Prejudice against the Welsh
In 2004, an official map published by the European Union, “The Eurostat Statistical Compendium”, dropped Wales off into the Irish Sea. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3715512.stm At the time, the Welsh were pretty philosophical about it, and they have a long history of learning to be so. You can see a larger image of the map here: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29&art_id=qw1096991820904E163 As a sequel, the BBC reported in January of 2005, three months later, that an insurance company had failed to insure someone in SE Wales–“Sentinel Card Protection told 71-year-old Bernard Zavishlock, from Abergavenny, last month that it could not renew the insurance policy he had held for 10 years because Wales was ‘an unknown country’.” These are examples of computer error, compounded by individuals who didn’t notice that Wales was missing. Real prejudice, however, has existed against Wales since the Norman conquest. Prejudice in and of itself Read more…
Gladiators in York
The Romans came to Britain in the 1st century AD. Julius Caesar invaded what is now England twice, in 55 and 54 BC but didn’t leave legions and never gained any actual territory. Britain Express amusingly called this ‘Caesar’s summer vacation’. It wasn’t until 100 years later, in 43 AD, that they invaded for real, and began a systematic conquering of what is now England, Wales, and Scotland. For a good summary of the chronology, see: http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Roman_invasion.htm http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ac71 What has always been harder to pin down is the cultural effect the Romans had on England, since after they left in the early 5th century, the remains of their culture seems to have been wholly swept away. Within a generation or two, little trace of them, except for their roads and ruined forts–and their religion, Christianity–remained. Everything had fallen into Read more…
Sacrificing the Goat
Ann Aguirre, at Writer’s Unboxed, wrote last week: “People will tell you to do this or that to make it in this business. Sacrifice a goat. Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me. Never write at 3 a.m. Stop killing your main characters. (Okay, maybe that one’s good advice.) The truth of the matter is: there is no one truth path to publication. There are no magic beans. Nobody has a secret formula for success, and nobody’s writing process is cast in gold. For most people it takes trial and error to determine what will work best.” I’m still stuck on the goat part, so was looking up to whom I could sacrifice a goat, were I to go that route. First off, is the Hindu goddess Saraswati. She is the consort of Lord Brahma and possesses the powers Read more…
Happy Mother’s Day!
Growing up, my family scoffed at ‘Mother’s Day’ as a Hallmark Holiday, but I’m here to tell you that its roots go all the way back to ancient times. Mother’s Day was not designed to honor mothers, per se, but part of the worship of goddesses within the pagan world. In Ancient Greece, Cybele, or the ‘great mother’ was honored as the mother of “most of the major deities including Zeus . . . [she was] the mother goddess, and the festival took place around the time of the Vernal Equinox.” http://www.mothersdaycentral.com/about-mothersday/history/ Later, the Christian Church adopted the holiday (Romans worshipped the goddess, Hilaria, and the Egyptians, Isis) as the day to celebrate the “Mother Church”. In the Celtic church, people honored first the pagan goddess, Brigid and then ‘St Brigid’, with the first milk of the ewes. http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mothersday/a/early.htm Furthermore, “in the Read more…
Why you should keep writing . . .
