The Wandering Jew in Burnley May 27, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Medieval, Modern
Today it is the turn of the Wandering Jew.
For those who have never met him WJ refused to help Christ (as he was carrying his cross) or made fun of Jesus as he hung between the thieves. This proved a bad idea. WJ now meanders cursed around the globe and will do so until the end of time in penance for his oversight. The WJ legend in some senses institutionalises European anti-Semitism: it was a medieval, perhaps a thirteenth-century creation. But it is difficult not to feel sympathy for this extraordinary individual doomed to ‘walk the earth’ like Caine. And so an anti-semitic rant actually becomes a bridge to understanding and shared humanity.
Most modern studies claim that by the nineteenth-century belief in the Wandering Jew had become purely symbolic. What then to make of this news report from that very century.
We are informed that a new race of religionists have lately risen in this locality (Burnley), who pretend to have more extensive acquaintance with the ‘mysteries of the kingdom’ that any of their predecessors. They assert with much gravity that in the darkest shades of night they are permitted to hold converse with departed spirits, and for this purpose it is their custom to meet together, and hear a sweet response from heaven. The latest intelligence they have received from the invisible world is to the effect that the Wandering Jew is in some part of Lancashire, and that he will shortly pass through Burnley, when he will make a call at a certain house and communicate such important information relative to a subject that is as yet entirely ‘unknown to mortal mind’, as will ‘astonish the natives’. Really we may inquire, what will come next?
Beach doesn’t want to set up today’s post as a Borges short story, but he found this clipping at the bottom of a pile of newspapers while preparing his tax documentation. A note says that it came from the Blackburn Times but neglects to give the date: woops… If anyone can dictate the words to any blanks here then Beach would love to fill them in. drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
In the meantime Beachcombing might note that Blackburn is something of a rival to Burnley. Was this a bit of garden green slander then or some honest to God non-conformism gone very very wrong. For what it is worth Beach’s money is on the second. As a Yorkshireman Beach, in fact, can share the intelligence that folk across the border in Lancs (Blackburn, Burnley etc) are a LITTLE strange.
Welsh Pre-Marital Sex, c. 1850 May 11, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
A German tourist in Wales in the 1850s. Our hero befriends, Sarah the girl of the house where he is staying and on whom, Beach suspects, he had something of a crush. However, Sarah, who is the only member of the house who can speak English, is walking out with Owen, the elder son of a nearby farm. One evening the German walks back to his room through the gloaming and meets Sarah who seems a little standoffish.
I wished Sarah good night, and went upstairs. But I had scarce reached my room, when I heard the kitchen door and then the house door gently opened. Growing curious, I went to the window, and saw, by the light of the moon, Sarah crossing the yard and proceeding towards a stall, from whose half open door a male figure speedily emerged, which could be no other than Owen. ‘By Jove!’ I thought ‘she did not stay up on my account alone.’ I hoped to be witness of a Welsh pastoral in storm and rain; but I had deceived myself; the Phillis [!] of our farm had arranged matters more comfortably. She walked back across the yard, and her faithful shepherd behind her, and then into the kitchen. How my astonishment increased, however, when, instead of sighs, oaths, and kisses, I only heard a sound imitating that Owen was pulling off his boots and Sarah her shoes. And I was right: they came up-stairs in their stocking feet, passed my door, and entered Sarah’s little chamber. ‘No,’ I said to myself ‘that is a little too much, that is beyond decency.’ The girl was scarce eighteen years of age, with childish eyes, retiring behaviour, modesty in language and conduct. Celts! Celts! I might have thought to myself at once that they would not belie their nature. But what does it concern me? Perhaps we are living in a Paradise, where the Serpent has not yet spoken!
It is a fascinating scene. Here we see a rare intimate glimpse of pre-marital ‘heavy petting’ in the nineteenth century. It has long been known by social historians – as it was known by social commentators before them – that sex took place before marriage in the nineteenth century in the working classes. However, for the most part evidence had to be amassed from bulges in wedding dresses or obtuse calculations from census returns cross-referenced with birth certificates. Pregnancy, in fact, was often the cue for courting to end and engagement and marriage.
In just the same way as it is said that today a quarter of all Italians are conceived in cars (how did anyone come up with this statistic?), a third of all lower class children in the nineteenth century (Beach made this statistic up) were the result of hurried love-making in barns and under hedge-rows.
Sarah – who went on to marry Owen – seems to have been enjoying here a custom where the courting couple spend an night together in bed as a form of marriage commitment: with the knowledge of parents. ‘Of course’, nothing untoward happened in the bed room, because then Sarah’s honour would have been besmirched. Or that, at least, was the theory that our German friend subscribed to… Any other examples of formalised loving before marriage in Christian countries prior to the twentieth century? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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14/May 2012. Akauma writes in: ‘Well… here I am with more stories than I have time to write re: premarital intimacy (if you will). Half of my family has been in the states from, let’s see… the wheel had been invented… but Moses was still a pup… actually, some of my paternal relatives really did come ‘over on the Mayflower’ though most wound up in Rhode Island since they weren’t exactly ‘Puritan material’… …having followed in my father’s footsteps and taken an interest in family history (read that genealogy), I have to say that although marriage due to pregnancy was hardly the norm, it was quite common and although families tried to ‘fudge’ records (including Bible records!) rather often in such cases, it’s usually not all that hard to find actual birth &/or marriage dates. One such alteration was a family Bible entry which read 21 March ALN… I scratched my head a long time over this one but finally discovered the marriage record from the town of Alna, Maine in the year 1815. What is really odd about this one is that their 1st child was born on 15 Nov 1815 and, really, who would even suspect what with so many babies conceived within the 1st days of marriage? But they knew that the not quite 9 month pregnancy was really full term, I suppose… My maternal family is German and there are several early babies on this side of the pond in the 19th century, but the case that interests me most occurred in Germany in the mid-18th century and was certainly over a year (if memory serves) between birth & marriage and simply too hard to hide and so was recorded as it happened sans whitewash. I’ve been told that primogeniture & a law disallowing marriage for those who did not own property caused quite a number of ‘late’ marriages. If this is the reason it certainly explains the large German/American population! I could go on but will end with an observation; it seems that in America at least the late 19th century brought about some highly imaginative forms of marriage &/or ‘utopian communities’. In at least one neighborhood in Rhode Island where my family lived (small cough here) marriage seemed to be looked upon as optional and procreation with a number of ones neighbors appears to have been a hobby that some engaged in rather often. Oh… one more! from the same general area which is my ‘fave’ example of a creative sense of morality. Seems a gentleman married a widow who had children by her 1st marriage, at least one of whom was a girl. The gentleman & his formerly widowed wife proceeded to have a number of children as time went by and as time went by earlier mentioned daughter of the widow grew to young womanhood and before one can say ‘bigamous cad’ the gentleman, if we can call him that, had set up a second household across town replete with a common-law-stepdaughter-wife & children. Least you think I am simply intrigued by titillating tales, I find this example particularly interesting because the children/step-grand children’s births were all duly recorded with both parents named and, this being the case, everyone in town must have known, including earlier mentioned formerly widowed wife, who as it would happen, was still mothering children by said “gentleman” who (the children, not the gent) would then have been the gent’s common-law-stepdaughter-wife’s half brothers & sisters and technically I imagine her step-grandchildren to boot.’ Wade has a link to a fascinating article on Courtship, Sex and the Single Colonist. Then Chris: ‘Well, there’s the whole tradition of “bundling“, which Lawrence Stone argues can be traced to the 17th century at least in England. But contra Philip Larkin, sexual intercourse wasn’t actually invented in 1963, so I’m sure there are other examples if you can find them.’ And in case you are wondering about bundling but don’t have time to click Kate writes in to explain: ‘Bundling was an old Yankee and Pennsylvania custom. A courting couple would spend the night together in bed, wrapped in blankets and sometimes separated by a board running the length of the bed. Traditionally, they were to spend the time talking, presumably about future plans, but this didn’t always happen. It occurred only during the winter months and was done with the full knowledge and approval of both sets of parents. It sounded like a sort of pre-marriage try-out. My understanding is that if a pregnancy resulted, no great shame was attached to the circumstances and the couple married.’ Thanks Akauma, Wade, Chris and Kate!
