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Here are the Blogs in the John M. Joyce category.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
Of Morris And Men
 Esme’s excellent post here is very relevant indeed and it contains some fascinating photographs of Inn signs. I hadn’t really noticed Inn signs until Esme started her series of posts about them, but now I’m hooked. They are yet another of our traditions that embody so much of our history. I know that Esme knows the origin of the Morris dancing traditions of our country, but for our readers who might not know, here goes a very brief explanation.
In late 1492 King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille succeeded in driving the Muslims from Spain and unifying the old Roman province of Iberia into a single country. In celebration of this a pageant known as a 'Moresca' was invented and staged throughout the newly re-formed Spain which those monarchs forged.
That pageant can still be seen in many places in Spain to this very day. A native Spanish dance - the 'Paloteao' - was taken into the pageant. That dance can still be seen in many of the rural the villages of Aragon, and sometimes elsewhere in Spain.
The original dance in the ´Moresca´ was a sword dance and the sticks used in Morris dancing in England are echoes of the swords in the 'Moresca'. Some authorities venture the idea that the Scottish Highland Sword Dance comes from the same source - the 'Moresca'.
I think that this whole idea might be the wrong way round and that sword dancing predated the 'Moresca' all over Europe but became linked to the European victory over the forces of Islamic darkness in Ferdinand's and Isabella’s time simply because it was an astoundingly important event for Europe. Sword dances are mentioned by Abbot Walter Bowyer of the Augustinian Abbey on Inchcolm(1) in his Scotichronicon of 1440 (there's an original copy in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh) and they are mentioned, also, in his predecessor's (Father John of Fordoun) work, the Chronica Gentis Scotorum, which Bowyer was commissioned(2) to finish and which became his (Bowyer’s) Scotichronicon, which the aforementioned National Library of Scotland has described as "probably the most important mediaeval account of early Scottish history" and as providing both a strong expression of [Scottish] national identity, and a window into the world view of mediaeval commentators. It’s certainly a very important medieval document and provides many insights into the attitudes of those times.
Whatever the case might be, Morris dancing in its present form most certainly commemorates the Spanish victory over the reactionary and dead hand of Islam in 1492. We should all support our local Morris men and their sides (teams) for they embody in their traditions and their dancing the very victory that we all devoutly hope for today. They symbolise the very freedoms which we at this site seek to defend.
Dance on brave Morris men, dance on!
Notes:
(1) The same Abbey which lends its name to the 14th. Century manuscript referred to as the ‘Inchcolm Antiphoner’ that has in its pages one of the few remaining examples of Celtic Plainchant. The Antiphoner can be accessed online here at Edinburgh University's site.
(2) Abbot Bowyer was commissioned by Sir David Stewart (third) of Rosyth who died in 1483. Both he and the Abbot were political players in the Scotland of those years and the Scotichronicron reflects their political prejudices.
Posted on 01/03/2010 6:54 AM by John M. Joyce
Friday, 1 January 2010
Hogmanay
I, and my partner R-------, am in the North of Scotland for this New Year. It took us over twenty hours to drive here through the snow-bound chaos that Britain has become over the last week or so – a journey that usually only takes us ten to twelve hours. It was a drive straight out of ones worst nightmare – sundry pets which are well used to the drive spent the last six hours of the journey wittering at us much as children do: “Are we there yet?” Are we there yet?”
If you have ever had to spend twenty hours in a car with a gaggle of vocalising, self-important Poodles, a discontented, over-affectionate Border Collie bitch, two elderly and incontinent, but only when they’re travelling, cats and more pet rodents than one could decently cram into a pantechnicon then you’ll know exactly what I felt like when we all reached journey’s end. Alternatively, if you’ve ever travelled more than ten yards with children in your motorcar then you’ll also know how I felt when we finally arrived at our destination. Got it? Good! Then I’ll proceed to the meat of this post.
The most important winter celebration for our pre-Christian Celtic ancestors was the hog mani or ‘high moon’ which we now call Hogmanay. This festival was always celebrated on the night of the nearest full moon to the winter solstice (December 21st.) which is when the full moon is at its highest in the winter sky.
By coincidence this year (2009) the full moon nearest the solstice being at its zenith happens to be on the 31st. of December which, as everyone knows, is Hogmanay. This state of celestial affairs doesn’t happen very often. Indeed, one could say that it happens once in a blue moon.
And that’s a phrase from our past, isn’t it? Did you know that Church Calendars used to, and sometimes still do so, indicate the nights when there would be a full moon in red ink – excepting if such a night was the second full moon in a month when they would mark the night in blue ink and that that practice gave rise to the phrase ‘once, in (under) a blue moon’?
There was a full moon on December 2nd. and that would, naturally, be a red moon. There is a full moon tonight (December 31st.) and it is, therefore, a blue moon.
Once in a blue moon all the celestial manoeuvrings come together to remind us of our ancient past, our ancestors and our rich, deep history. Last night was one such blue moon.
Enjoy it!
Oh, and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to each and every one of you. Posted on 01/01/2010 7:00 AM by John M. Joyce
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Of Cauliflowers And Kings
Esmerelda’s excellent and highly amusing post for the Sixth Day of Christmas is here. It has more of her photographs of wonderful English Inn signs and is well worth a look, as well as being very relevant indeed to this sixth day of Christmas.
Although Esme’s tavern keeper probably didn’t know this when he had his cauliflower Inn sign painted afresh, the cauliflower is a deeply ancient symbol in Christianity. Its pure white curd is a symbol of Mary the Mother of Christ and also of the huge white star which hovered over Bethlehem and guided the first worshippers (the Shepherds, and the animals, and the Kings) to Christ’s crib. Quite apart from the white curd symbolising the purity of Christ’s conception and birth, the cauliflower is also enmeshed in the traditions of Christmas Eve.
Cauliflower is one of the traditional ‘seven lean dishes’ served at the ‘great supper’ traditionally eaten by Christians on Christmas Eve and the tradition of this great supper persists in many rural parts of Europe to this very day, most notably in Provence in France, and one can also find its echo in some rural parts of Italy and Romania and amongst some traditionalists in the Anglican Communion as well as amongst some of the faithful strands amongst the Old Catholics. The great supper traditionally consists of seven small main dishes, eaten before the midnight service made up from white vegetables, one of which is always, but always, cauliflower, white fishes, and eggs and they symbolise the seven sufferings of the Virgin, followed by thirteen desserts which are eaten after the midnight service and which must contain the nuts and fruits which symbolise the mendicant orders (figs for the Franciscans, almonds for the Carmelites, raisins for the Dominicans and hazelnuts for the Augustinians), as well as dates, which symbolise Christ, wine for the Holy Blood of Life, cream for the purity of the thoughts and the actions of the true Christians, olive oil for the light (and continuity) of Christ, and bread for the Staff of Life which Christ is, and fresh winter fruits for the bounty of God. The last dessert course is always to be sour for the thirteen desserts symbolise the Last Supper eaten by Christ with his twelve Apostles and an echo of that tradition is with us today in the British practise of serving a final cheese (soured milk) and biscuit (bread) course at dinner frequently removed with nuts and fruits. Under no circumstances is meat ever served at the great supper on Christmas Eve.
Many orders of Monks and Nuns wear white habits and it is very interesting to note that many of them feature the cauliflower as an important Christmas vegetable in their histories and practises, and occasionally in their heraldic devices. Until very recently Christmas cauliflower receipts (recipes) were well known and widely used. It’s only over the last fifty or so years that the traditions surrounding the humble cauliflower have almost died out. Traditional Christmas cauliflower is boiled, to taste, cauliflower served with a cheese enriched white sauce spiced with nutmeg, black pepper and salt, but there are many modern variants which are very tasty that have become traditional outside Europe and one of my favorite receipts for Christmas cauliflower can be found here.
Anciently, before Christ that is, the white cauliflower curd, surrounded by its green leafs, represented the moon and was a pagan symbol, and sometimes rudely associated with the generative force at that – so it’s easy to see why it became associated with Christ’s birth and the purity of the Immaculate Conception. However, it is still a moon symbol in some Christian art for the date of at least one of our major festivals is calculated using the moon’s phases (Easter).
It’s Christmastide (4th. of December to Candlemas on the 2nd. of February), which must not be confused with the Christmastime (which runs from Christmas Eve to the first Sunday after the Epiphany on January, 6th.), and much of our ancient symbolism and imagery is so complicated and confused that it’s almost impossible to decipher and render into coherent form. This festival of Christmas is not just some simple Christian take on some Roman pagan festival – it’s far more complicated and ancient than that and for many of us it contains its own truths. As it should!
The simple cauliflower is just one example of how complicated our Christian symbolism, and imagery, actually is and how Esme’s innocent Inn-keeper’s newly painted sign will confuse, and no doubt fool, future historians.
Still, it’s interesting that he chose to continue to use a cauliflower for his sign, isn’t it? Posted on 12/31/2009 7:57 AM by John M. Joyce
Monday, 28 December 2009
A Funny Interlude
You know that you live in a small town when the guy who serves you at your local store speaks English – as his first language! Posted on 12/28/2009 7:03 AM by John M. Joyce
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Christmas Carols XI
This, some of you might be pleased to discover, is the final post in this series. The posts have been fun to write and I hope that you have enjoyed some of them and some of the links to the music.
You’ll no doubt have noted that Rebecca posted here Robert Herrick’s (1591-1674) merry Carol. It’s a slightly back to front Carol when one compares it to those we usually sing in that its symbolism and imagery are drawn from the warmer seasons of the year. That’s not surprising if one considers Herrick’s nature – by all accounts he was a happy man with a well-developed sense of humour. He was also an inventive man and that Carol demonstrates a little of that, I think. Rebecca didn’t post the Choral Flourish that led into the Carol. I rather like it so here it is:
What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a Carol, for to sing
The Birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the Voice! Awake the String!
Heart, Ear, and Eye, and every thing
Awake! the while the active Finger
Runs division with the Singer.
However, let’s move on with the story of Carols. The final part of the story of English Carolling started on Christmas Eve in AD1880. Even though ancient Roman Christians may have sung Carols in the worship, and some medieval Churches definitely did, there was no real tradition of doing so in England – and after the Reformation it looked as if the Carol would die out completely. However, as I mentioned in a previous post in this series, Victorian scholars collected and re-popularised the Christmas Carol and the tradition of singing them has since gone from strength to strength.
So, as the tradition revived something quite remarkable happened on that Christmas Eve in AD1880. It happened at Truro in Cornwall. In AD1877 Edward White Benson had been consecrated the first Bishop of the new See of Truro (created in AD1876) and work had just started on the new gothic revival Cathedral so he was, by all accounts, using a large shed as his temporary Cathedral. He was worried about the excessive drinking that the townsfolk indulged in of Christmas Eve so he devised a plan to get them into Church.
