The Centauri Device

Well, there's always a plus side. I'm in hospital again, and a bit stuck for reading. But among the books in Richard's Room, the little family/chillout room next to the Yeo Ward in Exeter's RD&E - amid Cookson, Cussler, King, Cornell, Helen Fielding ... aaargh! ... I did find just one good book, one I haven't read for around 35 years, M. John Harrison's classic SF novel The Centauri Device.

More Holme Lee children's illustrations

Further to Harriet Parr: bibliography, "Tuflongbo", and a dog's life, here are some more of the off-the-wall illustrations from the handful of 1860s children's fairytale books by the prolific Shanklin, Isle of Wight, novelist Parr (who wrote as Holme Lee).

"That Figure-Head."

"That Figure-Head." is a short story by Mrs Harcourt Roe that originally appeared in 1901 in the London-based literary magazine Temple Bar. I was interested to read it while researching Mrs Roe's works, but ran into problems: it's not hosted anywhere straightforward, and there's a glitch with Google Books that for some reason makes it impossible to retrieve in full, even via the usual workaround of a proxy server (Poe springs to mind: "er lasst sich nicht lesen"). I couldn't resist the puzzle of hacking it by 'jigsaw method' from the Google Books snippet view.

Gremlin?

Dorset war artwork is preserved (Rod Minchin, Western Morning News, March 17, 2015) reports on the successful conservation of a characterful mural painted in 1942 by Flight Sgt Sidney Beaumont of 263 Squadron. The logo is similar to one painted by Sgt Beaumont on his Westland Whirlwind aircraft.

Joe and the Jolly Gist

It's an unlikely jump from Victorian inspirational book to Cumbrian dialect stories, but J Milner Fothergill's 1888 The Will Power; Its Range in Action does exactly that. It's a bit of a curiosity, a collection of examples of will power in action, from history and literature, and described by its physician author as "not a metaphysical enquiry, but a practical book, which it is hoped will be found useful by many, especially those entering into the battle of life".

Panchatantra

I love it when memories drop into context, years later. On the bus yesterday, I was talking with Clare about school memories, and a recollection surfaced: How Supersmart ate the Elephant. This is a story concerning a jackal who finds a dead elephant, but is unable to bite through its hide. He succeeds eventually, by variously tricking other animals who come along. It's a good yarn, and I Googled it when we got home.

Legend Land: another Barham

I just ran into a couple of pleasant books: the two-volume Legend Land ("Being a collection of some of the Old Tales told in those Western Parts of Britain served by The Great Western Railway"). They're compilations of GWR pamphlets, The Lines to Legend Land series - in which the pseudonymous "Lyonesse" retells folklore of Wales and the Westcountry.

Micah Morey's Cave

John Ptak's blog Ptak Science Books has a very useful category - "History of Blank, Missing and Empty Things"- and this handily covers a now-lost Isle of Wight cave connected with a grim story.

Green Man sighting

I rather like beer pump logos. They're an excellent little artform, and on occasion they completely transcend what they are - fairly throwaway advertising artwork - and become truly inspired miniatures. This is an example worth of Arcimboldo.

Babylon is Fallen

Just purging some bookmarks, I rediscovered Ted Chiang's SF story Tower of Babylon, brilliantly imagining the practicalities of building of the Tower of Babel. This in turn reminded me of Alasdair Gray's collection Unlikely Stories, Mostly, which has a two-part fable on the same theme: The Start of the Axletree and The End of the Axletree, which uses the building of the Tower of Babel, and the evolving social structures within its workers and management, as an allegory for the development of human civilisation. The bookmarks also included several links for the hymn tune Babylon Is Fallen, which concluded the Topsham production of Tony Harrison's Mysteries earlier this year. It's a very catchy tune, open to considerable variation in style, whether the powerfully raw close harmony of Swan Arcade ...



... Sacred Harp devotional part singing ...



... or this grim anti-capitalist anthem by Plunderphoenix: Babylon muß fallen:



The tune is quite often claimed to be a 17th century Shaker hymn, but attribution doesn't seem to reliably track back further than the 1870s and William Edward Chute ...

His tune BABYLON IS FALLEN was printed in The Musical Million 6 (December 1875) and in Hauser's Olive Leaf (1878), where Hauser states that Prof. William E. Chute, then living in St. Thomas, Ontario, “composed the tune out of an old theme, and is too modest to claim any originality, but I do it for him."
- The Makers of the Sacred Harp, David Warren Steel, Richard H Hulan, University of Illinois Press, 2010

However, in an interesting Google Groups discussion on the tune - music for SH 117 BABYLON IS FALLEN - Gabriel Kastelle plausibly suggests a relation to an Irish tune called Reilly's Reel (see YouTube for basic tune, and this rather academic Celtic Trio arrangement - Babylon is Fallen fits perfectly with it).

Since 1991, it has been included in The Sacred Harp, a continually accreted collection of traditional American devotional choral singing (see Sacred Harp and Shape Note Singing and Wikipedia's article, Sacred Harp). I'm not sure what to make of the Sacred Harp tradition. Its choral music is not intended as a performance, and it's participatory and highly inclusive of all levels of ability: highly positive aspects that it's hard to disagree with. But as a musician used to striving for a polished performance, I find it sounds gratingly ramshackle. I guess you have to be in the mindset to appreciate it or not care about that.

- Ray

Faust (2011)

Johannes Zeiler (left) as Faust; Anton Adasinsky (right) as Mauricius

Another film recommendation: we just borrowed the video of Faust, Alexander Sokurov's 2011 film adaptation of the Faust legend. Russian-made, with dialogue in German, it's a "free fantasy" adaptation of the legendary Faust -  a man who sells his soul to the Devil - as portrayed by Goethe and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus.

In the Sokurov film, Heinrich Faust is a disillusioned middle-aged academic working in a seedy hospital in a seedy little German town, struggling to understand the nature of life through dissections and dabbling in alchemy. Penniless, he fails to pawn a ring, and buys hemlock to commit suicide. However, at this point he's visited by the sinister moneylender, Mauricius, who drinks the hemlock instead. It doesn't do anything but give him stomach pains, which amazes and intrigues Faust, who takes up the moneylender's offer to show him a side of the town he has never seen.

As the two wander the town, which is populated with grotesques and eccentrics, discussing life and theology, it becomes clear that Mauricius, though not overtly identified as the Devil, is something very strange. He shows Faust some corrupt highly-placed people who are his clients, and gets kicked by a carter who evidently knows his nature. Undressing in a laundry, he is revealed to have a monstrously deformed body with (as a woman comments) "nothing in front" and all his tackle at the back. While at the same laundry, Faust becomes attracted to a young woman, Margarete (played by Isolda Dychauk - a casting straight out of Vermeer). Things turn considerably for the worse when Mauricius starts a quarrel in a tavern by calling the wine "donkey-piss", then in the further mayhem caused by his miraculously making quality wine spout from the wall, engineers it that Faust fatally stabs a soldier with a meat fork. The two go to the soldier's funeral, when we find that the soldier is Margarete's brother; Mauricius uses the situation to broker a meeting between Faust and Margarete. However, despite her attraction to him, the (correct) rumour is spreading that Faust was the murderer, and he further blows his chances by admitting his guilt to her. He goes to Mauricius, who finally springs the deal: Faust's soul for one night with Margarete. Faust signs.