18 May 2012: John G. writes ‘Should one ever wish to go on mastermind can you think of a better specialist subject “and your subject tonight is Welsh Pre-Marital Sex”. More seriously in a time and place where your “pension plan” was your family it seems remarkable common sense to make sure that any binding union was going to be fruitful, making sure that the Bride and Groom could reproduce together would be to the advantage not only to the happy couple but also to their parents. On the subject of reproduction, I was told years ago of an interesting custom in Malta, if a bride had not conceived within a year of marriage the local priest would go to the family home to “pray” with the girl that she might be fertile, to ensure that the “prayer” session was not interrupted by the husband the priest would hang his umbrella over the front door handle as a form of “do not disturb” notice.’ Thanks John!!
23 May 2012: SY sends this in from a late eighteenth century English work. ‘And here amongst the usages and customs, I must not omit to inform you, that what you have, perhaps, often heard without believing, respecting the mode of courtship amongst the Welch peasants, is true. The lower order of people do actually carry on their love affairs in bed, and what would extremely astonish more polished lovers, they are carried on honourably, it being, at least, as usual for the Pastoras of the mountains to go from the bed of courtship to the bed of marriage, as unpolluted and maidenly as the Chloes of fashion; and yet, you are not to conclude that this proceeds from their being less susceptible of the belle passion than their betters: or that the cold air, which they breathe, has ‘froze the genial current of their souls’. By no means; if they cannot boast the voluptuous languors of an Italian sky, they glow with the bracing spirit of a more invigorating atmosphere. I really took some pains to investigate this curious custom, and after bing assured, by many, of its veracity, had an opportunity of attesting its existence with my own eyes. The servant-maid of the family I visited in Caernarvonshire happened to be the object of a young peasant, who walked eleven long miles every Sunday morning to favour his suit, and regularly returned the same night through all weathers, to be ready for Monday’s employment in the fields, being simply a day labourer. He arrived in time for the morning service, which he constantly attended, after which he escorted his Dulcinea home to the house of her master, by whose permission they as constantly passed the succeeding hour in bed, according to the custom of the country. These tender sabbatical preliminaries continued without any interruption near two years, when the treaty of alliance was solemnized: and so far from any breach of articles happening in the intermediate time, it is most likely that it was considered by both parties as a matter of course, without exciting any other idea. On speaking to my friend on the subject, he observed that, though it certainly appeared a dangerous mode of making love, he had seen so few living abuses of it, during six and thirty years residence… in that county, where it, nevertheless, had always, more or less, prevailed, he must conclude it was as innocent as any other. One proof of its being thought so by the parties, is the perfect ease and freedom with which it is done; no awkwardness or confusion appearing on either side; the most well-behaved and decent young women going into it without a blush, and they are by no means deficient in modesty. What is pure in idea is always so in conduct, since bad actions are the common consequences of ill thoughts; and though the better sort of people treat this ceremony as a barbarism, it is very much to be doubted whether more faux pas have been committed by the Cambrian boors in these free access to the bed-chambers of their mistresses, than by more fashionable Strephons and their nymphs in groves and shady bowers. The power of habit is, perhaps, stronger than the power of passion, or even of the charms which inspire it; and it is sufficient, almost, to say a thing is the custom of a country to clear it from any reproach that would attach to an innovation. Were it the practice of a few only, and to be gratified by stealth, there would, from the strange construction of human nature, be more cause for suspicion; but being ancient, general, and carried on without difficulty, it is probably as little dangerous as a tete-a-tete in a drawing room, or in any other full-dress place, where young people meet to say soft things to each other. A moon-light walk in Papa’s garden, where Miss steals out to meet her lover against the consent of her parents, and, of course, extremely agreeable to the young people, has ten times the peril’ Thanks SY
Victorian Osiris Kills Father and Paints Fairies April 30, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Now that the happy days of summer are here Beach is running away, in his mind, with several projects. There are the bat boxes, visits to the animals’ secret garden in the woods (with elder daughter), an attempt (probably vain) to get a carpenter to put up some shelves and then, chief among Beach’s preoccupations, there is the fairy corridor. Essentially, Beach plans to plaster the upper floor of the Beachcombing mansion with various sketches, artifacts, cartoons, photographs and ceramics relating to the good folk: in part to give his children unquiet dreams, in part to amuse himself. Consequently even though term is not quite over Beach has been on the prowl, salivating over graphic novels, Edwardian art books and stills from the fake fairy archives. And, so far, the most interesting potential contributor to the corridor has been Richard Dadd (obit 1886) who Beach thought that he would celebrate today
Dadd was a high-flying nineteenth-century painter whose career can usefully be split into three phases. (I) The boring phase: when the young and insufferable Dadd painted a series of conventional works (still lifes etc). (II) The fame phase: when an intense Dadd, in his early twenties, began to paint pat fairies and had praise heaped on him. (III) Then, finally, there is the mad phase from his mid twenties onwards which Dadd spent painting two works of utterly unconventional fairies in a top security mental asylum. The two late pictures are ‘Contradiction: Oberon and Titania’ and the simply amazing ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’.
How Dadd got from being a preppy Victorian fairy painter in the Royal Academy School to being a moon-barking inmate is a fascinating story in itself and Beach has half a suspicion that the fairies had something to do with it. On a trip to the Middle East in 1842 the still young Dadd began to show violent symptoms, so much so that his well-to-do travelling colleagues, including Sir Thomas Phillips, had the painter sent home early. Either in the Mediterranean or on the way back to his family in Kent Dadd convinced himself that he was the god Osiris (far more original than the staple of most nineteenth-century asylums, Napoleon). And he subsequently stabbed his father to death believing that bounder to be a devil. Dadd almost killed too a traveller on a train in France while trying to escape from arrest and was ultimately brought into the loving embrace of Britain’s surprisingly enlightened nineteenth-century Bedlam, Bethlem Royal Hospital.