His plan was quite simple. He wrote the Order for a new Christmas Eve Church Service and he held that Service at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve and for the first time since the Reformation Christmas Carols were sung in a Cathedral. Today we know that Service as ‘Nine Lessons and Carols’. It’s been slightly modified since Bishop Benson first wrote it and today the Truro Cathedral Service is not the one we usually think of – we tend to remember the one which the BBC broadcasts each year from King’s College, Cambridge – but it all started in Truro and, as you would expect, it still goes on in that lovely new Cathedral in beautiful old Cornwall and it’s there that you can find, each and every year, the townsfolk and the few winter tourists gathering in the true Spirit of Christmas. It’s a wonderful experience!
New Christmas Carols and Christmas songs continue to be written and some will last and some will not but the tradition of raising our voices in celebratory Hymns and songs at Christmastide will go on. Some songs of Christmas, like 'White Christmas', we don’t sing for ourselves but prefer to listen to, but they are still Christmas songs and they still contain something of the traditional imagery and symbolism of Christmas.
Thank you for reading these eleven posts – and yes, eleven was deliberate – and may all of you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Posted on 12/24/2009 7:18 AM by John M. Joyce
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Christmas Carols X
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the history of Christmas Carols because I’ve allowed myself to be diverted into a few interesting side-channels, so in this penultimate post of the series let me rapidly fill in some of the major historical points and give you all the occasional link to some lovely recordings of a Carol or two. I’m going to concentrate on the period from about AD1300 to the present day since I’ve already speculated quite enough about the many, many centuries of singing before that early date and about how many musicologists and text analysers link our Carols back into our ancient ages.
The earliest written works in English to record Christmas Carols, well carols in general, at any rate, appear to be the poems of Father John Awdelay, a Chantry Priest at Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire. We don’t know when he was born but we think that he died sometime around AD1430. His works are preserved in a manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (Douce 302). One of his poems – There is a Flower – has had tunes composed for it by Dr. J.M. Rutter and by Dr. W.S. Vann.
We know, as I wrote here, that there is a twelfth century record of Christmas Carols by Adam of St. Victor and I pointed out here that Christmas Carols were very popular in Medieval times. The Protestant Reformation and the Churches which arose from it, however, regarded the celebration of Christmas as far too Roman Catholic and did their best to eliminate any celebrations linked to Our Lord’s Birth – although, to be fair, Martin Luther made Carols and actively encouraged their use.
Despite the Reformation, Carols continued to be sung – usually in rural areas – and composed. "Adeste fidelis" (‘Oh come all ye faithful’) was written by John F. Wade (with additional verses by the Abbe Etienne J.F.Borderies) sometime in the early seventeen-hundreds. Frederick Oakeley translated the Latin into the English version we all sing today but there is some doubt as to how old the original Latin text might be with some authorities believing that it could be early eleventh century. The music, however, was indisputably written in the early eighteenth century but, again, some people claim that one can hear vestiges of a much older tune therein – and that’s perfectly possible given Wade’s, and everyone else’s, comprehension of his musical heritage at the time he wrote it. There is some argument that Wade, a Jacobite, meant this Carol as a paean to the birth of the pretender but I doubt that for it discounts entirely the movement of Faith within a man and we do know that after he fled England he lived amongst the Catholic exiles in France and worked on devotional music for the rest of his life.
Moving on, in AD1833, W.B. Sandys FSA published his Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (London (UK), Richard Beckley, 1833) which featured many old Carols of Christmastide – as the title implies – as well as much that was recent at the time of publication. The First Noel, an ancient Cornish Christmas Carol that Sandys, or someone around him, modernised, was included in this collection. We don’t have the original but the text and the music, if one attempts to take out Sandys’ reworkings, sound very early, and very West Country indeed, because all three phrases end on the third of the scale which is a characteristically Cornish musical idiom in the early folk tunes.
In the second half of the nineteenth century composers like Arthur Sullivan (he of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) added impetus to the Christmas Carol’s rediscovery by rewriting much of the ancient music in a form which was easier for their contemporaries to play and sing. To this period such Christmas Carols as Good King Wenceslas and It came Upon the Midnight Clear belong. The latter is a modern Carol from new England (USA) written by Edmund H. Sears, with music by Richard S. Willis called, simply, ‘Carol’, but in the UK the tune most often sung is one adapted from an ancient carolling folk tune in 1874 by Arthur Sullivan and is called ‘Noel’ – a synthesis of modern words with ancient music which was common in nineteenth century in England as our ancient musical and literary heritage was rediscovered.
Good King Wenceslas today ports the much loved words, for us English speaking folk, by John M. Neale (AD1818-AD1866), Warden of Sackville College (with the assistance of Thomas Helmore), which are actually a very, very imaginative ‘translation’ of Vaclav Alois Svoboda’s poem about Wenceslas written in AD1847 which he, or so he claimed, based on old Czech folk stories and traditions about Saint Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia (c.906–c.933AD). The tune, however, is the Tempus adest floridum (‘It is time for the flowering’) from the Piae cantiones ecclesiasticae et scholasticae veterum Episcoporum (‘Devout ecclesiastical and school songs of the venerable Bishops’) which is a Swedish collection of medieval Latin songs compiled by Jacobus Finno and published in 1582 in Griefswald (now in Germany but, at the time that work was compiled, part of Sweden) by Theodoricus P. Nylandensi.
Traditionally, the tunes for Christmas Carols – indeed, most carols – are written using the medieval chord structure – and that’s easily faked by most competent composers in any era so it’s hard to be certain of the provenance of any tune, but researchers can trawl through Libraries of ancient manuscripts and follow the clues and tantalising references and at least we can give you some idea about our musical past and our ancient Christmas Carols. That Medieval structure is based on the Roman chord structure (as far as we can determine from our Libraries) which seems to be based on a much more ancient understanding of music. The unique sound of Christmas is at least as ancient as our Faith and, it seems, maybe even older.
The tradition of English Christmas Carol singing is still alive and well – and new Carols are still being written and the old Carols are still being sung and enjoyed by millions of us. It is that depth and richness of culture and tradition which this site, NER, seeks to protect and nurture and define and defend. Know your history, say I, for without that knowledge you cannot defend yourself against the infidel hordes.
If you don’t know who you are, how can you define what you want to become? Our ancient Christmas Carols tell us who we are, where we’ve come from; but they don’t necessarily tell us where we are going to go – that’s a journey which is solely up to us to plot.
By the way, the tune to Hark, The Herald Angels Sing is Mendelssohn’s, adapted to Charles Wesley’s words by W.H. Cummings, and it first appeared in AD1861 although it was written in AD1840. Given Felix Mendelssohn’s incredibly profound knowledge of ancient music we can only guess as to whether or not he adapted an early tune or composed something entirely new, but in the tradition! A great Christmas, Christian Carol with music by one of the great, perhaps the greatest, Jewish (Austrian) composers! We live in a Judeo-Christian society and ours is a fantastic and great culture, and I rest my case! Posted on 12/23/2009 7:07 AM by John M. Joyce
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Christmas Carols IX
Silent Night
I have endeavoured to point out in this short series of posts that the tradition of Christmas Carols is an ever-changing one in its details and that new Carols come into being all the time. Perhaps the most famous new Carol of our modern age is ‘Silent Night’:
Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute Hoch Heilige Paar.
Holder Knab' im lockigen Haar,
Schlafe in Himmlischer Ruh!
Schlafe in Himmlischer Ruh!
Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!
G-ttes Sohn, o wie lacht
Lieb' aus deinem Göttlichen Mund,
Da uns schlägt die rettende Stund'.
Jesus in deiner Geburt!
Jesus in deiner Geburt!
Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!
Die der Welt Heil gebracht,
Aus des Himmels goldenen Höhn,
Uns der Gnaden Fülle läßt sehn,
Jesum in Menschengestalt!
Jesum in Menschengestalt!
Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!
Wo sich heut alle Macht
Väterlicher Liebe ergoß,
Und als Bruder huldvoll umschloß
Jesus die Völker der Welt!
Jesus die Völker der Welt!
Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!
Lange schon uns bedacht,
Als der Herr vom Grimme befreit
In der Väter urgrauer Zeit
Aller Welt Schonung verhieß!
Aller Welt Schonung verhieß!
Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Alleluja,
Tönt es laut bei Ferne und Nah:
"Jesus der Retter ist da!"
"Jesus der Retter ist da!"
The following is Bettina Klein’s lovely, inspired translation:
Silent Night! Holy Night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon G-dly tender pair.
Holy infant with curly hair,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Silent Night! Holy Night!
Son of G-d, love's pure light
Radiant beams from Thy Holy face,
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord at thy birth
Jesus, Lord at thy birth.
Silent Night! Holy Night!
Brought the world gracious light,
Down from Heaven's golden height
Comes to us the glorious sight:
Jesus, as one of mankind,
Jesus, as one of mankind.
Silent Night! Holy Night!
By his love, by his might
G-d our Father us has graced,
As a brother gently embraced,
Jesus, all nations on earth,
Jesus, all nations on earth.
Silent Night! Holy Night!
Long ago, minding our plight
G-d the world from misery freed,
In the dark age of our fathers decreed:
All the world redeemed,
All the world redeemed.
Silent Night! Holy Night!
Shepherds first saw the sight
Of angels singing alleluia
Calling clearly near and far:
Christ, the saviour is born,
Christ the Saviour is born.
The original Austrian German words of this, probably the most popular, modern Carol of Christmastide were written by Father Joseph Mohr in AD1816 when as a young priest he was sent by his Diocese to serve the Altar at the Pilgrimage Church in Mariapfarr in Austria. The following year ( AD1817) he was transferred to the St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf.
It is known that shortly before Christmas in AD1818 Fr. Mohr visited the home of musician and schoolteacher Franz Xavier Gruber who lived in an apartment over the schoolhouse in nearby Arnsdorf. Herr Gruber was also the Organist and Choirmaster at the Nicholas Kirche in Oberndorf. Fr. Joseph showed his poem to Herr Gruber and asked him to add a melody and guitar accompaniment so that it could be sung at the Midnight Service on Christmas Eve. His reason for wanting his poem set to music is unknown but the young priest is known to have really liked guitar music, so perhaps he merely wanted a simple tune which he could share with his parishioners at Christmas in a personal way.