Mauricius conducts Faust through a tunnel to Margarete, who is standing on the edge of a lake, evidently contemplating suicide. Faust embraces her and they both fall into the water. What happens next is a little enigmatic: is the fall a metaphorical one of falling into passion, or literal?  I took it as the latter: that the pact has granted Faust's wish in letter rather than in spirit: that Faust and Margarete are both dead, and Faust has spent the night with her only in the sense of being in the same place.

The next morning, Faust appears to wake, with grotesque figures creeping toward the window of the room where he's lying with Margarete. Mauricius aids him in fleeing town, and they ascend a rocky landscape, meeting characters we know to be dead, as Faust (we assume) is too. But Faust finds the wilderness interesting, and is fascinated by the workings of a volcanic geyser. His curiosity about the world revived, he finally tires of Mauricius's nihilistic gripings, buries him under rocks, and confidently departs into the vast glacial landscape.

The film has had mixed reviews. It was a hit at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered, but has also been described as "ponderous". It may be; its plot is a tapestry of detail, character, and strange encounter, all relevant to the theme, but not all directly relevant to the central story. I did, however, find it gripping, and its atmosphere intense; it's filmed in Iceland and in various Czech castles, all in visually beautiful subdued pastel (Faust's blood as he signs the pact is about the only saturated colour in the whole film). The film is carried by Anton Adasinsky's charismatic performance as Mauricius, combining the appearance of decrepitude with flexibility and sudden vigour; I didn't know until Googling that Adasinsky is a mime, clown, and veteran of physical theatre. And he does bring a certain dark Boschian humour to a rather solemn movie, in the sheer bizarreness of the characterisation, as when Mauricius reveals his Cronenberg-style body in the laundry (the New Statesman review described it as "as if a Doctor Who villain had strayed into Ingres") or the exchange when Mauricius prepares to defecate outside a church (the horrified Faust tells him he can't do that - he agrees, and instead, with much off-camera groaning, does it inside). If you like weird and moody films, check it out.

- Ray


moviemaniacsDE trailer



the more action-focused atlanticfilmtrailers trailer

Warp spasm!

Athletes tend to be highly superstitious when it comes to anything that might improve performance. So they're a ready market for commercially-hyped scientifically-unproven talismans, which this Olympics manifested in the practive of sticking magic blue go-faster tape on themselves (see Olympians Showcase Superstition With Mysterious Kinesio Tape, Scientists Doubtful, Peter Murray August 12th, 2012).

Whatever the actual claims for this stuff may be, a number of news media sites have circulated this factoid about its claimed mode of operation:

... it separates the upper layer of the skin from muscle tissue. This extra space allows for muscles to fire and recover more quickly.

 I don't know who originated this, but did no-one put brain into gear about this statement? The skin is anchored by the underlying 'superficial fascia' to the fibrous 'deep fascia' that sheaths the muscles. To separate these would involve major subcutaneous tearing of tissue, and I doubt that would do much for athletic performance ...

I was tickled by one commenter's ridicule of the idea - "you could turn round in your own skin" - as it reminded me of the ríastrad (battle frenzy) of the Celtic mythological hero Cúchulainn, as described in the prose epic Táin Bó Cúailnge (aka The Táin). Turning around in his own skin was just one of many weird physical transformations; Cieran Carson, one translator of The Táin, rendered "ríastrad" as "torque", but I much prefer Thomas Kinsella's term "warp spasm". One such description is:

"The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front… On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child… he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat… The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage."

I first ran into the word, not realising its credentials, in the comic strip Sláine in the comic 2000 AD. Its barbarian hero Sláine is somewhere between Cúchulainn and Conan the Barbarian, and the series is a very ingenious adaptation of Celtic mythology as fantasy with SF elements.

Sláine in full warp spasm
Redbubble / ISODIAWD Drawing and Illustration HQ / Comic Art Thread #4 - SLAINE

- Ray

Aleister Crowley as writer

Crowley satirised by Roger Mann of Lee & Herring as the ineffectual Roger Crowley.

Angela Williams at Literary Places just sent me a link to a recent news item: Aleister Crowley: Torquay's Warlock and James Bond's arch-enemy (Dr Kevin Dixon, This is SouthDevon, June 26th 2012).

It's an interesting short biography that covers lesser-known aspects of Crowley's strange life (that is, beyond his media-created reputation as the occult 'Great Beast') including his work as a writer. It quotes a truncated piece of this wonderfully lush passage about an encounter in Torquay:

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
OF A LADYE MINE, AND OF THE DREAM SHE HAD

'Twas at Torquay in Devon, land of stream and cream, 'o scaur and tor, o' moor gorse-golden, merry maids and proper men, tall fellows and bold, o' dells and coombes, and of cider stronger and sweeter than your Norman can make for all his cunning; and this girl was a play-actress, rosy as the apples, and white as the cream, and soft as the air, and high-spirited as the folk, of that enchanted dukedom. I know her name was langourous and lovely; but only the devil her master knows what it was; I shall probably remember it if I live to be eighty; but whether it's worth while to go through another forty years or so of European war in order to recall this detail is a matter rather for my readers than myself. The deuce take politics!

Whatever her name was, she was out walking. She was as pretty as a picture of Spring, for 'twas that which had got into her blood -- the good Sun grant it gets into mine this night, and stays there! So she was restless, so she walked up and down by the Sea, feeling the Sea's mood hers. I think she walked till moonset, but I'm not writing by the calendar, thank the Lord! We call it moonset; we declare moonset trumps. Good. Then she wandered on the face of the cliff for a while, and sought to tire her limbs. At last she came to a meadow; and there she called upon the Earth, lying upon the cool grass, and plucking out great handfuls. The daisies stared at her with great golden eyes, like Balzac's `Fille'. And so she dreamed that she was Earth itself, and a daughter of Earth, Titan, a giantess in the prime o' the planet. She lay like a great range of mountains athwart the plains, snow domes upon green alps. May the Lady of Dreams be ever near us, awake or asleep, with her hands full of loveliness. Carry your apron full, Our Lady, with cherry dreams, peach dreams, plum dreams, pear dreams, strawberry dreams, apple dreams, dreams that are clusters of the heaviest grapes! And fly also South and East upon occasion for we need tropical dreams, like mangoes, dates, pomegranates, lychees and mangostems!

- Not the Life of Sir Roger Bloxam

See Not the Life of Sir Roger Bloxam for the rest of this unfinished novel. It's worth a look; while rather overblown in style, it's nevertheless an intelligent piece of work, with strong allusions to Tristram Shandy, a lot of very lyrical writing (as above), flashes of Joycean punning, and an overall self-parody suggesting he wasn't taking himself that seriously:

Now you’ve mixed me all up, and we must broach a fresh hogshead of absinthe.

Crowley, for all his reputation, didn't just write anti-establishment stuff. As I mentioned earlier (see The Titanic verses) in 1913 he wrote this commemoration of the sinking of the Titanic.

FORTH flashed the serpent streak of steel,
Consummate crown of man's device;
Down crashed upon an immobile
And brainless barrier of ice.
Courage!
The grey gods shoot a laughing lip: ---
Let not faith founder with the ship!