It is always easy to identify the Osirises in our midst with hindsight: there is a worrying intensity in even mad Dadd’s early fairy pictures (see the one that heads this post), some scary nudes and over-red sunsets. But that intensity is as nothing compared to the hell that was to follow. Of course, Midsummer Night’s Dream was a staple of Victorian artists trying to fairy-up: as to a lesser extent was the Tempest. But no one painted Shakespeare like Dadd. If you look at the figures in this image (‘Contradiction’ above) you will see a worrying inability to communicate. No one is looking at anyone else, they seem all to be looking into space. Frequent comparisons with Bosch then are misplaced because Bosch’s infernos fit together like perfectly worked jigsaws. Yet, at the same time, Dadd’s characters are all clearly part of the same food chain with grand fairies and big fairies, and small fairies and beneath them tiny fairies and finally, we might imagine, microscopic fairies feeding on still smaller fairies and each other. It is an airless work, with no lush vegetation, only the kind of leaves that you would find in the drier parts of the Australian Bush. When Beach spent twenty minutes looking at it this evening he just wanted to throw open the window and let some air in. It took Dadd four years to paint.
The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke (that will almost certainly appear in the corridor) is more impressive and perhaps more frightening. An axe man (who could be Dadd) is about to split a hazelnut. And once more around him are a series of figures who are disconnected: their glances disconcertingly do not meet. But they are also clearly associated by their dress and their body language and the profusion of terrifying daisies everywhere. The connect-disconnect feeling is summed up for Beach by the fact that he is not sure which hazelnut the feller is about to crack. Is it the one directly at the man’s feet or the one about a yard away. Confusingly the pose the feller has taken up will not bring the axe to either: the visual experience is the same as that of staring at some of the early Renaissance works where perspective had still not been worked out and light seasickness results. This work, in any case, took Dadd nine years.
Not satisfied with just painting his nightmares Dadd wrote a poem about the Fairy Feller named Elimination of a Picture and its Subject which is about four thousand words long. A sample? ‘To your judgment I must bow Freely its exercise allow You perhaps to such are more inured. Your notions may be more endured But whether it be or be not so You can afford to let this go For nought as nothing it explains And nothing from nothing nothing gains.’ Paranoid schizophrenia probably works better in paint than in prose.
Beach is fascinated in fairy art at present, any off-the-beaten-track examples gratefully received: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
And here is mild Dadd, his knifing days behind him, painting Contradiction.
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30/April/2012: Invisible writes in: You undoubtedly have run across the fairy art of Charles Altamont Doyle (father of Arthur Conan Doyle). Also mad (he was an alcoholic, had seizures, and was periodically institutionalized) but his fairies are more whimsical and certainly less dire than Dadd’s whose work I cannot contemplate without feeling like I want to throw myself under a train. I can recommend The Doyle Diary: The Last Great Conan Doyle Mystery with a Holmesian Investigation into the Strange and Curious Case of Charles Altamont Doyle. There are very cheap used copies on bookfinder.com. More of a sketchbook than a diary–written/drawn while in a Scottish lunatic asylum. He seems to have been a loveable lunatic–the book is full of his witty appeals to his doctors, trying to prove he was not insane. Here are some pictures. Southern Man writes in with some suggestions for the corridor. The Cottingley Fairies (of course), engravings from nineteenth century books particularly Sykes, some of the early modern engravings of fairy hills, modern photographs with bits of luminous dust floating through the atmosphere, fairy sites on antique postcards, Neil Gaiman’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, particularly his version of Puck, Victorian stage girls dressed as fairies – preferably floating through the air. Thanks Invisible and SM!
5 May 2012: Fairy Avenger writes: Beach, liked very much this piece though you had not taken into account the latest scholarship, namely Patricia Allderidge’s excellent biography of Dadd in the Oxford DNB. I’ve copied out some of the relevant bits for you. I have some other fairy mistakes that you’ve made in your posts that I’ll include in the next months [!!]. Note, for example, that Dadd did not – contrary to earlier biographical sketches – believe that he was Osiris but that he was serving Osiris. ‘To those who knew him, Dadd’s character appeared to have changed. He had become watchful, suspicious, and unpredictable, concealing the fact that he was receiving messages and instructions from unknown sources (probably in the form of voices), but occasionally dropping hints that he was pursued by evil spirits, and was himself searching for the devil. Eventually he came to believe that the Egyptian god Osiris was the supreme being controlling all his actions, and the source of his ‘secret admonitions’. However, for much of the time Dadd still behaved normally… After a period of apparent recovery Dadd’s condition worsened again, and on 28 August 1843 he persuaded his father to accompany him to Cobham Park in Kent, near to his childhood home of Chatham, where he stabbed him to death with a knife bought specifically for the purpose. Dadd later explained that he had killed the devil in disguise, and seems to have retained this belief throughout his life, talking objectively about the murder as an event for which he held no personal responsibility. He made his way to France, but was arrested after trying to cut the throat of a stranger who was travelling with him in a carriage. Dadd was confined in a French asylum for ten months, and extradited in July 1844 to appear before the magistrates at Rochester. Though formally committed for trial, he was certified insane and was admitted on 22 August to the state criminal lunatic asylum attached to Bethlem Hospital at St George’s Fields in Southwark, south London. He was never to know freedom again. The ‘government wing’, where Dadd was first confined, had been built in 1816 to house patients sent by the courts and later through other legal channels. It was a prison-like block with heavily barred windows at the back of the main building, largely untouched by reforms which were taking place in the rest of the hospital. The internal environment was dark, cramped, and dismal, the outer world restricted to a bleak, high-walled exercise yard, and many of his companions were hardened criminals who had become insane while in prison. Dadd’s living conditions were much improved in 1857, when he and some of the ‘better class’ of criminal patients were moved to a specially converted ward in the main hospital, but far greater improvements occurred in 1864, when all the criminal patients were transferred from Bethlem to the new state asylum of Broadmoor in Berkshire… For some years Dadd was considered a dangerous patient, being unpredictable and sometimes violent, his conversation being rambling and incoherent when touching on the subject of his delusions. However, he soon began to work again in Bethlem, and effectively maintained his career as a painter for the rest of his life, though his pictures were rarely seen outside the asylums. A visitor in 1845 wrote of some recent drawings that they In Broadmoor Dadd’s talents found additional outlets, in painting scenery and a drop curtain for the theatre (now des.), as well as murals, furniture, and other decorative items, and in more ephemeral activities such as the production of comic cartoon figures at Christmas, and diagrams and illustrations for lectures and entertainments. Interviewed at the age of sixty, he appeared by this time to have accepted his fate, but still considered it unjust, feeling that society did not understand him. Dark and handsome in his youth, with expressive features, in later years he gave the impression of a scholarly recluse, with a snow-white beard and mild blue eyes gazing benignly from behind spectacles. Throughout the desolate circumstances of his later life he had clung to his identity as an artist, and although his personality was radically changed, insanity had not destroyed his intellect. He retained the delusion that he was subject to the will of Osiris, but after three decades in an asylum he still talked with intelligent interest about painting and the art world, read the Satires of Juvenal, and played the violin.’ Thanks FA!
