| The bellman addresses the condemned souls |
[9 July, 2009] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) artnouveauho was asking about a version of the following rhyme, part of which is being used as a singing text for a new piece of choral music by the composer Benjamin Till, which is having its premiere tomorrow. (It is also being broadcast at the end of the month on BBC London; won't be able to hear it in the Midlands, chiz).
All you that in the Condemn’d-hold do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die.
Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near,
That you before th’Almighty must appear.
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not t’eternal flames be sent:
And when St. ’Pulchre’s bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls!
Past twelve o’clock!
The Tyburn Chronicle: or, villainy display’d in all its branches (1768) [II, 73]
This is the earliest occurrence of the rhyme I know. In The Tyburn Chronicle it says:
It has long been a custom for the Bell-man of St. Sepulchre’s parish (on the night before the prisoners are to be executed) to come under Newgate and ring his bell, and repeat the following verses to the criminals in the Condemned-hold.
***
It was indeed the custom that the parish of St Sepulchre’s should arrange for a man with a bell to come and ring it through the street-grating of the condemned cell in Newgate on the nights before executions, and deliver a set address to the prisoners within. That began in 1605, when a wealthy merchant called Robert Dove endowed a charity for the following purposes. At midnight before every execution day, the clerk of St Sepulchre’s rang a handbell outside Newgate, within the hearing of the prisoners awaiting execution, and spoke a set speech admonishing them to spend the night in repentant prayers for their own salvation. Next morning the great bell of St Sepulchre’s was tolled for several hours, all the way through the proceedings, just as it would be tolled to mark a death or a funeral. While the preparations for the executions were taking place, the prisoners brought out of their cells, the procession to Tyburn formed up, the bell would already be tolling. When the procession reached St Sepulchre’s churchyard wall, the carts carrying the condemned persons would stop while the clerk rang his handbell and spoke a second set speech. This reminded the onlookers that the bell was tolling for the prisoners, invited them to pray for them, and once again admonished the prisoners to repent. The prisoners were also given a bunch of flowers to carry to the gallows. St Sepulchre's church bell continued to be tolled until the executions were over. It must have been audible over much if not all of the early modern metropolis. The custom continued well into the eighteenth century.
The set speeches in use in the early eighteenth-century, which I imagine were those prescribed by Dove, or very close, are printed in Edward Hatton's New View of London (1708) [II, 707]. They are in prose. This is the first one:
You Prisoners within, who for your Wickedness and Sin:
After many Mercies shew’d you, you are now appointed to be Executed to Death to Morrow in the Forenoon. Give ear and understand, that to morrow morning the greatest Bell of St. Sepulchre’s parish shall toll for you from 6 till 10, in order and manner of a Passing-Bell, which used to be toll’d for those which lie at the point of Death, to the end, that all godly People hearing that Bell, and knowing it is for you going to your Deaths, may be stirred up to hearty prayer to God to bestow his Grace and Mercy upon you, whilst you yet live. Seeing the Prayers of others will do you no good, unless you turn to God in true sorrow for your Sins, and pray with them for your selves also: I beseech you all, and every one of you for Jesus Christ’s sake, to keep this Night in watching and hearty prayer to God for the Salvation of your own Souls, whilst there is yet time and place for Mercy, as knowing that to morrow you must appear before the Judgment Seat of your Creator, there to give an account of all things done in this Life, and to suffer Eternal Torment for your sins committed against him, unless upon your hearty and unfeigned Repentance you obtain Mercy, through the Merits, and Death, and Passion of Jesus Christ your only Mediator and Redeemer, who came into the World to save Sinners, and now sits at the Right Hand of God to make Intercession for you, if you penitently return to him.
So, Lord have mercy upon you, Lord have mercy upon you all.
At which point the rather jaunty rhyming version found in The Tyburn Chronicle was composed I do not know. I am sure, from the use of the expression 'the condemned hold' (earliest instance in OED 1717), it dates from some time in the eighteenth century. Whether the rhymed version was ever really used in place of the speech that was originally composed by Dove is another thing I cannot answer, though I am strongly inclined to doubt it.
For John Strype’s account of Dove and his charities (1720; account based on Anthony Munday’s 1618 revision of Stow’s Survey of London) see the online edition of Strype’s Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster. (Raise a cheer for the magnificent hriOnline team, the people who have also brought us the The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913.) The relevant pages in Strype are here, here, and here.
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| In memoriam |
[29 June, 2009] |
My one-time English teacher and friend of many years, Ilid Landry, died on 10 June. She asked for John Donne's poem ‘Death be not proud’ to be read at her funeral, and it was read superbly, by another former pupil of hers. Donne was her favourite poet.
So here, in memory of Ilid, is another of Donne’s poems. I am not a Donne enthusiast. My favourite among the metaphysicals is Andrew Marvell. But this poem I have always liked a lot:
Loves growth
I scarce beleeve my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grasse;
Me thinkes I lyed all winter, when I swore,
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mixt of all stuffes, paining soule, or sense,
And of the Sunne his working vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract, as they use
To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse,
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown ;
As in the firmament,
Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg’d, but showne.
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From loves awakened root do bud out now.
If, as in water stir’d more circles bee
Produc’d by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheares, but one heaven make,
For, they are all concentrique unto thee;
And though each spring doe adde to love new heate,
As princes doe in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate the springs encrease.
John Donne (1573–1631)
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| The Padstow Obby Oss |
[11 May, 2009] |
Just come back from a fortnight's holiday in the West Country. Spent May morning in Padstow, following the traditional Obby Oss through the streets of the town.
Unite and unite and let us all unite,
For summer is a-come unto day;
And whither we are going we all will unite
In the merry morning of May.
***
The young men of Padstow might if they would–
For summer is a-come unto day–
They might have built a ship and gilded her with gold,
In the merry morning of May.
The young women of Padstow might if they would–
For summer is a-come unto day–
They might have made a garland with the white rose and the red,
In the merry morning of May.
With a merry ring, adieu the merry spring,
For summer is a-come unto day;
How happy is the little bird that merrily doth sing,
In the merry morning of May.
***
Now fare you well and we bid you all good cheer,
For summer is a-come unto day;
We will call no more unto your house before another year,
In the merry morning of May.
from the Padstow 'Morning Song'
(version in Cornish Homes and Customs (1934) by A. K. Hamilton Jenkin)
Crossposted to wolfinthewood on Dreamwidth
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| 'It was deep April, and the morn' |
[23 April, 2009] |
It was deep April, and the morn
Shakespere was born;
The world was on us, pressing sore;
My Love and I took hands and swore,
Against the world, to be
Poets and lovers evermore,
To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore,
To sing to Charon in his boat,
Heartening the timid souls afloat;
Of judgement never to take heed,
But to those fast-locked souls to speed,
Who never from Apollo fled,
Who spent no hour among the dead;
Continually
With them to dwell,
Indifferent to heaven and hell.
'Michael Field'
[Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Cooper (1862–1913)]
Crossposted to wolfinthewood on Dreamwidth
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| Online booksellers and the Amazon furore |
[13 April, 2009] |
I woke up this morning to the news that amazon.com and amazon.co.uk have stripped a very large number of books of their sales rank, with the result that they no longer feature prominently, if at all, in searches on these sites. The connection between most of these books seems to be words like 'lesbian', 'gay', 'homosexuality', 'sexualities', etc in the title and/or the product description. It transpires that after first defending it as policy to a concerned publisher who inquired what was happening, the company then backtracked rapidly and within hours was telling industry journalists that what was going on was due to a glitch.
A list of titles affected is being compiled here. It is biased towards fiction. A quick check on amazon.co.uk has shown me that a number of serious historical studies have also been caught in the net, including at least two works by oursin.
One of the most interesting takes on what is going on is by tehdely, in this post. tehdely points out the parallel to the infamous LiveJournal 'Strikethrough' incident of 2007. She/he suggests that the episode might be due either to a well-synchronized use by some fundie group of the Amazon complaints system to flag up a large number of titles as objectionable, with the result that they have been automatically deranked by the software or that a group of that kind has brought covert pressure to bear on Amazon, with the result that the company has ordered a sweeping purge of its database.
If the latter, then it is a disgrace; if the former, then Amazon may be something of a victim in the affair. I have to say, though, that I find it fairly unlikely that any fundie group, however big and well-organised, could flag up enough complaints about such a large number of titles in a very limited space of time. And there is also the question of the company representative's highly unsatisfactory response to the enquiry by the publisher Mark Probst.
[UPDATE: This post on the Dear Author blog shows that Amazon appears to be filtering on metadata categories. This explains some of the oddities and inconsistencies. It also puts the company very firmly in the frame.]
Someone or other, in a comment (apologies for not linking, but I can't find it again) pointed out that so far as the UK is concerned, Amazon has probably put itself on the wrong side of the equality laws. I hope this is true, and that legal pressure will be brought to bear.
