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Ancient Laughter, Modern Bewilderment January 28, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient

***Dedicated to Andy, the mad Monk***

Humour, it is sometimes said, is the most socially dependent aspect of literature. The gags that set William Shakespeare’s audience laughing now, very often, leave us shivering cold. Sometimes the generational shift is there under our eyes: the jokes in 1930s movies, Will Hay for example, appear fabulous to Beach but leave his students giving each other quick and significant glances in the direction of their teacher.

Shakespeare’s laughs and Will Hay’s antics are, at least ‘modern’. But some trips into ancient humour really freeze up the reader. Even one of Beachcombing’s favourite books – the Golden Ass – written as a comedy/ Roman road movie, is rarely as amusing as it was intended to be: the reader today remembers the piquant sex  and salvation in Isis (‘she is our lady’) not Roman toilet jokes.

In fact, anecdotes – along with satire? Juvenal is still funny – survive particularly well through the centuries, so much so that often we are still telling the same tales centuries later with cars replacing carts and ‘queens’ overlapping with Roman catamites. But if you have laughs based on puns or social institutions then you might as well give it up.

Nor were the Greeks any better. Beach has already visited in this place the hilarity caused when Chrysippus (c.206 BC) the oh-so-serious stoic philosopher laughed himself to death at a drunk donkey. It probably never happened but couldn’t they have made up something a little more juicy? Take some examples now, instead, from the premier Greek joke collection – yes there is one – Philogelos. Beach was initially attracted to the Greek equivalent of the Irish or the Jewish mother joke: the Greek intellectual. Always good to put the boot into philosophers. But these ones hardly fanned a smile.

An intellectual checked in on the parents of a dead classmate. The father was wailing: ‘O son, you have left me a cripple!’ The mother was crying: ‘O son, you have taken the light from my eyes!’ Later, the intellectual suggested to his friends: ‘If he were guilty of all that, he should have been cremated while still alive.’

An intellectual came to check in on a friend who was seriously ill. When the man’s wife said that he had ‘departed’, the intellectual replied: ‘When he arrives back, will you tell him that I stopped by?’

An intellectual had been at a wedding-reception. As he was leaving, he said: ‘I pray that you two keep getting married so well.’

The same intellectual said that the tomb of Scribonia was handsome and lavish, but that it had been built on an unhealthy site. [Beach’s favourite: he spontaneously grinned here]

Upon the death of his wife, an intellectual was out shopping for a coffin and got into a big fight over the price. When the salesman swore that he couldn’t sell it for less than fifty thousand, the intellectual said: ‘Since you’re under an oath, here’s the fifty thousand. But throw in for free a small casket, in case I need it for my son’. [wth!!!!]

And finally a joke that is still told today.

A friend met an intellectual, and said: ‘Congratulations! You’ve got a baby boy!’ The intellectual replied: ‘Thanks to buddies like you!’

In any case, all this begs the question: how many Greek intellectuals does it take to change a lightbulb? Best answer to be immortalised on this site – drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

Beachcombing knows Greek and Latin literature relatively well, but he has always felt a little lost in the Egyptian world. He did though stumble on this interesting site that lays Egyptian humour ‘bare’ with such epics as:
After a considerable while Hathor, Lady of the Southern Sycamore, came and stood before her father, the Universal Lord, and she exposed her vagina before his very eyes. Thereupon the great god laughed at her.

Yes, quite… Look out for the incest jokes too.

But what really set him off on this whole rollicking trip through the ancient world was a link sent in by Andy, the Mad Monk on some of the oldest jokes/riddles in history: this time from Mesopotamia. Here we see a series of ‘classics’ that are so obscure, presumably because of punning on language (which is almost impossible to translate) and our relative lack of knowledge of Mesopotamian society.

‘In your mouth and your teeth (or urine). Constantly stared at you. The measuring vessel of your lord. What is it?’

Answer: Beer.

‘He gouged out the eye. It is not the fate of a dead man. He cut the throat: A dead man – who is it?’

Answer: A governor… a governor is portrayed as executioner.

‘The deflowered girl did not become pregnant. The undeflowered girl became pregnant. What is it?’

Answer: Auxiliary forces.

Things seem to get progressively worse the further back we go. Neanderthal jokes – mammoth turds and body hair? – would perhaps have been physically painful. We should probably thank the gods that they couldn’t write.

The Soul Zoo January 27, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Medieval

So many interesting replies to recent posts to put up but little Miss B has a nasty flu so she is home from school and Beachcombing will be spending the morning with her – she is a state of such anxiety that the poor kid needs to be held at all times. Saturday seems a more promising day in this respect. Anyway on to the strange…

Odoric of Pordenone was a fourteenth-century European traveller in deepest Asia visited before in these pages. Though his memoirs make for bizarre reading, they generally seem to be borne out and Odoric is judged a reliable witness. What then about the following passage that Beachcombing finds simply inexplicable.

In the foresaide citie [Kanasia = Hangzhou in eastern China] foure of our friers had conuerted a mighty and riche man vnto the faith of Christ, at whose house I continually abode, for so long time as I remained in the citie. Who vpon a certaine time saide vnto me: Ara, that is to say, Father, will you goe and beholde the citie? And I said, yea. Then embarqued we our selues, and directed our course vnto a certaine great Monastery: where being arrived, he called a religious person with whom he was acquainted, saying vnto him concerning me: this Raban Francus, that is to say, this religious Frenchman commeth from the Westerne parts of the world, and is now going to the city of Cambaleth to pray for the life of the great Can, and therefore you must shew him some rare thing, that when hee returnes into his owne countrey, he may say, this strange sight or nouelty haue I seene in the city of Kanasia. Then the said religious man tooke two great baskets full of broken reliques which remained of the table, and led me vnto a little walled parke, the doore whereof he vnlocked with his key, and there appeared vnto vs a pleasant faire green plot, into the which we entred. In the said greene stands a litle mount in forme of a steeple, replenished with fragrant herbes and fine shady trees. And while we stood there, he tooke a cymball or bell, and rang therewith, as they vse to ring to dinner or beuoir in cloisters, at the sound whereof many creatures of diuers kinds came downe from the mount, some like apes, some like cats, some like monkeys and some hauing faces like men. And while I stood beholding of them, they gathered themselues together about him, to the number of 4200. of those creatures, putting themselues in good order, before whom he set a platter, and gaue them the said fragments to eate. And when they had eaten he rang vpon his cymbal the second time, and they al returned vnto their former places. Then, wondring greatly at the matter, I demanded what kind of creatures those might be? They are (quoth he) the soules of noble men which we do here feed, for the loue of God who gouerneth the world: and as a man was honorable or noble in this life, so his soule after death, entreth into the body of some excellent beast or other, but the soules of simple and rusticall people do possesse the bodies of more vile and brutish creatures. Then I began to refute that foule error: howbeit my speach did nothing at all preuaile with him: for he could not be perswaded that any soule might remaine without a body. Then I began to refute that foule error: howbeit my speach did nothing at all preuaile with him: for he could not be perswaded that any soule might remaine without a body.