At Midnight Mass that evening the two men, backed by the choir it seems by all accounts, stood in front of the High Altar in the St. Nicholas Kirche in Oberndorf and sang "Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!" for the first time with Father Mohr playing his guitar.
The story doesn’t end there, however, for Karl Mauracher, a master organ builder and repairman from the Ziller Valley in Austria, visited Oberndorf to work on the organ in the Nicholas Kirche several times in the years after this Carol was first sung. While doing his work in St. Nicholas, he obtained a copy of the composition and took it home with him and that’s how this lovely Carol got launched into the world.
Two travelling families of folk singers from the Ziller Valley incorporated the song into their repertoire after having seen Herr Mauracher’s copy. According to the Leipziger Tageblatt, the Strassers, one of the two families, sang the song in a concert in Leipzig in December 1832. It was during this period that a few of the notes were changed, and the Carol evolved into the easy melody we know and love today. On another occasion, according to an historical plaque, the Rainer family, the other singing family from the Ziller, sang this Christmas Carol before an audience which included Emperor Franz I and Tsar Alexander I. In AD1839, the Rainer family performed "Stille Nacht" for the first time in America, at the Alexander Hamilton Monument outside Trinity Church in New York City.
Joseph Bletzacher, a Court Opera singer from Hanover, reported that by the 1840s, this Carol was already well known in Lower Saxony. "In Berlin," he says, "the Royal Cathedral Choir has popularised it.” It became, according to many accounts, the favourite Christmas Carol of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, who used to have his Cathedral Choir sing it for him during Christmas every year.
By the time the song became famous all across Europe Fr. Joseph Mohr had died and the composer of the melody had been forgotten. Although Franz Gruber wrote to many of the music authorities in Berlin stating that he was the composer many people assumed that the tune was the work of Haydn, or Mozart or Beethoven. The mystery of the composer was finally put to rest a few years ago when a long-lost arrangement of "Stille Nacht" penned in the hand of Fr. Mohr, was authenticated. In the upper right hand corner of the arrangement, Father Mohr has plainly written: "Melodie von Fr. Xav. Gruber."
During his lifetime, Franz Xavier Gruber produced a number of orchestral arrangements of his composition. The original guitar arrangement is missing, but five other Gruber manuscripts of this modern Carol exist. The manuscript by Fr. Joseph Mohr ( circa 1820) is for a guitar accompaniment and is probably the closest to the arrangement of the melody sung at that Midnight Mass in 1818 in the St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf.
Later on Herr Gruber and his family moved to Hallein, now the home of the Franz Xavier Gruber Museum. It contains several rooms furnished from his former home along with some outstanding exhibits dealing with the history of "Silent Night" and amongst them is Father Joseph Mohr's guitar. Franz Gruber's grave is outside the house and is decorated with a tree every Christmas.
Father Joseph Mohr's final resting place is the tiny Alpine ski resort of Wagrain. He was born into poverty at 31 Steingasse in Salzburg in 1792 and he died penniless in Wagrain in 1848 (he’d been sent as Pastor to the Church and the faithful there). He had donated all of his earnings for the care of the elderly and for the education of the children in the area. His memorial from the townspeople of Wagrain is, appropriately, the Joseph Mohr School which is located a few tens of metres from his grave. The overseer of the St. Johann Church in Wagrain, in a report to the Bishop, described Fr. Mohr as "...a reliable friend of mankind, toward the poor, a gentle, helping father."
The simple and lovely words of this Carol were born from the imagination of a modest rural priest; the easily memorised tune was composed by a musician who was unknown outside his local area; and this great expression of joy and faith was first sung in a Church dedicated to St Nicholas whom I discussed in Part VIII, yesterday. If that’s not a significant coincidence, maybe even a minor miracle, then I don’t know what is.
And here, in something which probably approximates to Fr. Mohr’s original intention.
And here, for a small taste of English Cathedral Choristers – the great Christian musical heritage of our vanishing England. Posted on 12/22/2009 9:43 AM by John M. Joyce
Monday, 21 December 2009
Christmas Carols VIII
As I wrote in yesterday's post I consider the distinction between Christmas Carols and Christmas songs to be rather artificial. Many of our modern Christmas songs mention a certain Santa Claus – a semi-magical being that brings presents at Christmastide – and some would argue that such songs cannot be carols.
The character of Santa Claus, as you know, is based on a real life Saint called Nicholas who lived in what is now Southern Turkey but in his day and age it was Greek territory. He was born towards the end of the third century, we don’t know the precise date, and he died on December the 6th. AD343. He was a very generous man and a frequent giver of gifts and help to anyone in need, so it’s easy to see how the myth of Santa Claus with his flying sleigh and magical reindeer arose as memory of the deeds of the generous Saint became mixed up in the minds of the laity as the centuries went by. You can find a short biography of Saint Nicholas at this site and the Wikipedia entry is here.
Why am I mentioning St. Nicholas today when, for most Christians, his Feast Day was back on December 6th? That’s because in my particular tradition inside the Church of England we celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas today (the 21st. of December). I don’t know how that came about but I suspect that it’s something to with the Julian as opposed to the Gregorian Calendar, and because the Saint is in my mind I thought it would be good to have a look at some songs about him. (Today is also the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle for those of you who follow the American Episcopalian tradition and the Feast of St. Peter Canisius if you follow the Roman Calendar.)
There are two Christmas songs about Santa Claus that I really like. The first is this one (you can hear this first one here):
[‘I just got back from a lovely trip
along the Milky Way
I stopped off at the North Pole
to spend a holiday.
I called on dear old Santa Claus
to see what I could see
He took me in his workshop
And told his plans to me, so...’]
You better watch out!
Better not cry!
Better not pout!
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is comin' to town.
He's making a list
and checking it twice.
He's going to find out who's naughty and nice.
Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town.
He sees when you're sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good.
So be good for goodness sake!
You better watch out!
Better not cry!
Better not pout!
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is comin' to town.
With little tin horns and little toy drums,
rootie-toot-toots and rum-a-tum tums.
Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town.
Curly head dolls that toddle and coo,
elephants, boats and kiddie cars too.
Santa Claus is comin' to town.
The boys and girls in toyland
will have a jubilee.
They're going to build a toyland town,
all around the Christmas tree.
You better watch out!
Better not cry!
Better not pout!
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is comin' to town.
I saw Mommy tickle Santa Claus
Underneath the mistletoe last night.
She didn't see me creep
Down the stairs to have a peep;
She thought that I was tucked up in my bedroom fast asleep.
Then, I saw Mommy tickle Santa Claus
Underneath his beard so snowy white;
Oh, what a laugh it would have been
If Daddy had only seen
Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night.
So, what’s significant about these songs (and many others about Santa Claus too)? Well, the first one is a teaching song just as many of the ancient Carols are. It’s very simple and it isn’t great poetry for it’s aimed at children. Look at it closely, however, and you’ll see that it contains just the right amount of our common culture about Christmas for young minds to grasp. It contains the Santa Claus myth; it has the concept of reward for virtue (being good) and the lack of any reward for being bad; and it references the tradition of evergreen decorations at Christmas by mentioning the Christmas tree. The song is very simple but it has enough of the elements of Christmas in it to fall firmly into the mainstream, ancient tradition of Christmas singing. Is it a Carol? Some would argue not, because it makes no mention of Christ and His Nativity but one has to remember that it’s aimed at the very young who probably wouldn’t understand such a mention anyway. So maybe it’s a young children’s carol.
The second song is probably not a carol even in my opinion, but it is a Christmas teaching song. Why is it a teaching song? Because it’s reminding parents that one day their little innocent child will be grown up and will understand about Christmas as they do and that nothing lasts forever. It’s also, indirectly, about the love between two good parents and I hope you noticed the symbolic evergreen creeping in there in the second line – the mistletoe (and there’s a Christmas evergreen that really is all bound up with our ancient pagan past!). Even this song is firmly rooted in the ancient traditions of Christmas.
Here Comes Santa Claus
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,
Right down Santa Claus lane
Vixen and Blitzen and all his reindeer
Pullin' on the reins
Bells are ringin', children singin'
All is merry and bright
Hang your stockings and say your prayers
'Cause Santa Claus comes tonight!
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,
Right down Santa Claus lane
He's got a bag that's filled with toys
For boys and girls again
Hear those sleigh bells jingle jangle,
Oh what a beautiful sight
So jump in bed and cover your head
'Cause Santa Claus comes tonight!
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,
Right down Santa Claus lane
He doesn't care if you're rich or poor
He loves you just the same
Santa Claus knows we're all Gods children
That makes everything right
So fill your hearts with Christmas cheer
'Cause Santa Claus comes tonight!
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,
Right down Santa Claus lane
He'll come around when the chimes ring out
That it's Christmas morn again
Peace on earth will come to all
If we just follow the light
So lets give thanks to the lord above
That Santa Claus comes tonight!
Now this third song has bells, G-d, Prayers and even an exhortation for peace on earth. In the antepenultimate and the penultimate lines of the final stanza there is even a quite overt reference to the Christ. In fact, the last six lines of the last verse is nothing more than reference to the Watchnight Services which we all attend. This Christmas song is definitely directly in the mainstream tradition of Christmas Carolling.
These modern Christmas songs may not be the traditional Carols which we all know and love but they are well within the meaning of, the spirit of and the tradition of, Christmas. Even when they are ostensibly only about the myth of Santa Claus they reference that lovely, generous Saint – Nicholas, Bishop of Myra and may G-d bless him and keep him. Posted on 12/21/2009 7:00 AM by John M. Joyce
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Christmas Carols VII
Some people seek to make a distinction between Christmas Carols and Christmas songs. I believe that such a distinction is spurious because originally all Christmas Carols were merely songs which celebrated Christmas and were sung by the laity or the choir inside, and outside of, Church services at Christmastide. They were often, as I have demonstrated earlier in this series of posts, teaching songs – they taught the unlettered the meaning of Christmas in an easy to remember way – or were songs of celebration and joy sung to honour the Birth of Our Lord and Saviour. Sometimes they were songs from our ancient, pagan past which were given a Christian twist or two in order to make them acceptable and to allow a harmless tradition to continue uninterrupted into the Christian ages (as I argued here, yesterday).
There is a modern myth that it was St. Francis of Assisi who first introduced Carols at Christmas into Church services, but there is ample evidence to indicate that specifically Christmas Carols were known and sung by Christians at Christmas Services as early as the 300s AD in imperial Rome and its provinces. Often the words of such Hymns (Carols) were deliberately set to known tunes of the time – we have every reason to believe that even St. Ambrose’s starkly simple and very beautiful Veni redemptor gentium (a Christmas Carol composed by that Saint of Milan to counter the influence of the Arian heresy and explain the truly Christian view of the Incarnation of Christ – a teaching song again, it seems) used a much older, well-known and haunting tune.
