It seems worth noting that this is Lady Day - March 25th, officially the Feast of the Annunciation, commemorating the day that Jesus was conceived on his Mother by the Spirit of God.
Lady Day was greatly celebrated in Merrie England, and was indeed - until 1752 and the imposition of the Gregorian Calendar, when it was moved to the 6th April - the first day of the New Year.
Coming four days after the Vernal Equinox, Lady Day has the same kind of astronomical basis as Christmas has in relation to the Winter Solstice - and thereby links with natural religion.
England in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages was known for an especially high degree of devotion to Mary - probably something that came via the Celtic Church, with its many links to Constantinople; but was powerfully sustained over many generations.
It was a day for various kinds of religious celebrations, and also a day on which fairies might be seen; suggesting a distinctively Celtic harmony and synergy of the pagan and Christian forms.
Lady Day is timely because such matters are much on my mind; in particular the question of the underlying spiritual reality (rather than the theological superstructure) of Christian devotion to Mary - which strikes me as overall a Good Thing, however critical I am of most of the details.
Devotion to Mary seems like a corrective to the abstractions of orthodox monotheistic Trinitarianism, and a heart-warming of Christianity - as well as recognition of a fundamental and metaphysical reality.
It also seems like a part of England's destiny and the destiny of the English; in some rather obscure way, that I think needs elucidation and therefore deserves a greater effort of understanding.
What are serious Christians to make of the intention of the Pope to 'consecrate' the Fire Nation today? - which is Lady Day.
...The day when Catholics celebrate the 'annunciation' (announcement) when the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have conceived Jesus (i.e. nine calendar months before Christmas day).
Is this consecration-business a Good Thing? Or evil? Or is it a trivial distraction?
As usual, nowadays, the discernment is easy; despite that so many seem to fail the test.
By a Good Thing - we refer to its motivations. We are asking: are the motivations Good? Which translates as: are the motivations towards alignment with God?
And the answer is obviously No.
But why?
1. Provenance. This supposed consecration comes from one of The Global Establishment centres; from one of their major spokesmen.
2. Motivation. The timing of this consecration is politically-motivated; triggered by the Fire Nation attack last month.
3. Content.
This is the 'prayer' which is asserted to accomplish this consecration. Read it if you can (it is long, sprawling, and very boring).
Discerning this an of evil intent is child's-play. In form and content it displays the hallmarks of a System-bureaucratic, New World Order - hence Satanic - production.
Long when it should be short, unfocused when it should be precise, ambiguous where it should be precise, devious when it needs to be plain, studded with ephemeral leftist jargon, ugly when it should be a thing of beauty...
So, given that it is not intended to achieve any kind of consecration; what is the purpose of this exercise: what is it intended to accomplish? Two things, mainly:
First the harm of those who pray it. This kind of prayer is ineffectual in terms of its claimed objectives, but participation in this kind of Black Mass inversion of Christian ritual is subversive of salvation.
And secondly - this is intended to insert a wedge into the Great Schism - driving further apart Roman and Orthodox Catholics: to set Christian against Christian.
This Catholic-versus-Catholic strategy has already proceeded rapidly over the past month (driven by the converged Roman Magisterium). 'Fire Nation attack' has quickly emerged as yet another Litmus Test of Christians, especially traditional Roman Catholics, leading (apparently) many into taking sides with the 100% Satanic-evil Globalists and wildly-demonizing the less-evil (less value-inverted and significantly more Christian) Fire Nation.
So the pseudo-Christian, actually evil-motivated, 'consecration' today is not a trivial distraction but an invitation to participate in a corrupt inversion of Truth.
The 'prayer' encourages converged-churchianism rather than Christianity; apostasy rather than conversion; and the peaceifism of allegiance to the inverted-value totalitarian system of the Western Establishment - and desire that it defeat and annihilate the Fire Nation qua nation.
Of course it does! Consider who produced it and what it says - and doesn't?
This discernment is not difficult; but it is a Test - sorting-out the real Christians among Roman Catholics from those whose allegiance is merely to the current leadership of a (now) this-worldly and evil-allied global/ist institution.
(And these Tests will just keep on coming. Be prepared and stay alert.)
"I've had dim glimmerings of a mood of trust and faith in the Divine will a couple of times of late. Very faint to be sure, but there nonetheless.
"It seems, in my mind, to be connected to today - March 25th - the Feast of the Annunciation; a feast which was very important to Charles Williams, for instance; and also the date on which Sauron was overthrown in The Lord of the Rings.
"From a Catholic point of view, it's also worth noting that on the next Sunday - March 29th - England will be solemnly rededicated to Our Lady.
"It's one of the best ideas that English bishops have had in recent years, and when it was announced I had the feeling that it would be both significant and important. I didn't, of course, realise how much so!
"My sense, then, is that there are good things happening and God is very much at work.
"I don't know if any of this will be visible, or whether it'll be more in the nature of 'seeds planted'; but it'd be nice to think that we might be about to reach some kind of turning-point.
'Watch and pray,' etc.
"Happy Restoration of Gondor day!"
Edited and published, with his permission, from an email message I got this morning, from John Fitzgerald.
The main plot crux of Susanna Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is to be found in the chapter entitled "A gentleman with thistledown hair", in which Norrell becomes the first English magician to summon a fairy and ask for his assistance for perhaps four hundred years.
Norrell is an extremely dishonest magician, and (despite doing exactly this) consistently argues (in public and even with Jonathan Strange) against the practice of magicians contacting fairies - because of the dangers; and this warning superficially seems to be amply justified by the subsequent events.
Nonetheless, it also becomes clear that all magic ultimately comes from fairies - and that even Norrell's own magic, which he believes himself to have learned entirely from books, has been tacitly permitted, and indeed encouraged, from Faerie by the Raven King.