I thought my most useful contribution would be to list some alternative book sites to Amazon. But when I went to my favourite alternative site, The Book Depository, I found that if you enter 'homosexuality' in their search box the list of titles that comes up is almost (not exactly) the same as the list on amazon.co.uk. At present, the first two are anti-gay fundie titles. I think this is probably because The Book Depository have some deal with Amazon to use some form of their search engine; they sell extensively through Amazon Marketplace as well as from their own website, and they offer links on their site to buy from Amazon. Nevertheless, they are, I believe, a separate company, and I have had very good service from them in the past. They are based in the UK, but offer free worldwide delivery.
I am sticking here to sites I have used myself. So:
1) The Book Depository (UK-based, free shipping worldwide)
2) Blackwells, for academic books and serious non-fiction. They offer a reliable service. And they aren't using the Amazon search engine to find titles. (UK; free shipping in the UK for orders over £20)
3) To find secondhand/used books, the best starting points are the two meta-sites Bookfinder and Addall. These search through the inventory of a large number of online booksellers. Bookfinder lists new books in a separate column alongside the secondhand copies; Addall has a separate form to search for books in print.
4) The secondhand book site I have used most is Abebooks: in the past I have used both its North American site and the UK site. Unfortunately, the company now belongs to Amazon. However, many dealers list the same book on more than one site. Alibris, which also has a UK site, is an annoying company to deal with, as they charge your card soon after you place your order, and dispatch the book some time later - sometimes quite a long time later. However, the book usually comes in the end, and they do refund if it doesn't - though I once had to wrangle with them when the exchange rate changed. They did pay up the difference, after an exchange of views. I have also bought books through http://www.biblio.com/, with no problems.
In future, I shall be likely to buy directly through Abebooks only if it is my only option and I am absolutely desperate to obtain the book. Usually if a book turns up on Abebooks it is possible to contact the dealer separately about it, by phone or email. Some dealers also have separate websites of their own, in addition to their pages on Abebooks.
[UPDATE: I have just discovered that Bookfinder now belongs to Amazon, having been purchased along with Abebooks, its previous owner. The site blog claims that Abebooks was a hands-off owner, and anticipates that Amazon will show the same restraint. I wish I believed that was true, but Amazon have clearly shown that they manipulate their own search results in what they conceive to be their interest. (See also their fairly similar behaviour over print-on-demand titles not published using their service.) In future, though I expect I shall continue using Bookfinder for the moment (its value to Amazon is not financial; I imagine it lies in the information it provides them about what book buyers are looking for) I shall check its results very carefully against those provided by other sites.]
5) In the past I have had good dealings with Powells Books of Portland, Oregon. The books I have bought from them have all been secondhand, but if I were a North American customer looking for an alternative place to buy new books, I think I'd check them out first. I understand they are an independent company.
6) A very good UK remainder book site is PostScript Books. They mostly stock quality non-fiction, at good prices. They will send books worldwide, I believe.
7) Many publishers now sell direct to customers through the web. Smaller publishers I have bought books from recently include the poetry publisher Carcanet Press and the folklore/Celtic interest publisher Llanerch Press. In the future I shall be more likely to check online to see if I can buy direct from the publisher; especially if the publisher is a small or specialist one.
I may say that I am not happy that the main alternative UK bookseller I have listed here has close links with Amazon, and I expect to check out other online sellers of new books in the future.
I'd welcome any other suggestions of good online booksellers.
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For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life.
John Milton (1608–1674)
from Areopagitica (1644)
Thanks to Renascence Editions, at the University of Oregon. Full text here.
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| Colourful times in Clerkenwell |
[8 April, 2009] |
I am giving a talk on Tudor and Jacobean Clerkenwell under the title 'Trouble in Turnmill Street' at London Metropolitan Archives on Thursday 16 April at 11.00 am. It will be followed in the afternoon by a guided tour round Clerkenwell (not led by me). There is more information here (scroll down), and details of how to book here.
Turnmill Street (also called Turnbull and Turnball Street) was notorious as one of the wildest streets in London:
Here has beene such a hurry, such a din, such dismall drinking, swearing, and whoring, 't has almost made me mad: We have al liv'd in a continuall Turneball streete.
John Fletcher (1579–1625)
from The Scornful Ladie (co-written with Sir Francis Beaumont [1584–1616]; printed 1616)
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| Sharing a vision |
[23 March, 2009] |
I doubt whether anyone who read my last post missed the point that it was partly inspired by meditating on what some people have called The Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom 2009.
I came rather late to an awareness of that debate. Someone or other directed me to deepad's post I Didn’t Dream of Dragons, back in January, and I thought it was a very good post. But the fact that there was an intense and sometimes acrimonious debate continuing across LiveJournal and parts of the blogosphere was something I didn't find out about until the first week in March.
rydra_wong's 'linkspam' posts got me up to speed (also inspired me to fish down Babel-17 off the shelf one evening and reread it, which was enjoyable). I have found some interesting, thought-provoking posts through the links she has collected: for example, the debate on cultural appropriation that was conducted on The Angry Black Woman site in January, and asim's eloquent, perceptive and immensely challenging post The R-Word, which appeared a couple of weeks ago.
I didn't expect to post anything directly personal in relation to the debate, because that is not what I use my LiveJournal for, on the whole.
Last Thursday morning I took a look at rydra_wong's 'linkspam' post, and checked out the latest contributions.
One of the new posts that day was entitled Updated Post: Author Shit List. The poster, bridgetmkennitt, has made a list of the writers she proposes to boycott because she doesn't want 'to give [her] hard earned cash to racist or sexist authors'. Fair enough; how she spends her money is her prerogative entirely. I wouldn't dream of taking issue with her over it.
Most of the authors on her list are people whose books I have never read; but one name made me blink: 'Robin McKinley'.
Full and fair disclosure here: Robin is a friend of mine. It's a couple of years since we last met; we live in different parts of the country; but I am fond of her and I respect her.
Further clarification: I have not discussed this post of mine with Robin. I have not discussed the original post with Robin. I do not know if Robin is at all aware of bridgetmkennitt's post, or the post by unusualmusic to which she links. That post was made in January. It features a quotation from an entry in Robin's blog, made on 21 January and headed Inauguration Day.
When I saw that quotation, I winced. I remembered reading it in January, and thinking, oh dear, Robin, you have left yourself open to misunderstandings there.
But first, the context. Robin's post was written immediately after President Obama's inauguration ceremony in a mood of excitement. She feels proud to be an American, after eight years of feeling somewhat estranged from her country. She is impressed by Obama's inaugural speech. She is delighted by the benediction delivered by the veteran civil rights activist Joseph Lowery.
In the middle of her post she says the words that angered and disappointed unusualmusic: 'And okay, he’s officially African-American§ but he still looks like a white guy with a tan to me.§§'
I am not going to try and defend this remark, or explain what I think she was trying to say.
However, I am going to draw attention to a post she made ten days later, on 31 January. This is a passage from it:
'What I want [from an Obama presidency] is what I personally would see as the greatest miracle of all: that he can, on account of both who and what he is, a man of mixed race and heritage, pull us all together a bit more: Americans and British, Iraqis and Afghans, Israelis and Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis, North and South Koreans, Patagonians and New Guineans, Tuvaluns and Liechtensteiners. Because we’re all people first, and when the ozone, the polar ice, and the rainforests go, we’ll all go together.
This is what worries me about the focus on ‘the first African-American president’: it’s not that he’s not half black, of course he is, it’s that he’s also half white–or half something other than black, if you prefer. He’s BOTH. He is MORE THAN ONE THING. He belongs to more than one tribe. And you, me, Obama, the world, we can all be BOTH. We can all be more than one thing, belong to more than one tribe. In fact we should.'
And further on:
'An awful lot of what goes wrong among human beings is that we think in terms of us and them. We are apparently hardwired to do this: and we badly need to short this system out permanently. When all people of colour–or almost anyone who isn’t a WASP††–claim Obama as their own I sooo don’t want it to become another us and them situation–even if everyone-who-isn’t-a-WASP has been waiting a very, very long time for this moment and can hardly be faulted for wanting to revel in it. And I understand us and them, although mine tends to run along gender lines: did I want Hillary to be president partly just because she was a woman? ††† You bet I did. I’m frelling sick to frelling death of the gender wars: of the particular imbalances and abuses of that Us and Them. But I also know that the only way forward for men and women, just as for black, white, brown, yellow, red, chartreuse and plaid, is together. And, you know, acknowledging who we all are: different but the same.'
I have to say, as a Briton, that this strikes me as a very US American vision: up to and including the implicit assumption that the US President is the automatic leader of the whole world. But that is a side issue here.
Perhaps as a matter of personal temperament, perhaps as a matter of culture, the grand dream of the universal fellowship of human souls advancing side by side towards the future strikes me as splendid, uplifting – and remote.
I am a lesbian. At various points in my life I have been politically and culturally active in the lesbian and gay movement. I know that to some of my fellow humans, I am an unperson. There are people out there who will do me harm if they can.