In illa ciuitate 4. fratres nostri conuerterant vnum potentem ad fidem Christi, in cuius hospitio continué habitabam, dum fui ibi, qui semèl dixit mihi, Ara, i. pater, vis tu venire et videre ciuitatem istam: et dixi quòd sic, et ascendimus vnam barcham, et iuimus ad vnum monasterium maximum, de quo vocauit vnum religiosum sibi notum, et dixit sibi de me. Iste Raban Francus, i. religiosus venit de indé vbi sol occidit, et nunc vadit Cambaleth, vt deprecetur vitam pro magno Cane, et ideò ostendas sibi aliquid, quòd si reuertatur ad contratas suas possit referre quod tale quid nouum vidi in Canasia ciuitate: tunc sumpsit ille religiosus duos mastellos magnos repletos reliquijs quæ supererant de mensa, et duxit me ad vnam perclusam paruam, quam aperuit cum claue, et aparuit, viridarium gratiosum et magnum in quod intrauimus, et in illo viridario stat vnas monticulus sicut vnum campanile, repletus amoenis herbis et arboribus, et dum staremus ibi, ipse sumpsit cymbalum, et incoepit percutere ipsum sicut percutitur quando monachi intrant refectorium, ad cuius sonitum multa animalia diuersa descenderunt de monte illo, aliqua vt simiæ, aliqua vt Cati, Maymones, et aliqua faciem hominis habentia, et dum sic starem congregauerunt se circa ipsum, 4000. de illis animalibus, et se in ordinibus collocauerunt, coram quibus posuit paropsidem et dabat eis comedere, et cum comedissent iterum cymbalum percussit, et omnia ad loca propria redierunt. Tunc admiratus inquisiui quæ essent animalia ista? Et respondit mihi quod sunt animæ nobilium virorum, quas nos hic pascimus amore Dei, qui regit orbem, et sicut vnus homo fuit nobilis, ita anima eius post mortem in corpus nobilis animalis intrat. Animæ verò simplicium et rusticorum, corpora vilium animalium intrant. Incoepi istam abusionem improbare, sed nihil valuit sibi, non enim poterat credere, quòd aliqua anima posset sine corpore manere.

There is perhaps nothing impossible about this scene, though the theology clearly stuck in Odoric’s gullet. But still a monastery with a soul zoo out back! Early Asian Christianity contributed several unusual offshoots of Roman and Greek Christianity, but this must be among the most beautiful… Beach can’t help wondering whether it was all a misunderstanding (on the part of Chinese Christians) of some of those fabulous Roman images of Christ as Orpheus or the Byzantine images of all creation worshipping Christ.

Any ideas? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

De Gaulle and Ike at Gettysburg January 26, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary, Modern

***Dedicated to Michael Zak, a grand old partisan***

One of Beachcombing’s many files in the rusty filing cabinet in the downstairs bathroom is a surprisingly bulky: ‘battlefields after the fact’. Here there are a series of great men and women visiting the places of carnage past and reflecting on ‘the father of all things’.

There are many precious references in said file including Roosevelt’s trip to the killing plains of northern Africa in late November 1943: at one point Roosevelt and Eisenhower have a picnic in an olive grove with a large picket of military policemen standing in a circle, their backs to the commander in chief and his entourage.

Of course, the American battles in Tunisia were a recent memory when Roosevelt flew in. But the British generals who were taken in the same year on a friendly visit to Yorktown – of all places! – by their opposite numbers in the US forces was an unlikely attempt to put the Atlantic alliance on a firm footing.

However, Beachcombing’s favourite twentieth-century instance – any others: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com – is De Gaulle’s and Eisenhower’s visit to Gettysburg in 1960.

De Gaulle was in the United States to discuss Cold War strategy: just four short years after the painful events of Suez when Eisenhower had cobbled the Anglo-French initiative in the Mediterranean. Yet despite this recent disagreement between the US and France De Gaulle and Eisenhower got on well and their adventures at the site of the Civil War’s most decisive battle saw them playing like two mud larks in a foot of Thames water.

General de Gaulle had told me before the trip that he would ask Eisenhower to make time to visit the Gettysburg battleground. A scholar of military history, de Gaulle said he greatly admired Gen. Robert E. Lee, ‘by far the most brilliant generally in your Civil War’…. On the farm at Gettysburg, President Eisenhower proudly gave de Gaulle the grand tour of the stables and the barn. De Gaulle’s eyes gleamed when he saw some beautiful Arabian horses but began to glaze over as Eisenhower presented his Angus cows and bull. Growing impatient, de Gaulle finally managed to suggest tactfully that they get to the nearby battleground before the hot day had tired them out.

Eisenhower agreed at once and asked de Gaulle what particular site he would like to visit, since there would be not time for an extensive tour. Ike was impressed when de Gaulle talked learnedly of Cemetery Ridge, Culp’s Hill, Round Top and the tide of battle. ‘I had to concentrate to keep pace with my French friend’, Ike told me later, ‘He knows his battle of Gettysburg like a West Pointer.’

The two leaders scrambled over the field and eventually came to two, rusting artillery pieces.

Two of the guns in the battle are still in place at Gettysburg, a monument to the bravery of both sides. There is a 3-foot-high stone wall in front of the cannons to discourage trespassers. I watched in amazement as the two 70-year-old generals clambered over the wall, frisky as youngsters, curious as tourists. Charles de Gaulle was fascinated by the guns. He ran his hands over them, bent down to squint, to find their field of fire. He shook his head and said to Eisenhower, ‘Those gallant, crazy Southerners. How could they have charged into that wall of fire?’ Sweat was pouring down de Gaulle’s forehead. The French president was wearing his traditional heavy, worsted, double-breasted navy-blue suit. President Eisenhower, less formal than the stiff Frenchman, wore a more appropriate beige raw-silk summer suit, his bald head protected from the sun by a fedora. Ike’s cheeks were scarlet from the heat, but, like De Gaulle, he was enjoying himself. His aides kept whispering urgently that they were falling behind schedule. They were due to continue their conference at Camp David, and a helicopter was waiting to whisk them away. Finally, reluctantly, the two old soldiers allowed their aides to lead them away from the battleground.

Beachcombing has a special place in his heart for de Gaulle and Eisenhower and the picture of them enjoying themselves with the irresponsibility of ten year olds in the middle of weighty presidencies is one that he treasures.

Poor Ike also took the insufferable Montgomery over the same plots of land.

Beach has to confess on, the other hand, to a certain indifference to Lee’s tactics at Gettysburg. But for the record and for the Google spiders these were Lee’s two mistakes as seen by de Gaulle and recounted later to the author of this piece, David Schoenbrun, by Ike himself.

