April 15th, 2007
at 3:35 am
(Self Writ, Literature, The King of Terrors)
The relationship between the Gooroo and his disciple is accounted the most holy that can be formed, and subsists to the latest period of life. A Thug may betray his father, but never his Gooroo.
So wrote the redoubtable Charles Mackay in his ever popular Memoirs of Popular Delusions on the Thuggee cult: the wandering ritualists who, whether moving in small groups or in vast gangs, despite extreme affability were less admirable on a walking tour than, say, Christian Andersen’s Travelling Companion. Revisionists have downplayed the millions of alleged murders, as imperialist slander, and as in all these cases, it can be assumed that the count is unknown; that it is vastly inflated; but that even if they killed hardly anyone, the perpetrators were not nice people.
Meadows Taylor’s famous Confessions of a Thug is reviewed here, and here. Dr. Mike Dash wrote a more recent work, Thug, and a newspaper review mentioned that ‘Only once they had found a suitable place for disposing of the bodies would the signal be given — often the victim would be invited to look skywards’ ( Look Upwards Angel ! ) — then the chief strangler would make like Tod Slaughter. The various superstitions attached to the cult added some element of chance to the business: people were safe if employed as an Elephant driver or washerman; but blacksmiths and carpenters were only disallowed if travelling together. If in temporary possession of a cow, you were safe; good thugs couldn’t start the day off until they had heard a partridge; yet to hear a baby owl in daylight presaged disaster — not to the victims, though.
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April 14th, 2007notice
at 11:35 pm
(Other Writ, Poetry, The King of Terrors)
As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
Merrie sang the Birde as she sat upon the spraye;
There came a noble Knyghte,
With his hauberke shynynge brighte,
And his gallant heart was lyghte,
Free and gaye;
As I lay a-thynkynge, he rode upon his waye.
As I lay a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
Sadly sang the Birde as she sat upon the tree!
There seem’d a crimson plain,
Where a gallant Knyghte laye slayne,
And a steed with broken rein
Ran free,
As I laye a-thynkynge, most pitiful to see !
As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
Merrie sang the Birde as she sat upon the boughe;
A lovely Mayde came bye,
And a gentil youth was nyghe,
And he breathed many a syghe
And a vowe;
As I laye a-thynkynge, her hearte was gladsome now.
As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
Sadly sang the Birde as she sat upon the thorne;
No more a Youth was there,
But a Maiden rent her haire,
And cried in sadde despaire,
‘That I was borne !’
As I laye a-thynkynge, she perished forlorne.
As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
Sweetly sang the Birde as she sat upon the briar;
There came a lovely childe,
And his face was meek and mild,
Yet joyously he smiled
On his sire;
As I laye a-thynkynge, a Cherub mote admire.
But I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
And sadly sang the Birde as it perch’d upon a bier;
That joyous smile was gone,
And the face was white and wan,
As the downe upon the Swan
Doth appear,
As I laye a-thynkynge — oh ! bitter flow’d the tear !
As I laye a-thynkynge, the golden sun was sinking,
O merrie sang that Birde as it glitter’d on her breast
With a thousand gorgeous dyes,
While soaring to the skies,
‘Mid the stars she seem’d to rise,
As to her nest;
As I laye a-thynkynge, her meaning was exprest: —
‘Follow, follow me away,
It boots not to delay,’–
‘Twas so she seem’d to saye,
‘HERE IS REST !’
The Last Lines of Thomas Ingoldsby
R. H. Barham : The Ingoldsby Legends
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April 12th, 2007profile at 9:35 pm
(Self Writ, Literature, The King of Terrors)
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. He survived — as a prisoner of the Germans — the terror-bombing of Dresden.
“The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am,” Vonnegut wrote in Fates Worse Than Death, his 1991 autobiography of sorts.
But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW’s inside an underground meat locker labelled slaughterhouse-five.
I liked Mother Night the best of all his works. Even the film wasn’t bad.
Ave.
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April 12th, 2007 at 2:05 am
(Other Writ, Poetry, The King of Terrors)
“As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
“Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
“What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop ?
Robert Browning : A Toccata of Galuppi’s
Venice Beach
Historic Camel Photographs
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April 8th, 2007notice
at 9:08 pm
(Other Writ, Poetry, The King of Terrors)
This is the night when I must die,
And great Orion walketh high
In silent glory overhead:
He’ll set just after I am dead.
A week this night, I’m in my grave:
Orion walketh o’er the wave:
Down in the dark damp earth I lie,
While he doth march in majesty.
A few weeks hence and spring will come;
The earth will bright array put on
Of daisy and of primrose bright,
And everything which loves the light.
And some one to my child will say,
“You’ll soon forget that you could play
Beethoven; let us hear a strain
From that slow movement once again.”
And so she’ll play that melody,
While I among the worms do lie;
Dead to them all, for ever dead;
The churchyard clay dense overhead.
I once did think there might be mine
One friendship perfect and divine;
Alas! that dream dissolved in tears
Before I’d counted twenty years.
For I was ever commonplace;
Of genius never had a trace;
My thoughts the world have never fed,
Mere echoes of the book last read.
Those whom I knew I cannot blame:
If they are cold, I am the same:
How could they ever show to me
More than a common courtesy ?
There is no deed which I have done;
There is no love which I have won,
To make them for a moment grieve
That I this night their earth must leave.
Thus, moaning at the break of day,
A man upon his deathbed lay;
A moment more and all was still;
The Morning Star came o’er the hill.
But when the dawn lay on his face,
It kindled an immortal grace;
As if in death that Life were shown
Which lives not in the great alone.
Orion sank down in the west
Just as he sank into his rest;
I closed in solitude his eyes,
And watched him till the sun’s uprise.
Proem to The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford — [ W. Hale White ]
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March 27th, 2007profile at 7:19 pm
(Art, Generalia, The King of Terrors)
Click to magnify
Phillip Richard Morris RA : ‘The Shadow of the Cross’
Mezzotint by Charles Mottram
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March 18th, 2007 at 12:09 am
(Self Writ, Art, High Germany, The King of Terrors)
Whilst regarding the career of the great Schinkel on the web vide the post previous, I came across a Google Book the remarkable beginning of whose synopsis only emphasises how extraordinary his talents were, and the totality of his Prussian dedication to duty.
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