The Roman imperial Latin poet and lawyer Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, 348(?) – 413(?) AD, composed the very popular Corde natus ex Parentis (‘Of the Father's love begotten’) which is still sung at Christmas in many Churches today and you can listen to it here (he also composed that great Hymn of the Epiphany which we still sing sing today: O sola magnarum urbium (‘Earth Has Many a Noble City’), but that’s another story and the tune we all know to that Hymn is probably a much more modern creation, I think!). I’ve no reason to believe that the surviving and ancient tunes, in general, no matter that they have been ‘modernised’, do not carry with them some relationship to the originals for there is copious evidence in many collections and ancient libraries which demonstrates the persistence of musical tradition.
However, let’s move the story on a bit. The Saxons came into England after the fall of Rome and they brought their traditions of worship of their pagan gods with them. They were, as you all know, gradually Christianised and many of their ancient traditions were incorporated into English Christianity and then disseminated throughout the world over the next many centuries as England grew to be an imperial power and an important player on the world stage. Long before that process began to happen a Cistercian monk, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 to 1153 AD), championed the developing Christmas music in the cloisters under his control and such music was usually sung by his chorister monks at Christmastide. It has to be remembered that the Monastic Churches were often, indeed usually, also Parish Churches and the Parish priest often lived within the cloister and that this meant that whatever the monks in a particular locality practised the laity usually followed. Where Monasteries emphasised, once again, Christmas music and songs, as the Bernardine Cistercians did, then a rich tradition of such songs sprang up very easily amongst the local laity.
Encouraged by the cloistered ones, ancient tunes and dimly remembered lyrics were pressed by the lay peoples into the service of their Christian Faith and the choirmasters in the cloisters fed off the ancient musicality of the laity also. Much of the ancient Roman musical tradition of Christmas that was on the very edge of extinction in England and Northern France was resurrected and rewritten – just as the Victorian collectors resurrected and rewrote that which the idiot Puritans of the so-called Reformation sought in killjoy fashion to suppress – by those Cistercian music masters in their Monasteries. We owe those many un-named and unremembered musicians of the Cistercian cloisters of England a debt of gratitude for without them there would have been nothing left for the great scholars of the Victorian era to collect and we would have been, this Christmastide, frighteningly bereft of our ancient Carols.
However, we do know the name of one very prominent monastic musician who fed from common pool – Adam of St. Victor (a Monastery just outside medieval Paris) – and we know that he wrote (in the twelfth century) many great Hymns, and great Christmas Hymns, based on vernacular words and music. He wrote, to name but a few, Laudes crucis attolamus, Verbi vere substantivi and Stola regni laureatus, which are all still sung today.
Moving on, again, I must ask why so many of us believe, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that St. Francis initiated the modern Christmas Carol singing tradition in our Churches. Well, simply put, that’s because he revived the musical legacy of the Bernardine Cistercians and the early Roman Church’s music which they revived, and he was the last great Saint to do so. His revival of the great songs (Carols) of Christmas is still with us today – and salvaged for us by the great collectors of Victorian England as it almost died out once again in our country because of the Puritans. But St. Francis was merely reviving the legacy of Bernard of Clairvaux and the impact that the Cistercians made on the Yuletide musicality of Northern Europe – and on England – and they, the Cistercians, in their turn, were merely reviving a much older Roman tradition which, in England, had previously melded with the songs of the Saxon conversion. The music masters of the Franciscans found easy and rich pickings in England!
And the Ancient Roman Christians in whose time all this Carolling business started? Well they were merely rewriting in Christian terms the ancient pagan Hymns which were in turn based on something which musicologists suggest was even older. We are connected to this ancient past through an unbroken line of singers – monks and laity – and we forget that at our peril.
But new tunes and new words have been born from our ancient past, and a new musicality for our age has arisen from all the ancient tunes and much loved words – but that’s for later. Posted on 12/20/2009 7:01 AM by John M. Joyce
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Christmas Carols VI
There are today carols for many of the great Feasts of the Church but by far and away most often we use the word to refer to the songs about Christ’s Incarnation which we sing at Christmas in Church – or privately. The English word ‘Carol’ derives from the Old French verb ‘caroller’ which, at the time it came into English, meant to dance a circle dance whilst singing or being sung to (and that French word is traceable to Ancient Greek dramatic roots). Circle dances are a very ancient pagan tradition and refer to the idea of the circle of life and the turning of the seasons – “...singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day...” as Longfellow so eloquently put it in his Carol which I discussed in yesterday's post.
That’s a neat way of summing things up because, as we all know, the world turns and the world changes. Carols have changed, too: not in their ported meanings or their symbolism but in their language and their musical styles. The language has often been updated, as has the music, and in no era was that a more common occurrence than in the Victorian in the UK.
Many Christmas festivities, and consequently much Christmas music, were banned under the dead-handed rule of the religious bigot Oliver Cromwell, and despite his rule over Britain being short the damage he did to our ancient traditions took until Victorian times to remedy. However, our Victorian ancestors set to the task of restoring our traditions as best they could with much glee and gusto and the survival of many of the Christmas Carols which we know and love today is solely due to the efforts of the peoples of that era to collect and revive as much of our culture as they could before it died out completely.
The words of many of the ancient Carols were revised and updated in that great imperial epoch. The tunes to which they were set were also collected, revised and updated. Amongst the many of those surviving which were rewritten and are still popular today one can find such much-loved gems as ‘Good Christian Men Rejoice’, ‘It Came Upon A Midnight Clear’ and ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’ which are all ancient Carols rewritten by the Victorians so as to be more understandable in modern times. Much of the original words and melodies are lost to us but the Victorian scholars collected and popularised that which remained. Analysis of the tunes and the words so collected indicate to experts today that much of the content of these collections is very old indeed and that the tunes may be, probably are in their original form, much older than Christianity itself. Consider, if you will, that the tune of the official National Anthem of the United Kingdom (“God save our gracious Queen...”) is reckoned by many experts to be at least two thousand years old, probably much older in its original form, and that that tune has served as the anthem for many different States down through the ages.
‘The Wassail Song’, which doesn’t really celebrate Christmas but the New Year, having but one scant reference to Christmas in the fifth stanza, is a prime example of the Victorian rewriting of the Yuletide Carols. This song was certainly known in Shakespearean times and was already considered to be very old then:
Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wand'ring
So fair to be seen.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.
We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door,
But we are neighbours' children
Whom you have seen before
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.
Good master and good mistress,
As you sit beside the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who wander in the mire.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year
We have a little purse
Made of ratching leather skin;
We want some of your small change
To line it well within.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.
Bring us out a table
And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out a cheese,
And of your Christmas loaf.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.
God bless the master of this house,
Likewise the mistress too;
And all the little children
That round the table go.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.
The tune, judging by its intervals, is extremely ancient and the words refer to a tradition which I detailed here last year. It was collected and popularised by the Victorians but wassailing is a pagan tradition which was continued on these Islands by the Saxons who brought it from the European mainland and Heaven alone knows how old it, that tradition, might actually be: some experts reckon on three to five thousand years old.
However, let us return to the Christmas Carol. By the time Victoria ascended the Thrones of Britain in 1837AD the ancient Christmas Carols were only being sung in the more isolated rural parishes of Britain – and often in a much-debased form from the originals. We owe it to the great and painstaking Victorian collectors that we have today some semblance of our ancient Christmas Carols which we can still all sing and enjoy. Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert in 1840AD allowed the Prince Consort to re-energise the celebration of Christmas in Britain and inspired the great collectors of our ancient lore and lays to even greater efforts. Without the efforts of those Victorian scholars and collectors we would have lost such Christmas Carols as ‘The First Noel’, ‘The Cherry Tree’ and, of course, ‘My Dancing Day’, the Carol that the late Margiad Evans (Peggy Whistler) references in her great novel ‘Country Dance’ (the Welsh ‘Wuthering Heights’ as some term it); and we would have lost the ‘Sans Day’ Carol from Cornwall, as well.
We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Victorian travelling, erudite scholars who made it their business to preserve our culture and to educate us all about our past. Without them our modern Christmas would be a small thing indeed for it would lack our traditional music and we would be even more susceptible than we are to the fell influences of pagan Islam. Those scholars and collectors not only preserved the words and the music, they also understood the ancient meanings and the symbolism and they did their best to pass all that on to us.
I cannot leave this discussion without mentioning some few, so very few, of the great Victorian collectors. There’s A.H. Bullen, who published his Carols and Poems in 1885; and W.H. Husk who’s Songs of the Nativity was printed in 1868. Then there’s E.F. Rimbault’s Little Book of Carols published in 1846 (and his further collections of 1863 and 1865). There’s also the great Dr. John Stainer’s (with H.R. Bramley) Christmas Carols New and Old from 1871; and, of course, R. Vaughan Williams’ Eight Traditional English Carols, Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire. To these few, and many, many unsung others, we owe a huge debt of gratitude, for without them there would be no modern Christmas Carol and the Christmas celebration we know and love today would lack its rich music and many of our Christmas musical traditions.
However, as they collected from the past, our age was in gestation and we were about to add, as we were born and reformed the world, to the great tradition of Christmas Carolling. Posted on 12/19/2009 9:14 AM by John M. Joyce
Friday, 18 December 2009
Christmas Carols V
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
On Christmas Day in 1863AD one of the USA’s great poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), composed the following poem entitled ‘Christmas Bells’:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"
As you can plainly read this poem is not just about the promise of Christmas which was at the time being betrayed in that great fratricidal Civil War, but it also came from the heart and says something about Longfellow’s state of mind. Two years prior to writing this he had lost his wife in an accident at their home in which she died from injuries sustained when her clothing caught fire and he himself was badly scarred as he attempted to save her. His trademark beard was grown to cover the painful scars on his face which made shaving a penance.
About a month before penning the words of this poem his son, Lieutenant Charles Appleton Longfellow was severely wounded at the Battle of New Hope Church, VA, during the Mine Run Campaign (late November into early December in 1863AD). The poet’s deep despair and downcast state of mind is plain for all to read in his private journal.
However, the Christmas Carol we all know and love (‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’) didn’t come into being until over a decade later:
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
Sometime during or after 1873, John Baptiste Calkin (1827-1905), an English Professor of Music, set the words to one of his own tunes. However, his is not the tune which is most often heard today, that honour goes to a tune composed by Johnny Marks (he of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ fame) sometime in the 1950s.