We reel before the blows of fate;
Our stout souls stagger at the shock.
Oh! there is Something ultimate
Fixed faster than the living rock.
Courage!
Catastrophe beyond belief
Harden our hearts to fear and grief!

The gods upon the Titans shower
Their high intolerable scorn;
But no god knoweth in what hour
A new Prometheus may be born.
Courage!
Man to his doom goes driving down;
A crown of thorns is still a crown!

No power of nature shall withstand
At last the spirit of mankind:
It is not built upon the sand;
It is not wastrel to the wind.
Courage!
Disaster and destruction tend
To taller triumph in the end.

- Aleister Crowley, The Equinox, the official organ of the A∴A∴ The review of scientific illuminism, v. 1, no. 9 - 1913.

Aside from literary and esoteric work, he also wrote for Vanity Fair, pieces such as the pseudonymous humorous article A Hindu at the Polo Grounds, purportedly written by a visiting swami who thinks a baseball match is a religious ritual; The Hokku - a new verse form, in which he played a part in the Western popularization of the haiku; and The Three Great Hoaxes of the War, a sceptical article about the role of myth and mysticism in the popular consciousness during World War 1.

Hermetic.com's The Libri of Aleister Crowley is an excellent collection of Crowley's writings,and it's worth checking out. It's kind of a pity he devoted so much energy to the occult flakiness; he was a clever, literate and witty writer who should have a better reputation.

Thelemapedia - Aleister Crowley - also has a list of his writings, mentioning other little-known ones such as his occult novel Moonchild (online at Hermetic.com) and his many stories collectively called The Investigations of Simon Iff, mystery stories featuring the occult/psychological detective Simon Iff.

- Ray

Loki, Lord of Lies, lyrics

TYR - Lord of lies by midnight-dancer

This is an interesting video by the Faroese folk metal band Týr - see the official website www.tyr.fo - whose songs focus almost entirely on old Nordic lore, mythology, and history. Lord of Lies has a rather odd and catchy metal-mediaeval riff , and its lyrics are a powerful and mythologically accurate description of the legend of Loki bound until Ragnarök.

The text is worth close examination as poetry, both for its mythological allusions and its verbal devices. It stands perfectly well as a piece of epic verse that makes strong use of alliteration like the Old Norse poetry it alludes to, as well as both tail rhymes and internal rhymes.

Shakes the ground in agony the Lord of Lies
Once for every drop of venom in his eyes
Anger festers in his heart and loud he cries
My revenge will be the end and you will

See me rise, out of fact and fiction, Sacrifice
Raise your hands

Truth of prophecies is always in your hands
When you heed her words and do as she commands
Seals your fate and your memorial it stands
All the world ablaze I'll set and you will

See me rise, out of fact and fiction, Sacrifice
Raise your hands for my lore
And legend of these lands

Bound upon the ground until the
Day the sun will go away
Three winters snow falls in a row;
Your bonds will break from me

Skelvur jørðin øll og rapa bjørg og fjøll
Brýtur hav um lond og slitena so øll bond

So you stand before the breaking of the world
Gather all your strength in vain for you will

See me rise, out of fact and fiction, Sacrifice
Raise your hands for my lore
And legend of these lands

End, it has begun, now I am free,
Your ending sails with me
My serpent son stirs up the sea;
The Ship of Nails breaks free.

- Týr, Lord of Lies, Ragnarok, 2006

The "three winters snow" is the Fimbulvetr, the abnormally long winter preceding Ragnarök. Loki's "serpent son" is Jörmungandr, the World Serpent and the son of Loki by the giantess Angrboða. The "Ship of Nails" is Naglfar, a boat made entirely from the fingernails and toenails of the dead, which is foretold to sail to the battlefield Vígríðr, ferrying hordes that will battle with the gods. As to the meaning of this couplet in Faroese ...

Skelvur jørðin øll og rapa bjørg og fjøll
Brýtur hav um lond og slitena so øll bond

... it isn't findable online, but (with the help of the Týr Forum and Føroysk-ensk orðabók) I've arrived at a tentative idiomatic translation:

Shakes all the Earth and tumbles berg and fell
Breaking apart the land and snapping all my bonds

Anyone know Faroese?

This is all a good excuse to mention a wonderfully cross-genre University of Ghent dissertation paper that I'd otherwise have put in the out-takes: Old Germanic Heritage In Metal Music: A Comparative Study Of Present-day Metal Lyrics And Their Old Germanic Sources (Lorin Renodeyn, 2010 - see bibliographic data). If you like your Norse mythology, this is great reading. The author (there can't be anyone else of that name) is from Brugge, a roadie for two bands - Schrywoud and Johnny Crash and The Knocked-Ups - and rather a good photographer.

- RG

The King of the Cats

I had to draw this, because Cosmo
wouldn't wear a tinfoil crown.

Following on from the story of the cat funeral (attributed by Jean Cocteau to Keats) in MK Joseph's poem The Rosy Cats of Doctor Paracelsus ...

It's a very good yarn, which Cocteau retold in his 1969 The Hand of a Stranger: (Journal d'un inconnu). Admittedly, this must get some kind of prize for the retelling most embroidered with irrelevant waffle about the angsts of the storyteller.

On a Cat Story
To be not marvelled at, but believed

As far as I know, Keats' cat story has never been written. It has been passed down by word of mouth, changing as it goes. There are a number of versions about, but the mood is always the same. A mood so subtle that I wonder if that is not why the story better fits speech, with its leisureliness, than the pen, which is impatient.

These are the facts : Keats was to go to the village of F. to lunch with a friend who was the parson there. He had to cross a forest. On horseback, he lost his way in it. Dusk made the labyrinth inescapable. Tying his horse to a tree, he decided to wait for daybreak, and try to find a charcoal-burner's hut where he might shelter overnight. While he was wandering round, afraid to go too far out of sight of his horse, and taking care to blaze a trail wherever he went, he noticed a light. He made his way towards that light. It came from a sort of ruin not mentioned by any guide book, that of an ancient amphitheatre, a Coliseum, a confusion of arches, steps, tumbled stone, collapsed walls, gaps, brambles. The light, which was very peculiar, quivered and lit up the dead amphitheatre. Keats went close up, slipped through a gap past a pillar, and peeped.

What he saw pinned him there with stupefaction and terror. The auditorium was occupied by hundreds of cats, side by side, like the crowd round a Spanish arena, they were milling about everywhere, miaowing at the top of their voices. Suddenly he caught the sound of miniature trumpets, and the cats were motionless at once, their phosphorescent eyes turned to the right, from where came the flickering confusion of light and shadow. The light came from torches, carried by fifty jackbooted cats, heading a procession of other cats, magnificently clad, with cat pages and heralds trumpeting, cats carrying banners and cat standard-bearers.

The procession filed right across the arena and began to wind back, when there appeared four white and four black cats, with cocked hats and swords, they too, just like the others strutting on their hind legs. These four were carrying on their shoulders a little coffin on which lay a small golden crown. Behind this came more cats, two by two, bearing cushions on which were pinned orders, the diamonds of which sparkled in the light of the torches and flashed in the moonshine. The procession wound up with drums. Keats told himself that he must be dreaming, he had fallen asleep on horseback and this was a dream. But dreams are one thing, reality another. He was not dreaming and he knew he was not. He was lost by night in a forest, he was the witness of a rite of which no man should have seen anything, and he was afraid. The moment his presence was discovered that crowd of cats would rush out of the amphitheatre and tear him in pieces with their claws. The heralds trumpeted, the standards fluttered, the coffin was borne, all in a silence made painful by those arrogant little trumpets. After one turn of the arena, the whole procession moved away. The trumpets died down. The lights were extinguished The crowd of cats left the tiers of the amphitheatre. Many of them leapt out through the breach in the wall into which Keats now made every effort to efface himself. The ruin became a ruin again, with only the moonlight to occupy it.