‘Well, first… Lee allowed Gen. J.E.B. Stuart to continue his cavalry raids against the capital at Washington. De Gaulle acknowledged that these raids did keep Washington dithering in fright and that this was hurting President Abraham Lincoln’s chances to be nominated for re-election. So the raids were useful. But they could not be decisive in winning the war. To win the war Lee had to win a major victory on Federal soil and hold Union ground. Stuart would have been far more useful in battle at Gettysburg. Without Stuart’s mobile cavalry, Lee was fighting blind. He did not have enough intelligence on Union strength and positions and was thus unable to turn the Union flank. De Gaulle felt that this cast Lee the victory… De Gaulle felt that General Pickett should never have been given permission to charge the strong center of the Union line. That was the second error. The South – with less manpower, less weapons, less money than the North – could not afford a bloody, if gallant, assault that drained its strength. Superior Federal power would always triumph in a man-to-man assault. The South had to be a wily fox, not a charging bull.’

The conversation ended, according to Eisenhower, with a more general reflection of how wars are won and lost.

‘Oh, I had a few observations of my own to make. When de Gaulle told me how surprised he was at some of Lee’s blunders, I told him about the blunders of the Union Commander, George Meade. Meade could have ended that war then and there if he had pursued the rebel army as it retreated southward from Gettysburg. Lee could not get his men across the storm-swollen Potomac. If Meade has pursued him, he could have destroyed the Army of North Virginia, ending the Civil War. De Gaulle agreed, then paused. ‘Victory’ he said sardonically, ‘often goes to the army that makes the least mistakes not the most brilliant plans.’’   

Ecdicius and the Eighteen January 25, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient


Beachcombing’s recent description of the Roman end times – the grinding to dust of Roman civilisation in the fifth century – got him musing on one of his favourite decline and fall scenes. The following is a letter from Sidonius Apollinaris (obit 489) to his brother-in-law Ecdicius.  He is remembering the moment some months or years before when Ecdicius had saved the city of Auvergne, the defence of which was Sidonius’ responsibility: Sidonius was then bishop.  This surely is a candidate for one of the most bizarre victories in warfare: a tiny force of cavalry against, allegedly, thousands of barbarians.

Nothing so kindled [the locals] universal regard for you as this, that you first made Romans of them and never allowed them to relapse again. And how should the vision of you ever fade from any patriot’s memory as we saw you in your glory upon that famous day, when a crowd of both sexes and every rank and age lined our half-ruined walls to watch you cross the space between us and the enemy? At midday, and right across the middle of the plain, you brought your little company of eighteen safe through some thousands of the Goths, a feat which posterity will surely deem incredible. At the sight of you, nay, at the very rumour of your name, those seasoned troops were smitten with stupefaction; their captains were so amazed that they never stopped to note how great their own numbers were and yours how small. They drew off their whole force to the brow of a steep hill; they had been besiegers before, but when you appeared they dared not even deploy for action. You cut down some of their bravest, whom gallantry alone had led to defend the rear. You never lost a man in that sharp engagement, and found yourself sole master of an absolutely exposed plain with no more soldiers to back you than you often have guests at your own table.

illud in te affectum principaliter universitatis accendit, quod quos olim Latinos fieri exegeras barbaros deinceps esse vetuisti. non enim potest umquam civicis pectoribus elabi, quem te quantumque nuper omnis aetas ordo sexus e semirutis murorum aggeribus conspicabantur, cum interiectis aequoribus in adversum perambulatis et vix duodeviginti equitum sodalitate comitatus aliquot milia Gothorum non minus die quam campo medio, quod difficile sit posteritas creditura, transisti. ad nominis tui rumorem personaeque conspectum exercitum exercitatissimum stupor obruit ita, ut prae admiratione nescirent duces partis inimicae, quam se multi quamque te pauci comitarentur. subducta est tota protinus acies in supercilium collis abrupti, quae cum prius applicata esset oppugnationi, te viso non est explicata congressui. interea tu caesis quibusque optimis, quos novissimos agmini non ignavia sed audacia fecerat, nullis tuorum certamine ex tanto desideratis solus planitie quam patentissima potiebare, cum tibi non daret tot pugna socios, quot solet mensa convivas.

This is a precious memory from the post-Roman fifth century, the only eyewitness account we have of a Roman force defying the barbarian invaders successfully. And Ecdicius did it with the style that makes Hollywood movies unbelievable.

If there were more sources from that dark century – the most obscure in our era – we might better judge the deeds of similar Roman heroes in Britain and Spain who fought the barbarian waves: like Cu Chulainn on the strand, uselessly but with nifty footwork. Certainly this was the way that legends were made: in the excited imaginations of populations who had despaired at salvation. Read now in many ways the most moving part of Sidonius’ letter, his description of how Ecdicius was greeted in the city he had just saved.

Imagination may better conceive than words describe the procession that streamed out to you as you made your leisurely way towards the city, the greetings, the shouts of applause, the tears of heartfelt joy. One saw you receiving in the press a veritable ovation on this glad return; the courts of your spacious house were crammed with people. Some kissed away the dust of battle from your person, some took from the horses the bridles slimed with foam and blood, some inverted and ranged the sweat-drenched saddles; others undid the flexible cheek-pieces of the helmet you longed to remove, others set about unlacing your greaves. One saw folk counting the notches in swords blunted by much slaughter, or measuring with trembling fingers the holes made in cuirasses by cut or thrust.

hinc iam per otium in urbem reduci quid tibi obviam processerit officiorum plausuum, fletuum gaudiorum magis temptant vota conicere quam verba reserare. siquidem cernere erat refertis capacissimae domus atriis illam ipsam felicissimam stipati reditus tui ovationem, dum alii osculis pulverem tuum rapiunt, alii sanguine ac spumis pinguia frena suscipiunt, alii sellarum equestrium madefacta sudoribus fulcra resupinant, alii de concavo tibi cassidis exituro flexilium lamminarum vincla diffibulant, alii explicandis ocrearum nexibus implicantur, alii hebetatorum caede gladiorum latera dentata pernumerant, alii caesim atque punctim foraminatos circulos loricarum digitis livescentibus metiuntur.

It is tempting to ask whether in Britain the Arthurian legend was not born in scenes like this as one Roman leader or another – an Ambrosius or a Constantine – drove the Saxons back from the hills and returned victorious to Cadbury or another green castrum.

An aside. The account of Ecdicius is also given at third or fourth hand in Gregory of Tours who says that Ecdicius charged with just ten men (rather than 18): like Falstaff’s growing band of ruffians, we have Ecdicius’ shrinking band of partisans.

If we had only Gregory to rely on we would dismiss the account out of hand or rationalise it away. As it is we have the baroque Latin of Sidonius who watched events from the walls of the city and Ecdicius’s success, while remaining inexplicable, is confirmed as fact.

Beach is always on the look out for impossible victories in weird wars: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

2012 and All That January 24, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Contemporary

***Dedicated to Mark L with thanks for intelligence given***

The Beachcombings’ last aupair but one wanted to go back to school and get a degree as a midwife (which in itself begs all kinds of questions) but was holding off till 2013: ‘I don’t want to waste my time if the world is about to end’ she usefully explained. Beach should add that she was a bright, talented girl with the work ethic of a Weberian protestant.