Misfortunes with Severed Heads: Richard Owen and Lancaster Jail April 17, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Beachcombing regrets that he cannot provide the primary source for the following anecdote from Richard Owen’s early life. Anyone lucky enough to have instant access to mid nineteenth-century periodicals will find it in Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany vol 3 (1845), 294-303. Beach is taking this paraphrase from the excellent Dinosaur Hunters by Deborah Cadbury, a book to slaver over.
Richard Owen was, for those who don’t know, the rather insufferable scientist who, by his own estimation, ‘brightened’ mid and late nineteenth century England. As a young man he had become apprenticed to a surgeon in the north and after some traumatic weeks of autopsies and operations Owen was bitten by the anatomy bug: something which led to an extraordinary incident involving an African’s head.
By chance, a black patient had died in the gaol hospital [in Lancaster] and Owen assisted at the post mortem. Inspired by and article had he had read on ‘The Varieties of the Human Race’, he slipped some silver to the old turnkey. ‘I told him I should have to call again that evening to look a little further into the matter before the coffin was finally screwed down.’ It was snowing that night, when he returned to the gaol. He made his way up the same spiral stairway that had so terrified him just a few weeks previously, entered the corpse room and took the head of the dead man. Carefully concealing the head in a brown paper bag under his cloak, he went back down, past the turnkey. His thoughts, he said later, were only on craniological speculations of ‘facial angles’, ‘prognathic jaws’ and the ‘peculiar whiteness of osseous tissue’. But his thoughts were not on such lofty matters for long. As he hurried down the hill, he slipped on the ice and lost his balance. The black head was catapulted out of the bag and went bounding off down the slippery hill, pursued by Owen in his great, flapping, dark cloak and leaving splashes of red on the white pavement slabs. It bounced against the door of a cottage, which flew open, and he heard unearthly shrieks from inside. Owen rushed inside, ‘saw the whisk of a garment of a female’ vanishing through the door, ‘and the ghastly head at my feet with its white protruding eyeballs.’ He grabbed it and ran home. The next day the whole town was talking of the phantom, which was widely rumoured to be the ghost of a Captain Tasker and his Negro slave, perhaps even the Devil himself. For any doubters, a drop of blood now dry and dark by the door to the cottage, provided proof of their nocturnal visit.
Beachcombing would be grateful for any other good severed head stories and he would be very grateful for the scans from Hood’s Miscellany which he promises to type up for the world: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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18 April 2012: Invisible writes with this calling into question the anecdote and its identification with Owen: I’m sorry to say that Ms. Cadbury seems to have been misled. I pulled up the reference from >shudder< Google Books and it says nothing whatever about Richard Owen, but is part of a series of comic vignettes written as fiction, apparently to mock popular superstitions about ghosts, goblins, haunted houses, etc. I’ve been unable to find out anything about the author as yet. I tried to attach a PDF of the relevant passage which is “Recollections and Reflections of Gideon Shaddoe Esq IX pp. 294-303. Signed by “Silas Seer” but it was taking hours to load. Perhaps you can pull the plain text from the link above so you don’t have to transcribe. It’s a lovely tale to attribute to Richard Owen, but I don’t think it will hold up. And given Owen’s propensity to appropriate other scientists’ research, it’s ironic that his name somehow should have become attached to this fiction. Then later the same day. Here’s a bit more about Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany which makes it’ pretty clear that the Gideon Shaddoe series was written by Hood himself. He apparently wrote many satires on events of the day so it IS possible that Richard Owen was supposed to be recognized as the anatomist mentioned in the piece. I just haven’t found the clef to this comic roman if that’s what it is. Owen was such a prominent figure; he would have been ideal topical material Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany was a monthly journal originally published by Thomas Hood. A total of 61 issues were published from January 1844 to June 1849. Hood made most of the original material for it. After his death in 1845, Charles Rowcroft became the editor. The magazine was not particularly successful, partly due to the refusal to take on a publisher. Hood wrote humorously on many contemporary issues. One of the most important issues in his time was grave robbing and selling of corpses to anatomists–another reason Owen might have been a target. Thackeray and Dickens mention Owen by name in The Newcomes and Our Mutual Friend respectively, briefly and in a mildly satirical vein. Richard Altick, in The Presence of the Present: Topics of the Day in the Victorian Novel has this to say about Thomas Hood. ‘With the exception of numerous treatments of public issues of the day in the form of ‘addresses’ to their respective proponents, Hood’s kind of topicalities did not relate primarily to news events. Instead, they took the form of witty improvisations on the trivia of everyday life, ‘manners’ as we would call them. From the perspective of a century and a half, they are closer to the weekly contents of Punch than to Byronic comedy. Buried in them are uncountable ‘in-jokes’ from which posterity is excluded. Only Hood’s contemporaries would have recognized them and welcomed their humor for whatever it was worth.’ Again, I suppose it is possible that Owen was the person alluded to in the severed head incident. But if he was, I’d just like to know how Ms. Cadbury deduced his identity. I spent the morning photographing the 20 B-25 bombers here for the Doolittle Raider 70th (and final) reunion and my computer is locked up loading them to my FB page. Otherwise I might have more answers for you! I still think, given the context of the Gideon Shaddoe series, which positions itself as a satire on the superstitions of the ignorant lower classes, that it’s reaching (without further proof) to assume that Owen was the target of that satire.’ Thanks Invisible!
Fairy Sighting on Skye, c. 1880 March 12, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary, Modern
The family crisis continues here and so Beach offers a modest little post on a fairy sighting in Skye: perhaps Beachcombing’s favourite witness account of the ‘good folk’. This was written out in the early 1960s that puts the experience back c. 1880.
In the darkening of an Autumn evening over eighty years ago a little boy in the Isle of Skye was awaiting the return of his mother from a visit to an ailing neighbour. He and his elder sister had been left with their grandmother while their mother was on an errand of mercy. Another little boy had joined them, and all had played happily during the afternoon. Their own home was some distance from their grandmother’s – just too far for little ones unaccompanied. Presently there came to call on their grandmother an elderly woman from the village, one whom the children knew well and whom they liked. Probably by this time they were becoming a little tired and cross, and their old friend was trying to amuse them. Suddenly she said: ‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’ They all took hands and went out into the gloaming and down the path by the side of the burn. Then the old lady stopped, and said: ‘Look, do you see them?’ And there on the hillside, all dressed in green, were the fairies dancing in a ring round a fire. The children were simply enchanted by what they saw, and one can imagine their excitement and the wonderful story they would have to tell their mother on her return. Next morning they rushed out to look for the ashes of the fairy fire, but there was nothing to be seen.
So what is so special about this account? Well, it is perhaps not the account in itself, but what the account led to that makes Beachcombing’s hair stand on end. The little boy in this story was Ernest Edward Briggs, the father of perhaps the greatest post-war British folklorist Katherine Briggs. And as one biography of KB puts it ‘[her father] was an imaginative storyteller and devoted to Katherine and it was from this childhood influence that Katherine developed a strong interest in fairytales and folklore later in life.’ Certainly this story haunted the family and was told again and again.