It was now that a much more dangerous idea than the scene he had witnessed came to Keats. It was that he would not be believed. This was a story he would never be able to tell. It would be classified as a poet's falsehood. Now, Keats knew that poets do not tell lies. They bear witness. [And he knew] that it is believed that they do lie. And he became frantic, at the thought a secret like this would remain his property, that he would never be able to relieve himself of it, sharing it with other men. A catafalque of loneliness.

Shaking himself, he went back to his horse. resolved to leave the forest, whatever it cost him. He then succeeded in reaching the parsonage, where he was no longer expected.

The parson was a very cultivated man. Keats had great respect for him, considering him, indeed, competent to understand his poems. He told his story, but without referring to the amphitheatre of cats. The parson had been in bed, and had got up again. The parson's valet was asleep. The parson laid a meal for Keats. Keats ate in silence. The parson was astonished to find him so distracted, and asked if he were not feeling unwell. Keats replied that he was not, but admitted that he was under the influence of a worry, the cause of which he was unable to tell. The parson gave him a friendly shake and said he certainly must explain what he meant. Oysterlike, Keats wriggled, but in the end the parson got him to give way, for once his guest had admitted that his anxiety was he would not be believed, the parson promised to believe him. Keats was not satisfied with a mere promise, but made the parson swear over the Bible. This however the parson could not do. But he did declare that his promise as a friend was really quite as good as the oath of a priest.

"I am all ears," he said, and lay back in his armchair, smoking his pipe.

Keats was about to tell, when he thought better of it. Fear overcame him again. The parson, now very interested, had to let him have his way and say nothing, in order to free his tongue. But at last Keats closed his eyes and told the story. The parson listened in the gloom, the window open on the stars, the fire dying down. Keats described the ruin, the strange gathering and the strange happening. From time to time, he opened his eyes, to shoot a glance at the parson ...
... section unfindable
Then it happened, just as sudden as a clap of thunder, without either Keats or the parson really grasping what was taking place. Keats had got to the procession, the torches, the trumpets, the pennants, the drums, and was describing the costumes, cocked-hats and high-boots. "Four white cats," he said, "and four black cats, were carrying a coffin on their shoulders. On the coffin lay a golden crown."

He had scarcely got these words off his lips when the cat which was sleeping in front of the fire arched its back. Its hair stood on end. "But that means I am now the king of the cats," it cried out in a human voice, and leapt out of the window.

- The Hand of a Stranger (Journal d'un inconnu), Jean Cocteau, Horizon Press, 1959

I haven't been able to track it to Keats - this seems to be an invention or mistake on the part of Cocteau (perhaps he was thinking of the remark by WB Yeats on Swinburne's death). But Mary Shelley repeated in her 1824 On Ghosts this version ...

A gentleman journeying towards the house of a friend, who lived on the skirts of an extensive forest, in the east of Germany, lost his way. He wandered for some time among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. On approaching it he was surprised to observe that it proceeded from the interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked at the gate he thought it proper to look through the window. He saw a number of cats assembled round a small grave, four of whom were at that moment letting down a coffin with a crown upon it. The gentleman startled at this unusual sight, and, imagining that he had arrived at the retreats of fiends or witches, mounted his horse and rode away with the utmost precipitation. He arrived at his friend's house at a late hour, who sate up waiting for him. On his arrival his friend questioned him as to the cause of the traces of agitation visible in his face. He began to recount his adventures after much hesitation, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his friend should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned the coffin with the crown upon it, than his friend's cat, who seemed to have been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, crying out, 'Then I am king of the cats;' and then scrambled up the chimney, and was never seen more.

... by Matthew G Lewis. who told it to the Shelleys. It appears as an English fairy tale - The King o' the Cats - but, interestingly, one often collected many decades after these literary sources. However, it appears many times in 19th century publications. There's an extremely erudite verse retelling in The Mouser-Monarchy, a piece by John Hamilton-Reynolds in The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 75, Part 3, 1845. Fraser's Magazine in 1837 has a verse retelling "narrated by Washington Irving as having been told by Sir Walter Scott to him" (here). It's also in the 1836 anonymous collection Poems on Several Occasions, from 1793 to 1816 (page 41), and also in the letters of Lord Lyttleton (see Letters of the late Lord Lyttelton, Volumes 1-2, 1785, pp 35-36). And it appears in folklore versions: Notes and Queries, for Dec 15th 1860, mentions the variant story about someone being told by a cat, "Tell Dildrum [that] Doldrum's dead". Stephen Vincent Benét's 1937 short fantasy The King of the Cats is based on the same story.

Addendum, 31 Jan 2013: I'm not sure now I missed this one first time round, but David Platt of Small Finds from the Spoilheap kindly sent me a scan and pointer to Joseph Jacobs' version The King o' the Cats (from his 1894 More English Fairy Tales, Project Gutenberg, E-Text No. 14241).

Right: a low-res image of the nice artwork by Alan Howard accompanying the reprint of Jacobs' version in Northern Lights: Legends, Sagas and Folktales, ed. Kevin Crossley-Holland, Faber & Faber, 1987.

- Ray

Cogita ante salis

Curtius Leaping into the Gulf - Benjamin Haydon

THINK BEFORE YOU LEAP

Suddenly, time just …. stops. It's strange. I feel how I suppose a lark's tongue feels when it's suspended in aspic and heading towards someone's gullet. They say when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. So I should be seeing my foalhood, my first mating, my racing triumphs at the Circus Maximus. (PAUSES) But I can tell you, I'm not getting any of that. It's just a quiet moment of crystal clarity. I know it's the end of my life, and I have a long, long second for reflection.

Yes, that's me: the one with the hooves and panicked expression. He's the one wearing the false six-pack and that vague “Did I leave those honeyed dormice in the microwave?” look on his face. And we're here for the stupidest reason. Geology. A great hole opened up, right in the middle of the Forum here in Rome. Some said it was a fissure in a lake bed, others that the spot was zapped by lightning, or that it was an earthquake. I didn't get the full story. But it was clearly geological.

I know, it's a big jump (so to speak) from Earth Sciences to taking a suicidal flying leap, but then that's Romans for you. You know them – good solid chaps if you want complicated grammar, roads, sewers, giant crossbows, walls round cities. Consummate engineers. But their grasp of geology is non-existent. Take Vesuvius. Before that unfortunate Pompeii affair, they thought it was just a mountain. Duh. What about Stromboli? Etna? Didn't they know that mountains with that pointy look tend to spout fire sooner or later? Nope. When Vesuvius blew, it was all (SYLVESTER STALLONE ACCENT) “The Gaaads Are Angry” and someone had to make a grand gesture. And Roman grand gestures involve more than tendering your resignation and handing back the keys to the Senatorial washroom. When you screw up in Rome, you have to do something noble but deranged – Horatius chucking himself off the bridge in full armour, and the like.