So, I think we must assume that it was, in principle, alright for Norrell to enlist the assistance of a fairy - if, let us say, the thing was done for the right reasons and in the right way. But that in fact there was something about the way this fairy was enlisted by Norrell which led to many bad outcomes - the actual summoning was (we can infer) done for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways.
Firstly, Norrell enlisted the fairy primarily for his own self-aggrandizement - in order to impress the prominent politician Sir Walter Pole by raising his recently-dead fiancee, and thereby putting Sir Walter into Norrell's debt. Norrell justifies this to himself by pretending the action was for the benefit of restoring 'English magic', but in practice Norrell always interprets 'English magic' purely in terms of himself and his own benefit; and he does his best to prevent or suppress all other aspects of English magic.
So first the motive was wrong. What, then, about the specific fairy who was summoned: the 'gentleman with thistledown hair'? At first glance he seems to be the worst possible fairy that Norrell could have summoned - however it seems that Norrell had no control over this, and I think we must assume that the Raven King was behind the choice.
The thistledown fairy has, indeed, many desirable qualities, some of which he tells us (and seem to be confirmed) and others which emerge through the story. Firstly, he is a King and is perhaps the most magically powerful fairy alive; and secondly he has been the servant and friend of some of the greatest magicians England has ever known: primarily the Raven King himself, but also the Golden Age ('aureate') magicians Thomas Godbless, Ralph Stokesy and Martin Pale.
Although there is considerable evidence that this fairy has become corrupted over the past few hundred years, and is now a monster of cruelty and conceit, I think that we would be justified in assuming that if Norrell's motives had been good and if Norrell's decisions had been wise and altruistic, this fairy would have been suitable.
The crucial moment comes when the 'bargain' is being settled between Norrell and the fairy - when the fairy asks: "Should I agree to restore this young woman to life, what would be my reward?"
Norrell asks what the fairy wants, and the response is: "to be allowed to aid you in all your endeavors, to advise you upon all matters and to guide you in your studies. Oh, and you must take care to let all the world know that your greatest achievements are due to larger part to me!"
This seems not unreasonable, and would seem to be the normal way in which fairies have worked with magicians in the past - they are apparently a conceited race and love nothing more than frequent praise and honours; but have been content to be led strategically and ruled by Men, who are more diligent than they.
However, Norrell rejects this request for selfish, egotistical reasons, without consideration; this, because he wishes to be given personal credit for all magic, and does not want to share status or praise with anybody - least of all with a fairy.
This refusal provokes 'a long silence' and then the fairy declares 'this is ungrateful indeed' - and eventually suggests a deceptive 'deal' where he claims 'half' of Lady Pole's new life - which Norrell simply understands to mean her lifespan being shortened by half; but which the fairy interprets to mean absolute control over half of each and every day of Lady Pole's life.
(For half of every day for an agreed ninety-four years, during the nights, Lady Pole is therefore compelled to be the fairy's companion in fairyland; engaged in repetitive and tedious dances, rituals and ceremonies - until she comes to regard her inescapable fate as literally worse than being dead.)
What has happened is that instead of Norrell himself paying the 'price' for the fairy's cooperation, he makes Lady Pole pay the price - whether she likes it or not. This is the essence of Norrell's wicked action.
So - I think we can locate Norrell's refusal of the fairy's first offer as the critical turning point in the plot of the book, since it leads to the enchantments of Lady Pole, Stephen Black and Arabella Strange - and to the fixed hostility of the fairy towards both Norrell and Strange (leading to their own bleak personal fates as co-prisoners bound in darkness).
In sum: it was necessary to the restoration of English magic that a fairy be summoned, and it was probably right that that particular fairy be the gentleman with thistledown hair; but most of the tragedies of the story stem from Norrell's selfishly bad motivations in summoning the fairy and his selfishly bad decision with respect to making a deal with the fairy.
It's really no big deal in the scheme of things, a symptom rather than a cause - and I still (sometimes) wish people a Happy New Year* after the numbers click-over (and our 1:1 definition of New Year is plain numerological thinking, a discipline so beloved of the totalitarian Establishment)...
But it has become traditional for me to write a curmudgeonly post about the fake/ incoherent/ demonic practice of calling January 1 New Year.
Here 'Tis, yet again, and with some new added malice...
In our heads, for our-selves, we ought to have some other date for the new year.
If we accept that a year is essentially astronomical, then the new year arrives after the winter solstice (whatever date we happen to assign to that, usually 21 December, having artificially made periodic adjustments with extra Leap Years)...
But, bearing in mind that through most of history the solstice could not be known more accurately than to a span of several days - we ought not to make a fetish of the precise astronomical instant.
Solstice is (for the natural Man) more of a "season" than a day.
If you are a Catholic Christian, you probably should consider celebrating Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation - currently March 25th in the UK - as your inner New Year...
As was done in England until 1752 (which was, by no coincidence, the time and place when modernity began to ascend to dominance).
In essence, today really-is the New Year - only because They regard it as a New Year for the purposes of their demonic strategies.
In this bureaucratic world, where the elimination of human belief-in and contact-with the spirit and the divine is primary - the wholly artificial, simultaneously anti-scientific and atheistic date of Jan 1 does the desired job very well.
Just bear that in mind.
*In particular, from having lived for many years in Scotland among Scots; I have to make allowances for that more-deeply mind-controlled race than we English, and their post-religious pseudo-patriotic infatuation with Hogmanay!
What is she like - the Lord’s Mother, the young Jewish girl who said Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word? When I was a boy, not much was made of Mary in our house. My parents, not being religious, sent my sister and me every Sunday, three times a day, to the Methodist chapel across the road, so they could enjoy a bit of peace and a lie down. They were, as I say, not religious themselves. In fact they were practical atheists. But my God they were Protestant atheists!