And then there are the people who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me. The people who will watch my back, while I watch theirs. I don't always agree with all of them. Some of them can be frankly irritating at times. Out of ignorance, or some kind of inadvertence, they say things that I find annoying, even offensive. I may be moved to remonstrate with them. But I don't confuse them with the enemy.
I recognise them because, however imperfectly, we share a vision: of peace, equality and social justice.
I acknowledge that these are the people to whom I owe my survival, and my loyalty.
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| Some appropriations |
[16 March, 2009] |
There is a quotation that’s been haunting me over the last few days. It is one that has stuck in my mind ever since I first stumbled across it, in the autumn of 1976. It is a line from the comic dramatist Terence:
homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
I am a human being; I regard nothing human as alien to my concern.
Until I had occasion, all those years ago, to make a study of his work, I had always assumed that Terence was a Roman. ‘Roman playwright’; ‘Roman dramatist’: those were and still are the explicatory tags most commonly attached to his name. But as I found out, the truth is not so simple.
The name ‘Terence’ is an Anglicised form of Latin ‘Terentius’. In his own time Terence was known as Publius Terentius Afer. ‘Afer’ means African. He was born in Carthage, on the Tunisian coast, and he was dark-skinned [‘colore fusco’]. He may have been a Berber, or a Phoenician, or of mixed ancestry.
The chief source for his life is an account by Suetonius (c. 70–c. 160 CE) [Latin here]. At the time it was written, Terence had been dead for well over two centuries.
Terence arrived in Rome as a young slave. His master was a Roman senator, Publius Terentius Lucanus. Finding the boy to be intelligent and good-looking, Terentius Lucanus gave him the kind of education that was suited to a free man, and freed him when he reached adulthood. [In the context of ancient Roman culture it is a plausible conjecture that Terence’s master made sexual use of his handsome young favourite.]
Like all Roman freedmen, Terence took his master’s forename and family name: ‘Publius Terentius’. We do not know his birth-name.
The kind of education that was considered to be suited to a free man was primarily an education in Greek literature. Greek was the language of learning and letters. Terence wrote his plays in Latin, for a Roman audience, but he made very heavy use of material appropriated from the work of the Greek comic dramatists.
As a young man, Terence moved socially in a circle that included many well-born Romans. He was a close associate and protegé of Scipio Aemilianus (c. 185–129 BCE; also called Scipio Africanus the younger), a noted patron of letters, and his close friend Gaius Laelius. He was probably much the same age as these two men, which would mean he was born in about 185 BCE.
His first play, Andria (‘The Girl from Andros’), was performed in 166 BCE. He based it on two earlier plays by the Greek comic dramatist Menander (c. 342–292 BCE).
Two years before the performance of Terence’s Andria, in 168 BCE, the Roman general Paullus had defeated King Perseus of Macedon at Pydna. As a result of this victory, Rome became the supreme power throughout the Greek world. Paullus’s personal share of the loot from the fall of Macedon was Perseus’s library of books in Greek.
Terence’s friend and patron, Scipio Aemilianus, was the second son of Paullus, and fought under him at Pydna. He was the adopted son of Scipio Africanus the elder, who, before any of these young men were born, had beaten the Carthaginian general Hannibal and asserted Roman supremacy over North Africa.
Suetonius notes that according to some sources, Terence owed his success with his two upper-class friends, Scipio and Laelius, to his good looks; it was very strongly hinted that he made himself sexually available to them.
In the prologues to two of his plays, Terence mentions that there were rumours that he was helped in the writing of his plays by his aristocratic friends. Suetonius notes that Terence’s denials of this are rather half-hearted; interestingly, he infers, not that the rumours were true, but that Terence allowed them to be thought so, because he knew that it flattered his patrons.
Six comedies by Terence survive. All of them are based on earlier plays by Greek authors. They are not straightforward translations, but adaptations. Several of his comedies combine elements from more than one source. In the prologues to some of his plays, he defends himself against criticisms that his free treatment of the Greek originals amounted to ‘polluting’ them.
In 159 BCE, when the dramatist was in his mid-twenties, he left Rome to travel into Greece. He never came back. In Suetonius’ time, there were various contradictory rumours about his death: that he drowned at sea, or that he died somewhere in Greece as a result of an illness.
Suetonius speculates that he may have planned the trip to Greece with the intention of researching Greek customs and institutions, so as to portray them more accurately in his plays.
***
The line ‘I am a human being; I regard nothing human as alien to my concern’ comes from Terence’s play Heauton Timorumenos. The title is a Greek phrase usually translated as ‘The Self-Tormentor’ or ‘The Self-Tormenting Man’. The play is based on a lost original by the Greek dramatist Menander. It is not known whether or not this particular line is a direct translation of a passage by Menander, or whether it originated with Terence.
At quite an early point, this line was detached from its context in the play and became an aphorism. Cicero quotes it in De Legibus [‘Concerning the Laws’] (c. 51 BCE): ‘But if men would follow their true natures, and, using their judgement, “regard nothing human as alien to their concern”, as the poet says, justice would be equally upheld by all.’ [I.xii (33); Latin here, and the Internet Archive has an English translation. Cicero also quotes this line in De Officiis (‘On Duties’; Book 1 cap. 9)]
In the middle of the first century CE Seneca quotes it: ‘Nature brought us forth related to each other … she instilled in us mutual love and made us sociable creatures. She established fairness and justice; in accordance with the way she has arranged things, it is more deplorable to inflict harm than to be injured; in accordance with her command, let our hands be ready to give aid where it is needed. Let this line be in your heart and in your mouth: “I am a human being; I regard nothing human as alien to my concern.” ’ [Epistulae XCV.53; Latin here; an English translation here.]
Cicero and Seneca had appropriated Terence’s line of dialogue and turned it into an axiom of Stoic philosophy. The Stoic school of philosophy was founded at Athens in the fourth century BC. The Stoics taught that all men are brothers, without distinction of conquered or conqueror, slave or free. This did not prevent wealthy Stoics from keeping slaves. Both Cicero and Seneca were slave owners.
More than five centuries after Terence’s death, St Augustine of Hippo recorded the story that when this line was spoken, ‘the whole theatre, full of foolish and uneducated people, broke into applause’. St. Augustine continues: ‘This shows that the idea of the fellowship of all human souls naturally touched their sympathies: not one of the people present failed to perceive themselves as the neighbour of all other human beings.’ Is this story true? Who knows. It sounds suspiciously like an exemplum or anecdote made up by some orator or writer to lend force to his point. [St. Augustine, Epistulae (‘Letters’) no. 155; Latin text in this volume. St Augustine also cited the same quotation from Terence in his work Contra Julianum (‘Against Julian’; English translation here; see p. 240).]
St. Augustine, who was influenced by Stoic philosophy, has appropriated the quotation from Terence to support his case that the injunction to ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ was a universally recognised law.
[For ‘love thy neighbour as thyself&rsquo see: Leviticus ch. 19 v.18; Matthew ch. 19 vv. 17–19; ch. 22 vv. 37–40; Mark ch. 12 vv. 28–34; Luke ch. 10 vv. 25–37; Romans ch. 13 vv. 8–10; Galatians ch. 5 v. 14; James ch. 2 v. 8. I do not ignore the fact that this opens up a whole new topic. It is disturbing that many people who call themselves Christians seem not to realise that when Jesus spoke the words ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ he was quoting from the third book of Moses.]
In 1788 a young Oxford undergraduate from Jersey called John Lemprière wrote a classical dictionary under the title Bibliotheca classica. As Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary it was to be reprinted many, many times. In his article on Terence, Lemprière included the story from St. Augustine, with certain additions. He stated: ‘when the words of Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto, were repeated, … the audience, though composed of foreigners, conquered nations, allies, and citizens of Rome, were unanimous in applauding the poet, who spoke with such elegance and simplicity, the language of nature, and supported the native independence of man.’
The ‘foolish and uneducated people’ of the anecdote recorded by St. Augustine now becomes a theatre full of people very disparate in origins and status, but united under the rule of the Roman Empire. Terence, the educated African freedman, is implicitly co-opted as a case of a barbarian civilized by exposure to Graeco-Roman culture, at the same time as he is appropriated as an example of ‘the native independence of man’: the idea that something in the human spirit will always rise above slavery and oppression, and claim a place in a universal brotherhood which everyone, conquerors and conquered alike, recognises as decreed by the law of nature.
At the time Lemprière was writing, Britain had lost North America (apart from Canada), but it was strongly established in the Caribbean, and well on the way to controlling India. It was still up to its neck in the slave trade, though as a society it was beginning to have scruples about this: in 1788 over one hundred petitions for the abolition of slavery were presented to Parliament.
***
The context in which the original quotation occurs is a dialogue between two old men, Menedemus and Chremes. Menedemus, the ‘Self-Tormentor’, insists on doing a lot of the heavy work on his farm himself, although he has plenty of slave labourers. Chremes, his neighbour, bluntly asks him why, and suggests that he should give himself a break. The following exchange occurs:
Menedemus. Chremes, do you really have so much time to take from your own affairs that you can pay attention to things that are alien to your concern and of no consequence to you?