And that comes to our present situation. Even to me, this obviously geological hole had an obvious solution: Roman engineering. Why didn't they just pour concrete down it? There must have been some left over from building the Colosseum, and a lot more than some Hibernian would hawk around villas offering to concrete their chariotways. No, to them it was another (SYLVESTER STALLONE ACCENT) “The Gaaads Are Angry” situation. And somebody had to take the rap.

They went to the usual haruspex. You know the score: messy entrails all over the place, and a totally useless answer: (ADOPTS GORMLESS VOICE) “Throw into the ravine,” they said – and I quote - “the thing that constitutes the greatest strength of the Roman people”. And you know my view by now; I prefer concrete solutions. But no, they didn't see the answer as simple as filling the thing in. It need another Grand Gesture: a GG. (WEARILY) Sorry, standard joke – we don't have many. Anyway … I was not pleased when that gesture came from him, my master, Marcus Curtius, the nice-but-dim son of the Curtius clan. You've heard of them: patricians, old money, but not a brain cell among them. Marcus not-so-bright Curtius decided that “the thing” etcetera referred to a prime specimen of Roman youth – i.e. himself.

The observant among you may have noticed the title here: Curtius leaping into the Gulf. Spot the deliberate mistake. Do you see Curtius leaping? No, muggins here is doing the leap. I knew something was up when he came to my stable in full dress uniform, looking quite nervous and talking about all our great deeds together. So I made my excuses: bad mane day, a spot of the glanders, a touch of the trots, being a little (COUGHS) hoarse. (Sorry, another standard joke). But he wasn't having it. With all due ceremony, me caparisoned to the nines, we get cheered along the Appian Way, round the Seven Hills, and into the Forum, and there we are, staring into the abyss, and it staring back at us.

He was completely out of it by then. I think on the way he'd taken a drop of (MAKES DRINKING GESTURE) … you know, to drive away any second thoughts. So it was all down to me, and duty kicked in. I am, after all, a patrician Roman horse – a true equus. It would've let the side down if I'd had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the edge, hanging on with my hooves. I struck a dignified pose, took a suitable run-up, and then we were sailing over the lip, and down and down, and I was thinking “Merda-merda-merda-merda”. And then, strangely, the terror vanished, and for an instant, everything … froze.

I could leave with you with all kinds of morals, and they're all about not getting into scrapes like this. “Never volunteer” is one. “Stupid is as stupid does” is another. But I'll settle for a good old Roman proverb: “Cogita ante salis” - “Think before you leap”.  And now it's time. Heigh-ho. The GG can't wait any longer.

(SHOUTS) GERONIMUS!

---

Pardon the change in format, but I didn't want to waste this. It's an out-take - it wasn't accepted - that I sent in for the Exeter Royal Albert Memorial Museum Gripping Yarns project. The brief was to write a monologue inspired by an exhibit in the refurbished RAMM. It's an odd painting, and I'd never bothered to look into the background until I saw it again recently. The artist, Benjamin Haydon, was rather a sad character who was never that good, in and out of prison for debt until he finally committed suicide, botching even that (he shot himself and cut his throat).

As to the painting, ignoring all the anachronistic embroidery, it concerns the story of a depression in the Roman Forum called Lacus Curtius (the Lake of Curtius). Even the Romans seem not to have had much idea of its origin, and they had several stories. Varro recorded the rather dull one that it opened after a lightning strike, and was named after the consul Gaius Curtius Philo, who had a fence built around it. Another, from Livy, is that it was named after a Sabine leader called Mettius Curtius, who got bogged down in it with his horse during battle. A third, and the most sensational, also comes from Livy, and concerns the chasm opening, and only shutting when the gods were appeased by a noble young Roman, Marcus Curtius, riding his horse into it.

It's all in the territory of origin myth; the Marcus Curtius story is very similar to the Greek anecdote telling a similar tale about the son of King Midas). But it was the one the Romans liked best, with its story of noble patriotic sacrifice. Also, providing an extremely vivid scene, it was the one artists latched on to. A quick Google finds, just for starters ...

Marcus Curtius leaping into the gulf - Giovanni Paolo Pannini (early 1700s)

Marcus Curtius Leaping Into The Void - Eustache Le Sueur

The Death of Marcus Curtius
Pierre Joseph Celestin Francois

The Feat of Marcus Curtius, Simon de Vos

The Leap of Marcus Curtius
Jean-Léon Gérôme.

... and many, many more (see Google Images).

The one that rather tickles me (apart from the "Whoo! Look, no hands!" stance in the Simon de Vos painting) is John Leech's woodcut from Gilbert Abbott À Becket's 1852 The Comic History of Rome, which shows a fairly cheerful Curtius taking an ungainly dive into the chasm, watched by Romans who are clearly there to watch the spectacle over a slap-up picnic.

All of the Leech images are on Wikimedia Commons - Category:The Comic History of Rome - and the book itself is on the Internet Archive (ID comichistoryofro00beuoft). It's worth reading if you're into Roman history, or want to get into it painlessly, as the satirical treatment is merely a vehicle for a seriously-intended purpose. The preface:

Some explanation is perhaps due from a writer who adopts the title of Comic in relation to a subject which is ordinarily considered to be so essentially grave as that of History. Though the epithet may be thought by many inappropriate to the theme, this work has been prompted by a very serious desire to instruct those who, though willing to acquire information, seek in doing so as much amusement as possible.

It is true that professedly Comic literature has been the subject of a familiarity not unmixed with contempt on the part of a portion of the public, since that class of writing obtained the popularity which has especially attended it within the last few years ; but as whatever disrepute it has fallen into is owing entirely to its abuse, there is no reason for abandoning an attempt to make a right use of it. The title of Comic has therefore been retained in reference to this work, though the author has felt that its purport is likely to be misconceived by many, and among them not a few whose judgment he would highly esteem, who would turn away from a Comic History solely on account of its name, and without giving themselves the trouble to look into it. Those persons are, however, grievously mistaken who have imagined that in this, and in similar books from the same pen, the object has been to treat History as a mere farce, or to laugh at Truth — the aim of the writer having invariably been to expose falsehood, and to bring into merited contempt all that has been injudiciously, ignorantly, or dishonestly held up to general admiration. His method of telling a story may be objected to ; nevertheless, if he does his utmost to tell it truly, he ought not, perhaps, to be very severely criticised for adopting the style in which he feels himself most at home ; and if his opinions are found to be, in the main, such as just and sensible persons can agree with, he only asks that his views and sentiments may be estimated by what they contain, and not by any peculiarity in his mode of expressing them.

The writer of this book is animated by an earnest wish to aid, as far as he is able, in the project of combining instruction with amusement ; and he trusts he shall not be blamed for endeavouring to render such ability as he possesses available for as much as it is worth, in applying it to subjects of useful information.

Those who are not disposed to approve of his design, will perhaps give him credit for his motive ; and he may with confidence assert, that, from the care and attention he has bestowed upon this work, it will be found to form (irrespective of its claims to amuse) by no means the least compendious and correct of the histories already in existence of Rome to the end of the Commonwealth. If he has failed in justifying the application of the title of Comic to his work, he has reason to believe it will be found accurate. Though the style professes to be light, he would submit that truth does not necessarily make more impression by being conveyed through a heavy medium ; and although facts may be playfully told, it is hoped that narrative in sport may be found to constitute history in earnest. 