They were among that great number of hardworking puritans in the backstreets of Armley, Leeds
who detested the local parish church of St Bartholomew – a magnificent 19th century Gothic building which loomed over the whole parish like a Victorian grandparent. They didn’t like the fact that the men who worked there wore cassocks and called themselves priests. They didn’t like the newsletter which invited Armley householders to Mass. And they had only so much as to hear mention of the Blessed Virgin and they thought instantly of the Scarlet Woman.
When I was thirteen, I read Bertrand Russell’s Why I am not a Christian. I chucked the chapel and its frosty deacons and became an atheist too. So what to do on a Sunday morning? I took to going to visit my grandmother who taught me to play whist and encouraged me to learn the piano in her front room – a room kept almost solely for funeral teas: with that piano and its yellowing keys, an aspidistra which had seen better days; and the solipsistic ticking of an unwatched clock.
One morning when I was there, struggling over Mozart’s so called simple sonata in C, K.545, I suddenly heard a great commotion from the street. I looked out and there was a procession from the Roman Catholic church. The priests in lace and birettas. Pretty young girls in white dresses. Old ladies with veils. Clouds of incense. A brass band as good as the Sally Ann. And this haunting refrain Ave… Ave. It was my first taste of real religion and it made Bertrand Russell seem quite irrelevant - because the heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.
I wonder why there exists this coolness among Protestants towards the Blessed Virgin? If you read the great Catholic theologians such as St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine, you will find Our Lady is revered and honoured. If you read the best English poets - Donne and George Herbert - you will find adoring verses about her. But I’ve discovered you don’t have to look far for the love of her expressed by eminent Protestants.
Part of the suspicion of devotion to Mary is an English distaste for public displays of emotion. True sentiment is often mistaken for mere sentimentality. And there is perhaps a more insidious fear – the fear of femininity. But still I’m puzzled over some Protestants’ hesitation in coming to Mary. For Protestants love the Bible, and she is after all the most important character in the Bible after Our Lord himself.
The doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven is regularly sneered at by unimaginative Protestants as something which was not even proclaimed a doctrine until 1950 in the Papal Bull Munificentissimus Deus. But the Pope was only belatedly coming round to recognise what the ordinary people had always believed. For the Assumption is an ancient belief. I was in Bourges cathedral a couple of years ago and there was the Assumption in glorious stained glass from the 13th century. You don’t need to go as far as Bourges. Visit St Mary’s church, Thornton Parva in North Suffolk and you can see a great picture of the Assumption, earlier than the Wilton diptych in the National Gallery. In the Middle Ages England was known as Mary’s dowry.
Unique. And just how extraordinary Mary is, think on this. She is the person physically and intimately related to the Holy Ghost. Think back to the creation where it says, And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
This is the same Spirit – God himself – who formed his own Person in the body of this little Jewish girl. The Spirit of God moving on the face of the waters. And so Mary is Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea. She is the first creature in the new creation. She wears a blue dress because she is the Earthly Mother clothed in the colour of the Sky Father. Her body housed the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity by the will of the First Person and the operation of the Third Person of that most Holy Trinity. She is the receptacle of the Incarnation. God is Spirit. She is matter. She is matter and Mater. Mother.
Well, I’m not going to quote any of the great Catholic theologians. I’m going to look at what some distinguished Anglicans and Protestants have said about Mary. Let’s start near home with Eric Mascall who worked as a priest in the City of London. Mascall says, The relation of Mary to the Church is the relative product of two more fundamental relations. The first of these is Mary’s relation to her Son: he is still Man and she is still his Mother. The second is his relation to us and to the Church: we are his members and the Church is his Body. Therefore Mary is our Mother and we are her children by adoption into her Son. This is not an exuberance of devotion but a fact of theology.
Or here’s the Methodist Neville Ward: The birth and infancy narratives, which date from the very first Christian century, are seen as a paean of praise to God and to Mary for Jesus. Ever since then, there has poured through the life of the Christian Church an amazing flood of gratitude and love for her whose existence was the slender thread on which for believers hangs so much of life’s joy and meaning.
Or Donald Dawe, Presbyterian: Mary in her femininity expresses those dimensions of faith that have been lost in a male-dominated piety. So we join in saying “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus”. Where this mystery is no longer contemplated, faith in her Son wanes.
Finally Martin Luther himself: Mary is God’s workshop and as the mother of God she is raised above the whole of humankind and has no equal.
I wrote a few lines about the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption into heaven:
The fields are all rust after the spring rain,
And the sky descends heavily, compressing the light
As I roved out one evening fair
It bein' the summertime to take the air
I spied a sailor and a lady gay
And I stood to listen
And I stood to listen to hear what they would say.
He said "Fair lady, why do you roam
For the day is spent and the night is on."
She heaved a sigh while the tears did roll
"For my dark-eyed sailor
For my dark-eyed sailor, so young and stout and bold."
" 'Tis seven long years since he left this land
A ring he took from off his lily-white hand
One half of the ring is still here with me
But the other's rollin'
But the other's rollin' at the bottom of the sea."
He said "You may drive him out of your mind
Some other young man you will surely find
Love turns aside and soon cold has grown
Like the winter's morning
Like the winter's morning, the hills are white with snow."
She said "I'll never forsake my dear
Although we're parted this many a year
Genteel he was and a rake like you
To induce a maiden
To induce a maiden to slight the jacket blue."
One half of the ring did young William show
She ran distracted in grief and woe
Sayin' "William, William, I have gold in store
For my dark-eyed sailor
For my dark-eyed sailor has proved his honour long"
And there is a cottage by yonder lea
This couple's married and does agree.
So maids be loyal when your love's at sea
For a cloudy morning
For a cloudy morning brings in a sunny day.
*
I know this ballad from the version sung on the Steeleye Span album Hark! The Village Wait, which is simply sublime:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8CFB552rNQ
But the words alone illustrate for me the tremendous power of stock phrases in poetry, specifically oral poetry. Pretty much the whole ballad consists of stock phrases, yet it has immense elegiac strength.