Chremes. I am a human being; I regard nothing human as alien to my concern. You may think of me either as giving you advice, or as being inquisitive. If you are doing the right thing, I may do the same; if you are not, I may be able to deter you.
In 1753, in his essay ‘Dissertation on the Provinces of the Drama’, the critic and classical scholar Richard Hurd quoted the line homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto and commented:
‘We are not to take this, as hath constantly been done, for a sentiment of pure humanity and the natural ebullition of benevolence. We may observe in it a designed stroke of satirical resentment. The Self-tormentor, as we saw, had ridiculed Chremes’ curiosity by a severe reproof. Chremes, to be even with him, reflects upon the inhumanity of his temper. “You,” says he, “seem such a foe to humanity, that you spare it not in yourself; I, on the other hand, am affected, when I see it suffer in another.” ’ [5th edition, pp. 200–201; text here.]
It’s hard to disagree.
It may also be added that during the course of the play Chremes shows himself to be a bumbling busybody. His claim to feel concern for the sufferings of a fellow human being is an empty remark by a self-satisfied fool. [Also, it turns out that he had ordered that his daughter should be exposed at birth; though this may be more disturbing to a modern audience than a Roman one.]
Terence’s patron Scipio Aemilianus was interested in Stoic ideas.
Perhaps Terence, the freedman, the barbarian from Africa, the accommodating social climber, is using Chremes to send up pompous Stoics whose avowed belief in the fellowship of human souls is strictly theoretical.
Or perhaps that is just how I’d like to see him.
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| Bleak prophecy |
[6 March, 2009] |
I don't often comment on politics in this journal, and when I do, it is generally obliquely, by way of some quoted passage that strikes me as apposite to the times. This is not because I am not interested; on the contrary, people who know me in Real Life know that life with Gill is lived to the accompaniment of regular savage commentary on public affairs. But this journal is a space to play in, and share fun stuff.
However, yesterday's news about the Bank of England's decision to resort to ‘Quantative Easing’ ‘Quantative Inflation’ strikes me with the deepest dismay and foreboding. It has been clear to me all along that the nightmare to end all nightmares would be hyperinflation; also that we would be quite lucky to avoid it. I did not imagine that Britain's economic governors would run to embrace it with open arms.
Did they never learn any history at school? Do the words 'Weimar' and 'wheelbarrow' fail to ring any bells for them?
My partner's mother lived in Germany for a while in the early 1920s. I am told that for the rest of her life she flatly refused to save money.
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There had come a complete uncertainty as to the future. Long before the close of 1791 no one knew whether a piece of paper money representing a hundred livres would, a month later, have a purchasing power of ninety or eighty or sixty livres. The result was that capitalists feared to embark their means in business. Enterprise received a mortal blow. Demand for labor was still further diminished; and here came a new cause of calamity: for this uncertainty withered all far-reaching undertakings. The business of France dwindled into a mere living from hand to mouth. This state of things, too, while it bore heavily upon the moneyed classes, was still more ruinous to those in moderate and, most of all, to those in straitened circumstances. With the masses of the people, the purchase of every article of supply became a speculation—a speculation in which the professional speculator had an immense advantage over the ordinary buyer. …
Nor was there any compensating advantage to the mercantile classes. The merchant was forced to add to his ordinary profit a sum sufficient to cover probable or possible fluctuations in value, and while prices of products thus went higher, the wages of labor, owing to the number of workmen who were thrown out of employment, went lower.
Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918)
from Fiat Money Inflation in France (1914)
[full text on Project Gutenberg]
I am off to dig the garden and plant cabbages.
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| Rathangan |
[28 February, 2009] |
The Fort of Rathangan
The fort over against the oak-wood,
Once it was Bruidge’s, it was Cathal’s,
It was Aed’s, it was Ailill’s,
It was Conaing’s, it was Cuilíne’s,
And it was Maeldúin’s:
The fort remains after each in his turn—
And the kings asleep in the ground.
Anonymous (Irish, sixth century or earlier)
trans. Kuno Meyer (1858–1919)
AFTERNOTE: papersky has pointed out that what Meyer in his translation calls a fort was actually the remains of a village, fortified with a bank of earth (which originally would have been topped with a palisade).
I found this fine photo of the fort as it is today on Flickr:
The photographer has uploaded several more.
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| She Saw a Banshee |
[26 February, 2009] |
From thence [Limerick] we went to the Lady Honora O'Brien's, a lady that went for a maid, but few believed it. She was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Thomond. There we stayed three nights, the first of which I was surprised at being laid in a chamber where, about one o'clock, I heard a voice that awaked me. I drew the curtain, and in the casement of the window I saw by the light of the moon a woman leaning into the window through the casement, in white, with red hair and ghastly complexion. She spake loud, and in a tone I never heard, thrice "Ahone"; and then with a sigh more like wind than breath she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so much affrighted that my hair stood on end and my night-clothes fell off. I pulled and pinched your father, who never awaked during this disorder I was in, but at last was much surprised to find me in this fright – and more when I related the story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us slept more that night; but he entertained me with telling how much more those apparitions were usual in that country than in England. And we concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the want of that knowing faith that should defend them from the power of the devil, which he exercises amongst them very much. About eight o'clock the lady of the house came to see us, saying she had not been a-bed all night, because a cousin O'Brien of hers, whose ancestors had owned that house, had desired her to stay with him in his chamber, who died at two o'clock. "And," said she, "I wish you to have had no disturbance, for it is the custom of this place that when any die of this family, there is the shape of a woman appears in this window every night until they be dead. This woman was many ages ago got with child by the owner of this place, and he in his garden murdered her and flung her into the river under your window. But truly I thought not of it when I lodged you here, it being the best room I had." We made little reply to her speech, but disposed ourselves to be gone suddenly.
Ann, Lady Fanshawe (1625–1680), widow of Sir Richard Fanshawe, baronet, writing in 1676 about events in the winter of 1649. Her memoirs are addressed to her son Richard.
from The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe (published in 1907)
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| A Bard, a Piper and a Librarian |
[22 February, 2009] |
GAELIC SOCIETY OF INVERNESS
CONSTITUTION
***
9. The Society shall elect a Bard, a Piper, and a Librarian.
from Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, vol xviii, 1891–1892
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| Woodwoses |
[11 February, 2009] |
As everyone who has read Gawain and the Green Knight knows, among the perils faced by Sir Gawain as he rides in search of the Green Chapel through an England that never quite existed (but should have) are the woodwoses, the wild people of the woods. ('Sumwhyle wyth wormez he werrez, and with wolves als, Sumwhyle with wodwos that woned in the knarrez' [Sometimes he fights with dragons, and with wolves, as well; sometimes with woodwoses, that lived among the crags].)
When I was in Norfolk last autumn I visited a couple of churches which had figures of woodwoses carved on their fonts. I'd guess that in that context the woodwose, the wild man, was a symbol of the natural, unregenerate human being, unredeemed by christening. But that is just a guess.
In medieval iconography, woodwoses are covered in hair, and they carry clubs. The font of St Catherine's, Ludham, has two woodwoses carved on it: a male and a female.
 
The font of St Edmund's, Acle, has four very fine woodwoses, still with traces of paint:
 
There were various different conceptions of woodwoses, wild men, homines silvestres, in medieval and Renaissance texts. Sometimes they seem to be conceived of as a separate but related species from the human. Probably rumours of the great apes contributed to the legends. Sometimes they are simply humans who have become wild through grief or despair or outright madness. At one point in the Lancelot stories he runs to the woods and lives as a wild man after Guinevere's rejection drives him mad. During the Renaissance, the natives of America and other places are quite often compared with and even identified with wild men.
Some woodwoses are gentle creatures, vegetarians, living like humans did in the lost Age of Gold. Others are altogether ogreish, even cannibalistic.
The most famous wild man of medieval fiction was the hero Orson (urse-son, the bear's son). His story begins when Bellisant, Empress of Constantinople, is banished by her husband the Emperor, who has been led to believe she has been plotting against him. The Empress, who is pregnant, gives birth to two twin sons under a tree in a forest. One of the babies is carried off by a bear:
The Beer that had taken one of the chyldren of Bellyssant, devoured it not but bare it in to his caverne that was profounde and obscure. In the whiche was foure younge Beers stronge and puyssaunt. The Beer caste the chylde amonge hys whelpes to be eaten, but god that never forgeteth his frendes shewed an evydent myracle. For the younge Beeres dydde it no harme, but with theyr roughe pawes strooked it softely. When the Beer sawe that her lytle whelpes would not devoure it, she was right amerous of the chylde (so muche) that she kepte it and gave it sucke a hole yeare. The chylde was all roughe because of the nutrifactyon of the beer, as a wilde beest. So he began to go in to the woode, and became great in a while and began for to smyte the other beastes of the forest, in suche wyse that they all douted hym, and fledde before him, For he fered nothyng in the worlde. In suche estate was the chylde ledyng a beastes lyfe the space of xv. yeare. He became so great and strong, that none durst passe through the forest for hym, for bothe men and beastes he did put unto dethe, and eate their flesh al rawe as the other beastes did, and lived a beastual life and not humayne. He was called Orson, because of the beere that had nouryshed hym, and he was al so rough as a beere. He dyd so muche harme in the forest, and was so sore redoubted, that there was none, were he never so valiaunt and hardy, but that he had great fere to encountre the wylde man. The renowne sprange so of hym, that all they of the countrey aboute chaced and hunted hym with force and strength, but nothynge avaylled all their deade, for he fered neyther gynnes* nor wepons, but brake all in peces. Now he is in the forest ledyng the life of a wilde beast, without wering of any cloth, or any worde speaking.