Gilbert Abbott À Becket's The Comic History of England, which is in the same vein, is also on the Internet Archive (ID comichistoryofen00abecuoft).

- Ray

Lebensbaum

This is one of the images that dates the previously-mentioned Wonders of the World: the Lebensbaum (Tree of Life) wooden sculptural facade to Bernhard Hoetger's 1931 Haus Atlantis in Böttcherstraße, Bremen.

As Wonders of the World puts it,

The outstretched figure here shown does not represent Christ, but embodies the idea common to all religions of self-sacrifice for an ideal. The surrounding Sun Disc connects this with the myth of Odin, whose annual death was said to give birth to the New Year.

This is more than a little of an underexplanation. As can be seen in the detailed images at the House Atlantis page on the Böttcherstraße website, the figure is a kind of Odin-Jesus symbol, surrounded by a wheel with runes and a quotation of the episode in the Poetic Edda where Odin suffers self-sacrifice to gain the power of the runes ...

Ich weiß, daß ich hing am windigen Baum neun Nächte lang, vom Ger verwundet, dem Odin geweiht, ich selber mir selbst.

I know that I hung on a windy tree, nine nights long, wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin, myself to myself.

... while the three-pronged structure at the base is recognisably an Odinist "Toten" rune (aka death rune). There are more images at Jeff Diehl's Haus Atlantis Odin page, and this particularly clear one in Lionel Gossman's 2009 biography of Marie Adelheid, Brownshirt Princess: A Study of the "Nazi Conscience" (page 10):



The symbolism of the piece draws on a manufactured tradition of Nordic-Atlantean myth favoured by top-ranking members of the Nazi party. Furthermore, the whole Böttcherstraße architectural project, bankrolled by the decaffeinated coffee magnate Ludwig Roselius and designed by Hoetger, was dedicated to the prime mover of these myths at the time, the lay historian-scholar Herman Wirth (see Nationalist Uses of the Atlantis Myth in a Nordic Framework, Vanessa Ward, 2008). Hoetger, however, fell out of favour when his expressionist sculpture was denounced as "degenerate art"; he settled in Switzerland, where he died in 1949.

The Lebensbaum sculpture was largely destroyed by fire following Allied bombing in 1944. Unlike the rest of the street, it wasn't restored (unsurprising, perhaps, given its history and symbolism) but the frontage of Haus Atlantis was eventually given a redesigned restoration in 1965 with a circular brick-pattern mosaic by Ewald Mataré, another German artist whose work had been considered degenerate.

Böttcherstraße now remains a major artistic and cultural tourist attraction in Bremen.

- Ray

"As the British Government now employs Esperanto translators"

Does it? Where? In what capacity exactly? I ask this after running into another repetition of a factoid I've seen quite a lot on language sites recently: the claim via a piece of boilerplate pro-Esperanto comment spam that the UK government employs Esperanto translators:

As the British Government now employs Esperanto translators it has ceased to be a hobby.
- various sites.

I've nothing against Esperanto as a language or any doubts that it's a more significant phenomenon than a "hobby", but this just didn't ring true. A little Googling finds firstly that this meme seems to date from late 2008, when the British right-wing press carried stories criticising the language translation budget of NHS Direct, the National Health Service's patient helpline. A typical exposition:

It's great news for the nation's Cherokee speakers. Or it would be if there were any here.

The Health Service spends £255,000 a year translating its services into 160 languages, including the Native American tongue.

But, like many of the others such as Akan and Cebuano, Cherokee does not have a single registered speaker here.

The telephone helpline NHS Direct even provides advice in the invented language Esperanto - even though it is highly unlikely that any of its 1,000 speakers worldwide would not be able to speak a more common language.

The cost of interpreting and translating for the benefit of UK residents who do not speak English was revealed by the Conservatives after a parliamentary question.

Tory health spokesman Mike Penning said: 'Particularly in a time of economic uncertainty, the Government must ensure that the best possible use is made of finite NHS resources.

'People will question the need to translate services into languages like Cherokee and Esperanto. Most importantly, spending on such provision is diverting funds from frontline services.'

- £250,000 lost in translation by NHS for providing interpreters, Daniel Martin, Daily Mail Online, 18th October 2008.

The quotation from Mr Penning doesn't appear in Hansard, the official record of parliamentary proceedings, so it must have been commentary to the press after the parliamentary question. The question itself, however, does appear for 13th October 2008:

NHS Direct: Translation Services

Mike Penning: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) which non-English languages are offered to users of NHS Direct services; and what the total budgetary allocation for NHS Direct translation and language services is; [225324]

(2) what assessment he has made of the efficacy of NHS Direct translation and language services in providing equitable and accessible medical advice for non-English speakers. [225325]

Mr. Bradshaw: NHS Direct offers interpretation and translation services for all callers to telephone services through Language Line in the following languages:

Assamese
Azeri
Afrikaans
entries snipped
Esperanto
many more entries snipped
Spanish
Turkish
Urdu

...
The budgetary allocation for these services for 2008-09 is £255,000.
...

- Hansard, 13th Oct, 2008

The newspaper story is typical Daily Mail garbage. It's  not as if huge amounts were being spent on routine translation of documents into languages scarcely used in the UK. NHS Direct interpretation works on an as-required basis only; you want medical advice, you give them a call, and if you need a non-English language they'll find a speaker. So none of this budget would go toward translating or interpreting an obscure language unless a speaker called who needed it - and for many of the languages on the list, such as Esperanto, that's highly unlikely in the UK.

As to whether this counts as the government "employing" Esperanto translators, it doesn't, any more than I "employ" a cleaner if I hire a company that employs one. NHS Direct subcontracted the work to the language service mentioned, Language Line, a private translation and interpretation company based in Canary Wharf, London. I don't know if NHS Direct uses it now, but it still exists and provides its services entirely by subcontracting in turn to a portfolio of freelancers ("It should be noted that all interpreters engaged by Language Line Services are self-employed freelance contractors"). Its list of languages served is online - Esperanto is no longer on it.

So, to summarise: in 2008, a wing of the government-funded NHS had potential access - no evidence of routine use - to Esperanto translation and interpretation, via two layers of subcontracting.

This hardly supports the claim that "the British Government now employs Esperanto translators", with its strong implication that there are multiple Esperanto translators directly on its payroll.

Addendum: I just found a little more about this.

A forum post about Esperanto Day 2011 cites this Hansard archive for 16 March 2011, which contains the following section:

Departmental Interpreters

Ian Austin: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for which services provided by (a) his Department and (b) its associated public bodies interpreters provide services in a language or languages other than English; how many interpreters are employed or subcontracted for each non-English language; and what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of interpretation costs incurred in the latest period for which figures are available. [42898]

Chris Grayling: The information requested is as follows:

For DWP (including CMEC):

(a) The following is a list of the languages that have been serviced:
Afar
Afrikaans
Akan
entries snipped
Esperanto
more entries snipped
Yiddish
Yoruba
Zulu.

(b) The total number of subcontracted interpreters available for use is approximately 2,200. Data are not held for the number of interpreters that are employed or subcontracted for each non-English language.