From what Beach can understand the 2012 craze is based on a misreading of Mesoamerican texts and even if it were based on a correct reading of Mesoamerican texts he wouldn’t be much concerned. Since going to an evangelical church as a youngster he has constantly heard and read about the coming end of the world and, of course, almost every generation of Christians have indulged in similar conceits. The 2012 party then is, read by cry-wolf Beach, as an updated version of a very old western obsession: the vanity to believe that we are the last generation and that we are, therefore, ‘special’.

As we noted above almost every Christian generation has believed passionately in the imminent drawing of the divine curtains: heck, Revelations may have been written with Nero cast as Antichrist. However, there is at least one interesting exception to this that Beach finds it hard to get his head around. In the fifth and sixth century the Roman Empire fell hard and fast and there really was an apocalypse. The Roman economy was ground to pieces, cities emptied – urban life ended, infrastructure broke down, the monied economy ceased, bricks and tiles were replaced with wood, economic nets reaching to China and India gave way to anemic local barter and in some areas the post-Romans even lost the ability to produce pottery. In short, the Mediterranean world and its appendages were dragged kicking and screaming into the Middle Ages.

By rights the clergy and bishops and monks of that time should have gone into apocalypse overdrive. After all, this was not just the threat of fossil fuels running out in twenty years or a volcano two continents away: it was the end of the world here and now. And yet they were strangely reserved. They did not ignore Christian eschatological teachings: the world would end eventually and they politely acknowledged that fact. Yet surprisingly they did not interpret the events around them as ‘signs’ of the imminent return of Christ or the arrival of that loveable rogue (ahem!) the Antichrist: the end is nigh was completely absent, there were no sandwich boards in the fifth century. Was there some underlying reluctance on the part of late antique civilisation to get down and dirty with apocalypse or was it just a predictable human trait: faced with the real thing you talk and write about something else?

Are there other periods where apocalypse mania has ebbed as real world disasters grow? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beachcombing is looking into the Black Death after pressing ‘publish’ on this post.

On a lighter note here is a link to a full version of a Thief in the Night: very watchable and sincerely made end-times kitsch.  Then there is this nasty, uncharitable but amusing-despite-itself scene from Six Feet Under: helium filled sex dolls and rapture warning.

Remembering Bologna January 23, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary

Beachcombing doesn’t normally have much time for railway-stations, but for Bologna he’ll make an exception. It is not the edifice itself that catches his attention, but the way memory has been built into its very fabric: the memory that is of 2 August 1980.

At 10.25 on the morning of that day a bomb went off in the waiting room, in a station crowded with holiday-goers: eighty five were killed and over two hundred wounded. No other terrorist attack on Europe soil before the Islamism of the 2000s came close to this. The bomb blast would have been bad enough, but it was placed in such a way that the roof came down killing scores more than would otherwise have perished.

The question of who actually planted the bomb is a long and involved one and a common opinion is that those serving prison sentences might not necessarily be the guilty parties. Sufficient to say that this was probably an extreme right-wing attack and that there may have been some involvement on the part of state agencies either – horror of horrors – in the planning or, more credibly, in covering up afterwards. This, at least, is the considered opinion of the Italian judiciary. In Italy you don’t need to be a conspiracy nut to believe in conspiracies: it is a mainstream activity.

Terrorist attacks are not really bizarre history territory – though we previously visited Omagh, but as Beach hinted above there is something eerie about the memory of the bomb attack in the building: the Italians have the aesthetics of commemoration down to a fine art.

For one, the clock in Bologna station stands permanently at 10.25, the minute the bomb went off. It must have taken some courage for the public authorities – at a station of all places! – to insist that the clock be left unfixed. How many German tourists are misled every year we wonder.

There is a plinth with the names of the victims just above the place where the bomb was positioned: look at the scorch marks on the photograph. The words on the plinth record a ‘fascist atrocity’: something particularly meaningful in red Bologna.

Then the Bolognesi, a people famed for their creativity, have built the memory of the attack into their yearly calendar with demonstrations and rituals. Here is one particularly novel attempt to recall the dead with the living.

Beach stumbled on this extraordinary video too – *!mature content!* – of a young cameraman who was first on the scene and who somehow managed to record the carnage around him without his hand shaking too much. Over the top in the audio track any reader who knows Italian will be able to hear the mounting horror of the Bolgnese ambulance crews as they realise what they are dealing with: ‘tell everyone, we need blood donors…’

Finally, a picture that encompasses it all. One bomb, one moment in time: eighty five senseless deaths.

Any other buildings with scars? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

***

24/Jan 2012. Umbriel has some nice examples here: ‘Regarding your recent post on Bologna Station — There are, of course, major building preservations of bomb damage from WWII. The ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall have both been preserved as war memorials. A couple of my examples of my own experience, however, seem closer to what your post had in mind. The J.P. Morgan Building on Wall Street (a stone’s throw from the World Trade Center site, as most things in downtown Manhattan are) still bears shrapnel scars from the anarchist bomb detonated in front of it in 1920, as shown in this article. Another scarred former train station is Kansas City, MO ‘s Union Station (now a civic and shopping center) the facade of which bears bullet scars from an attempt by ’30s gangster Pretty Boy Floyd to rescue one of his gang members from Federal custody (as referenced in this old New York Times article about the plans to redevelop the disused station, bullet holes unfortunately not pictured)‘ Then Southern Man: ‘You forgot the most beautiful of all the preserved ruins: the blitzed and roofless Coventry Cathedral. ‘May God forgive us all’! Thanks Southern Man and Umbriel!

What Religion did Fairies Follow? January 22, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Modern

Beach’s endless reading in the literature of fairies has led him to a couple of unusual passages. He honestly doesn’t know that to make of them. In truth, they frighten him.

The first is from a south-western fairy tale where a man is reunited with his ‘dead’ fiancé who is actually trapped in fairy land. While there she explains the lifestyle, beliefs and manners of the fairy folk.

‘For you must remember they are not of our religion,’ said she, in answer to his surprised look, ‘but star-worshippers. They don’t always live together like Christians and turtle-doves; considering their long existence such constancy would be tiresome for them, anyhow the small tribe seem to think so. And the old withered ‘kiskeys’ of men that one can almost see through, like puffs of smoke, are vainer than the young ones. May the Powers deliver them from their weakly frames! And indeed they often long for the time when they will be altogether dissolved in air, and so end their wearisome state of existence without an object or hope.’

This rather ghastly half life is bad enough, but what Beachcombing finds most intriguing is the reference to ‘star-worshipping’. What on earth does this mean in this context? Is it an erudite nineteenth-century reference to astrology? Or is it, if we want to be almost absurdly ambitious, a memory of Neolithic religion in  Cornwall in the 1800s? There has long, of course, been the idea that the fairies are the memory of an earlier civilisation.