Now, the poet Longfellow was no slouch when it came to learning and you can plainly see that he used much of the ancient symbolism of Christmas – bells, chanting voices in unbroken song, despair (the ‘for-lorn’ referenced in yesterday’s Part IV of this series of posts on Christmas Carols) changed to hope through the Saviour’s coming and the final stanza’s pealing of the bells ‘more loud and deep’ which is nothing more or less than the ancient ‘magic’ of percussion used long before Christ’s coming in order to summon the divine to ones service – the Divine which isn’t dead nor sleeping, but awaits our call to it (in both senses of that phrase).
Many of the complexities of our society’s millennia old symbolism is still represented here in a Carol penned in the late nineteenth century of our modern era by a great and well-educated poet of the New World. The fact that the poet’s own despair gave rise to the words somehow, for me, just reinforces the symbolism; and it puts this popular modern Carol firmly into the ancient tradition of our Western world – it’s just another step along the road of our incredibly rich and evolving culture. Posted on 12/18/2009 7:58 AM by John M. Joyce
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Christmas Carols IV
I have a particular fondness for many of the very old Christmas Carols which are seldom heard these days – Mary has one here – for they are often very simple once one manages to get to grips with the older form of English in which they are written.
Many of these old Carols are nothing more than catchy, simple teaching songs written to explain Christmas to the illiterate folk of the time in a way that they might easily remember. Such a one is ‘A New Year, A New Year, a child was yborn’
A new oer! a new oer! a chyld was i-born,
Us for to savyn that all was for-lorn,
So blyssid be the tyme!
The fader of hevene his owyne sone he sent,
His kyngdam for to cleymyn,
So blyssid be the tyme!
Al in a clene maydyn our Lord was i-lyot
Us for to savyn with all his myot,
So blyssid be the tyme!
All of a clene maydyn our Lord was i-born,
Us for to savyn that al was forr-lorn,
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytle chyld, myn owyn dere fode,
How schalt thou sufferin be naylid on the rode?
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytle child, I synge al for thi sake,
Many on is the scharpe schour to thi body is schape;
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lyllay! lullay! lytle chyle, I syng al be-forn,
How schalt thou sufferin the scharp garlong of thorn?
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytle chyle, qwy wepy thou so sore?
And art thou bothin God and man? Quat woldyst thou be more?
So blyssid be the tyme!
Blyssid be the armys the chyld bar abowte!
And also the tetes the chyld on sowkyd!
So blyssid be the tyme!
Blyssid be the moder! the chyld also!
With benedicamus Domino!
So blyssid be the tyme!
These fourteenth century words can be found in Thomas Wright’s book(1) and he gives his source as the Sloane Manuscript Collection (now held by the British Museum in London (UK) ). Edith Rickert in her great book on the ancient Carols of England(2) renders the verses into slightly more modern English thuswise (and I’ve added a little further help in the parentheses):
A New Year, A New Year, a child was yborn,
Us for to saven that all was forlorn,
So blessed be the time.
The Father of heaven His own Son He sent,
His kingdom for to claimen (on earth is He lent).
So blessed be the time.
All in a clean maiden our Lord was ylight,
Us for to saven with all His might.
So blessed be the time.
‘Lullay, lullay, little Child, mine own dear fode, [a babe in arms]
How shalt Thou suffer (to) be nailed on the Rood?’
So blessed be the time.
‘Lullay, lullay, little Child, mine own dear smart, [unknowing of future sadness]
How shalt Thou suffer the sharp spear to Thy heart?’
So blessed be the time.
‘Lullay, lullay, little Child, I sing all for Thy sake,
Many (a) one is the sharp shower [wound] to Thy body is shape!’ (you’ll take]
So blessed be the time.
‘Lullay, lullay, little Child, fair haps [many things] Thee befall,
How shalt Thou suffer to drink eisel [vinegar] and gall?’
So blessed be the time.
‘Lullay, lullay, little Child, I sing all beforn,
How shalt Thou suffer the sharp garland of thorn?’
So blessed be the time.
‘Lullay, lullay, little Child, why weepest Thou so sore,
And art Thou (then) both God and man, what wouldest Thou be more?’
So blessed be the time.
Blessed be the arms the Child have tucked, [has been held in]
And also the teats the Child hath sucked.
So blessed be the time.
Blessed be the mother, the Child also,
With Benedicamus Domino.
So blessed be the time.
So it’s a triple teaching Carol. The first three verses lay out the reasons for Christ being born. The next six verses presage the Events of Easter; and the last two verses emphasise the importance of Mary Mother of God. It does all these things in easy to learn, short, rhyming verses that can be taught to children and the unlettered with ease.
This is Richard Terry’s arrangement of the collected music(3) for this Carol:
One can see that the tune is very old despite Terry giving it a more modern feel – in fact it could be very old indeed, anything up to twenty-five centuries old. This ancient Carol, and its probably extremely old tune (but this tune may not belong to this Carol for Terry is not completely to be trusted and was a good enough composer to have been able to make tunes which he, himself, composed sound as if they have ancient roots), is yet another example of the remarkable persistence of our cultural roots into the modern day and of the extensive depth, intricacy and richness of those roots. The legacy of our ancestors informs our culture today and it’s that legacy and our present culture that this site fights to defend.
Notes:
(1) Wright, Thomas, Specimens of old Christmas Carols, Selected from Manuscripts and Printed Books, London (UK), The Percy Society, 1841.
(2) Rickert, Edith, Ancient English Christmas Carols: 1400-1700, London (UK), Chatto & Windus, 1914.
(3) Terry, Richard R, Twelve Christmas Carols, London (UK), J. Curwen & Sons Ltd, 1912. Posted on 12/17/2009 8:41 PM by John M. Joyce
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Christmas Carols III
I saw three ships come sailing in
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning.
And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day?
And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas Day in the morning?
The Virgin Mary and Christ were there,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
The Virgin Mary and Christ were there,
On Christmas Day in the morning.
Pray, wither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
Pray, wither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas Day in the morning?
Oh they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
Oh they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day in the morning.
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day in the morning.
And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas Day in the morning.
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas Day in the morning.
Then let us all rejoice again,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
Then let us all rejoice again,
On Christmas Day in the morning.
What, however, does it mean? Well, let’s start with the tune. It’s a very old tune and has obviously come down to us today by being filtered through Saxon musicians and refined into modern musicality at a much later date – its intervals indicate that it could be over twenty-five centuries old and, perhaps, based on even earlier tonalities. Obviously, therefore, the words which we know and love today are not the original ones but later Christian lyrics.
These modern, relatively speaking, Christian words contain a wealth of references to the earliest years of our Faith. For example, in stanzas one and five the ships come sailing in – to landlocked Bethlehem! Obviously, we are not meant to take the words literally, so what is the symbolic meaning? Well, the first Christians saw the world as their contemporaries did and for those peoples, and for countless of generations before them, ships, and those who controlled and steered them, seemed to possess a divine, almost magical, quality. The world appeared to our remote ancestors to be very much larger than we perceive it to be today and mostly they did not travel more than a mile or two from where they were born and raised, so, for them, a ship suddenly becoming visible on the horizon was an almost magical event and the fact that it had travelled, invisibly to them, for vast distances and visited places unknown was a magical thing that could only be done with divine blessing.
When our early Christian ancestors wanted to glorify and magnify the Birth of Our Lord in Bethlehem it was natural for them to use the idea of the wondrous ship in order to convey the divine, and the divinely supranatural, nature of the event. The ships that sailed into Bethlehem bore (in the third verse) the purity of Mary and the Soul of The Christ and they didn’t sail on water, they sailed on the Spirit of G-d – the very aether of the world which G-d created and enlivened by His Spirit and that is made plain in the sixth stanza, but don’t let’s forget that ships feature prominently in many Biblical tales: the Ark, Jesus at Galilee as the Fisher of Men, in the calming of the storm, and as the ship of salvation which is the Faith itself, to name but four. The ship, Peter’s barque, has come to represent the very Church and, indeed, in Christian architecture the central area of a Church is still, to this very day, called the ‘nave’ which is a direct crib from the Latin word for a ship.
The sixth verse is very interesting and probably contains some of the most ancient symbolism of all. Percussion – beating upon things to make euphonious sounds or discordant noises – is amongst the oldest of pre-Christian ‘magics’ and is probably the origin of organised music. With the development of metals, beating upon a sonorous metallic, hollow object added a whole new range of percussive abilities to the noise-making repertoire and it is but a short step to add a clapper to the hollow metal tube that archaeological finds indicate that the earliest bells were.
The earliest mention of bells in the Christian texts that I can find seems to be in Exodus (Ch. 28, Vs. 33, 34 and 35) and they are obviously small, golden, metallic, sounding objects attached to the vestments of the High Priest and the fact that they are attached to such important garments indicates just how symbolically important they were considered to be, but bells are also recorded in Zechariah Ch. 14, V. 20 where they are said to be attached to the caparisons of a horse girt for war – a war of religion at that.
However, bells ringing and souls singing in this particular carol are meant to indicate the Spiritual sea upon which we are all supposed to float and upon the which the ‘ships’ that docked at Bethlehem also float and these stanzas, the sixth and the seventh, may have words that roughly, very roughly, correspond with the original ones from twenty-five, or more, centuries ago, or, at least, they may port the original sense of the original words. The sound of bells, or any percussive instrument, and the sound of singing voices, was once believed to be divinely magical and possessed the ability to change reality. It is interesting to note that the square bell – a bell shaped like a four-faced pyramid – was involved in worship in the temples of Ancient Egypt from the first Dynasty onwards and it seems that they were used, together with the other known idiophonic instruments of the time, to induce trances and summon the divine.
It is the tradition, and superstitions, of the bells and the voices that these two stanzas refer to. Even today, Christians use bells in many ways and they are still rung to signify (summon?) the presence of G-d at the moments of Consecration in the Mass. The bells in this carol, of course, refer to the ultimate moment of Consecration – the moment when G-d was made man, voluntarily became man and shared our suffering and began to teach us how to forgive.
It’s just a small wonder, then, that Islam hates the sound of Christian bells! That, of course, is another one of our beliefs – the Devil can’t abide the sound of Christians ringing bells and that’s why we clink our glasses together when we propose a toast: to imitate the sound of bells and to ward the Devil away from the good Christian sentiment of the toast; a toast that until very recently most of us, had we been the toaster or the toastee or the toasted, would have drunk in wine – the Blood of Christ.