This has a 'eucatastrophe' at "One half of the ring did young William show/
She ran distracted in grief and woe" which produces that 'lift' of the spirit from which we gain such inspiration.
Thirty-something years ago I lived in Glasgow, Scotland; in one of those (rather handsome) four-storey, red sandstone, tenement flats that form most of the housing in that city. These are in pairs, one on the left and the other on the right side of the stairwell - which opens to the street.
I was a single young man, teaching Anatomy at the university; and opposite me lived a little old lady, a spinster - probably in her seventies - and I would sometimes (but nothing like as often as I should have) visit her, have a cup of coffee, and talk.
She struck me as a rather typical of her ilk, being a Presbyterian of the Church of Scotland - whose favourite reading was the cozy, 'couthy' and heart-warming productions of the DC Thomson publishers from Dundee - the Sunday Post newspaper, The People's Friend magazine and annual, and moral or uplifting verse by the poetess Patience Strong (a pen name, as you will have guessed).
These meant a great deal to her, and she would read out passages, and occasionally lend me something she thought was especially good.
In response to my (then atheist) enquiry about why she was a Christian; she once said something about her faith, the gist of which I found very striking at the time and have always remembered.
This was that she was a Christian because of the promise of going to Heaven - without which she could not continue in life.
But she actually put it the other way around - without the hope of going to Heaven after death, she would not find her life worth living.
At the time I found this rather pitiful; and I regarded it as simply wishful thinking from someone (much less intelligent and experienced than myself) whose life was so lonely, restricted and lacking in interest that she needed to fabricate this sentimental fantasy.
I also judged that she was not a 'real Christian' because eternal life was not what it was all-about. Life, I believed, was about making the most of our mortal years; and stoically accepting that there was nothing else.
I thought she was just making-up a consoling but pretend religion to suit herself, rather than understanding the bleak truth of existence.
Nowadays, however, I believe that little old lady was wiser than me, and was just plain right about the true nature of real Christianity.
I am also sure that her sincere desire for eternal life in Heaven was exactly what was required for her to go there after death - and what made sense of her quiet and solitary mortal life.
The marks may have been left by members of that much-discussed organization The Knights Templar, who were certainly active locally. Three were tried in York on various charges including worshipping "a certain cat" - who would appear to Templars in particular circumstances.
Another curiosity is a gravestone in the floor just in front of the chancel, where the death of Dorothy, wife of William Aynsley on March 18th of the year (apparently) seventeen-thirty and-a-half!
What the "half" symbol
means here, is actually that her year of death was 1732 by the European Gregorian calendar in which the New Year began on January the first; but 1731 according the Julian calendar that was still (happily!) used in Britain, which started the New Year on March 25th - Lady Day.
Now that we have passed the winter solstice, we are in the New Year - or would be if there was any secular coherence to the concept!
(A religious New Year can be any time; and indeed it was,even in England, where the New Year was March 25th - Lady Day - until just a few brief centuries ago; the residue of which is the "financial year" beginning on April 6th after some extra days were added to the calendar in 1752.)
However... One thing I have learned since 2020, is that I am hopeless at predictions - at least in the medium-terms of months to years. No matter how I feel that some-thing will, or will not, happen soon; this means next to nothing when compared with what actually happens.
So, predictions are, for me, merely an indication of how I feel about the way that things-in-general are shaping.
What has wrong-footed me is that British people still have basically the same general attitudes as they did in 2019, or 2000. Astonishing things have happened, and keep happening; but the basic mindset, the explanatory system, the underlying interpretative assumptions, have not changed significantly.
At some point, I guess there will be a change (on the basis that I understand the world, which I cannot help but hold, without creating a self-refuting paradox!); because the mismatch between reality as I know it, and reality as it is generally assumed, is vast and widening.
Maybe that will happen in 2024? But even-if-so that is not necessarily, or likely, to be A Good Thing; because without a prior and cataclysmic spiritual awakening the outcome will be a despair that is likely to enhance self-loathing and accelerate the established cultural suicide.
As I have often said, it seems likely to me (and this is being officially encouraged) that an epidemic of suicide will sooner or later happen in the West; including urgent demands for medical assistance in making this a painless procedure.
On the flip-side, will be murderous cults rooted in prideful and resentment-fuelled self-assertion (and some of these will probably include self-described traditionalist Christians).
That Pride is not a legitimate antidote for Despair ought to be obvious, especially to Christians - but it isn't obvious, or, at least, the sin of Pride is strong enough to overcome scruples.
Again on the flip side, the sin of despair is also capable of subverting and destroying real Christianity.
What is actually needed is - presumably, mutatis mutandis - modelled by the life of Jesus Christ; which is that fear should be defeated by faith, rooted in hope, validated by God's love of each of us.
Death is a serious business, and while we are sustained alive than we have important spiritual work to do; but we cannot allow ourselves to regard death as the worst possible outcome. From a Christian perspective there are many things worse than death (as evidence by the Sainted martyrs, among many others).
To put matters differently; we need to recognize that survival cannot, and should not, be our priority. Partly because survival merely means some delay in dying. And partly because the price of surviving may be evil - and, indeed, that we are each asked to pay the cost of prolonging personal survival by embracing evil in our heart - is all-too-likely in these End Times.
I am fascinated by the descriptions of Tolkien's Numenoran Men; and how one of their gifts was to know when it was that they should die. This evoked one of the most beautiful passages Tolkien ever wrote:
Then going to the House of the Kings in the Silent Street, Aragorn laid him down on the long bed that had been prepared for him. There he said farewell to Eldarion, and gave into his hands the winged crown of Gondor and the sceptre of Arnor, and then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed.