Beach would plump for astrology and sleep well the night after. But every so often other sources have curious details about fairy religion that are rather more difficult to explain away. This is Robert Kirk on the fairies in his Secret Commonwealth, written in 1691 describing fairy beliefs.

They live much longer than we yet die at last, or least vanish from that state. For ‘tis one of their tenets that nothing perisheth, but (as the sun and year) everything goes in a circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions, as ‘tis another that every body in the creation moves (which is a sort of life), and that nothing moves, but has another animal moving on it, and so on, to the utmost minutest corpuscule that’s capable to be a receptacle of life.

We have here a slightly intellectualised version of village Hinduism. But what the hell is it doing in late seventeenth-century Scotland? There are two explanations that jump to Beachcombing’s mind.

First, a wild one: the ancients compared druidic belief to Pythagoras. Is it possible that this transmigration of souls comes from authentic druidic customs that have somehow survived to be represented as fairy beliefs? There was long the idea that fairy belief stemmed from druidic belief.

Second, a contorted version of the same. Is it possible that knowing that transmigration was connected with the druids the seventeenth century had connected these beliefs with the fairies as an act of antiquarianism?

For the record, Beach suspects that both explanations are wrong. And this paragraph remains like a great beached whale flapping its tail and daring us to explain it.

So what is going on here? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

***

22/1/2012: Phil P writes in to say ‘One other possibility comes to mind. The Rom as presumed to have originally come from India. (Romany is related closely to Sanskrit) Is it possible that they brought a bit of Hindu cosmology to Scotland? I don’t know how far back their presence in the isles goes.’ Thanks Phil! Several correspondents wrote in afterwards with a fifteenth/sixteenth century date for the arrival of fairies.

24/1/2012: Invisible is next: ‘The first excerpt you quote—it seems very “literary” rather than coming from genuine folk/fairy tales. What is the location and date? Who “collected” the tale? [Beach: Robert Hunt, 1865] I’d almost suspect some Theosophist/Yeats-ian interpolation. [Beach: about ten years too early?] As for the second 1671 quote, I’d see it as more of a reflection on the rising interest in science/molecular theory and microscopy. Here are a few tidbits on the subject: In Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas p. 725 One sixteenth-century wizard stated that the fairies had power only over those lacking religious faith. p. 729 Most of those who remained sympathetic to fairy-beliefs admitted the Roman Catholic character of the fairy kingdom. ‘Theirs is a mixt religion,’ wrote Robert Herrick, ‘part pagan, part papistical.’ [The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, ed. L.C. Martin ( Oxford 1956), p. 91] Goodwin Wharton, who was tricked by Mrs Parish into believing that he had extensive relations with the fairies, or ‘low-landers’, as she sometimes called them, was told that they were ‘Christians, serving…God that way, much in the manner of the Roman Catholics, believing [in] transubstantiation, and having a Pop who resides here in England.’ [ British Museum , London Add. MS 20,006, f. 36v.] Although I cannot quickly find the source, the Elves of Iceland (huldufólk/hidden people) are believed to come in both Christian and pagan varieties. Here is the info from the Huldufolk FB page. Note the tiny churches: Huldufólk (Icelandic hidden people from huldu- “pertaining to secrecy” and fólk “people”, “folk”) are elves in Icelandic folklore. Building projects in Iceland are sometimes altered to prevent damaging the rocks where they are believed to live. According to these Icelandic folk beliefs, one should never throw stones because of the possibility of hitting the huldufólk. In 1982, 150 Icelanders went to the NATO base in Keflavík to look for “elves who might be endangered by American Phantom jets and AWACS reconnaissance planes.” In 2004, Alcoa had to have a government expert certify that their chosen building site was free of archaeological sites, including ones related to huldufólk folklore, before they could build an aluminum smelter in Iceland . In 2011, elves/huldufólk were believed by some to be responsible for an incident in Bolungarvík where rocks rained down on residential streets. Icelandic gardens often feature tiny wooden álfhól (elf houses) for elves/hidden people to live in. Some Icelanders have also built tiny churches to convert elves to Christianity. President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has explained the existence of huldufólk tales by saying: “Icelanders are few in number, so in the old times we doubled our population with tales of elves and fairies.” Hidden people often appear in the significant or prophetic dreams of Icelanders. They are usually described as wearing 19th-century Icelandic clothing, and are often described as wearing green. I remembered reading Icelandic tales [repeated in Ireland again and again] that told of elves despondent over their salvation. Here’s a site that gives some of those tales.   The Count writes in: ‘Concerning the intriguing though staggeringly pointless question of which religion is adhered to by creatures who don’t exist in the first place, I found myself, very surprisingly, stimulated to give the matter some serious thought, since, as you say, this is an extraordinarily intriguing subject, even if it has no bearing on anything that matters in any way whatsoever… Here are my conclusions, which unexpectedly turn out to have some possible bearing on reality. Since this missive has turned out to be quite long, I am not suggesting that you publish the whole thing on your blog – it is merely food for thought. But do with it as you will. Anyway… You don’t give a source or a date for your curious quote about fairies being “star-worshippers” [1865 Robert Hunt, Cornwall UK], but assuming this is a genuinely old folk-tale as opposed to a bit of random nonsense made up for the kiddies, this whole paragraph could be read as a garbled description of the beliefs of the Cathars. The Cathar élite, the Perfecti, led extraordinarily ascetic lives and actively tried to belong less and less to this horrible sinful world, longing for the time when they would die and rejoin the Godhead. Catharism was one of the few religions that encouraged ritual suicide when you reached what you considered to be your condition of peak holiness! Since this ferocious level of holier-than-thou-ness was very hard to maintain for one’s whole life, most of the Perfecti were old men, and many Cathars only took the final vows on their deathbeds. The Perfecti may very well have been scarily fanatical ultra-pessimists whom everybody else was in awe of. And the “star-worshipping” thing could easily refer to a misunderstanding of their belief that humans – and to some extent every living creature – contained tiny bright specks of the actual substance of God, the entire point of their religion being to render themselves so far removed from this horrible wicked world created by the Devil masquerading as God that these little pieces of God (which surpasseth all understanding – ha ha! – theological joke!) would be able to return to the Divine Light, which existed unreachably far above us, instead of being recycled to continue their miserable existence in this vale of tears, which actually constituted torture of God. It all fits rather well, does it not? You say this tale is from the “south-west”, which I take to mean Britain. Since prior to the Albigensian Crusade the Cathars had no significant presence in Britain, it would have been a logical place for small bands of them to flee to. Even if they were officially heretics there just like everywhere else, the average peasant wouldn’t have heard of them and wouldn’t automatically get worked up about them being in the neighborhood. Living in forests would not be a problem for people who embraced asceticism in all its forms, and the very fact that they were deliberately poor and humble to a downright excessive degree struck a chord with poor people who had come to associate the Catholic Church with greed and oppression (which was why there was a crusade against them in the first place, of course). So we’re talking about mysterious people who are obviously from somewhere else who live in the forest and aren’t Christians, and are therefore actively persecuted by the church. And since they regarded getting their message across as more important than life itself, they wouldn’t have been shy about attempting to explain their weird beliefs to an uncomprehending farmer who could probably barely understand their accent. Note also that since the Cathars believed that creating more life was a sin (for the reasons stated above), sex was heavily discouraged even within marriage, and was utterly out of the question for Perfecti. Thus a small group of Cathars devout enough to hold out to the bitter end in a forest would presumably have a birth-rate somewhere between “very low” and “non-existent”. This would tend to doom them to fairly speedy extinction, but it would also explain the belief that fairies have trouble reproducing in the usual way. Of course, fairies supposedly existed long before the Albigensian Crusade. However, existing beliefs could have been modified by subsequent events. Especially if the original fairy stories were based on a similar but longer-lasting situation where tiny pockets of Druids continued to dwell in forests, which is known to have been the case well into the early Christian era, mostly in Brittany and to some extent in Wales, but quite possibly elsewhere too. Note that the Druids had an all-male priesthood and lived in all-male communities so that women wouldn’t find out their holy secrets, whatever they were. For a dying religion with a dwindling trickle of recruits, this must have been a problem, and may well have given rise to that whole thing about fairies having trouble reproducing and being forced to steal babies – which desperate Druids may actually have done a few times. On a related note, the official Christian position on fairies was that, not being humans or angels, they had to be devils, because there were no other alternatives. However, the common people had strong beliefs in these creatures who, though scary and sometimes malicious, were nowhere near relentlessly evil enough to be proper demons, and could sometimes actually be nice. Therefore a totally unofficial belief grew up that fairies were angels who had refused to take sides in the original war in Heaven, and as a punishment for fence-sitting, didn’t fall as far as the really bad guys, but instead were condemned to wander the Earth forever as a morally ambiguous and totally irrelevant third party mainly preoccupied with apathetically wishing Doomsday would come around so it would all be over. Not unlike the Liberal Democrats. This idea does fit in quite well with some of what your sources say about fairy religion, but it also states quite categorically that fairies are failed angels. If you know for an absolute fact that there are no gods but God because you used to live with Him, it’s a bit silly to waste your time worshipping stars! Interestingly, Islam incorporated a lot of untidy Middle Eastern popular beliefs by officially embracing this idea from the start. The djinn are neither divine nor infernal, just an irresponsible bunch of random supernatural beings who mostly just do their own thing. The famous variety who usually seem to end up imprisoned in lamps for some reason are the most powerful djinn, but there are dozens of other varieties, ranging all the way down to trivially unpleasant monsters that are basically supernatural animals. Djinn are more strongly inclined towards evil than fairies, perhaps because they were never angels in the first place and therefore don’t sit around all day moping, so they’re much more energetically amoral, and that sort of thing tends to end badly for somebody. Also, the most powerful djinn are so terrifying that they don’t really have counterparts in Fairyland. But other than that, djinn and fairies are basically identical. Since Islam and Christianity partially agree, certainly on the entire monotheism issue, I would have to say that as far as the official position of the world’s major religions goes, fairies are lapsed Muslims. KMH writes ‘Contrary to popular opinion, none of man’s or fairy’s religions in the beginning worshipped physical objects such as the stars, the sun, or animals. What was actually worshipped was the spirit, or higher entity, intrinsically associated with these objects. Unfortunately as cultures and religions decline their own adherents may not truly understand what they are doing. So we are given these simplistic explanations of religious beliefs from sources not understanding their real basis. Before astrology there was an ancient tradition of star gazing to obtain inspiration from these higher entities which Christians would say are no more than angels.  See. Rev. 1:20 for an example of the identification of stars with angels. Today we have the UFO-alien connection with stars (or their planets) which seemingly corroborates the ancient beliefs, except that the angels have been  replaced with beings deviating enough from the human form for the ancients to classify them as demonic. There is a lot of literature today from star-beings which has been channelled by mediums or obtained by direct contact.’ Thanks KMH, Invisible and the Count!