*gins, traps
from The Hystory of the two valyaunte Brethren Valentyne and Orson (c. 1510; text from 1565 edition)
translated from the French romance Valentin et Orson (originally written between 1475 and 1489) by Henry Watson (floruit 1500–1518)
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| Bookhunting on and around the Charing Cross Road |
[8 February, 2009] |
When I was a child growing up in Greater London, my father, who worked in Clerkenwell, would sometimes come home with secondhand books that he had found in his lunch hour in a fabulous place called 'the-Charing-Cross-Road'. Most of the books were for him, of course, or ones he had found for my mother, but a few of them came my way. For instance, knowing I was interested in King Arthur, he brought me Sebastian Evans's book The High History of the Holy Graal, a translation of the Old French romance usually called Perlesvaus: to me, a treasure. (I posted a story from it a couple of years ago.)
When I reached sixteen, I persuaded my parents I was old enough to be allowed to head off to the city by myself for a few hours; so one Saturday I went up on the tube, clutching several months' worth of saved-up pocket money. Probably Christmas money too. It was winter, I remember that.
The first place I made for was the Charing Cross Road. On that visit it was Foyles where I spent my time and money. After much thought, I bought the Tolkien and Gordon edition of Gawain and the Green Knight, Skeat's one-volume Chaucer, and Christopher Fry's play The Lady's Not for Burning, which I had recently heard on the radio, to my then utter delight. I still have a sneaking fondness for it.
Since that time I have rarely gone to central London without spending at least an hour or so in the bookshops round the Charing Cross Road. Foyles has gone through various phases, but the sheer volume of stock they carry has made them always worth a visit. I have spent many happy if slightly claustrophobic hours in the cellars of Quinto Books and Any Amount of Books. I have never done so well in Henry Pordes Books, but I drop in there if I have the time. From time to time I have made some very good finds in P. J. Hilton's secondhand bookshop in Cecil Court. And nearby Watkins Books has some interesting folklore and books on magic. All those shops are still there, I believe, so I suppose I shall be visiting the Charing Cross Road area for a while longer.
But I miss the places that have gone. The first disappearance I noticed was that of Zeno, on Denmark Street, specialising in books on Greece, including Classical Greece. It had a decent secondhand section. I have a book on the art of Archaic Greece I bought there. High rents forced Zeno to move out to the suburbs some years ago. I am not sure it exists any more. I used to shop at Silver Moon women's bookshop, but high rents destroyed it as an independent entity seven or eight years ago. Foyle's took it over and gave its name to a room on their third floor, but last time I went there I wasn't much impressed. I have a terrific book on Medieval Norwegian Art I bought from Zwemmer's Art Bookshop, some time in the nineties. But high rents killed Zwemmer's, too. I never spent much time in the other art bookseller, Shipley's, where the prices for anything I fancied were invariably way beyond my pocket. Shipley's closed at the end of last year. There was a bargain bookshop up near the Tottenham Court Road end, with a useful secondhand section in its basement. Among the books I bought there were Souter's Glossary of Later Latin and Weinreb and Hibbert's The London Encyclopaedia, both of which are on the shelves immediately above my computer. I am not quite sure when that shop closed, but I am pretty sure it wasn't there last time I passed down Charing Cross Road.
It is about four years now since Murder One closed down its science fiction and fantasy section. I used to go there nearly every time I was in London. The main shop moved across the road, but I never visited it in the new premises. I am not a great reader of detective fiction. Now Murder One has closed completely, and the Guardian has marked its passing, and the steep decline of the booktrade on the Charing Cross Road, with an interactive web page: Charing Cross - the fading world of books. It made me sad.
Ballade of the Book-man’s Paradise
There is a Heaven, or here, or there,—
A Heaven there is, for me and you,
Where bargains meet for purses spare,
Like ours, are not so far and few.
Thuanus’ bees go humming through
The learned groves, ’neath rainless skies,
O’er volumes old and volumes new,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There treasures bound for Longepierre
Keep brilliant their morocco blue,
There Hookes’ Amanda is not rare,
Nor early tracts upon Peru!
Racine is common as Rotrou,
No Shakespeare Quarto search defies,
And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There's Eve,—not our first mother fair,—
But Clovis Eve, a binder true;
Thither does Bauzonnet repair,
Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup!
But never come the cropping crew
That dock a volume’s honest size,
Nor they that “letter” backs askew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
Envoy
Friend, do not Heber and De Thou,
And Scott, and Southey, kind and wise,
La chasse au bouquin still pursue
Within that Book-man’s Paradise?
Andrew Lang (1844–1912)
from Rhymes à la Mode (1885)
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| The Nine Orders of Angels |
[11 January, 2009] |
On holiday in September near the southern edge of Norfolk, I discovered the wonderful late medieval painted rood screens that have survived in a surprising number of the churches of that area. Through the patience of my partner and the technical marvels of my Canon EOS 450D camera I was able to take a lot of reasonably decent photos, without flash (it would be a crime to use flash on those paintings). In the last few days, I have finally found time to process some of the best of these images and put them on Flickr.
The rood screen I loved best of all was in the out-of-the-way church of St Michael and All Angels, Barton Turf. Its highlight is a set of panels depicting each of the Nine Orders of Angels. Presumably once the church had a great painting or statue of St Michael, to complete the set, but that is long gone. However, one of the panels of the very famous rood screen at Ranworth depicts a very fine St Michael. The Barton Turf angels delight me partly because they are so wonderfully decorative, partly because the subject matter (the Nine Orders of Angels) is relatively arcane, but also, it has to be said, because they strike me as, well, a bit camp.
Here are some of my favourites:
And here is the St Michael from the rood screen in the church of St Helen, Ranworth:
The Nine Orders of Angels were more or less invented by a sixth-century Christian Neoplatonist, probably from Syria, who wrote in Greek and called himself Dionysius the Areopagite after an early Christian mentioned in the Book of Acts (chap 17 verse 34). These days he is usually known as 'Pseudo-Dionysius' but in the Middle Ages they thought his writings were really the work of a first-century Christian, and accordingly they were held in high regard. Dionysius states that there are nine orders of angels: seraphims, cherubims, thrones, dominions, powers, virtues, principalities, archangels and angels. The seraphim are the closest to God, and only the last two orders, the archangels and angels, have any dealings with the human race. Dionysius found the seraphims in Isaiah, cherubims in various Old Testament passages, but perhaps especially in Ezekiel, and the thrones, dominions, powers and principalities in Colossians (chap 1, verse 15). I am not sure what gave him the idea of an angelic order of 'virtues' (virtue=Greek δυναμεις).
******
Come, then, let us at last, if you please, rest our mental vision from the strain of lofty contemplation, befitting Angels, and descend to the divided and manifold breadth of the many-shaped variety of the Angelic forms …
We must … search, in our first explanation of the types, for what reason the Word of God prefers the sacred description of fire, in preference to almost every other. You will find it, then, representing not only wheels of fire, but also living creatures of fire, and men, flashing, as it were, like lightning, and placing around the Heavenly Beings themselves heaps of coals of fire, and rivers of flame flowing with irresistible force; and also it says that the thrones are of fire; and that the most exalted Seraphim glow with fire, it shews from their appellation, and it attributes the characteristic and energy of fire to them, and throughout, above and below, it prefers pre-eminently the representation by the image of fire. I think, then, the similitude of fire denotes the likeness of the Heavenly Minds to God in the highest degree; for the holy theologians frequently describe the superessential and formless essence by fire, as having many likenesses, if I may be permitted to say so, of the supremely Divine property, as in things visible. For the sensible fire is, so to speak, in everything, and passes through everything unmingled, and springs from all, and whilst all-luminous, is, as it were, hidden, unknown, in its essential nature, when there is no material lying near it upon which it may shew its proper energy. It is both uncontrollable and invisible, self-subduing all things, and bringing under its own energy anything in which it may happen to be; varying, imparting itself to all things near it, whatever they may be; renewing by its rousing heat, and giving light by its uncovered illuminations; invincible, unmingled, separating, unchangeable, elevating, penetrating, lofty; subject to no grovelling inferiority, ever moving, self-moving, moving other things, comprehending, incomprehended, needing no other, imperceptibly increasing itself, displaying its own majesty to the materials receiving it; energetic, powerful, present to all invisibly, unobserved, seeming not to be, and manifesting itself suddenly according to its own proper nature by friction, as it were by a sort of seeking, and again flying away impalpably, undiminished in all the joyful distributions of itself. And one might find many characteristics of fire, appropriate to display the supremely Divine Energy, as in sensible images. The Godly-wise, then, knowing this, depict the celestial Beings from fire, shewing their Godlikeness, and imitation of God, as far as attainable.