And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. "Lady Undómiel," said Aragorn, "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. Take counsel with yourself, beloved, and ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and rail from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep.
"I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men."
"Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear the hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive."
"So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"
The Numenoreans had been gifted (by the Valar, the gods) with a lifespan several-fold greater than ordinary Men; and they were also immune to both illness and the degenerations of ageing. So they would (unless killed) remains healthy and vigorous until they became aware that their proper lifespan was ended; and at this recognition they - willingly, by choice - ought-to embrace death, as did Aragorn.
If they rejected death, the Numenoerans could indeed live about a decade longer; but at the cost of rapid decline in physical health and the onset of what we would term dementia. But more significantly, by clinging to life, they had succumbed to spiritual corruption. And this corruption itself shortened their life span.
It was when the Numenoreans, especially their Kings and Queens, began clinging to life; that the corruption of the race began to get a grip and to accelerate. Because this clinging represented their rejection of the divine will that Men (but not elves) should naturally die and their souls would then leave the circles of the world.
I feel that there is a deep lesson in Numenor about life and death. Our life is of value, as a time of experience and learning, and for so long as this life continues it is ordained by God. Death is inevitable for men - however, the inevitability can be accepted or rebelled-against; can be embraced at the proper time, or delayed for a while.
There will come a time when we know that Christians ought to surrender life willingly - and more with faith and hope onto the next stage.
But - for this choice to be a real choice, it is possible to refuse to die now and move-on - and it is possible that death can be delayed. There is no guarantee of successful delaying of death, for those who choose that path - but the spiritual crux is whether we accept timely death, or whether we strive to delay it.
We can either acknowledge that this mortal life has now fulfilled its divine purpose and that it is now best to undergo the transformations of death and resurrection...
Or, we can refuse death, and remain alive for some while longer - but at the cost of physical and mental degeneration and spiritual corruption.
In other words, we can - at death - align our-selves with God's purposes; or we can turn-away-from God's purposes and hold to our own.
When I talk of willing embrace of death at the right time, I mean more than a stoic acceptance of the inevitability of death; and more than the acceptance of death as the least-worst of alternatives - for someone worn-down by pain and weariness. In other words, the willing embrace of death means more than death as analgesia, sleep and rest.
Death should go beyond mere passive acceptance to a voluntary and positive choice. When a Christian follows Jesus through death to resurrected life eternal; this is an active and conscious matter - which entails repentance (recognizing and discarding the sins that are incompatible with Heaven).
The willing embrace of death was modelled by Jesus in the Gospel accounts; but it follows naturally from a desire for salvation - which can only come via death.
It may be of vital importance to know the point at which the price of life becomes too great.
A Man may find himself confronted with the possibility of 'clinging to life' at the cost of doing, saying or thinking some-thing that he knows to be a deep and damning sin. At such a point; a Christian needs to be able to recognize that this is the time to die.
Such a situation may become more frequent in the world as it has become. In this totalitarian world of surveillance and control, ruled by powers of evil; more and more Men are in a position analogous to the slave of a wicked master.
Ultimately a slave may be compelled to do his master's will, or else die: there may be no other alternatives.
Therefore, we need to be prepared to die, prepared willingly to accept death; when what we are being asked to do is would destroy our own capacity for repentance.
Each Man will know when this point is reached (God will make sure of this) - although he may, of course, choose to pretend that he does not know.
Obedience and death-delayed; or refusal and death-now...
The devil delights in presenting such a choice when he feels confident of the outcome; and he must surely be confident that most modern Men would do or destroy literally anything when they believe itmay delay their own death - as the 2020 birdemic made crystal clear.
If that choice comes to us, and when the price of obedience is damnation; a Christian needs to acknowledge the fact, and the irreversibility of the decision. To refuse martyrdom may be to embrace damnation.
It is as well to be prepared. The cost of wrong choices we can see depicted in the History of Numenor.
I had four early morning walks during my recent family holiday to Oxford. Walking in Oxford can be marvellous - or else made disappointing by dense crowds, the intrusions of sturdy beggars, and the sense of being walled-out-from so many gems.
But if you pick your places and times, and have a pilgrim's purpose - all these problems may be circumvented - and depth and richness of experience will be your reward.
*
1. Christ Church Meadows
I began by walking from Jericho, cutting across to St Giles, down the Broad and past the Radcliffe Camera (as featured in the Notion Club Papers) to the Magdalen end of the Meadows, looping around to the Christ Church end.
The Meadows are one of the loveliest spots in England when you have them to yourself on a summer morning. I men only one other person. There is the natural beauty of the river, and also looking across at the beauty of the old colleges lined-up across the top of the meadows, and reflecting on the fundamental spiritual health of early generations who built them.
I came back to Jericho via the canal from Hythe Bridge, and past numerous (some astonishingly scruffy) houseboats.
*
2. The Parks and St Cross churchyard
The Parks are surrounded by the Science labs and research units of the university, and centred on the cricket grounds. They are very pleasant - especially at the far end where there is a view across the River Cherwell to summer pastures and the possibility of a diversion to really rural countryside.
Alternatively, from another corner of the Parks one can reach Mesopotamia - a narrow strip 'between two rivers' - actually a spit of land dividing the Cherwell. It was a favourite route for the Lewis brothers between the home in Headington Quarry and Magdalen College.
However, this day I went to St Cross Churchyard to visit the grave of Charles Williams (and Hugo Dyson and Kenneth Grahame). It is a gorgeously verdant, overgrown backwater - very quiet at this time of day.
*
3. Port Meadow Willow Walk
This is a very pleasing narrow, streamside walk leading-out onto Port Meadow from Jericho. It goes to an excellent spot beside the River Thames, the rather OTT-named 'Rainbow Bridge' and a great view back across Port Meadow and out towards The Trout at Wolvercote (an Inklings pub).