"Data are not held" says it all. Even this more recent source provides no actual evidence whether or not Esperanto translators / interpreters are "employed" (as opposed to subcontracted) nor any information as to whether or not they've been used to an extent that justifies crowing about Esperanto's significance to the UK government.  We only know what "languages that have been serviced" - that is, support has officially been on offer - not the extent to which that support was used, if at all.

Addendum: OK, so I just I just had a comment from the comment spammer himself, Brian Barker: "This seems to be yet another knee jerk reaction to Esperanto's progress". Not at all. I think Esperanto is deeply cool. All I object to is exaggerated claims, and comment spamming (however worthy the cause).

- Ray

The Oaks of A la Ronde

Further to the previous post on A la Ronde at Exmouth, I dug out a little more on the still-extant story that the will of the co-owner, Jane Parminter, contained a theological-political stipulation concerning Judaism and a grove of oaks. As it involves lengthy quotes, I thought I'd devote a separate post to it.

The story concerns a visit to the area by the Reverend Lewis Way:

Now it so happened that in the winter of 1811, shortly after the death of Miss Jane Parminter, Lewis Way was staying with some of his wife's relations in Devonshire, when one day he rode with a friend along the road which leads from Exmouth to Exeter. Two miles from the former town he was suddenly struck by the sight of A la Ronde, and in some amazement begged his companion to tell him to whom belonged this strange dwelling which looked more like a residence for South Sea Islanders than an ordinary country house. His friend gave him full particulars ; adding that Miss Jane Parminter had recently died and — according to local gossip — in fulfilment of her wishes had been buried with her coffin standing upright in the little Chapel of Point in View, while her will, or a codicil to her will, contained a singular clause. In reference to a group of oaks in the grounds of the house she had decreed as follows;

These oaks shall remain standing and the hand of man shall not be lifted up against them till Israel returns and is restored to the land of promise.

- The Ways of Yesterday: being the chronicles of the Way family from 1307 to 1885, Anna Maria Wilhelmina Stirling, 1930

Inspired, Way become a prime mover in kick-starting the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews - loosely a Christian Zionist organisation - and the story rapidly became a promotional meme within that society and among others with a similar agenda. However, the archives of the Society reveal a debunking late in the 19th century.

It is the duty of a faithful historian to relate everything connected with his subject, so long as he avoids wounding the susceptibilities of the living and reflecting upon the dead. A Society like this has its "secret history"; a secret history which is more or less public property. Of such a character were the two controversies to be treated of in this chapter. Let us take what we may call, for want of a more exact name, the Irish Controversy — which lasted for some weary years, and was a source of much grief, heart-burning, and even dismay in certain quarters. This is how it all came about.

In the summer of 1882 Mr. Benjamin Bradley, the Society's Accountant, was spending his holiday in Devonshire. With him the Society was first, foremost and everything. He was whole-hearted in its cause, and always about its business. Being in the county of Devon, it occurred to his active mind that he could not spend his time more profitably or agreeably than by visiting the "Oaks of a la Ronde," near Exmouth; that far-famed spot which, with its traditional associations, had given inspiration to Lewis Way, and thus led to the regeneration of the Society. To Mr. Bradley's intense surprise and disappointment he learnt that, as a matter of fact, there was no clause in Jane Parminter's will about the preservation of the oak trees to which the attention of Lewis Way had been called, and which, in course of time, had become a fascinating legend, held by generations of members of the Society, narrated in a thousand speeches, and the subject of two most interesting pamphlets — The Oaks of a la Ronde *, and another founded upon it, Jane Parminter's Will, by the Rev. Ralph W. Harden, the Irish Secretary. Now, Mr. Bradley was the embodiment of exactness and accuracy. He returned to town burning to let the truth prevail. He brought together the results of his discovery in a paper, and succeeded in thoroughly alarming the Committee, who were persuaded that the very existence of the Society depended on pricking the bubble at once. This they proceeded to do in a very remarkable way. Instead of communicating with the writers of the delightful pamphlets mentioned, and advising the necessary alterations, they suspended their issue, which was regarded as a very high-handed proceeding.

* The Oaks of a la Ronde, translated from the German of Professor Franz Delitzsch, by A.O.F.I., and republished by the kind person of Dr Moses Margoliouth in 1880.

- pages 416-417, The history of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, from 1809 to 1908, William Thomas Gidney, 1908. Internet Archive ID historyoflondons00gidnuoft.

To cut a long story short, this led to considerable drama in the Society. Harden went on the offensive, pamphleteering with allegations of mismanagement. The differences were eventually resolved, but Bradley's debunking failed to kill the oaks meme, whch continues to this day.

The English translation of Delitzsch's pamphlet The Oaks of A la Ronde appears in the 1877 edition of The Hebrew Christian witness and Prophetic Investigator (ed. Dr Moses Margoliouth). Delitzsch did make some attempt to verify the story:

These consecrated oaks are still standing at A la Ronde. And yet scarcely a person at Exmouth knows anything of the testamentary clause. The present vicar even knew only of a confused report, which stated that Miss Parminter had ordered the oaks to be preserved that the Jews might build ships with them, or, if not, use them in some other way. And the gardener, who has lived there for nearly twenty years, knew no more than that he had heard say that the deceased lady thought a great deal of the trees. But we have the story on the very best authority, namely, a letter written by Miss Drusilla Way (which we give farther on), describing the sympathy which her sainted father felt for Israel from the first, his self-devotion to labour for the cause (which is not forgotten to this day), and stating that it was by means of the oaks of A la Ronde that the first idea of such work entered into his heart.
...
In November, 1875, the Rev. P. L. D. Acland, Pastor of Broad Clyst (diocese of Exeter), paid me a visit. I asked him whether he would, on his return, find out for me all the proofs of the story of Lewis Way's waking up to the interests of Israel by a sight of one of the wildest nooks of Devonshire, which was, by the will of the owner, to be left untouched till the re-establishment of the Jews in the Promised Land. This request he has fulfilled in the most faithful and conscientious manner possible.

In Exeter none of the lawyers whom he questioned had any knowledge of the singular will. And then it suddenly came to his memory that an old friend of his had married a Miss Way. He communicated with the family, and obtained for me from Miss Drusilla Way, the eldest daughter of him who fell asleep in the year 1840, the valuable information which is subjoined at the end of this narrative. It fully establishes the truth of the story. But he also travelled himself to Exmouth, and procured for me a guide-book, which was quite an old-fashioned one, but found scarcely any mention of the testamentary clause in Miss Jane Parminter's will. So that without the testimony of Miss Drusilla Way, the story would have been banished to the realm of tradition and its fancies. So that we are the more pleased to have its authenticity vouched for by this veracious witness.
...
"It is indeed true," writes Miss Drusilla Way, "that my father's first interest in the Jews was aroused by an incident of a peculiar nature. It happened in the winter of 1811-12, when he was living at Exmouth, in Devon. A friend with whom he was riding pointed out to him a house named A la Ronde, the owner of which, a Miss Jane Parminter, had lately died, and had left the remarkable clause in her will that certain trees were not to be cut down till the Jews were restored to Palestine. This information produced the most powerful impression on him. His subsequent deep spiritual concern for the salvation of the ancient people of God, and his untiring efforts on their behalf, date from this starting-point.