So this carol, as I hope you can see, is much more complex, deep and ancient than you might have previously thought. Once again, and for the third time of saying, can you see just how wonderful the culture we defend at this site actually is and how our simple Christmas carols are anything but simple, and how they join us to our ancient past and to the ancient faith of the Jewish people – those of the Elder Faith. Posted on 12/16/2009 7:32 AM by John M. Joyce
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Christmas Carols – II
The Holly and the Ivy:
This is a very old carol and it seems that it survived the reformation and the fell, evil and dreadful hand of the so-called Lord Protector. The lyrics are as follows, or so they have come down to us:
The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flower
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To be our sweet Saviour
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a bark
As bitter as any gall;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to redeem us all.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly and the ivy
Now both are full well grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
Now, the Holly and the Ivy represent the male and the female – the yin and the yang if you must have it in some other spurious cultural reference – but Holly, so it seems, dates from our ancient pagan past as representative of life, evergreen life, persisting through the winter snows and coupled with the shy and retiring, modest perhaps, shade loving ivy (all the characteristics of the decent female!).
Holly has a "white as a lily" flower and in the second stanza it is an allusion to Christ's purity inherited through Mary His Virgin Mother.
In the third stanza, an obvious correlation is drawn between the red colour of the Holly's berry and Christ's blood and it’s very interesting to draw the comparison with the stain of the collie bird’s beak which I mentioned in part I.
Holly's thorny spines and prickles in the fourth stanza is an allusion to the "crown of thorns" worn by Christ as he was tortured and crucified.
And the bitter taste of Holly's bark which is mentioned in the fifth stanza is a reference to the drink offered to Christ as he hung upon the Cross.
But and but, all this symbolism is much older than the Christian tradition, though none the less valid for that, and Holly was considered by the Ancient Romans to be one of the plants of Saturn and was woven into crowns and garlands at the Saturnalia.
However, there is some evidence that the symbology of evergreens –specifically Holly and Ivy in this case – predates recorded history for the dried remains of both plants can often be found in excavated tombs dating from before the invention of writing. Also, there is some small, but very meagre, evidence that the ancient Mesopotamians celebrated the Winter Solstice (for twelve days [!]) with decorations of evergreens, over forty centuries ago in order to help one of their principle gods – Marduk – tame Kaos for another year.
Christmas is so complicated and bound up with our ancient past, isn’t it?
There is copious evidence which links this carol to much older times than the Christian traditions and the relatively recent celebrations of the Winter Solstice. Once again our Judeo-Christian culture turns out to be much deeper, richer and more ancient than anything that one could imagine. This solstice is important to humankind but the greatest Church in Christendom does not demonstrate that fact.
St.Peter’s Basilica in Rome is not aligned, quite deliberately, for the Winter Solstice, but is aligned for the Vernal Equinox; as it should be for it celebrates life and fecundity: and that was a deliberate decision made in the face of the full knowledge of our past – a knowledge which we are in danger of losing. It’s only at the Vernal Equinox that the sun (the Son?) strikes through the great doors and illuminates the Papal Altar: Easter is the more important festival!
But, what of the ‘running deer’? Well that’s the ancient symbol of kingship for a year and a day, or a rut and a lay. You choose, for the precise meaning is lost in the mists of time – but we still celebrate it and remember it in our Stag Nights when we party with the Bridegroom. And that’s a tradition which is at least forty centuries old. Ah, the stag, the rutting stag, still present in one of our favourite Christmas carols after all the centuries of civilisation!
Posted on 12/15/2009 7:12 AM by John M. Joyce
Monday, 14 December 2009
Christmas Carols – I
The Twelve Days of Christmas:
Although, and I love to be a pedant, in the fourth stanza it is not ‘calling birds’ but more correctly ‘collie birds’ – blackbirds that is, a plentiful food source when this roundalay was originally penned, and therefore a most useful gift. The ‘four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie’ from the old nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence refers to the same food source.
On the first day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.
On the second day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the third day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the fourth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the fifth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the sixth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the seventh day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the eighth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the ninth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Nine ladies dancing,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the tenth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Ten lords a-leaping,
Nine ladies dancing,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Eleven pipers piping,
Ten lords a-leaping,
Nine ladies dancing,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Twelve drummers drumming,
Eleven pipers piping,
Ten lords a-leaping,
Nine ladies dancing,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four collie birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree!
Symbolically ‘the partridge in a pear tree’ is Christ on the Cross, the ‘two turtle doves’ (a bird which mates for life) symbolise the eternal love of God,
‘French hens’ are Nuns (and that term for a Nun persists in the more rural parts of England up until these modern times) and symbolise the union of these ladies with Christ for they are the brides of Christ and northern French hens usually had black and white colourations similar to a Nuns habits and were introduced into England by the Normans after the conquest in 1066AD but it’s equally as likely that the ‘two French hens’are meant to represent the two major Testaments.
The ‘collie birds’ I’ve already mentioned (above) and their black colouring was seen as demure and pure and the flash of orange of the beak as symbolic of Christ’s dried blood staining the habit. They also refer to the four Gospels.
‘Five golden rings’ refers to the ring-necked pheasant which is a Christian symbol for one who seeks spiritual (or pure) love – and this is an ancient symbol which can be traced all the way back to the tale of Jason and the Argonauts by the way. The ‘golden rings’ also refer to the Pentateuch.
‘Six geese a-laying’ is also very ancient symbolism – the goose was the very first wild bird to be domesticated by mankind and was, until very recently, the bird of choice for the Christmas feast (it’s still my preference and a good, fat green goose is the bird which R-------, my partner, and I will be eating this coming Christmas Day) – and the Christian symbolism is very complicated, and very ancient, indeed (and the symbolism of this bird pre-dates Christianity by many thousands of years, as well). Aesop had the fable of the goose which laid golden eggs in his collection of folk tales which he compiled twenty-five centuries ago in ancient Greece as I’m sure that you are all aware. However, the tale is far older than the clever moral compilation by Aesop and can be traced back to the cult of Thoth in ancient Egypt about thirty-four centuries ago. Thoth, so it is said, laid the egg from which Ra, or Atum or Nefertum or Khepri or whatever one wants to call them, emerged as an ibis and that tale of ancient gods is generally reckoned to have emerged from the folk memory of the domestication of geese by early man not too many centuries before it was first written down by the ancient Egyptians as the legend of Thoth in order to justify his position in the pantheon.
Now, the Thothic tradition persisted in Egypt throughout the many dynasties and became incorporated in a debased form into the very early, and I stress the ‘early’ (and the ‘very’), traditions of Coptic Christianity as a legend of the beginning of all things rather than the classical Christian version – a fairytale if you will – and Valentius, an Alexandrian gnostic theologian who lived sometime between 90AD to 170AD, incorporated much of the Thothic tradition into his works. The Valentinian gnostic heresy persisted for many centuries and it’s generally accepted that the ‘six geese a-laying’ derives from that source and refers to our ancient Christian past and the defeat of heresy. Bear in mind that the ‘six’ can also be taken to refer to the six days of creation.
‘Seven swans a-swimming’ – seven (the great and magical prime number reckoned by some to be the first true prime) coupled with swans. The swan is the symbol of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ, and also, from ancient times, a symbol of purity and of the unknown and of unions which last a lifetime, and of, of course, the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
‘Eight maids a-milking’ is quite simply a bawdy reference and has everything to with lactation and breasts and the desire felt by men for fecund women but it is much more likely that it refers to the eight beatitudes and the huge feeling of fulfilment gained by observing them.
‘Nine ladies dancing’ refers to the nine Fruits (not to be confused with the Gifts at seven) of the Holy Ghost.
The ‘ten Lords a-leaping’ calls to mind the great Morris dancing traditions of England born from the Saxon traditions of boozy and spiritual dancing but the ‘ten Lords’ are generally meant to represent the ten commandments.
‘Eleven pipers piping’ are the eleven faithful Apostles – Peter (the Rock), Andrew, James (son of Zebedee), John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (son of Alpheus), Thaddeus and Simon The Zealot, but not Judas the Iscariot who was the twelfth Apostle but not faithful and betrayed our Master.
The ‘twelve drummers drumming’ is a very obvious reference to the twelve doctrinal points in the Apostles Creed – the Symbolum Apostolorum or Symbolum Apostolicum – which is sometimes called the ‘Symbol of the Apostles’:
I believe in G-d the Father Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth (1),
And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord (2),
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary (3),
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried (4),
He descended into hell.
The third day He rose again from the dead (5);
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of G-d the Father Almighty (6);
From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead (7).
I believe in the Holy Ghost (8);
The Holy Catholic Church and
The Communion of Saints (9);
The Forgiveness of sins (10);
The Resurrection of the body (11),
And the Life everlasting (12).
(Amen).
On that great statement of Faith (a statement I make and affirm several times every week) – a faith that I believe in and will defend to my last dying breath if I have to – I take my leave of you, having, I hope, demonstrated just how deep, ancient and complex the Judeo-Christian culture which we defend actually is.
But then, I’m C. of E. and everyone knows that G-d is an Englishman! Isn’t He? Posted on 12/14/2009 6:33 AM by John M. Joyce
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
How, Exactly, Do You Think That An International Conference Works?
Well, apart from the hookers and the gigolos, it works pretty much as most things organised by governments work: scarcely at all, that is, and with a deep and sleazy feel.
Physically the security here in Copenhagen is very good. There are security gates and frequent checkings of ones pass – especially if one wants to get into the Bella Centre wherein the main conference is being held, and that’s right and proper. Obviously, and just as one would expect, there is huge lobby of special interest groups, each and every one of them touting their green credentials in some strident, vacuous, raucous and vainglorious way. “Eat hand-knitted yoghurt”, “grow your own computer”, “buy a photovoltaic cell for your male-pattern bald-spot”, “methane-rich bovine flatulence drives turbines”, “hedgerows for freedom”, “chrysanthemums for freedom” (don’t ask, I’ve no more idea on either of the last two than you might have), “save the Manchurian worm”, “save a tree for Christmas: use plastic” (!) – each and every lunacy which one can possibly imagine is represented here in the lobby to the Conference.
But there is one group of people, of industrialists, which is conspicuous by its overt and seeming absence and that group is those who mine, extract, or otherwise trade in, hydrocarbons and coal. That group doesn’t, as far as I can ascertain, have any representation in the lobby at all! But that doesn’t mean that they have admitted defeat and withdrawn from the fray – far from it!
Much earlier this evening I, with many others, was entertained to a very good dinner in one of Copenhagen’s finest hotels by a group of people who represented those industries. Our host was/is a representative for a consortium of international companies with vested interests in the fossil fuel industries. In his after dinner speech he emphasised the one fact that is beginning to emerge from this Conference: the hydrocarbon and solid-fuel companies don’t have to have official representation here at this discredited Conference for they have already won the legal argument even though they have lost the moral high ground. They have spent millions – at least, at the very least, $58.000,000 in the USA alone in the last year – in order to sustain their position as energy providers and they have spent that money in individual, national, law-making assemblies and to good effect. It is obvious that these companies don’t give a damn about how much their policies might be contributing to global warming just so long as nobody, least of all this irrelevant Conference, disrupts their damaging and ruinous profits.