28/1/12: Precious stuff from PJ: ‘I was very interested in your post on the religion of fairies.  I’ve been reading Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar by Robert Lebling.  Throughout it I haven’t been able to help comparing/contrasting the way Islam views their versions of fairies and the way fairies are often regarded in such books as Eddie Lenihan’s collection, Meeting with the Other Crowd.  Often the priests in those Irish stories tell of fairies being a rather sad lot, knowing they’ll never gain salvation (because they aren’t human).  This makes them inimicable to good Christians everywhere.  One of your other correspondents mentioned a similar theme in the Icelandic tradition.  I must say, if I knew that the accident of my birth (as a fairy) would mean I’d be condemned at the End of Time, I might feel rather peeved myself and tend to act out in unpleasant ways against ‘the lucky ones’. I know someone else already brought up the djinn/Islam connection, but I wanted to share an interesting passage from Legends of the Fire Spirits:The earliest Muslim interpretations of jinn regard them as having free will, like humans, able to choose between good and evil.  The Qur’an itself has a chapter devoted to these spirit beings: Sura 72, Al-Jinn.  This sura begins by mentioning a group of jinn who listened to the recitation of the Qur’an and decided to accept Islam… An ancient mosque in Mecca is dedicated to the jinn who accepted the Prophet’s message.  Masjid al-Jinn (Mosque of the Jinn) is either the locale where the jinn actually listened to the Prophet recite the Qur’an, or the place where he received revelation of the sura called Al-Jinn… [Richard Burton visited this mosque and wrote of it in Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah.] Legends of the Fire Spirits again: These jinn made a commitment to monotheism, the core of Islam.  Other Qur’anic passages indicate that jinn had heard of earlier revelations, such as that of Moses and the Trinitarian doctrine of Christianity. For Muslims, the beings we call jinn—however they may be conceptualised—are an integral and ever-present part of the language and theology of their faith. The existence of these creatures is assumed and reiterated numerous places in the Qur’an.  The book, at its very outset, calls Allah rabb al’-alamin, ‘lord of the worlds,’ understood from the earliest days of Islam to mean all possible worlds that could exist, including the worlds of humans, of jinn and of heaven. The Qur’an often mentions mankind and jinn together as the two types of creatures capable of receiving—and accepting or rejecting—the divine message.’ RPJ meanwhile connects fairy religion with other things: ‘Your article about the vague notions of ‘star worshiping’ among the faerie folk remind not about astrology, but about the concept of ‘psychic channeling’ of messages coming from intelligences that ‘dwell’ out in the Cosmos. Like Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger, and his speculations that he was receiving messages coming from Orion. Similar ideas can be found elsewhere in the counter-culture —e.g. Philip K. Dick’s ‘Valis’. And about ‘soul transmigration’, this resonates with that encounter Facius Cardan had with 2 sylphs, and how one of them told him that nothing of the person survives after death. Might this arcane passage be related to the others you wrote about?’ Then we have the legendary Da-da. ‘Hey, Beachminster. Be careful when you apply that crusty word, ‘religion’, for things like elementals and beings who may be ABOVE us spiritually. A religion is merely a set of theories based on what some people believe about another person who had the actual experience — and they’re usually not the same people who had the original experience that brought about the ‘religion’. (Indeed, when that does occasionally happen, Da-da smells a rat.) The key word here is EXPERIENCE that leads to real KNOWLEDGE (forgive the capitals, Da-da’s weak). Take Buddha and Jesus, for example, two guys who would have done anything while alive to keep us from making them the centers of religions. Da-da for one has a few key mystical experiences which led to knowledge of what is really going on in the universe and beyond. These  were rather startling and challenging events, so Da-da typically keeps them to himself (Da-da has seen the angry villagers at the end of ‘FRANKENSTEIN’). However, if he told some people about an experience and they started to congregate and talk about said experience with actual eyewitnesses to Da-da *having* the experience, and that group banded together to group-remember what Da-da said and created rituals to commemorate it… well, that’s religion: a rather severe celebration of someone else’s experience that has very little to do with the experience at all, and certainly doesn’t lead to real knowledge. So, in terms of The Good Folk, they may not necessarily have a religion per se, as much as they have something that hinges on knowledge based on direct experience of something we have no inkling of. The point is really moot, as we won’t know what’s going on until we recognize and absorb all our various macules into what we once were, reaching that certain point where the carousel of time stops, as it will no longer be needed, and it’s last call at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. AND it needs be said that enquiries into Good Folk subject matter are fraught with peril (again, more direct experience), as the beings we’re talking about are, well… INHUMAN about their privacy. Any of that make sense? Da-da can say that, given his own knowledge of the near- and far-ancients, that they themselves were intractable and adamantine fanatics about the sky and stars, and about astronomical observation and calculation and the numbers describing same. We as a hominid group used to be soooo much smarter – and yet just as foolish – but we’re learning. Now all we need do is drop the savagery. A Man Called Da-da. P.S. In terms of the KNOWLEDGE Da-da possesses, suffice to say that we are non-local beings having a local experience. –AMCD’. This post has probably produced the most unusual comments Beach has yet read on this site and that is saying something. It is a privilege to host PJ, Da-da and RPJ! Thanks guys!