*
4. The suburbs of North Oxford
This might not have a wide appeal; but I had a wonderfully enjoyable Victorian suburban morning walk that began with visiting Tolkien's two houses in Northmoor Road in its route zig-zagged past broad leafy residential streets, most of the women's colleges, the Dragon School and into The Parks (again) via the Lady Margaret Hall entrance - crossing the dewy grass and ducking under trees next to the cricket square, and by various means to Blackwell’s bookshop.
*
NOTE: The above photos of the places I walked were taken from Google Images - acknowledgement and thanks are due to the gifted photographers who made them.
The king had been a prisoner
At a prison long in Spain
And Willie of the Winsbury
Has lain long with his daughter at home
"What ails you, what ails you, my daughter Janet
Why you look so pale and wan
Have you had any sore sickness
Or yet been sleeping with a man?"
"I have not had any sore sickness
Nor yet been sleeping with a man
It is for you, my father dear,
For biding so long in Spain"
"Cast off, cast off your berry-brown gown
You stand naked upon the stone
That I may know you by your shape
If you be a maiden or none"
And she's cast off her berry-brown gown
She stood naked upon the stone
Her apron was low and her haunches were round
Her face was pale and wan
"Was it with a lord or a duke or a knight
Or a man of birth and fame
Or was it with one of my serving men
That's lately come out of Spain?"
"No it wasn't with a lord nor a duke or a knight
Nor a man of birth and fame
But it was with Willie of Winsbury
I could bide no longer alone"
The king has called on his merry men all
By thirty and by three
Saying "Fetch me this Willie of Winsbury
For hanged he shall be"
But when he came the king before
He was clad all in the red silk
His hair was like the strands of gold
His skin was as white as the milk
"And it is no wonder, " said the king
"That my daughter's love you did win
For if I was a woman, as I am a man
My bedfellow you would have been"
"Now will you marry my daughter Janet
By the truth of your right hand?
Oh will you marry my daughter Janet
I'll make you lord of my land"
"Well yes, I'll marry your daughter Janet
By the truth of my right hand
Well yes I'll marry your daughter Janet
But I'll not be the lord of your land"
He's mounted her on a milk-white steed
Himself on a dapple grey
He has made her the lady of as much land
As she shall ride in a long summer's day
Willy's unearthly - enchanting - beauty suggests to me that he is an Elf; indeed an Elf Lord. Hence faery (or a substantial part of it) is the land of which he makes Janet the Lady. This also explains why the King seems not to have heard of so significant a landowner, nor of his apparently vast domain - an otherwise inconceivable situation.
Indeed, in Charles Murray's historical survey of Human Accomplishment; English literature was the only one of the subjects surveyed in which women made a strong showing.
And, even there, women did not feature among the very highest literary geniuses such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe.
But there is one neglected but culturally highly significant area in which it seems as if women geniuses have been supreme, in terms of ability and influence; and that is as spiritualist mediums and psychics.
1. The Fox Sisters, who from 1848 were the origin of Spiritualism, which became a global phenomenon for a century, and still persists (there is a spiritualist church within ten minutes walk of where I write).
2. Madam HP Blavatsky - the founder of Theosophy; whose international influence is so vast as to be difficult to calculate and of extraordinary breadth. For instance; much of Rudolf Steiner's vast oeuvre derives from Theosophy; and it was the Theosophical Society in London that converted a secular-minded Gandhi to Hinduism.
3. Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, which grew very fast and went all around the world in a couple of generations to become extremely widespread at its peak - and, although much diminished, it still continues. (There is a Christian Science Reading Room about a mile from here.)
4. Ellen G White was the prophetess whose insights underpinned the Seventh Day Adventist church - global in reach and apparently still growing, especially in the third world.
5. Dion Fortune - who was the leading Christian magical occultist of the twentieth century. Her teaching and Fraternity of the Inner Light gave rise to multiple other major magicians and magical societies. Nowadays DF's influence appears to be growing in New Age and Neo-Pagan media.
These five women (to which some others could be added) constitute a pretty formidable tally in a short space of time.
And the contributions of these women was apparently of a fundamental and foundational (rather than derivative) nature.
This also fits with the oft-noticed fact (across several religions and churches) that women are intrinsically more often naturally psychic and mediumistic; and can also (like Dion Fortune, who was not naturally a medium) become psychic by effort and training.
It is no coincidence that the (currently) best known, most beloved, English Christian mystic is Lady Julian of Norwich.
Although genius is always rare, and in most cultures for most of the time (including our own, now) essentially absent; there are, indeed, solid psychological reasons (e.g. innate personality and intelligence) why genius is overall much more often to be found in men.
Despite which, over the past half century, it has become a rather dodgy academic-journalistic pastime to manufacture and fake women-"geniuses" in science and the arts (and culture more generally).
This has been attempted even in several fields in which there are zero women of the first, or even second, rank (such as mathematics, and the composition of classical music).
Meanwhile, there has been this area in which women really do excel; but which has been ignored!
...Albeit for fairly obvious reasons; in that their activities seem fake, mad, or wicked both to the outgoing Christian traditionalists and the incoming Leftist materialists.
Nonetheless, if evaluated by the normal standards of our culture; these womens' achievements clearly emerge as both socially significant and distinctively creative - and can then be recognized as products of genius.
A very nice version of the Sussex Carol follows an excellent syncopated instrumental version of Christmas Day in the Morning; from a folk band called Magpie Lane; after a narrow ginnel off the High Street in Oxford, where they live. More of their music can be found here.
*
The first performance of Sussex carol I heard was broadcast live (and rough and ready) on radio from The Etchingham Steam Band - with vocals including the first lady of Sussex folk music - Shirley Collins.
I can never really endorse a book (or movie) that ends badly - and there are a lot of them. I mean works that begin well and fall to pieces to end poorly. It seems to be much more difficult to end well than to begin well.