But they also depict them under the likeness of men, on account of the intellectual faculty, and their having powers of looking upwards, and their straight and erect form, and their innate faculty of ruling and guiding, and whilst being least, in physical strength as compared with the other powers of irrational creatures, yet ruling over all by their superior power of mind, and by their dominion in consequence of rational science, and their innate unslavishness and indomitableness of soul. It is possible, then, I think, to find within each of the many parts of our body harmonious images of the Heavenly Powers, by affirming that the powers of vision denote the most transparent elevation towards the Divine lights, and again, the tender, and liquid, and not repellent, but sensitive, and pure, and unfolded, reception, free from all passion, of the supremely Divine illuminations.
Now the discriminating powers of the nostrils denote the being able to receive, as far as attainable, the sweet-smelling largess beyond conception, and to distinguish accurately things which are not such, and to entirely reject.
The powers of the ears denote the participation and conscious reception of the supremely Divine inspiration.
The powers of taste denote the fulness of the intelligible nourishments, and the reception of the Divine and nourishing streams.
The powers of touch denote the skilful discrimination of that which is suitable or injurious.
The eyelids and eyebrows denote the guarding of the conceptions which see God.
The figures of manhood and youth denote the perpetual bloom and vigour of life.
The teeth denote the dividing of the nourishing perfection given to us; for each intellectual Being divides and multiplies, by a provident faculty, the unified conception given to it by the more Divine for the proportionate elevation of the inferior.
The shoulders and elbows, and further, the hands, denote the power of making, and operating, and accomplishing.
The heart again is a symbol of the Godlike life, dispersing its own life-giving power to the objects of its forethought, as beseems the good.
The chest again denotes the invincible and protective faculty of the life-giving distribution, as being placed above the heart.
The back, the holding together the whole productive powers of life.
The feet denote the moving and quickness, and skilfulness of the perpetual movement advancing towards Divine things. Wherefore also the Word of God arranged the feet of the holy Minds under their wings; for the wing displays the elevating quickness and the heavenly progress towards higher things, and the superiority to every grovelling thing by reason of the ascending, and the lightness of the wings denotes their being in no respect earthly, but undefiledly and lightly raised to the sublime; and the naked and unshod denotes the unfettered, agile, and unrestrained, and free from all external superfluity, and assimilation to the Divine simplicity, as far as attainable.
But since again the simple and variegated wisdom both clothes the naked, and distributes certain implements to them to carry, come, let us unfold, according to our power, the sacred garments and implements of the celestial Minds. The shining and glowing raiment, I think, signifies the Divine likeness after the image of fire, and their enlightening, in consequence of their repose in Heaven, where is the Light, and their complete illuminating intelligibly, and their being illuminated intellectually; and the sacerdotal robe denotes their conducting to Divine and mystical visions, and the consecration of their whole life. And the girdles signify the guard over their productive powers, and the collected habit of being turned uniformly to It, and being drawn around Itself by an unbroken identity, in a well-ordered circle.
The rods signify the kingly and directing faculty, making all things straight. The spears and the battle-axes denote the dividing of things unlike, and the sharp and energetic and drastic operation of the discriminating powers. The geometrical and technical articles denote the founding, and building, and completing, and whatever else belongs to the elevating and guiding forethought for the subordinate Orders. But sometimes the implements assigned to the holy Angels are the symbols of God's judgments to ourselves; some, representing His correcting instruction or avenging righteousness, others, freedom from peril, or end of education, or resumption of former well-being, or addition of other gifts, small or great, sensible or intelligible. Nor would a discriminating mind, in any case whatever, have any difficulty in properly adapting things visible to things invisible.
Pseudo-Dionysius (c.500)
from On the Heavenly Hierarchy trans John Parker in 1899
Thanks to Roger Pearse, who has transcribed the complete text of this translation of Dionysius's writings and put it online.
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| The Fleet Ditch |
[8 January, 2009] |
oursin linked to a couple of Guardian pieces about a project to restore some of London's lost rivers. This reminded me of Ben Jonson's mock-heroic poem about the two men who took a bet to take a boat up the Fleet River (then an open sewer) as far as Holborn. Here are three of his most graphic passages:
In the first jawes appear'd that ugly monster,
Ycleped Mud, which, when their oares did once stirre,
Belch'd forth an ayre, as hot, as at the muster
Of all your night-tubs, when the carts doe cluster,
Who shall discharge first his merd-urinous load:
Thorough her wombe they make their famous road,
Betweene two walls; where, on one side, to scar men,
Were seene your ugly Centaures, yee call Car-men,
Gorgonian scolds, and Harpyes: on the other
Hung stench, diseases, and old filth, their mother,
With famine, wants, and sorrowes many a dosen,
The least of which was to the plague a cosen.
But they unfrighted passe, though many a privie
Spake to'hem louder, than the Oxe in Livie;
And many a sinke* pour'd out her rage anenst'hem;
But still their valour, and their vertue fenc't'hem …
The banks of the Fleet were lined with privies. The following lines seem to be describing a particularly big and well-known one:
By this time had they reach'd the Stygian poole
By which the Masters sweare, when on the stoole
Of worship, they their nodding chinnes do hit
Against their breasts. Here, sev'rall ghosts did flit
About the shore, of farts, but late departed,
White, black, blew, greene, and in more formes out-started,
Than all those Atomi ridiculous,
Whereof old Democrite, and Hill Nicholas,**
One said, the other swore, the world consists.
These be the cause of those thick frequent mists
Arising in that place, through which, who goes,
Must trie the un-used valour of a nose:
And that ours did. For, yet, no nare*** was tainted,
Nor thumbe, nor finger to the stop acquainted,
But open, and un-arm'd encounter'd all:
Whether it languishing stuck upon the wall,
Or were precipitated down the jakes,
And, after, swom abroad in ample flakes,
Or, that it lay, heap'd like an usurers masse,
All was to them the same, they were to passe,
And so they did …
Higher up, near Newgate Street, there was a stretch of the river where butchers and cooks routinely disposed of refuse, under some misguided ordinance of the Middle Ages. Jonson compared this part to Acheron (the burning river of the Greek Hades):
The ever-boyling floud. Whose bankes upon
Your Fleet-lane Furies; and hot cooks do dwell,
That, with still-scalding steemes, make the place hell.
The sinkes ran grease, and haire of meazled hogs,
The heads, houghs, entrailes, and the hides of dogs:
For, to say truth, what scullion is so nasty,
To put the skins, and offall in a pasty?
Cats there lay divers had been flead and rosted,
And, after mouldie grown, again were tosted,
Then selling not, a dish was tane to mince'hem,
But still, it seem'd, the ranknesse did convince'hem.
For, here they were thrown in with'the melted pewter,
Yet drown'd they not. They had five lives in future.
*sinke: cess-pit
**Nicholas Hill (1570–c.1610), a philosopher
***nare: nostril
Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
from 'The Famous Voyage'
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| The words of the prophet |
[30 December, 2008] |
Your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
***
Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
Isaiah chapter 59 verses 3–5, 7–8 (Authorised [King James] Version)
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| Christmas comes but once a year |
[23 December, 2008] |
In comes I old Father Christmas.
Am I welcome or am I not?
I hope old Father Christmas will never be forgot
As Christmas comes but once a year
And when it comes it brings good cheer,
A pocketful of money and a cellar full of beer,
Roast beef, plum pudding and mince pies:
Who likes that any better than I?
from the Mummers' Play as collected by R. J. E. Tiddy at Overton, Hampshire in 1913
A very merry Christmas to my friends online.
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| John Milton goes girl-watching |
[3 December, 2008] |
Next Tuesday is the quatercentenary of the birth of John Milton. I am giving a talk with the title 'John Milton of London' at the Guildhall Library on Friday afternoon (2 till 4.30). As of this morning, there were still a couple of tickets left. Admission - £10 / £7.50. Booking (essential) on 020 7332 3851. ***Edit: All the tickets are now sold***
Meanwhile, I need to check the pronunciation of a couple of Italian names: Lucca, the city, and Cifra, a composer. Anyone out there know Italian?