KB, in fact, wrote:
[A]s children my brother and sisters and I were never tired of hearing this story. My aunt too, when she came to visit us, would corroberate [sic] the tale. And I have passed it on to mine, and shown them the green, grassy mound ‘where Papa saw the fairies’. Two years ago, and for the first time, I met the third child, now an old man, and he could recall as vividly and clearly as if it had been yesterday all the details of that wonderful evening.
This could in part be rationalised away as brother and sister retelling and retelling an experience and misunderstanding the presence of fairies on a Scottish island: the wealthy Briggs family had connections with Skye. But KB’s discussion of the tale with ‘the third child’ suggests someone outside the magic circle who had his own independent memories.
Perhaps KB is right, if we want to look for a ‘rational’ solution, to concentrate on the one adult present who was said to have second sight.
An interesting point in this narrative is the second-sighted woman who gave the children their glimpse of the fairies. It is noticeable that they were all hand in hand when they saw them, though her method was simpler than that of the wizards described by Kirk, who put their right hand on their pupil’s head and their right foot on his left and made him look over their right shoulder. The fairies were dressed in the usual manner in green and were dancing round a fairy knoll, but it was somewhat unusual for them to dance round a fire instead of being more mysteriously lit. Fires are as a rule only used by the iron-working fairies.
As always where ‘genuine’ fairies are concerned Beachcombing has not the slightest idea what to make of this. He has though since becoming part of the fraternity of fairy scholars become fascinated by the fairy-faith beliefs of those involved in fairy studies. Views on the reality of fairies seem to stretch from wicked disbelief to silly-headed credulity. What for example did Briggs really think about the existence of fairies? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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14/Mar/2011: Fey writes: ‘The question of fairies, belief and fairy experts is a fascinating one. Let me give some examples. There are out and out believers: e.g. Signe Pike and Eddie Lenihan. They are not scholars and can get away with it. Janet Bord author of Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People is a serious type and I suspect that she believes. ‘My personal view is that traditional fairy lore had developed from various stimuli, namely belief in nature spirits, primitive races, pagan gods and the spirits of the dead. Personal sightings, on the other hand, could be the results of imagination, fabrication, or the externalisation of unconscious archetypes. If these were the only explanations, then none of the Little People seen were objectively real. Can this be true? I honestly do not know, and I am not going to pretend that I do, but if I were to allow myself a flight of fancy, I would speculate that some of the Little People might be real, and that they live in another world which exists parallel to ours.’ Katharine Briggs says in some place – can’t find it! – that the Cottingley Fairies don’t seem real to her because they look too much what Edwardian Fairies should look like. Does this not imply a certain patience that fairies can exist? Perhaps, perhaps not. Or what about this from Welsh scholar Robin Gwyndaf? ‘Once upon a time there was a boy who lived on a farm, high in the hills of north Wales. Occasionally when he was not needed to help with the housework or on the farm, or when he just felt like wandering over his ‘country estate’, he would leave the farm yard, walk along Cae Bach (the little field) until he came to Y Giat Goch (the red gate. Once through this he was right in the centre of a circular piece of land about ten yards in diameter . The grass there was always green – unusually green – and always fine and even, like velvet. There the young lad would sit for hours and dream his time away. Nowhere would he be happier than in that green circle of land near the red gate, because there the fairies would come and take him with them on a long journey, over the Foel Goch hill, Llangwm village nearby, and the Berwyn mountains, to a wonderful land of beauty and plenty, sweet music and dance. The author of this essay was that yong boy! I mention my childhood recollection not to emphasise the power of imagination, but to point out that the belief in the fairies persisted in Wales into the late forties and early fifties of this century.’ This surely implies belief in a scholar?’ Thanks Fey!
The Rocking Stone Unrocked February 10, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
The mother of all busy days today as students clamor for assistance and daughters for entertainment. Beach hope that readers will forgive him for offering up this story from his winter reading about Cornwall in the south-west of Britain. Our author is describing the Loggan Stone, aka the Logan Stone of Treen.
This far-famed rock rises on the top of a bold promontory of granite, jutting far out into the sea, split into the wildest forms, and towering precipitously to a height of a hundred feet. When you reach the Loggan Stone, after some little climbing up perilous-looking places, you see a solid, irregular mass of granite, which is computed to weigh eighty five tons, supported by its centre only, on a flat, broad rock, which, in its turn, rests on several others stretching out around it on all sides. You are told by the guide to turn your back to the uppermost stone; to place your shoulders under one particular part of its lower edge, which is entirely disconnected, all round, with the supporting rock below; and in this position to push upwards slowly and steadily, then to leave off again for an instant, then to push once more, and so on, until after a few moments of exertion, you feel the whole immense mass above you moving as you press against it. You redouble your efforts–then turn round–and see the massy Loggan Stone, set in motion by nothing but your own pair of shoulders, slowly rocking backwards and forwards with an alternate ascension and declension, at the outer edges, of at least three inches. You have treated eighty-five tons of granite like a child’s cradle; and, like a child’s cradle, those eighty-five tons have rocked at your will! The pivot on which the Loggan Stone is thus easily moved, is a small protrusion in its base, on all sides of which the whole surrounding weight of rock is, by an accident of Nature, so exactly equalized, as to keep it poised in the nicest balance on the one little point in its lower surface which rests on the flat granite slab beneath. But perfect as this balance appears at present, it has lost something, the merest hair’s-breadth, of its original faultlessness of adjustment. The rock is not to be moved now, either so easily or to so great an extent, as it could once be moved. Six-and-twenty years since, it was overthrown by artificial means; and was then lifted again into its former position. This is the story of the affair, as it was related to me by a man who was an eyewitness of the process of restoring the stone to its proper place.
And the story is an entertaining one.
In the year 1824, a certain Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, then in command of a cutter stationed off the southern coast of Cornwall, was told of an ancient Cornish prophecy, that no human power should ever succeed in overturning the Loggan Stone. No sooner was the prediction communicated to him, than he conceived a mischievous ambition to falsify practically an assertion which the commonest common sense might have informed him had sprung from nothing but popular error and popular superstition. Accompanied by a body of picked men from his crew, he ascended to the Loggan Stone, ordered several levers to be placed under it at one point, gave the word to “heave”–and the next moment had the miserable satisfaction of seeing one of the most remarkable natural curiosities in the world utterly destroyed, for aught he could foresee to the contrary, under his own directions!
But Fortune befriended the Loggan Stone. One edge of it, as it rolled over, became fixed by a lucky chance in a crevice in the rocks immediately below the granite slab from which it had been started. Had this not happened, it must have fallen over a sheer precipice, and been lost in the sea. By another accident, equally fortunate, two labouring men at work in the neighbourhood, were led by curiosity secretly to follow the Lieutenant and his myrmidons up to the Stone. Having witnessed, from a secure hiding-place, all that occurred, the two workmen, with great propriety, immediately hurried off to inform the lord of the manor of the wanton act of destruction which they had seen perpetrated.