It is interesting to speculate why this might be. There might be many reasons - but one is clearly that the author is technically able to write, but does not have anything to say. The book goes nowhere, because there is nowhere for the book to go.
This is a product of the fact that the work cannot be greater than the man - and there are a lot more technically-adept Men than there are great Men.
For the same reason, there are a lot more first-rate minor writers, than major writers; and many problems arise from a minor writer trying to give the impression he is major. The word for this is pretentious.
That is; the desire primarily to please critics, editors, scholars and 'pseuds' in general. Naturally, this leads to poor works.
Such self-sabotage with the intent of garnering the praise of those whose world view is primarily ideological can, itself, be a mask for incompetence; but is not necessarily so.
One of the most notorious self-sabotages in literature is the ending of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw; which has Eliza Doolittle marrying Freddie instead of Higgins - as the narrative irresistibly suggests she would.
Shaw was trying to make an anti-romantic ideological point - as he explained in a (very unconvincing!) post-script; and for this he was prepared to wreck the end of a brilliant play - and he then doubled-down on this error.
Because the actors who were successfully touring Pygmalion away from London changed the ending (without telling Shaw) by adding some unspoken 'business' to imply that Eliza would actually marry Higgins. This 'played' much better with the audiences; who were otherwise leaving the theatre confused and dissatisfied.
Shaw was incensed when he found-out, and did his best to stop it; yet when Pygmalion was converted to one of the most successful musicals ever - My Fair Lady - the anti-Shaw pro-Higgins ending was retained.
Shaw was setting his undoubted genius against the autonomous and irresistible demands of natural narrative - and not even Shaw could make anything else work.
In writing Pygmalion; Shaw had something to say, and said it - which is why the work has lasted. But for the play to be truthful, there can only be one ending - and it is not the ending that Shaw wanted to write.
There are many works that contain much that is good, but are marred by a bad ending; and whether one responds to such works is a matter of preference.
A couple of examples from my experience are Phillip Pullman's 'Dark Materials' trilogy; which begins very well indeed but begins to fall to pieces even before the end of the first volume - and of course ends very poorly.
(The reasons why have been definitively described by John C Wright in his essay collection Transhuman and Subhuman).
Another example is Elidor by Alan Garner - which is generally well-liked but which has an ending that is both abrupt and unsatisfying.
Why this should be, I believe to be related to an element of bitter, disillusioned (apparently guilt-motivated) class-resentment; that seems to have grown in Garner throughout adult life almost to overwhelm him - and to spoil most of his books (and especially the endings).
Both Pullman and Garner are technically very gifted writers who are limited by their own natures, which are significantly stunted by their (very typically modern) failure to learn from experience and consequent doubling-down on a false and nihilistic world view.
That same critic-pandering, reality-rejecting pathway was pioneered by James Joyce with Finnegans Wake, and Samuel Beckett from 'Godot' onwards.
From the above analysis it can be seen why so many movies of the past few decades fail to end well - after a promising start.
There is this determination to be praised for 'courageous' (ha!) subversive/ edgy/ dark qualities - for imposing value, sex and plot inversions without regard for the natural demands of narrative. So the movie draws us in, sets-up a situation - then delivers... nothing. No closure. No meaning.
(And then gets Establishment-praised for 'bravery'!)
To construct a coherent and satisfying movie remains possible (e.g. Groundhog Day, Dunkirk), but is never easy nor common - and these all have a strong sense of inevitability about their unfolding and resolution. How much simpler to write politically-correct dross - and reap the awards...
Surprising plot twists and ends can be done effectively - e.g. Maleficent, Rogue One; but always by deploying some alternative 'traditional' story trope - such as self-sacrificing heroism.
In other words, new story shapes are possible; unpredictability and surprising twists may be effective. But these require exactly the kind of endorsement of narrative inevitability that the subversive/ edgy/ dark anti-heroic impulse rules-out.
In sum; some of the poor endings (and, indeed, middles) of novels and movies can be explained in terms of authorial limitations; but even-more is subtracted by authors trying to make socio-political points, or curry the favour of cultural gatekeepers at the cost of narrative destruction.
Reading biographies and memoirs - as I do - I am often struck by the vivid, detailed recall of those who met eminent people - and contrast it with my own hazy recollections of meeting the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe -
who was, if not exactly eminent, someone that appears as a minor but significant figure in the annals of the twentieth century in relation both to Wittgenstein and to C.S. Lewis. Lewis, for example, regarded her as much more intelligent than he was.
*
The meeting was, I am pretty sure, in the summer or autumn of 1985, and comes from a rather lost episode of my young adult life (lost, because it did not lead on to anything), while I was working on my doctorate in neuroendocrinology. I have no written evidence from this period, and I didn't discuss my plans very widely, so I am forced to operate purely on the basis of memory.
I was, at the time, much under the spell of Wittgenstein, and (therefore?) wanting to study philosophy as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge on an accelerated (2 year instead of 3 year) degree - possible because I was already a (medical) graduate.
I must have written to some people, and arranged some meetings and then I travelled to Cambridge where I had lunch with Anscombe at her college New Hall, then in the afternoon met with the admissions tutor of Trinity and their philosophy tutor (Nick Denyer).
So I was probably with Anscombe for an hour and a half or so. What do I recall?
*
Of the lady, that she struck me a very much the same type as the minor country gentry I had encountered in Somerset and Northumberland; a chunky, pugnacious and somewhat 'masculine' elderly woman (of course, masculine or not, she had had numerous children). Her speech was clipped and 'military' in style, the content I remember as cliched and at a superficial social level.
Her car was very muddy and full of bits and pieces.
The lunch at New Hall, and the college itself, I can picture as being similar to, but somewhat better than, a secondary school dinner - there was some kind of gimmick by which the lunch counter rose up out of the floor (electrically powered) to bring up food from the kitchens below, I imagine. In general I felt rather underwhelmed, disappointed.