One of the things I am looking at in the talk is some of Milton's early Latin poetry. I have been translating his great neglected pastoral elegy, 'Epitaphium Damonis', but I'll keep that for the talk for now. But here is a prose translation of part of a Latin poem he wrote at the age of 17 when he was a Cambridge undergraduate. The poem is addressed to his best friend from school, Charles Diodati. Milton is unhappy at Cambridge; he is much happier at his father's house in London. After a long passage about theatre-going, he continues:
But I do not always lurk under a roof or within the city, nor is the springtime wasted on me. I also visit a grove of elms not far from the city, a place in the suburbs, magnificently shady. Here very often you may see groups of girls go by, stars that breathe out enticing flames. Ah! how many times I have been struck with wonder at the miracle of a fine figure, [a sight] that might restore an old man’s youth. Ah! how many times have I seen eyes that surpassed gems … a forehead of outstanding loveliness, and fluttering locks of hair, the golden nets that Love the trickster spreads [for us].
...
You, London, a city built by settlers from Troy, visible in all directions because of your crest of towers, fortunate beyond measure, you enclose within your ramparts whatever loveliness the pendent orb possesses. The stars who glitter for you in serene skies, the crowd of attendants who wait upon Endymion’s goddess, are not so many as the crowd that may be seen shining through your streets, girls who catch the eye both for their shapely figures and their golden [ornaments].
John Milton (1608–1674)
from Elegia prima ad Carolum Diodatum (Spring 1626?)
translation © Gillian Spraggs, 2008
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| 'Robbin Hoods Men' |
[22 November, 2008] |
There is a very interesting interview in today’s Guardian with Asad ‘Booyah’ Abdulahi, a Somalian pirate chief. He talks about something that I have seen mentioned elsewhere, but which has been suppressed in most reports of the recent piracy incidents: that he and other Somalian pirates were originally fishermen who were driven to piracy following heavy harassment by foreign boats fishing in Somalian waters, which made it impossible for them to gain a living as peaceful fishermen.
He is reported as saying, ‘We consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don't see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea.’
Thomas Checkley, Marriner, Saith, That he knows John Shuan the Prisoner at the Barr, That he belonged to the Tanner Frigot, One John Stover Master, and sometime in March last the said Ship or Frigot was taken in the prosecution of her Voyage from Pettyguavus to old France by Capt. Samuel Bellamy and Monsieur Lebous. they pretended to be Robbin Hoods Men. That Shuan Declared himself to be now a Pyrate, and went up and unrigged the Maintopmast by order of the pyrates, who at that time forced no Body to go with them, and said they would take no Body against their Wills.
Trial of Simon van Vorst and Others. [October], 1717
in Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period. Illustrative Documents (1923), ed. John Franklin Jameson
Thanks (as so often) to Project Gutenberg, which has put the whole book online.
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| The Gallopers |
[14 November, 2008] |
For three days every November the Fair comes to Loughborough. And every year along with the Fair comes the great steam roundabout; not powered by steam any more, but still with its carved gallopers and its organ. The legend round the canopy reads: 'Proud Old Time Riding Horses Rode By All With Joy'. I love that. The person who drafted those words had a good ear for rhythmic prose.
I think that same roundabout used to be one of the two that always came to the Midsummer Fair at Cambridge when I was a student in the seventies. I think I recognise it by the three carved and painted showgirls built into the case of the organ. I think, though, that it was a different set of gallopers that used to come to Pinner Fair in Middlesex when I was a child. But the music and the horses were in much the same style.
I don't always go to Loughborough Fair. Some years I lie low, and curse the traffic problems and the continual noise of the rides, mercifully distant from where I live, but still very audible, especially at night. But if I do pass through the Fair, as I did today, I always take a ride on the gallopers: it connects me to the child I once was, and to generations of riders going back to the the time of my great-grandparents in the High Victorian Age.
Jackanapes was not absolutely free from qualms, but having once mounted the Black Prince he stuck to him as a horseman should. During the first round he waved his hat, and observed with some concern that the Black Prince had lost an ear since last Fair; at the second, he looked a little pale but sat upright, though somewhat unnecessarily rigid; at the third round he shut his eyes. During the fourth his hat fell off, and he clasped his horse's neck. By the fifth he had laid his yellow head against the Black Prince's mane, and so clung anyhow till the hobby-horses stopped, when the proprietor assisted him to alight, and he sat down rather suddenly and said he had enjoyed it very much.
Juliana Horatia Ewing (1841–1885)
from Jackanapes (1883)
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| Winter |
[12 November, 2008] |
Mirie it is while sumer ilast
With fugheles* song;
Oc nu necheth** windes blast
And weder strong.
Ei, ei, what this nicht is long!
And ich with wel michel wrong
Soregh*** and murne and fast.
*fowls', birds'
**But now approaches ('nigheth')
***Sorrow
Anonymous; early 13th century
This is one of the earliest English secular songs to have survived with music: an incongruously cheery tune, which can be sung as a round (I have an old Argo recording of it sung like that).
And no, things aren't really quite that bad; though I have had trouble sleeping some nights.
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| Evangelical Religion |
[22 October, 2008] |
My Father was very fond of defining what was his own attitude at this time, and he was never tired of urging the same ambition upon me. He regarded himself as the faithful steward of a Master who might return at any moment, and who would require to find everything ready for his convenience. That master was God, with whom my Father seriously believed himself to be in relations much more confidential than those vouchsafed to ordinary pious persons. He awaited, with anxious hope, ‘the coming of the Lord’, an event which he still frequently believed to be imminent. He would calculate, by reference to prophecies in the Old and New Testament, the exact date of this event; the date would pass, without the expected Advent, and he would be more than disappointed, – he would be incensed. Then he would understand that he must have made some slight error in calculation, and the pleasures of anticipation would recommence.
Me in all this he used as a kind of inferior coadjutor, much as a responsible and upper servant might use a footboy. I, also, must be watching; it was not important that I should be seriously engaged in any affairs of my own. I must be ready for the Master's coming; and my Father's incessant cross-examination was made in the spirit of a responsible servant who fidgets lest some humble but essential piece of household work has been neglected.
My holidays, however, and all my personal relations with my Father were poisoned by this insistency. I was never at my ease in his company; I never knew when I might not be subjected to a series of searching questions which I should not be allowed to evade. Meanwhile, on every other stage of experience I was gaining the reliance upon self and the respect for the opinion of others which come naturally to a young man of sober habits who earns his own living and lives his own life. For this kind of independence my Father had no respect or consideration, when questions of religion were introduced, although he handsomely conceded it on other points. And now first there occurred to me the reflection, which in years to come I was to repeat over and over, with an ever sadder emphasis,--what a charming companion, what a delightful parent, what a courteous and engaging friend my Father would have been, and would pre-eminently have been to me, if it had not been for this stringent piety which ruined it all.
Let me speak plainly. After my long experience, after my patience and forbearance, I have surely the right to protest against the untruth (would that I could apply to it any other word!) that evangelical religion, or any religion in a violent form, is a wholesome or valuable or desirable adjunct to human life. It divides heart from heart. It sets up a vain, chimerical ideal, in the barren pursuit of which all the tender, indulgent affections, all the genial play of life, all the exquisite pleasures and soft resignations of the body, all that enlarges and calms the soul are exchanged for what is harsh and void and negative. It encourages a stern and ignorant spirit of condemnation; it throws altogether out of gear the healthy movement of the conscience; it invents virtues which are sterile and cruel; it invents sins which are no sins at all, but which darken the heaven of innocent joy with futile clouds of remorse. There is something horrible, if we will bring ourselves to face it, in the fanaticism that can do nothing with this pathetic and fugitive existence of ours but treat it as if it were the uncomfortable ante-chamber to a palace which no one has explored and of the plan of which we know absolutely nothing.
Edmund Gosse (1849–1928)
from Father and Son (1907)
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| Autumn |
[19 September, 2008] |
I have to admit there are things I have enjoyed about this wet summer. There have been some amazing cloudscapes, for one thing. And the trees have been so green. A lot of shrubs and plants are flourishing. The sweetbriar in my garden produced a second flush of flowers, which hasn’t, I think, ever happened before.
This poem was written at the end of a very different summer. But still, when I see the thistledown flying, it has a way of coming into my mind.
Autumn
The thistledown’s flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.
The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.
Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we’re eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.
John Clare (1793–1864)
Thistledown
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| Philomela |
[8 September, 2008] |
Today on its very last day I caught the ‘Fabric of Myth’ exhibition at Compton Verney. There was some great stuff there, but one piece knocked me out: the mixed media installation Gynaikonitides, by Delaine Le Bas. The name is a transliteration of a classical Greek word that means ‘Women’s Quarters’. The interpretation panel on the wall briefly mentioned Philomela, without giving many details of the story. That was a mistake, I think, since a lot of people don’t know it. It is not one of the ‘Greek Myths’ that they retell (often in sanitized versions) in children’s books. Nothing could sanitize the story of Philomela and her sister Procne.
Ovid goes to town on it (he liked the gruesome ones), and I can’t include all of his text here. Briefly, Procne daughter of Pandion marries Tereus, King of Thrace and they have a son, Itys. Five years after the marriage, Procne longs to see her little sister, Philomela, and Tereus goes and fetches her for a visit. He promises her father to take great care of her. But in fact, the moment he saw her he was overcome with lust. Tereus sails back to Thrace, bringing Philomela.