- The Oaks of A la Ronde, Franz Delitzsch, trans. A.O.F.I., The Hebrew Christian witness and Prophetic Investigator, 1877.

This seems very sloppy research, with a deal of confirmation bias. It rejects all the negative data points, but accepts the one with the sought-after confirmation. Being a family member does not necessarily make a person a reliable source. Drusilla Way was a strong apologist for her father, and she was 71 at the time of the enquiry, making her only 7 at the time of Way's epiphany; over a lifetime, she could easily have acquired a piece of family mythology. The bottom line is that the research failed to find the primary source: the alleged will itself.

What I find very suspicious, about 150 years later, is that I've been unable to find a version of the Lewis Way story in print prior to the 1870s (a bit strange for something said to be "held by generations of members of the Society, narrated in a thousand speeches") and the specific text of the claimed codicil - These oaks shall remain standing ... etc - seems to make its first appearance in the 1877 translation of the Delitzsch pamphlet.

Addendum: December 15th 2011, upgraded from Comments:

Trevor said:

This post, correctly, leads to the conclusion that the story of the Oaks was mythology that arose sixty years after the death of Jane Parminter in 1811. I have been able to examine the original probate copy of the will and can confirm that it contains no clause whatsoever in regard to the oaks nor is there a codicil. A letter from Oswald Reichel, a distant relative and a historian, who was living at A la Ronde at the time was published in the local newspaper, the Exmouth Journal of 24 June 1911. He refers to the story of the oaks as “a curious myth, the source of which appears to be a little book entitled “The Oaks of A la Ronde” written by an imaginative lady with material supplied by a still more imaginative travelling foreigner”. Reichel added that there were never any oak trees planted at A la Ronde for the purpose and, at the time of his writing, none remained at Point in View. Reichel suggests that the interest of the cousins in Jewish converts arose from the Grand Tour when they witnessed in Rome the Christian baptism of a Jewess and learned of the difficulties besetting the after-life of such a convert when cut off from her people.

I also occasionally read suggestions of a lesbian relationship between Jane Parminter and her second cousin Mary. Until recently it was perfectly normal for orphaned children to be taken into a related family or individual. In Mary’s case it was previously understood that Cousin Jane was her guardian but recent research shows that her father’s will that role was to be undertaken jointly by a cousin (Samuel Lavington of Bideford) and her own Aunt Mary. My research over many years of the family history has revealed no evidence whatever to suggest that Jane and Mary were “an item”.

It was great to read that you were fascinated by your visit to A la Ronde. The volunteer guides (I am one) do their best to make the property interesting to our visitors.

Brilliant! Thanks very much for clarifying this, Trevor. Even the brief tour was very thought-provoking, and I'd recommend A la Ronde to anyone. Hilary kindly just sent us a complimentary pass for a proper visit, and I look forward to it.

- Ray

The Jumart ... and Gallica

While browsing around the concept of unlikely hybrids (a spinoff from a Languagehat discussion - see Tityre-tu), I ran into the picture above. This benign-looking creature is technically a monster: the fabled "jumart".

Etymology: < French jumart, formerly jumare, < Provençal gemerre, gemarre, of uncertain origin.
A hybrid animal, erroneously believed to be the offspring of a bull and a mare or she-ass, or of a horse or ass and a cow.
1690 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding iii. v. 216 We have Reason to think this not impossible, since Mules, and Gimars [1714 Wks. I. 206 jumarts], the one from the mixture of an Horse, and an Ass, the other from the mixture of a Bull, and a Mare, are so frequent in the World.
- Oxford English Dictionary

Even among unsophisticated peoples, millennia of livestock farming experience ought to have been enough to dismiss the possibility of such a cross. Nevertheless, even in the 19th century, you find occasional reports of the myth persisting, and of attempts to verify its truth. The jumart, like the Indian Rope Trick, had a habit of never appearing when a reliable observer wanted to see it.

If we may credit the testimony of several persons, the ox too has its mules, the reputed offspring of a bull with a mare or she-ass, or of a horse or an ass, with a cow. These have been called jumarts. They say these monstrous productions, and, they add, extremely rare, are chiefly to be found in the burning climes of Egypt and Barbary: yet, during more than three years travelling in the east, I was never able to obtain the sight of such a creature, though I made all possible enquiry for the purpose.
...
The French settled at Cairo assured me, that a little before my arrival, a jumart was shewn there, said to be the offspring of an ass and a cow. But these popular reports were confirmed by no observation or particularity. I could not even obtain any knowledge of the principal outlines of the sigure of this animal; so that possibly, as well as that described by Shaw, it was nothing more than a particular variety of the ox. Thus, the pretended jumarts of Dauphiny, and the Pyrenees, are nothing but the offspring of the horse and she-ass.
- Charles Sigisbert Sonnini, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, Volume 2, 1799, pages 316-317

Vitality Of Traditions: The Jumart. —The jumart, or hybrid between the bovine and equine race, is still believed in through all the southern countries. There was a reputed jumart at Seidekene, near Smyrna, in Asia Minor, during my stay there, and I heard of another. The jumart came into Smyrna several times, and I had made preparations to get a photograph, but it always escaped me. The description fully conforms to that given in books of natural history of the alleged jumart. This one was said to be the offspring of an ass and a cow; whereas the jumarts recorded in books are said to be the offspring of bulls with mares and she asses. The existence of the jumart is doubted by most naturalists. The alleged jumarts as yet examined have been hinnies.
- Hyde Clarke. Notes and Queries. Dec 21, 1867, page 500.

I initially found the jumart picture at a French image/clipart site, Dessins (Drawings), but it tracks down to plate 199 in Illustrations de Histoire générale des animaux, des végétaux et des minéraux. Partie 1, Les Quadrupèdes de la France, a natural history book published some time in the 1700s with drawings by Jacques de Sève (engraved by  Rousselet, and with text by Buchoz).  The images, in a slightly naive style and in natural and neo-classical settings, are lovely and worth a browse: see The Cat, The Hedgehog, The Garden Dormouse, The Squirrel, The Wild Boar and Boarlets, and so on.

The scans of Illustrations de Histoire générale des animaux... are hosted at the Gallica bibliothèque numérique (Gallica digital library) - an interface to the digitised collections of BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France - the National Library of France). Gallica is a mind-blowing resource that gives free searchable access to, currently, around 1.5 million documents (books, manuscripts, maps, images, periodicals, sound recordings, and scores).  As I have work to do, I've dared only the briefest browse so far; you could get lost in there a long time.

Addendum: While looking for the Locke quotation cited by the OED, I ran into this very nice haiku error message at the University of Sussex Library site:

Server is willing
Alas, the file is crafty
It cannot be found

I did find it elsewhere. Locke had weird ideas about hybridisation; the full paragraph in his 1690 An essay concerning human understanding reads:

...for if History lie not, Women have conceived by Drills; and what real Species, by that measure, such a Production will be in Nature, will be a new Question; and we have Reason to think this not impossible, Mules and Gimars, the one from the mixture of an Ass and a Mare, the other from the mixture of a Bull and a Mare, are so frequent in the World. I once saw a Creature, that was the Issue of a Cat and a Rat, and had the plain Marks of both about it; Marks of both about it; wherein Nature appear 'd to have followed the Pattern of neither sort alone, but to have jumbled them both together.
- see The Works of John Locke, 1722, page 206

- Ray