News stories: thanks to correspondents.

Review: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret January 21, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern

In 1766 Jeanne Baret, a young Burgundian, joined a round-the-world trip, a French mission to claim territory in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Her experiences, the subject of a recent book by Glynis Ridley, would have been remarkable in itself given her gender and the date. But as the French navy did not allow women on its vessels JB had to dress and act as a man, disguising herself in a cramped hulk where one sniff of oestrogen would have set three hundred sailors a-slavering.

Beachcombing has previously looked at some cases of women living their lives as men, including the remarkable James Barry. But Barry’s choice was a heroic and calculated defiance of the limits placed in his way by the patriarchs of Victorian Britain.

Jean B, on the other hand, was more object than a subject. She may have wished to see the world, she may have wished to botanise in the South Sea islands – she was an expert in plant lore. But she came, above all, as an assistant to her lover, Philibert Commerson: and if she came it was because he believed that it would be convenient for his botanical, sexual and house-keeping needs.

The fact that JB was an object rather than a subject makes it difficult to narrate her experience. It is not that there is a lack of sources. There were as many diaries written on the voyage as you would find in a modern British cabinet: self-conscious explorers are a little tiresome in that way. But JB wrote nothing. To recreate her story then you have to reach through the various accounts and in these accounts she is at best a bit actress. Think Rashomon, think  The Ring and the Book and understand that there is a vacuum at the centre of the tale where there should have been a chest full of folios.

This is a particularly dangerous situation for an author, of course, because you need extraordinary discipline to rein in speculation and to avoid invention. Glynis Ridley largely succeeds employing the various snippets of information about JB, reading them with all the care of an eighth-century Biblical exegete.

When this works it works very, very well. Take the author’s chilling decoding of the allusions to a gang-rape on a far forsaken strand, the secret at the heart of the book. Beach took down his Massai lion-killing spear and indulged in some Kill Bill fantasies after reading that chapter.

The moments when the author fails are, instead, those that involve JB’s ‘keeper’, the botanist Commerson, an egotist and a rule-breaker, an object of odium for GR. We are going to give her a pass on this though as she was much provoked.

For Beach there is, in the end, something sordid in this book. The problem is not the writing which is intelligent and smooth, but rather the story itself. The three-year torture of any human being, woman or man, glimpsed or seen, on sea or land, is never going to be pleasant and JB would, frankly, have had a better time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

For those, of course, who are made of sterner stuff – Beachcombing’s favourite genre of film is the romantic comedy – then this should not be a problem. And even for shiny happy people there is, at least, an upbeat ending. JB is abandoned half way around the world and there she begins her transformation from object to subject. She marries a man who she seems to have loved and then makes her way back to France: becoming, in the process, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Then, later in her life, a friend in the French ministry wins her a generous pension. And, best of all, there is a post-mortem miracle. The publication of this book has encouraged a botanist to name a plant after JB.

In every way, Jeanne Baret was lucky in her biographer.

Beachcombing is always on the look out for unusual books: drbeachcombing  AT yahoo DOT com

***

21, 1, 2012: Invisible writes: ‘Your post on Jeanne Baret reminded me of Hannah Snell, The Female Soldier, whose ‘autobiography’ I recently read at Gutenberg. Here’s some general background:  How much of it is true and how much tarted up, I am not qualified to say. ‘ Thanks Invisible!!

14, 1, 2012: DC writes in with a new story (at least for Beach). ‘The story of Charlie Parkhurst is real.  I grew up at a grade school adjacent to the graveyard where Charlie Parkhurst is buried.  One year we went out and took tombstone rubbings.  One rubbing that was shared in class was that of Charlie Parkhurst. By some accounts she was the first woman to vote.’ Thanks DC!

 

Burning Libraries! Two Lost Folklore Collections January 20, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary, Modern

Historical blindspots: every age has them. Take the relative lack of interest in folklore prior to the eighteenth century. When folklore heats up in the later nineteenth century you cannot walk across the parlour without tripping over a book on fairies or witches. This means that anything written before say 1860 is particularly precious and any loss all the more tragic.

Here Beach must introduce Robert Hunt (obit 1887) and a moving preface he penned for the the third edition of his deservedly celebrated Popular Romances of the West of England. Just to give this a chronological edge Hunt was born in 1807 in the prehistory of Cornish folklore. He first published his work in his fifties in 1865 and he came to reflect on how he had put it together in his early seventies in 1881.

There we learn that ‘the beginning of this collection of Popular Romances may be truly said to date from my early childhood. I remember with what anticipations of pleasure, sixty-eight years since [c. 1813 aged six!], I stitched together a few sheets of paper, and carefully pasted them into the back of an old book. This was preparatory to a visit I was about to make with my mother to Bodmin, about which town many strange stories were told, and my purpose was to record them. My memory retains dim shadows of a wild tale of Render the Huntsman of Lanhydrock; of a narrative of streams having been poisoned by the monks; and of a legend of a devil who played many strange pranks with the tower which stands on a neighbouring hill. I have, within the last year endeavoured to recover those stories, but in vain. The living people appear to have forgotten them; my juvenile note-book has long been lost: those traditions are, it is to be feared, gone for ever.’