( This is what happens next )
And the installation? Some people looked at it blankly and wandered on. Some people paused, looked troubled, and left quite soon. Some people spent more time there. I went back five times. ‘Disturbing’ was a word I heard some people mutter. It was disturbing: dolls with bleeding mouths, tiny severed doll limbs, suspended on strings from the ceiling, a web of strings that entangled anyone who entered: especially when you tried to leave. The disquieting sound-track combined sounds of bird-song, a nightingale, and I think a swallow's twittering, and a hoarser cry that may have been a hoopoe, with the cries of women and children. There were peepholes into peepshows on either side: child-sized figures with the heads of lambs, bigger figures with leopard masks, and dark distorted human shapes painted on the walls. 'Like lambs to the slaughter' read one inscription. The White Rabbit, who leads the way into the world of a child's nightmares, was a motif that recurred a couple of times. At the far end of the installation was a broken spinning wheel and a cot with a child-sized figure in it.
It was a harrowing place to be. But I stayed because there was so much detail, and every detail contributed something more. Also, because I wanted to fathom the whole of it, take it in, come to terms with it. It was harrowing, but it was not gratuitously horrible, and not, I thought, despairing. In spite of everything, Philomela told her story, made her art, resisted and escaped. On the wall above the cot was a painting of a moth: symbol of metamorphosis.
I was moved, and very impressed.
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| We will get them Bowdlerized! |
[4 September, 2008] |
‘Officials at the AQA board said their request that schools destroy the anthology containing the Carol Ann Duffy poem Education for Leisure had been triggered by concerns in two schools about references to knives.’ – Guardian
I hate to be reduced to incoherent fury, but wtf?
SCENE.– Gardens in Castle Adamant. A river runs across the back of the stage, crossed by a rustic bridge. Castle Adamant in the distance. Girl Graduates discovered seated at the feet of Lady Psyche.
CHORUS.
Towards the empyrean heights
Of every kind of lore,
We’ve taken several easy flights,
And mean to take some more.
In trying to achieve success
No envy racks our heart,
And all the knowledge we possess,
We mutually impart.
SOLO – MELISSA.
Pray, what authors should she read
Who in Classics would succeed?
SOLO – PSYCHE.
If you’d climb the Helicon,
You should read Anacreon,
Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
Likewise Aristophanes,
And the works of Juvenal:
These are worth attention, all;
But, if you will be advised,
You will get them Bowdlerized!
CHORUS.
Ah! we will get them Bowdlerized!
W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911)
from the libretto to Princess Ida (1884)
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| The Willow Fountain |
[28 August, 2008] |
Willow fountain, Chatsworth, Derbyshire
There is another greene walke and about the middle of it by the Grove stands a fine Willow tree, the leaves barke and all looks very naturall, the roote is full of rubbish or great stones to appearance, and all on a sudden by turning a sluice it raines from each leafe and from the branches like a shower, it being made of brass and pipes to each leafe but in appearance is exactly like any Willow...
Celia Fiennes (1662–1741)
written after a visit to Chatsworth in 1697
(see The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, ed. Christopher Morris)
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| An Affair of Honour |
[14 August, 2008] |
Christian Davies was born Christian Cavenaugh in Dublin in 1667. In 1693 she enlisted as a footsoldier under the name of Christopher Welsh to search for her first husband, Richard Welsh, who had been tricked into enlisting in the army, and taken to Flanders to fight in the war between William III and Louis XIV of France. The following episode is supposed to have taken place in the winter of 1694–1695, while she was with her regiment in Gorkhum (Gorinchem), Holland. The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies was published the year after her death. The title page claims that it was ‘Taken from her own Mouth’:
I was in Gorcum, where my grief for my husband being drowned in the hopes of finding him, I indulged in the natural gaiety of my temper, and lived very merrily. In my frolics, to kill time, I made my addresses to a burgher’s daughter, who was young and pretty. As I had formerly had a great many fine things said to myself, I was at no loss in the amorous dialect; I ran over all the tender nonsense (which I look upon as the lover’s heavy cannon, as it does the greatest execution with raw girls) employed on such attacks; I squeezed her hand, whenever I could get an opportunity; sighed often, when in her company; looked foolishly, and practised upon her all the ridiculous airs which I had often laughed at, when they were used as snares against myself. When I afterwards reflected on this unjust way of amusement, I heartily repented it; for it had an effect I did not wish; the poor girl grew really fond of me, and uneasy when I was absent; for which she never failed chiding me if it was but for half a day. When I was with her, she always regaled me in the best manner she could, and nothing was too good or too dear to treat me with, if she could compass it; but notwithstanding a declared passion for me, I found her nicely virtuous; for when I pretended to take an indecent freedom with her, she told me, that she supposed her tenderness for me was become irksome, since I took a method to change it into hatred. It was true, that she did not scruple to own she loved me as her life, because she thought her inclination justifiable, as well as lawful; but then she loved her virtue better than she did her life. If I had dishonourable designs upon her, I was not the man she loved; she was mistaken, and had found the ruffian, instead of the tender husband she hoped in me.
I own this rebuff gained my heart; and taking her in my arms, I told her, that she had heightened the power of her charms by her virtue; for which I should hold her in greater esteem, but could not love her better, as she had already engrossed all my tenderness; and, indeed, I was now fond of the girl, though mine, you know, could not go beyond a platonic love.
In the course of this amour, a serjeant of our regiment, but not of the company I belonged to, sat down before the citadel of her heart, and made regular approaches, which cost him a number of sighs, and a great deal of time; but finding I commanded there, and it was impossible to take it by a regular siege, he resolved to give a desperate assault, sword in hand. One day, therefore, while I was under arms, he came to her, and without any previous indication of his design, a fair opportunity offering, he very bravely, and like a man of honour, employed force to obtain what he could not get by assiduity. The girl defended herself stoutly, and in the scuffle she lost her cap, and her clothes were most of them torn off her back; but notwithstanding her resolute defence, he had carried the fortress by storm, had not some of the neighbours opportunely come in to her assistance, alarmed by her shrieks, and made him retreat in a very shameful manner. No sooner had she recovered, and dressed herself, than she went in search of, and found me, in my rank, standing to my arms. She told me what had passed, and begged me to revenge the insult offered her.
( More )
from The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies (1740)
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| The Grey Lady |
[2 August, 2008] |
It has been a gruelling few weeks. However, somewhere in there I managed to finally save up enough money for the camera of my dreams (a Canon EOS 450D [Digital Rebel XSi in the States]). I hope over the next few weeks I shall have more time to play with it. I have set up a Flickr photostream.
Here are some of my favourites:
16th century barn at Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings, Worcestershire
Mill ruins, Lumsdale, Derbyshire. (Reminds me of papersky’s terrific post on the industrial ruins of Elfland.)
Early this evening my partner and I took a walk up near Bradgate House. Bradgate, now a ruin, is where Lady Jane Grey lived. According to local legend, she still haunts the area in the guise of a Grey Lady.
Bradgate House
Before I went into Germanie, I came to Brodegate in Lecetershire, to take my leave of that noble Ladie Jane Grey to whom I was exceding moch beholdinge. Hir parentes, the Duke and the Duches, with all the houshould, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the Parke: I found her, in her Chamber, readinge Phaedon Platonis* in Greeke, and that with as moch delite, as som jentleman wold read a merie tale in Bocace**.
*Plato’s Phaedo
**Bocaccio
Roger Ascham (1515–1568)
from The Scholemaster (published 1570)
Evening cloudscape near Bradgate
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| Frills and furbelows |
[17 June, 2008] |
I have spent most of the last week indexing ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) mantua_maker’s forthcoming book. It’s a thick manual of sewing techniques and projects, so I now have a vast (and entirely theoretical) knowledge of sewing. I was especially fascinated by the short section based on eighteenth century decorative pleating techniques, which she researched and recreated from surviving garments and paintings. She’s good on ruffles too.
I knew I’d once come across an Elizabethan song about sewing, written by an unknown woman, so after I’d delivered the index I tracked it down.
A Gentlewoman that married a yonge Gent who after forsooke [her,] whereuppon she tooke hir Needle in which she was excelent and worked upon hir Sampler thus:
Come give me needle, stitch cloth, silke and chaire,
That I may sitt and sigh and sow and singe,
For perfect coollours to discribe the aire
A subtile persinge changinge constant thinge.
No false stitch will I make, my hart is true,
Plaine stitche my Sampler is for to complaine
How men have tongues of hony, harts of rue,
True tongues and harts are one, men makes them twain.
Give me black silk, that sable suites my hart,
And yet som white, though white words do deceive;
No greene at all, for youth and I must part,
Purple and blew, fast love and faith to weave.
Mayden no more, sleepeless ile go to bedd;
Take all away, the work works in my hedd.
Anonymous (before 1603)
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