The only remark I can recollect was in response to a query about her meeting with Wittgenstein - she said something about having heard about him while she was studying in Oxford, then concluding this to comment that 'of course, he had a first-rate mind'. This struck me at the time as a characteristic bit of Cambridge boilerplate.
*
So, in my memory at least, I have to admit that I was not impressed by G.E.M Anscombe, indeed I rather disliked her - yet of course she was both generous and tolerant to meet up with me, give me lunch, and talk with me - I who was someone merely considering applying to Trinity, and with no connection with her or with the university. I hope that I was suitably grateful.
(And I very much doubt whether G.E.M Anscombe was at all impressed with me! I can't recall saying anything which, even momentarily, captured her attention or interest. Quite likely, this was a basis of my slight feeling of resentment - that I did not, could not, impress her? Maybe I was hoping to be recognized as 'the next Wittgenstein'? - that unlikely notion would indeed be entirely consistent with my self-conceit of that era.)
*
The episode led nowhere because, although I was indeed offered a place at Trinity to read philosophy, when I saw the size of the college fees (on top of the university fees and the need to support myself for two years of very hard academic work) it was very obvious that I could not afford it.
But also, the visit had rather put me off the idea of studying undergraduate philosophy at Trinity, Cambridge; as I recall I was glad of a cast-iron excuse not to follow-through my plans.
In the event, I went to Durham to study for an MA by thesis in English (only one year, and with a British Academy scholarship - so easily affordable) - and this turned out to be a much more fruitful path for me.
*
(Although Durham English did not cure me of Wittgenstien - in fact things got even worse as I continued reading philosophy alongside the English, and moved on to Richard Rorty and deep into the lunacy of 'postmodern' thinking, which I had successfully resisted up to that point. It took a few more years to extricate myself from that mess.)
*
The Cambridge affair now feels like a near miss or lucky escape - a madness of a few weeks - on those rare occasions I remember it; and maybe that interpretation colours or extinguishes my memories.
But what a feeble set of recollections I have concerning this meeting!
For some people, such a meeting might have provided sufficient incident to fill a 15 000 word memoir!
Perhaps the very best piece of secular writing on Christmas? This is something I have been reading aloud for forty years - first to my younger brother, then with him, now with my children.
There are a few variants of this work - here is one:
**
One Christmas was so much like another, in those
years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the
distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep,
that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights
when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights
when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the
two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged
fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out
whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued
ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out
come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.
It was on the afternoon of
the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for
cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at
Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there
were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our
hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long
as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would
slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed
hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay,
off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
We were so still,
Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal
snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs.
Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if
we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our
enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew
louder. "Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.
And
we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the
house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the
gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town
crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on
the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and
stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.
Something was
burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there
after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing
in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at
the smoke with a slipper.
"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong. "There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas." There
was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing
in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting. "Do
something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I
think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone
box. "Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."
But
we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and
three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero
got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a
noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were
standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came
downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to
hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She
looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing
among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said,
"Would you like anything to read?"
Years and years ago, when I
was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of
red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang
and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday
afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the
jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car,
before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft
and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy
says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked
it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."
"But
that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from
white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and
swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather
moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the
gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."
"Were there postmen then, too?" "With
sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they
crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the
children could hear was a ringing of bells." "You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?" "I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them." "I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells." "There were church bells, too." "Inside them?" "No,
no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and
storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the
frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea.
It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the
weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."
"Get back to the postmen" "They
were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and
the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...." "Ours has got a black knocker...." "And
then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches
and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from
foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out." "And then the presents?" "And
then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a
rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the
chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs. "He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump,
dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."
"Get back to the Presents." "There
were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and
mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky
gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding
tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and
balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always
wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that
made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a
little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying
with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with
quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and
drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."
"Go on the Useless Presents." "Bags
of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false
nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and
rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could
explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you
pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat
might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could
make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased,
and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field
under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge
and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and
butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if
they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and
Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with
instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark
to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his
stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you
put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you
waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a
cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast
under the balloons."
"Were there Uncles like in our house?" "There
are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas
morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the
swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead
bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a
robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping
back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all
albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the
irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front
parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by
the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and
the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their
collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them
out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths,
coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the
explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor
anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs,
poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."
Not
many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always,
fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of
snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back,
as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes
two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown
scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up
an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves
until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their
inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy
smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding
and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side
lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette
and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to
himself.
I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to
put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas
when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and
blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces,
their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had
turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of
the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their
watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters
scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already
been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the
sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie
had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in
the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed
thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to;
and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled.
In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and
the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns
and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the
Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken
for a sea-going tramcar.
Or I would go out, my bright new boots
squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge
footprints on the hidden pavements. "I bet people will think there's been hippos." "What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?" "I'd
go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down
the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail." "What would you do if you saw two hippos?"
Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house. "Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box." "Let's write things in the snow." "Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn." Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"
The
silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were
snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs,
with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying
"Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few
children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and
cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill,
into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the
whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and
the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave.
Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.
Bring
out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled
like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared
not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing
carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying
streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large
house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one
of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of
us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of
old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We
reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the
Herald?" "No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three."
One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly
distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by
nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King
Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry
voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time,
joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of
the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons
floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good
again and shone over the town. "Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. "Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading. "Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.
Always
on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a
cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was
very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the
parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then
another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then
everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my
bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored
snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on
our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling
night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the
close and holy darkness, and then I slept.
**
Note: Dylan Thomas himself had the merest trace of Welsh accent, mostly in the intonation; so it is not necessary to an authentic performance.