Our host was self-congratulatory about the ineffectiveness of Conferences such as Copenhagen. He made no secret of the fact that, as Steve Kretzmann once said, Congress is a fantastic investment for the fossil-fuel industry. One can easily extrapolate the meaning of that to other national governments including the British government.
Undermining its own credibility in Copenhagen and the integrity of its pledge to phase out support for fossil fuels, an agency of the Obama Administration, the United States Export-Import Bank, has reportedly approved $3 billion in financing for an Exxon led consortium constructing a liquefied natural gas plant on Papua New Guinea.
The Obama Administration has yet to commit to any specific amount of financing for developing nations to transition to a clean energy economy and adapt to the impacts of climate change
“Does the Obama Administration seriously expect other nations to believe that it can’t find money to fund international efforts to build a clean energy economy and help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change when they’re still giving billions to Exxon?” said Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International.
Doug Norlen, Policy Director for Pacific Environment added, “How can other governments take the U.S climate change commitments seriously if it is financing the increase of emissions through such fossil fuel projects?”
“Exxon made more than $45 billion last year, making it [one of] the most profitable corporation[s] on the planet. This is the last place that taxpayer support should be going. The Administration should immediately reverse this decision and immediately devote this money and more to international climate finance”, said Kretzmann.
Details of the deal, which has not yet been announced publicly, are going to be announced this week, apparently: just as President Obama appears in Copenhagen!
Now, what can we take from all this? Well, we can take one significant fact from all this – the hydrocarbon and coal industries are more interested in short term profits than in long term gains. Those industries are more interested in ‘burn now’ rather than ‘conserve, and grow the potential future uses’. They have recognised the single most important aspect of energy policy today: there is no point, revenue and tax-wise, in saving for the future and they have also recognised one other important thing: governments either will not, or cannot, actually govern – that they, the energy companies, have more power than elected governments because such governments are afraid to exercise power – and that’s a very important point; governments no longer seek to exercise the mandate given to them by the electorate! Our politicians simply won’t make decisions and direct policies. Our politicians have abdicated power to the ridiculous presumption that the strongest lobby must be correct; they no longer believe in, or exercise, the mandates given to them by their electorates.
And the strongest lobby doesn’t even have to show up!
Nowhere is that more apparent than here in Copenhagen. The ‘no shows’ win and nothing will change – that’s the message that this Conference will be remembered for. It’s the last act of a doomed system – a conference that will decide to do what? Precisely nothing at all!
But, and make no mistake here, this fatal inaction will be cloaked in fine sounding, Obamaesque, words! That’s where politicians go today – straight into Obamaspeak! Meaningless rhetoric has finally won out against rational argument and sound science.
And let me make a final point here. We, the Western nations, have apparently got to make the deepest cuts in our carbon emissions simply because we are wealthy and invented the modern world and because everyone else wants what we have achieved: we must impoverish ourselves to gratify the poorest nations’ aspirations. Were all nations to have a free and democratic system of government then that reasoning might have some validity, but given the fact that most national governments reject democracy whilst demanding parity with the West I fail to see why we should extend any courtesy whatsoever to such regimes.
Quite simply put, I fail to see why we in the free West should rescue the failed regimes of the autocratic, frequently Muslim, violent regimes of our enemies from the natural results of their arrogant behaviours.
Tell me, why should we support this? Why should we support our governments when they advocate such a massive transfer of wealth to third world dictatorships?
Are we stupid? Why do we even contemplate such idiocracy? Posted on 12/09/2009 6:49 AM by John M. Joyce
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Elites, Self-Interest and the Copenhagen Conference
Let’s start with the election of Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri as Chairman of this most important Conference. Did you know, were you ever told, that the good Doctor (2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner on behalf of, and head of, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] along with Vice-President Gore) is also the Chairman of the Sheikh Zayed (United Arab Emirates) Future Energy Prize committee?
Did you know, were you ever told, that the good Doctor was on the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation – one of the most suspect and allegedly one of the most polluting companies on earth – until just six years ago? This is a company deeply mired in as yet unprovable, but probable, corrupt practices which more than likely led to the death of one of its own executives, in 2005, when Shanmugam Manjunath, one of the marketing managers at one of the IOC’s subsidaries, and an MBA from prestigious Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, was murdered for sealing a corrupt petrol station deal in the state of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) in India on behalf of Indian Oil and that that was just the latest in a long line of suspect deals dating back many years which are currently under investigation by legal authorities in India.
in having seen the importance of being in the lead. They may have a lot of oil today, but it is not going to last for ever. And as I keep telling my friends and colleagues here, since you are a major energy exporter today, you have to now invest in technologies and resources that would keep you exporting energy in the future.
Several initiatives are being considered in North Africa, where the large area of land receiving abundant solar radiation can make the region a major world energy exporter. They can generate power using solar technology and transmit the energy to Europe. So it is entirely possible in some form or shape and the UAE can also remain a major energy exporter in the future.
I commend the leadership of the country for what they have done so far in promoting this...
[United Arab Emirates]
Worldwide, there will be a major transition in supply and consumption. I commend the leadership of the UAE
In other, and more accurate, words: let’s keep the developed world in thrall to the Ummah for as long as possible.
Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri is a leading advocate in the pleading of a special case for the heavily polluting, or potentially heavily polluting, third world countries and he argues vociferously that the developed countries must bear the lion’s share (an entire pride’s share, actually) of the necessary cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases so that such countries can follow us into the shining upland pastures of prosperity by simply emulating our unwitting past mistakes which we made as we industrialised in ignorance of the consequences. In that approach he seems to me to be following a completely different agenda from that which the science of climate change indicates. He has neither the imagination nor the intellect (or perhaps, as I personally suspect, he is in hoc to some dubious alliance) to tell the developing world that it must turn aside and cease to copy our past mistakes, but, instead, must use our learning, our existing industrial base and its great labour resource in order to find a new and cleaner way to reach for prosperity – a prosperity which it needs and deserves, as I do not deny.
Moreover, the good Doctor is, or was, involved with the International Association for Energy Economics (a known shill, as I understand it, for the oil industry and, as an organisation, a probable climate change denier - see its blog here) and the Asian Energy Institute – largely, I am given to understand, funded by the Arab oil producing nations (but that is not easy to ascertain and I could be wrong and I’m still working on proving that link-up).
Right from the start the Copenhagen Conference is mired in the stench of corruption and the exercising of double standards. It seems to me, in my personal opinion, to have chosen as its Chairman a deeply unsound and compromised person whose credentials are, for me, highly suspect and scarcely to be trusted.
I think, and this is purely my personal opinion, that the hydrocarbon industry, the oil industry, has pulled off one of the greatest coups of modern times and has managed to place one of their own as head of the IPCC and as Chairman of the Copenhagen Conference. I have absolutely no confidence at all that there will be any real and lasting progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions arising from the process in Copenhagen because, in my personal opinion, the elected and appointed officials attending this conference, in particular Dr. Pachauri (the Chairman), are already deeply in thrall to, and compromised by, their previous, recent and current associations with the oil industry.
By the way, and just to put things into perspective for you, did you know that this Conference in Copenhagen will generate the emission of the same quantity of greenhouse gases as Burkina Faso will emit in one calendar year?
Other delegates to this disreputable travesty of a Conference will come under my gaze as I find out more about them. However, please be under no illusions. This is not a conference about reversing climate change and preserving some semblance of biodiversity and a rich future for our offspring – this is a conference about seeing just how far we can go without actually extinguishing all life on earth: this is a conference about preserving the entrenched positions of existing institutions which do not want to change.
Mostly, this is a Conference about how to save the dinosaurs!
The big question, the question you have to ask yourself as you strive to preserve some semblance of civilisation as the waters rise and the weather systems become ever more erratic, is: are the dinosaurs worth saving? Posted on 12/08/2009 6:41 AM by John M. Joyce
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
The Oldest Industry’s Defence Against Copenhagen
The World’s oldest industry sought to defend itself against the Copenhagen climate summit by offering free call-girl services to delegates:
...the city council had postcards sent to 160 hotels urging people coming to town for next week’s UN Climate Change Conference to "be sustainable – don't buy sex," according to Spiegelonline.
"Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," the cards say.
Pols may think enviro delegates should only burn their cash on the kind of hot Danish that goes with coffee, but sending that kind of message got the Sex Workers Interest Group steamed.
"This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as lord mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don't understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way," the group's spokeswoman, Susanne Møller, was quoted as saying
.
"We have to defend ourselves," Moller said in touting the call girl giveaway, which offers a comp romp [sic] to anyone who can produce a warning card and summit ID badge...
So, tell me, what exactly is unsustainable sex – the sort that the city council would approve of presumably (be unsustainable – do buy sex) – and exactly why is it encouraging it?
Forgive my juvenile and prurient speculation but I am forced to wonder just how one would quantify and offset ones carbon footprint for a night, an evening, an hour, of passion in the arms of one of Copenhagen’s ladies of negotiable virtue? Or, not to be sexist, in the arms of one of Copenhagen’s, ahem, noted gigolos?
Do remind me, but isn’t this supposed to be a serious conference where all the delegates and all of the world’s press address our imminent demise by our own wilful actions?
Silly me! It’s yet another junket for the elite, isn’t it? Posted on 12/08/2009 4:30 PM by John M. Joyce
Friday, 4 December 2009
Check Out The Checkers of Chequers
After reading Esmerelda’s very interesting posts on Public Houses and Inn signs at this post and also here I went crawling through my attic and dug out some of my notes from those ill-remembered lectures, delivered to me in far off and almost forgotten (yes, and halcyon) times, which I mentioned in the comments to her post here.
It seems, from that which I noted as a callow youngster paying but scant attention to a minor part of my degree course, that the chequerboard design of alternating differently coloured squares is ultimately, way back in the dim and distant past of our evolving civilisation, based on a natural flavouring for beer!
Now, bear with me here and forgive my natural loquacity - which is probably due to my natural penchant for consumption of the product of the brewer’s skills, anyway.