Here are, as Hunt found, lost worlds. The precious folklore and beliefs of the English counties was slipping away more rapidly than ever before in the early, mid nineteenth century: with railways, national schools and a crumbling squirearchy intervening between Hunt’s youthful collections and his attempts in old age. Oh to lay our hands on those stitched pages… Beach wonders what became of them.

A similar tragedy took place even in the golden age of folklore collection in the early twentieth century. William Paynter (obit 1976) spent much of his twenties ‘witch-hunting, he went to every parish in Cornwall searching out the last generation of witch stories, publishing some in Cornish newspapers which are, thank God, still recoverable if dispersed.

He also though put these stories together in a manuscript entitled Cornish Witches and Wizards or Cornish Witchcraft that seems to have been completed by the early 1930s when he was about thirty. He failed, however, to find a publisher and could not get enough subscribers (those were the days!) to justify publishing independently.

‘The manuscript is now lost and it is presumed to have been destroyed along with most of his other folkloric data.’

A man who knew more about the last generations of belief in witchcraft than anyone else in the south-west, who had spent years travelling to gather every twig from the Cornish broomstick failed to pass on his knowledge to future generations. He ended up, instead, in old age selling dragons blood by post and appearing as a folklore pundit on local television. There are worse fates but not many…

Where are the snows of yesterday?

In the same place, of course, as Hunt’s baby collection and Paynter’s book on Cornish Witches.

Any other lost folklore collections? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

Hauntings and Technology: the Teflon Effect January 19, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary, Modern

***Dedicated to Penne with thanks***

Not a month ago Beachcombing reflected on the strange way that Roman ghosts are a modern invention and the way too that there are apparently fashions in which historical periods haunt and which do not. Beach thought that today he would reflect, instead, on a different but surely related phenomenon, the apparent allergy that new technologies have for the spirit world.

Take this 1880 article about ghosts:

It used to be a common thing for sailors to refuse to go to sea on a Friday. We hear nothing of this in these steamboat days. Steam has made every day alike. Steam has been a great changer, and in the matter of popular superstitions it has proved the great reformer. Wherever steamboats and steam-engines appear superstitions disappear, ghosts, fairies, witches are speedily forgotten. Who ever heard of a ghost in a railway station, or of a bewitched cattle truck, or of a haunted saloon carriage. The thing is impossible. The most expert seer could not find a ghost in a first-class waiting-room – could not even imagine such a thing

This was probably not true even in its day. After all, Dickens had written The Signal Man, the most famous railway ghost story of all, in 1866, fourteen years before this. And today railway ghosts are two to a penny: Beachcombing finds 170 at the paranormal database. But it is probably true that new technology has, at least at first, a sort of Teflon effect with such legends: tales of haunting just don’t stick for the first generation.

Now it seems it’s the turn of airfields. Penne sends in this extraordinary collection of airfields haunting (from which the photograph above is stolen). Lots of good stuff including non-existent native American cemeteries under Denver airport:

‘The rumor may have started, says the site, when the airport’s public art program began playing Native American chants on a continuous audio loop near the pedestrian bridge linking Concourse A and the Jeppesen Terminal building.’

And there is at least one Battle of Britain fighter-pilot ghost.

So what’s next up for a visit from the spirit world? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beachcombing’s money is on internet cafés and call centres…

 ***

21 Jan 2011: First up is Invisible who has reflection upon reflection on this. ‘It is a little odd that while there are accounts of phantom trains, planes, and automobiles, there does not seem to be an increase in ‘tech hauntings’: haunted computers, Blackberries, video games, or I-phones although there do seem to be a fair number of reports of haunted radios. See, for example, news.stv.tv and paranormaldatabase.  (And if you want phantom fighter pilots and planes, see Bruce Halpenny’s “Ghost Stations” series.) There are few reports of haunted computers (The Vertical Plane case where Ken Webster supposedly had a 16th-century gentleman communicating through his word-processor is one case that springs to mind.) Despite the scene in the movie Poltergeist, TVs rarely figure in ghost stories. I have heard a number of anecdotes about TVs turning on and off by themselves and mysteriously switching channels—often interpreted as ghostly activity, but more likely to be the result of a neighbor’s garage door opener being on the same frequency as the remote. But for the most part ghosts seem to favor more low-tech gadgets: the tape recorder for collecting Electronic Voice Phenomenon, the digital cameras to snap photos of orbs, and the ubiquitous EMF detectors of the ghost hunters with which the country seems overrun. I’m not sure why these items are so popular since there is no manual with which to calibrate said ‘ghost detectors’—no table that says, ‘if you get a reading of .7501, it means there is a ghost.” instead of, say, old furnace ductwork in the walls. If you look at the items in the average ghost hunter’s kit, they would not differ much from the stopwatches, thermometers, and cameras of the 1950s Ghost Club. One wonders if this means that ghosts are inherently conservative late adopters… What’s the latest trend in the spirit world? One thing I’ve noticed recently is a ghost hunting ‘protocol’ where one sets up a flashlight and commands any spirits present to turn it on and off. (The electrical version of ‘rap once for yes; twice for no’ of the séance room?) While headless ghosts and phantom cavaliers are completely passé, unfortunately ‘demons’ and ‘dark entities’ seem to be the newest fad with the title ‘Demonologist’ replacing the term ‘ghost hunter’ or ‘parapsychologist’. One can’t just have a harmless ghost; it has to be an Evil Spirit in a House of Horror where a Portal to the World Beyond has attracted a Vortex of Malevolent Entities. I blame the Evangelicals. That and all the loose apocalyptic talk that has been going around.’ Stella writes: Telemarketers calling from beyond the grave to try to sell people obsolete products or ask them whether they plan to vote for Roosevelt or Hoover certainly have excellent urban legend potential.  I predict that the psychically inclined will soon be able to contact the dead on their iPhones.  Who knows, there might even be a ouija board app.’ Mccp writes, meanwhile: This isn’t about ghosts, per se, but the Denver (Colorado) International Airport is the strangest in the world. It features a mural by Leo Tanguma that depicts an apocalypse, a sculpture of a demonic horse with red eyes that light up, and gargoyles. It is a frightening place, more like one of those Asian theme parks that depict Buddhist Hell than an airport. No one has ever explained the odd decoration scheme. The DIA is cited in many places on the Net. Then Tony has this to say: the Tiger tank  captured in Tunisia 1943 , and now restored to running condition at the Bovington Tank Museum (Wool, Dorset) is supposedly associated with the ghost of Herman the German,  who is sometimes seen in the buildings . I heard tell of him as a schoolboy in about 1964.’ Thanks Tony, Invisible, MCCP and Stella!

 

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