The news was soon communicated throughout the district, and thence, throughout all Cornwall. The indignation of the whole county was aroused. Antiquaries, who believed the Loggan Stone to have been balanced by the Druids; philosophers who held that it was produced by an eccentricity of natural formation; ignorant people, who cared nothing about Druids, or natural formations, but who liked to climb up and rock the stone whenever they passed near it; tribes of guides who lived by showing it; innkeepers in the neighbourhood, to whom it had brought customers by hundreds; tourists of every degree who were on their way to see it–all joined in one general clamour of execration against the overthrower of the rock. A full report of the affair was forwarded to the Admiralty; and the Admiralty, for once, acted vigorously for the public advantage, and mercifully spared the public purse.
The Lieutenant was officially informed that his commission was in danger, unless he set up the Loggan Stone again in its proper place. The materials for compassing this achievement were offered to him, _gratis_, from the Dock Yards; but he was left to his own resources to defray the expense of employing workmen to help him. Being by this time awakened to a proper sense of the mischief he had done, and to a tolerably strong conviction of the disagreeable position in which he was placed with the Admiralty, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of repairing his fault. Strong beams were planted about the Loggan Stone, chains were passed round it, pulleys were rigged, and capstans were manned. After a week’s hard work and brave perseverance on the part of every one employed in the labour, the rock was pulled back into its former position, but not into its former perfection of balance: it has never moved since as freely as it moved before.
It is only fair to the Lieutenant to add to this narrative of his mischievous frolic the fact, that he defrayed, though a poor man, all the heavy expenses of replacing the rock. Just before his death, he paid the last remaining debt, and paid it with interest.
Any other cursed stones, rocking or otherwise? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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11/2/2012: KMH remembers Coral Castle in Florida. The 9-ton gate is nicely balanced so that a child can move it. Laurence has Teetering Rock in Dog Patch in mind.
Invisible writes in: I had to laugh out loud at the Admiralty getting involved with the Lieutenant and the rocking stone. Here’s an article about the cursing stone of Cumbria: And another cursed stone. Thanks KMH, Laurence and Invisible!!
22/2/2012: Sword and Beast writes in: ‘300 km south of Buenos Aires, there is a pampean city named Tandil, which, in the indigenous mapuche language, means “beating rock”. This is a reference to a 300 ton boulder which stood, quite impressively, on the edge of a rocky foothill, the “piedra movediza”. It was common practice to place bottles or other things under its base to see them break. There are good pictures. Among the many legends that surround the moving stone, there is one involving a mapuche human sacriffice of a lover (whose heart would then beat in stone) and a mention that General Rosas, the then Governor of Buenos Aires and “conqueror of the desert” (actually mostly the Pampas), has tried to bring it down with several horses, without success. The bolder toppled on February 29th, 1912, probably due to vandalism or mine explosions nearby, and split into three pieces at the bottom of the hill. In 2007, a hollow replica was cemented in the same place where the original stood, creating the world’s first “moving rock” that does not move.’ Then Moonman sends in some precious pages from Corliss. ‘Of course, Corliss has a section in Ancient Infrastructure 63-68 on this topic. He mentions the New York USA Peekskill rocking stone which shows people can’t help but try to destroy wondrous things as well as Cromwell’s armies purposely destroying rocking stones because of Druid association. I include scans of the section of interest for your examination only, not sharing on the Internet due to copyright.’ Beach is going to infringe just a little to include some of Corliss’ thoughts on British material: ‘Rocking stones have received the most attention by British amateur and professional archaeologists. This is understandable because standing stones and stone circles dot much of their countryside. France also boasts a few rocking stones. More are found in Asia but we have no details. The British enthusiasm for rocking stones infected New England, which, like Britain, is strewn with glacier debris. Some of these North American boulders either rock today or have been rockable in the past. The older American scientific journals carry many accounts of these unstable stones. Today, though, rocking stones are relegated to amateur archaeology publications… It is also true that rocking stones present a challenge to vandals, and numerous unstable stones have been pushed or levered off their bases. In addition, rocking stones have pagan affinities. Oliver Cromwell’s armies, for instance, deliberately destroyed rocking stones for their connections to the Druids. For several reasons, then the record of rocking stones is incomplete.’ Thanks Moonman and S&B and another salute to the great Corliss!
Electrocuting African Tribal Hosts January 3, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
One of the great challenges of any nineteenth-century explorers was to make friends with the ‘primitives’ in such out of the way places as an equatorial rain forest, the upper peaks of the Andes and through much of Darkest Africa. And, of course, to do so they brought gifts along with them: a sensible enough precaution. And what gifts! Here is a list from one African-bound American at the end of the nineteenth-century. The following were an addendum to his goods as things that, though useless in themselves, he could give to the natives to add to his prestige and power over them.
I bought more than 5000 pounds of beads of different sizes and colors, several hundred pieces of cotton goods, some pieces of silk and coats, waistcoats, shirts, 2000 red caps, a few umbrellas, files, knives, bells, fire-steels, flints, looking-glasses, forks, spoons, some stove-pipe hats for the kings near the sea-shore, straw hats, etc., etc. Then, to impress the wild people with what I could do, I bought several large Geneva musical boxes, one powerful electrical battery, several magnets, and six ship clocks, etc, etc.
Two items stand out for Beachcombing on this list. The stove pipe hats – see illustration – and the ‘powerful electric battery’. WtH! Let us imagine for a moment that you have just accidentally trod on the sore toe of a powerful up-river chieftain. How is a ‘powerful electric battery’ going to save your life? Well, read this passage and remember that our hero has already intimidated his hosts with gunfire and – the darkness! – Swiss music boxes.
After a few moments I took the [music] box back into my hut, and brought out a powerful electric battery. Then I ordered the forty-three elders and the king to come and stand in a line. They came, but were evidently awed. The people dared not say a word. Every thing being ready, I told them to hold the ninety feet of conducting wire. ‘Hold hard!’ I cried. The people looked at the old men with wonder, and could not understand how they dared to hold that charmed string of the Oguizi [a white]. The Ishogos, my guides, were themselves bewildered, for they had not seen this thing in their village. My Commi men did not utter a word, but their faces were as long as if they never had seen anything. ‘Hold on!’ I repeated, ‘do not let the string go out of your hands’. I then gave a powerful continuous shock. The arms of the elders twisted backward against their will, and their bodies bent over; but they still held the wire, which, indeed, now they had not the power to drop. Their mouths were wide open; their bodies trembled from the continuous electric shock; they looked at me and cried ‘Oh! oh! oh! Yo! yo! yo!’ I had really given a too powerful shock. The people fled. In an instant all was over. I stopped the current of electricity. The wire fell from the elders’ hands, and they looked at me in perfect bewilderment. The people came back. The elders explained their electric sensation, and then a wild hurra and a shout went up. ‘There is not another great oguizi like the one in our village,’ was the general exclamation ; and they came and danced around me, and sang mbuiti songs, bending their bodies low, and looking at me in the face as if I had been one of their idols.
