Westron Wynde

Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
the smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!



Words and music from a Tudor part-book, used as the cantus firmus for a Mass by the sixteenth-century English composer John Taverner, organist of Christ Church, Oxford, and resident of Boston, Lincolnshire (two of my favourite places). Odd choice for a Mass, but that's the sixteenth century for you: crazy.

The Battle of the Fish

Matthew Paris explains natural phenomena:


'Although other great and unheard-of wonders happened in this year [1240], we have thought it worth our while to mention in this work one more remarkable than the rest. As it is the nature of the sea to vomit up on dry land the dead bodies thrown into it, about eleven whales, besides other marine monsters, were cast up on the seacoast of England, dead, as if they had been injured in some kind of struggle — not, however, by the attacks or skill of man. The sailors and old people, dwelling near the coast, who had seen the wonders of the deep when following their vocation in the vast waters, and trafficking to distant countries, declared that there had been an unusual battle amongst the fishes, beasts, and monsters of the deep, which by wounding and gnawing each other, had caused death to several; and those which had been killed had been cast ashore.

One of the fishes, a monster of prodigious size, made its way into the Thames, and with difficulty passed uninjured between the pillars of the bridge; it was carried as far as a manor of the king's called Mortlake, where it was followed by a number of sailors, and at length killed, after a great deal of trouble, by innumerable blows of spears. Of this event, a certain versifier jestingly remarked:

Venerat ad funus Thetidis de piscibus unus,
Quern rex Neptunus misit quasi nobile munos.'

[To Thetis' funeral came a monster fish.
By Neptune sent to make a glorious dish.]



These days it would probably be attributed to global warming.

Danish Pride

Never thought I'd see the day when Gorm the Old got his name in The Sun... that's really quite freaky. I wonder where they got that wussy picture of Cnut, though.

Give me my self, and take your self again

By Michael Drayton (1563-1631).


You not alone, when you are still alone,
O God, from you that I could private be!
Since you one were, I never since was one;
Since you in me, my self since out of me,
Transported from my self into your being;
Though either distant, present yet to either,
Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing,
And only absent when we are together.
Give me my self and take your self again,
Devise some means but how I may forsake you;
So much is mine that doth with you remain,
That, taking what is mine, with me I take you;
You do bewitch me; O, that I could fly
From my self you, or from your own self I.

Waken thou with me

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Ignorance and the Church of England

Here's something to make you want to cry.

"The Church of England has voted to use more accessible language during baptisms to help it connect better with congregations, especially non church-goers. Members attending the Church’s General Synod, or parliament, in London, agreed that the Liturgical Commission should provide supplementary material to help prevent the eyes of worshippers “glazing over” during important parts of the service.

The Reverend Tim Stratford, from Liverpool, said on Wednesday his motion was "not a request for christenings without Christianity." Quite the opposite. "I am not asking for the language of Steven Gerrard," he said, referring to the Liverpool and England soccer star. "Just references that could be understood by the majority."
...
Stratford said many people today did not have enough background in the Bible to understand the images used in the current baptism services. This was "not a plea for a prayer in Scouse, but for a prayer that the majority of non-theologically-versed Britons would understand." He gave the following as an example of what he called "problematic sentences":

Through water you led the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.

In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit."

Wait - those are your 'problematic sentences'? You're telling me that there are people who come to present their children for baptism who don't understand the simplest references to
a) one of the most famous stories in the Bible and
b) the Resurrection of Christ
even when presented in language which is so plain as to be almost banal? And the Church of England, instead of realising that maybe this shows how atrociously they have failed to educate the souls in their charge, decides to just take out the Biblical references? That may be one of the most patronising things I've ever heard. Generations of people with no formal education have learned the basics of the faith well enough to understand the baptism service - and today's Christians aren't even to be expected to try. Modern Christians are too stupid to understand the symbolism of baptism, so we should just pretend there isn't any (while at the same time making snobbish jokes about the Scouse dialect, of course).

This, right here, is why the Church of England is dying. You hear a lot of drivel from Anglican vicars about how paternalistic their Victorian forebears were, but no Victorian clergyman would have ever been so elitist and patronising as to think his flock should not be expected to understand just a little of the Biblical basis for baptism! And as for the medieval era (you know, that time when no one knew the Bible, because the nasty clergy hid it from them?) - well, illiterate tradesmen put on plays about the story of Moses and Pharoah, a story which is today supposed to be beyond the comprehension of ordinary Christians.

Never mind, it gave Rowan Williams an opportunity to make a self-deprecating joke: "I find myself very much in sympathy with this motion. Like most of those who have spoken, I too, have a sense of the wordiness of what we have and a slight feeling of eyes glazing over. It is not, I think, solely as a result of my delivery."

St Anselm would be so proud.

Anglo-Saxon Executions

This is a weird one. As told to William of Malmesbury, with reference to a miracle performed by Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury:

Dunstan "was able to lighten the woes of his sons by great miracles. One of these I have not seen in writing, though I recently heard it narrated by a monk of Christ Church. A thief, condemned to fall to his death, called on the aid of St Dunstan; his eyes already blindfolded, he was pushed away by his executioners and leapt into the chasm, but without coming to any harm. The blessed Dunstan spoke with him in person there, and removed his bandages. The poor man, heartened by this help, found his way along rough paths to higher ground; an invisible hand on his back supported him as he clung to the cliff-face, and prevented him slipping backwards". (p.15, i.20)

This is "apparently the earliest reference to the customary local mode of execution called ‘infalisation’, according to which felons were thrown from a cliff called Sharpeness at Dover" (William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom, vol.II, p.33).

Hardcore Kentish justice!