It seems, at least according to my badly written notes and poor memory, that archaeologists have determined that beer, before the discovery of hops, was often flavoured with the fruits of the of the wild Service tree (Sorbus torminalis, syn. Torminalis clusii). That particular rowan tree is native all across Europe, North Africa and across Asia Minor as far as as the Elburz Mountains and it’s interesting to note that true beer is not found in the archaeological record east of the Elburz range. The fruits of the wild Service tree taste a little like dates and are still collected from the few surviving trees in the hedgerows of Britain and preserved in honey and eaten at New Year in some country villages. It’s not every year that the fruits will ripen in Britain because Sorbus torminalis requires a hot summer and a long, warm autumn for the fruits to ripen and then blett to edibility, but global warming means that this is now happening in most years and frequent periods of climatic optimum means that regular ripening happened often enough in our past for the memory to be preserved from one generation to the next. However, beer was usually flavoured with underripe and slightly astringent fruits and, anyway, the bletted fruits produced a very short lived brew that was drunk young and was reviled by most as the old women’s drink.
Now what, I hear you all ask, has that got to do with ‘chequers’ and Esme’s interesting, and thirst provoking, disquisitions on Pub signs and her splendid photographs of a reviving artisanal artform? Well, stay with me for just a moment or two whilst I pour myself another foaming tankard of the brew that cheers from the jug, the little brown jug, which the boot boy has just replenished for me from the pub (‘The Swan in Happiness’, if you must know – too, too precious) on the corner of our lane and the High Street.
The bark of the Sorbus torminalis peels away in a roughly chequerboard pattern – the grey bark peels away in rough squares to reveal the dark brown layers underneath – but, and much more importantly, the ripe fruit has lenticel markings which look much like a chequered pattern and the fruits, in English and to this very day, are known as ‘chequers’. English is by no means the only Indic language to preserve this source, most do, and beer, specifically small beer (as a method of rendering water safe to drink using the sterilising properties of alcohol), is historically important. The chequerboard pattern on Inn signs indicated that there was sufficient alcohol in the water such as to render it safe to drink and that sign, that indication, dates from the day and age when the alcohol, the beer, was flavoured with the berries of the wild Service tree – the chequered berry – and that dates back so far into prehistory as to be almost astounding.
One can only guess at the meanings that our very ancient ancestors, lacking any understanding of chemistry or biology, might have ascribed to drunken insights and at how the chequerboard pattern of Dark and Light squares became embroiled in, and entangled with, our religious beliefs but that that pattern did become so mixed up with our beliefs and lives on, today, in so many ways, is undeniable. That Esme finds it hither and yon on so many of her carefully photographed Inn signs is proof, if proof is needed, of just how ancient much of our culture actually is. Esmerelda’s photographs prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that an ancient belief, perhaps an alchemical superstition, lives on into our modern world, albeit unrecognised and in a different way.
Oh, and let me be honest here, sometimes art is just art. Sometimes an Inn sign is just an Inn sign. Sometimes there is no ancient meaning. There is a pub that I know of called the “Queen in Arms”. It’s the hangout of several chess clubs and its sign is a chequerboard painted by the landlord, in all innocence, just two years ago. He doesn’t know that he is the heritor of a proud, millennia-old tradition – why should he? But he is!
By the way, Esme, does the Bosom’s Inn in St. Lawrence Lane still exist? Despite all the time I’ve spent in London I’ve never thought to check up on that! That was one of the great City Inns assigned to Charles Vs suite, when he came over to visit Henry VIII in 1522. At the sign of "St. Lawrence Bosoms" twenty beds and stabling for sixty horses were ordered.
That strange old bit about the trained horse and Bankes which was written under the pen names of "John Dando, the wierdrawer of Hadley, and Harrie Runt, head ostler of Besomes Inne," probably refers to the same Inn, but the horse in question mustn’t be confused with the spartina grazing Bankers living on the islands of North Carolina's Outer Banks.
But this brief entry into the affray is ‘Loves Labours Wonne’ and all I mean to do is shew how Esme’s lovely collection of photographs of ancient Inn signs demonstrate yet another example of our deep and ancient culture and what we could lose if the vile conformity of Islamic belief were to gain the upper hand in our countries.
Now, whose round is it? Thanks! Mine’s a pint of the best. Dash it, make it a half-and-half with a flesh and blood on the side. May as well be hanged for a lamb as led to the slaughter!
Cheers! Posted on 12/04/2009 6:49 AM by John M. Joyce
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Endemic Corruption And Bad Government In Muslim Africa
As long as allegations and accusations of corruption against government officials, innocent or guilty, in the Muslim world are seen as attacks against the state and treasonous crimes then nothing in those Muslim countries is ever going to change and the filthy stench of the festering dishonesty of many Muslim officials will continue to fill the noses of Western aid-givers. I, for one, have ceased to give to any Charity which operates in any Muslim country because I’m sickened by the venality – the bribery and corruption - that such charities have to indulge in in order to help anyone.
I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago but, as usual, real life intervened so I’ve updated it and am posting it after the event in Doha.
The Algerian government is blocking attendance of an Algerian NGO from an upcoming UN anti-corruption summit. This is a deeply worrying development, according to the UNCAC Coalition, a group of over 200 organisations seeking implementation of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC).
The Coalition is also alarmed to learn that a Gabonese citizen included in the summit delegation of another NGO had to press government authorities for months in order to obtain a passport to travel to the Conference. These actions come on the heels of an objection, reportedly by the Russian Federation, to a Georgian NGO’s participation in the same meeting. The UN conference, to be held in Doha from 9-13 November, is due to discuss implementation of the UN Convention, which includes provisions on whistleblower protection and citizen participation in the fight against corruption.
“We are alarmed at a growing pattern of obstruction to civil society participation in the UN anti-corruption conference,” said Kirstine Drew of UNICORN—Trade Union Anti-Corruption Network. “Some governments appear set on stifling civil society voices, including in international fora”.
The rules of procedure for intergovernmental UNCAC meetings, which were set up by governments, allow governmental objection to participation of NGOs unless they are already accredited by the UN system. The Coalition calls for the Russian and Algerian objections to be withdrawn and for steps to be taken to ensure that NGOs and participants will not be excluded on the basis of arbitrary objections, denial of travel documents or other obstructions.
“Governments and international organisations, including the UN, that are committed to civil society participation should ensure that such arbitrary exclusions cannot take place,” said Gillian Dell, Programme Manager at Transparency International, the Coalition’s secretariat.
The summit now taking place for a third time, provides a forum for 141 governments party to the UNCAC to discuss key actions such as the design of a process to assess government progress in delivering on their commitments. Since the UN Convention meetings began in 2006, only one known objection was made to an NGO’s attendance and this was withdrawn prior to the conference.
The Algerian government’s objection to the Association Algérienne de Lutte Contre la Corruption was reportedly received by the UN two weeks after the deadline for such objections and was based on a government claim that the group was not properly registered as an NGO. This claim is disputed by the group, which was first invited and accredited for the upcoming Doha meeting and then disinvited after the Algerian government’s late objection. A representative of the group was present at the second UN summit on the Convention in 2008 and highlighted the need to protect anti-corruption advocates.
The Gabonese citizen, Gregory Ngbwa Mintsa, was a co-complainant in a case brought by Transparence-International France, which called for an inquiry into French property owned by the late Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and two other African heads of state. Following the complaint, Gabonese authorities arrested and began an investigation of the Gabonese citizen on charges of "possession of a document that could be used for propaganda" and "oral and written propaganda in order to incite revolts against authorities.” After great public outcry he was released, but is still under investigation.
Transparency International does good work and can be found at http://www.transparency.org/ . Its report on the UNCAC meeting in Doha can be found here and it states quite clearly that the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) meeting in Doha “has agreed a review mechanism that falls short of effectively tackling the devastating effects of corruption.”
Well, no surprises there then!
In case any of you think that Algeria is just slightly suspect and should be viewed as irrelevant in the overall scheme of things just remember, if you ever knew, that Algeria is deeply complicit in supporting rogue regimes such as that which is currently ruling in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). The following is also from http://allafrica.com/ and can be found at http://allafrica.com/stories/200911040393.html
Sixty-nine more Zimbabwean students have been awarded scholarships to study at Algerian universities as relations between Harare and Algiers in the political, educational and cultural fields continue to strengthen.
Speaking at a ceremony to send off the students in Harare yesterday, Higher and Tertiary Education Minister Stan Mudenge commended Algeria for helping Zimbabwe afford its youths a tertiary education.
"To date, there are 161 students already studying different degree programmes. This positive trend testifies the deepening relationship in the political, educational and cultural fields," he said.
Minister Mudenge said Government was investing heavily in tertiary education as it was the foundation of other forms of development. "The link between higher education and socio-economic development in building knowledge-based societies is overwhelming and strategic. In this endeavour, we pursue the goals of equity, relevance and quality," said Minister MudengeHe urged the students to be good ambassadors for the country and preserve their cultural and national identity.
Algerian Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Ali Mokrani said the scholarship programme was an extension of support rendered to Zimbabwe since the liberation struggle.
"This scholarship is, in fact, a continuity of the training extended by Algeria to the Zimbabwean freedom fighters in the past and today to you as a new generation so that when you return home, you will contribute to the development of a bright Zimbabwe and keep the link alive with Algeria," said Mr Mokrani. (My added bold emphasis.)
The students are offered scholarships to study engineering, science of material, medicine, veterinary, biology, architecture, agronomy, earth sciences, industrial security and French. Algeria has been extending scholarships to African countries for the enhancement of the human relations and sharing of knowledge and capacity building.
In fact Algeria, as most Muslim dominated countries are, is complicit in doing everything it can to undermine moral values and to support illiberal and murderous regimes such as that ruling in Zimbabwe today. However, Algeria is not alone in its duplicitous Muslim outreach programmes. Here at NER I drew your attention to efforts by Kuwait (Kuwait, for Heaven’s sake, a country that we westerners went to war to liberate from an Iraqi invasion) and the The Africa Muslims Agency, and the Kuwaiti financed Al Furqaan (see here) movement, to penetrate and disrupt African countries and their relationships with the rest of the world.
By the way, and just in case you run away with the erroneous impression that Stan Mudenge is, in some sense, a sensible person merely being pragmatic about the education of Zimbabwe’s youth in these difficult times, this Stan Mudenge is the self-same, self-titled and ridiculously self-named (yes, he named himself but heaven alone knows why he named himself as he did – the man is quite mad!) Dr. Isaak Stanislaus Gorerazvo Mudenge who said about Taiwan’s elections back in 2004AD:
"The Government of the republic [sic] of Zimbabwe has followed with grave concern development in the Taiwan Province of the People's Republic of China leading to the sham elcction [sic] and referendum held on 20th March 2004 in a vain attempt to justity [sic] the so-called "Independence of Taiwan".
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