He then proceeds to terrify the villagers with a deftly used magnet…
Any other ‘superiority’ gifts? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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5 Jan 2012: Sword&Beast writes in ‘I´ve just read your post on gifts from explorers and it reminded me a passage from the history of Brazil. Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva was an explorer from the 17th century then village of São Paulo, one of many who went deep inland to fetch for natives, gold or diamonds. The 1987 movie The Mission gives a good impression of these slave-hunting expeditions called ‘bandeiras‘. In 1682, Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva run into a tribe where the women were richly adorned with gold. As they refused to tell were the gold came from, the explorer threw the strong Brazilian run called “cachaça” (which today is used for milder uses such as “caipirinha”) into a pound and set it on fire, saying that he would burn all rivers and water sources if he was not taken to the gold sites. Although not as threatening as Swiss music boxes, it worked and the explorer passed into history known as Anhanguera, which means ‘old devil’ in the local amerindian language.’Thanks S&B!
Lancashire Voodoo c. 1850 December 26, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Beach promised no more fairy stories in 2011 but he thought he would go out with a witch tale from nineteenth-century Lancashire on the wrong side of the Pennines. There is something reminiscent of an earlier post from Hebden Bridge here and also of the curious case of the witch who suffered spontaneous combustion in Suffolk. Most interesting it seems to have come from a reliable first-hand source: the book dates to the late 1860s.
(208) Some years ago I formed the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman who had retired from business, after amassing an ample fortune by the manufacture of cotton. He was possessed of a considerable amount of general information – had studied the world by which he was surrounded – and was a leading member of the Wesleyan connexion. The faith element, however, predominated amongst his religious principles, and hence both he and his family were firm believers in witchcraft. On one occasion, according to my informant, both he and the neighbouring farmers suffered much from loss of cattle, and from the unproductiveness of their sheep. The cream was bynged [soured] in the churn, and would bring forth no butter. Their cows died mad in the shippons, and no farrier could be found who was able to fix upon the diseases which afflicted them. Horses were bewitched out of their stables through the loopholes, after the doors had been safely locked, and were frequently found strayed to a considerable distance when they ought to have been safe in their stalls. Lucky-stones had lost their virtues; horseshoes nailed behind the doors were of little use; and sickles hung across the beams had no effect in averting the malevolence of the evil-doer.
At length suspicion rested upon an old man, a noted astrologer and fortune-teller, who resided near New Church, in Rossendale, and it was determined to put an end both to their ill-fortune and his career, by performing the requisite ceremonials for ‘killing a witch’. It was a cold November evening when the process commenced. A thick fog covered the valleys, and the wild winds whistled across the dreary moors. The farmers, however, were not deterred. They met at the house of one of their number, whose cattle were then supposed to be under the influence of the wizard; and having procured a live cock-chicken, they stuck him full of pins and burnt him alive, whilst repeating some magical incantation. A cake was also made of oatmeal, mixed with the urine of those bewitched, and, after having been marked with the name of the person suspected, was then burnt in a similar manner The wind suddenly rose to a tempest and threatened the destruction of the house. Dreadful moanings as of some one in intense agony, were heard without, whilst a sense of horror seized upon all within. At the moment when the storm was at the wildest, the wizard knocked at the door, and in piteous tones desired admittance. They had previously been warned by the ‘wise man’ whom they had consulted, that such would be the case, and had been charged not to yield to their feelings of humanity by allowing him to enter. Had they done so, he would have regained all his influence, for the virtue of the spell would have been dissolved. Again and again did he implore them to open the door, and pleaded the bitterness of the wintry blast, but none answered from within. They were deaf to all his entreaties, and at last the wizard wended his way across the moors as best he could. The spell, therefore, was enabled to have its full effect, and within a week the Rossendale wizard was locked in the cold embrace of Death.
Beach loves the idea of ‘a leading member of the Wesleyan connexion’, i.e. a tee-totalling, pontificating, go-to-chapel-on-sunday-even-with-a-cold Methodist carrying out a voodoo ceremony on the Lancs moors sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century.
A theme that repeats itself in these late witchcraft accounts is the way that the offended against are far more diabolical (at least in terms of the proof given) than the offenders.
Any other late witch accounts, 1750 plus? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
What do fairies smell of? December 23, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Beachcombing knows that not everyone appreciates his endless posts on fairies, but here is – he promises – the last one for 2011. He might even wait a week before he starts again in 2012.
Anyway, apologies apart, he recently stumbled on a rather beautiful book about Yorkshire in the late nineteenth century, one that offered up a page or two on the gentry. The passage begins with some fairly bog standard stuff about how there is still the memory of fairies among the commoners (240).
A correspondent from the borders of the North and West Ridings tells me of the strong belief in fairies that existed among the people of his district when he was a boy. It seems he used to talk to an old inhabitant who, as he confessed, had often ‘seen the fairies. Figures of men and women gaily clad, of full size, and in rapid confused motion, he said he had often watched in early summer mornings. He used to tell of an unbelieving horse-dealer who had stayed the night with him. At dawn the old farmer saw the fairies, as he had so often done before, and called up his guest, who, unbeliever though he declared himself to be, hurried out as he was, very lightly clad, and sat so long on a wall watching them that he caught a rheumatism that he never was cured of.
But what about this strange coda that Beachcombing finds quite unaccountable.
By the way, a young woman, into whose house this same gentleman once went, told him that she had never seen fairies (though her relations often had) but she had smelt them. On his asking what sort of odour he was to expect so that he might be similarly favoured, she went on to enquire if he had ever been in a very crowded ‘place of worship’ wherein the people had been congregated for a length of time. Such was the description; a very different one had been looked for; but it is the unexpected which happens.
When Beachcombing first read this he assumed that the mention of the ‘place of worship’ was taking us towards Romanism and incense. But imagine what a crowd of Yorkshire yeoman – in the era before baths – smelt like after having been in a ‘very crowded place of worship… for a length of time’! The fairies presumably smelt then of body odour?!? Perhaps that rather horsey, sweat-soaked tweed smell rather than the knock-out stink of amonia, but really…
The author, a gentile nineteenth-century vicar is having none of this though.
It was supposed that the young woman who was such an adept at scenting out the fairies was in reality trying to give an idea of the gushes of hot air one sometimes comes across on broken ground during summer time.
Wth!
Any ideas on what the fairy sniffer was smelling? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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27/12/2011: This from Mish M ‘I don’t think of that part of the world being particularly volcanic, but perhaps there was some kind of *event*?… That led to sulphurous steam to seep out? Or perhaps there are some hot springs in the area.’ Thanks Mish!!!!
Fairy Death Bed Conversion December 15, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Beachcombing’s fairy year continues. In his grazing through the accounts of the fairy faith on the western and northern fringe of Europe one of the things that has most fascinated him is the belief of the connection between Catholicism and things fairy. There is a famous early modern comment – irritatingly Beach can’t remember by whom – to the effect that fairies left England with the arrival of Protestantism. There are the bigoted but perhaps quite astute debates about how belief in purgatory may have preserved belief in fairy land. Then there is the fact that the nineteenth-century Protestant Welsh believed that in fairy matters any sufferer should make a bee-line for a Catholic priest. While musing on this Beach came across the following bit of bizarreness from the second half of the nineteenth century, from the most bizarre corner of the United Kingdom, Strabane in the Six Counties. Today confessional warfare involves collecting money for one group or other of sectarian thugs and occasionally throwing stones at the police. A century and a half ago there was also though a fairy front!