As Ann Aguirre wrote on Writers Unboxed last month, writing as a profession is all about rejection. Rumor has it that it’s possible to have your book snapped up by the first agent you send it to (Stephanie Meyer, anyone?), but if that’s not your name, that’s probably not you. It certainly isn’t me. I started writing fiction five years ago, dabbling in short stories and poetry, until I settled down to write my first novel, just to see if I could. It was a fantasy—complete with elves, swords, and magic stones—and I wrote the whole thing in six weeks while my infant son was napping. While I wasn’t so naïve as to think I’d finished it just because I’d typed ‘the end’, I edited it only twice before I let other people read it. A writer friend told me Read more…
The Anam Cara
The role of the anam cara or ‘soul friend’ in Celtic pre-Christian religion appears to have been that of a spiritual advisor. While much of the language today is from the neo-pagan/new age spiritual tradition, the anam cara does seem to be rooted in history. This post is a product of a long discussion with a hospital chaplain (waiting for my husband’s colonoscopy–all is well). We shared an interest in history and Celtic people, and he brought up the existence of the ‘anam cara’. He stated that within the pre-Christian tradition among the Celts, the ‘anam cara’ was a spirituall leader or ‘soul friend’ who saw a person through birth (even perhaps, as a midwife), maturity, and death. ‘Anam cara’ were true spiritual advisors. With the coming of Christianity, the Catholic church encountered significant resistance against conformity to Rome and one Read more…
Man’s Inhumanity to Man
Man was made to mourn: A Dirge, by Robert Burns Many and sharp the num’rous ills Inwoven with our frame! More pointed still we make ourselves Regret, remorse, and shame! And Man, whose heav’n-erected face The smiles of love adorn, – Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn! The following article from March 14, details the attacks in Lagos, Nigeria, which is one of the most war torn countries in Africa. It begins: “Nigerians woke last Sunday, to the news that more than 400 people of Dogo Nahawa community in Jos south area of Plateau state had been sent to their early graves by rampaging invaders. News of the attack spread like wildfire creating panic in parts of Jos North, which had earlier in January, witness another round of the orgy of violence that has now become and existential Read more…
Advice for New Writers
My advice is simple: just write. Sit down every day and plow ahead, with whatever word count goal you choose. And as you write, don’t think about the fact that you’ve never written anything longer than a twenty page paper and that was for a class you hated in college. Today, even if what you put on the page is terrible, no-good, the worst chapter ever inflicted on a word processing program, believe that through editing, educating yourself, and reading what other people write and say about writing, you can learn and improve. You can get better day by day—until one day you read over the two pages you managed to write the day before and think to yourself, ‘hey, that’s pretty good!’ Don’t think about publishing. It isn’t that a first or second book couldn’t be published, but that Read more…
Mount Badon / Caer Faddon (part 2)
Mount Badon, if it exists at all, should appear on the map somewhere. But where? There are many, many possibilities. First of all, we should note where Mount Badon is not. For all that Geoffrey of Monmouth embellished and expanded the Arthurian legend, he did history a disservice in supposing that King Arthur ruled all of England, Scotland and Wales. Geoffrey wrote his book under the patronage of Robert of Gloucester, who was trying to justify the rule of England by his half-sister, Maud. Thus, because Maud had roots in Normandy, so did Arthur; because Maud was hoping to rule all of Great Britain, so did Arthur; because Maud’s power base was in and around Gloucester, so was Arthur’s. Yet even in the twelfth century, for one king to control all of Great Britain by force of arms was extremely difficult. Read more…
Mount Badon
In the Arthurian legend, as well as in the historical record, Mount Badon (or Caer Baddon) is the location of Arthur’s last battle that pushed the Saxons back into England for a generation. All the literary sources, including Geoffrey of Monmouth, the last of the historical and first of the mythical, indicate its significance. This is what they have to say: Nennius: “The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and in it nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day, from a single charge of Arthur’s, and no one laid them low save he alone; and he was victorious in all his campaigns. ” Writing in 796 AD (Historia Britonum, Page 35) Annales Cambriae: “The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and Read more…
Rain (again)
The weather is one of those things that everyone talks about, whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent. In the sunnier parts of the world (such as Redlands, California), people would mention the weather only if we had any, as in “we’re having some weather, aren’t we?” It was as if the normal ‘weather’, which was sunny and hot, wasn’t weather at all. Given that the 18 months we lived there we had 5 inches of rain, you can see why they might think that way. At the same time, having grown up in Western Washington and lived in Britain, weather in those places is more a matter of discussing it only when it is not raining. My husband and I have been wandering around the Olympic National Forest this week. Just up the road is Forks, Washington (of Twilight fame). Read more…
The Nature of Knowledge
To humans, learning is like breathing–it comes naturally. What a human learns, however, is not natural and depends on the needs of the individual, the time she lives in, and what is available for her to learn. A thousand years ago, ‘book’ knowledge was the province of the Church and of the elite (usually male). Over the next two hundred years, formal education became more widespread. Cambridge University, for example, was founded in 1209 by a group of men dissatisfied with Oxford. When a man went to the university, his education began with the seven liberal arts: Latin grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. After he received his Master of Arts, he could choose to study law, medicine, philosophy, or theology, upon which he would receive his doctorate. Knowledge, however, is not necessarily just ‘book learning’. While this afternoon my Read more…
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