John McCorkle, the dying man, aged eighty, was all his life a Presbyterian. He lived in a house by himself, being attended by a woman who is a Roman Catholic. The Rev. Jas. Gibson regularly visited him, and entertained a favourable opinion of the old man’s piety. He was also frequently visited by one of the elders. On Sunday the 22nd ult.. Mr McCorkle sent word to Mr Gibson that he was very ill, and requested to be remembered in the prayers of the congregation; soon after his mind began to wander. He accused the fairies of having shot him through the head, and he mentioned the name of Mr Magee – the [Catholic] priest – as having power to save him from their influence. On being asked, he said that the suggestion had come from ‘that woman there’, meaning his Roman Catholic servant.
Mr Magee was afterwards summoned by the woman in Mr McCorkles’s name. He came at once, and began his ministrations before any of the old man’s relatives, who are all Presbyterians, were aware. An old neighbour woman, a Presbyterian, came in, and was astonished to see the priest at the bedside. She told him he must have made a mistake, and requested him to withdraw. He told her he had been sent for, and refused to withdraw, but ordered her to leave the house. She at length ran and acquainted the sick man’s relatives. One of them, a respectable young woman, ran in and ordered the priest to desist. The priest seized her by the arm roughly, and forcibly expelled her, barricading the door. A male relative soon arrived and forced the door open, so as to be able to see the priest, and warn him to desist. Mr Magee put his head out of the door and ordered a Romanist, who was passing, to put the man away. This he did speedily and violently. A Romish crowd also collected to protect their priest from interruption. Mr Magee, on Sunday evening went to a magistrate and made an affidavit, in which he swore that he had been sent for by Mr McCorkle, that he had found him quite sensible and anxious to see him, but that he apprehended personal violence in case he attempted to repeat his visit, and therefore claimed the protection of the constabulary. This was granted, and shortly after eleven o’clock at night he proceeded again to the house, accompanied by a number of armed police and a crowd of Romanists. All the sick man’s relations but one, a young man, had gone home. The priest ordered his friends away. This was done, the door closed, and the priest finished his work. McCorkle was made a Romanist, and died a few hours later ‘a good Catholic’.
Naturally the Prots were not amused!
It is no wonder that such proceedings have excited deep feelings of indignation in the minds of the Protestant members of the community. The Romanists exult over their new ‘convert’ and prayers were offered for the repose of his soul in Strabane Chapel, on Sunday last. Here we have the whole machinery of proselytism. An old man, in a state of mental aberration, a Romish woman bringing the priest, a Romish crowd, and even the police assisting. Are these things to be allowed in the Protestant North? Is an aged Protestant not to be allowed to die in peace? This is another instance of the mode in which converts are made to Romanism. The conversion is a farce, but greater care must be taken that sick Protestants be protected from annoyance. We allow religious liberty to others, and we must have it to ourselves, otherwise the struggles of the past are vain and must be re-commenced.
And, of course, so they were…
Why does Catholicism and the fairy faith seemingly get on so well? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Regular readers should be warned that Mrs B is both bemused and disgusted.
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16 Dec 2011: James writes that ‘Sir Walter Scott wrote that the Pope was indulgent of fairies. The connection between Protestantism and the flit of the fairies is often found in the seventeenth century onwards. John G and Invisible point out that a late reflex of this is from Kipling’s Puck of Puck Hill: ‘An’ old!’ Tom went on. ‘Flesh an’ Blood have been there since Time Everlastin’ Beyond. Well, now, speakin’ among themselves, the Marshmen say that from Time Everlastin’ Beyond the Pharisees favoured the Marsh above the rest of Old England. I lay the Marshmen ought to know. They’ve been out after dark, father an’ son, smugglin’ some one thing or t’other, since ever wool grew to sheep’s backs. They say there was always a middlin’ few Pharisees to be seen on the Marsh. Impident as rabbits, they was. They’d dance on the nakid roads in the nakid daytime; they’d flash their liddle green lights along the diks, comin’ an’ goin’, like honest smugglers. Yes, an’ times they’d lock the church doors against parson an’ clerk of Sundays!’ ‘That ’ud be smugglers layin’ in the lace or the brandy till they could run it out o’ the Marsh. I’ve told my woman so,’ said Hobden. ‘I’ll lay she didn’t beleft it, then—not if she was a Whitgift. A won’erful choice place for Pharisees, the Marsh, by all accounts, till Queen Bess’s father he come in with his Reformatories.’ ‘Would that be a Act o’ Parliament like?’ Hobden asked. ‘Sure-ly! ’Can’t do nothing in Old England without Act, Warrant, an’ Summons. He got his Act allowed him, an’, they say, Queen Bess’s father he used the parish churches something shameful. Justabout tore the gizzards out of I dunnamany. Some folk in England they held with ’en; but some they saw it different, an’ it eended in ’em takin’ sides an’ burnin’ each other no bounds, accordin’ which side was top, time bein’. That tarrified the Pharisees: for Goodwill among Flesh an’ Blood is meat an’ drink to ’em, an’ ill-will is poison.’ ‘Same as bees,’ said the Bee Boy. ‘Bees won’t stay by a house where there’s hating.’ ‘True,’ said Tom. ‘This Reformations tarrified the Pharisees same as the reaper goin’ round a last stand o’ wheat tarrifies rabbits. They packed into the Marsh from all parts, and they says, “Fair or foul, we must flit out o’ this, for Merry England’s done with, an’ we’re reckoned among the Images.”’ ‘Did they _all_ see it that way?’ said Hobden. ‘All but one that was called Robin—if you’ve heard of him. What are you laughing at?’ Tom turned to Dan. ‘The Pharisees’s trouble didn’t tech Robin, because he’d cleaved middlin’ close to people like. No more he never meant to go out of Old England—not he; so he was sent messagin’ for help among Flesh an’ Blood. But Flesh an’ Blood must always think of their own concerns, an’ Robin couldn’t get _through_ at ’em, ye see. They thought it was tide-echoes off the Marsh.’ ‘What did you—what did the fai—Pharisees want?’ Una asked. ‘A boat to be sure. Their liddle wings could no more cross Channel than so many tired butterflies. A boat an’ a crew they desired to sail ’em over to France, where yet awhile folks hadn’t tore down the Images. They couldn’t abide cruel Canterbury Bells ringin’ to Bulverhithe for more pore men an’ women to be burnded, nor the King’s proud messenger ridin’ through the land givin’ orders to tear down the Images. They couldn’t abide it no shape. Nor yet they couldn’t get their boat an’ crew to flit by without Leave an’ Good-will from Flesh an’ Blood; an’ Flesh an’ Blood came an’ went about its own business the while the Marsh was swarvin’ up, an’ swarvin’ up with Pharisees from all England over, striving all means to get through at Flesh an’ Blood to tell ’en their sore need.’ Thanks James, John and Invisibile!
