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pameladeanLeaving aside momentous events both sad (our feline Eldest Inhabitant is no longer with us) and pleasing (Eric visited for eleven days), for some reason I felt impelled to share the random contents of my brain on a rainy autumn day.
I was putting clean sheets on David's bed, and he had June Tabor and the Oyster Band's "Freedom and Rain" playing. The track was "Dives and Lazarus," a bright bouncy energetic song with lots of brass. I have always been deeply amused by its apparent espousal, in the final verse, of a Universalist theology. "If I had as many years to live as there are blades of grass, I would --." At this point, I always hear them sing "make it in my will secure that the devil should have no power," but Googling suggests that possibly they are actually singing something more like, "then I would have some peace secure, and the devil will have no part." However, the interesting bit comes next. "Hell is dark, hell is deep, hell is full of mice. It's a pity that any poor sinful soul should be barred from our savior Christ." When they say "mice," they probably mean "rats," that having been the generic at the time. I expect the rest means something else too, but I don't care; I like my Universalist interpretation.
Another thing about this song that I like is its embroidery of the really pretty plain Biblical version. That version just says that Lazarus sat at Dives's gate, and the dogs licked his sores. In the song, however, Dives sends out the dogs to drive Lazarus away, and "they had not power to bite one bite, and they licked his sores away." I've seldom seen a medieval version of an originally Biblical story that did not fantasticate it in this manner. Sometimes the original is fantastical enough, however, and then the embroidery has a different glitter to it. When I was in graduate school, I was assigned a paper on the carol "Saint Stephen and King Herod." I recall the matter so vividly perhaps in part because the original of the story is not in the canonical Bible, but rather in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. There is an account of Stephen's martyrdom in the New Testament book of Acts, but it is a very sober document compared to the carol. Stephen is called the first Christian martyr, a fate he achieves, in the New Testament, some while after Jesus's life and death. However, it was apparently necessary to improve upon this thoughtless timeline so that he was martyred as soon as he possibly could be, just as Christ was born. Otherwise, I conceive, somebody might have got in before him.
I had a little trouble doing my research. Some Ph.D. candidate had checked out all the English versions of Nicodemus's gospel that were available in the SUNY-Binghamton library. This sort of thing happened with great regularity while I was at SUNY-Binghamton, and my usual recourse was to take the rickety bumpy old school bus that went at an ungodly hour up to Cornell, where they had enough books for their students and for us too. But I had left writing the paper until the last minute. So I ended up removing from the library a Greek edition put together by a German scholar who wrote his prologue in German but put his footnotes in Latin. I was completely unable to cope with either of those, but I was able to puzzle out the Greek well enough to get by.
In any case, there's already a roasted but crowing capon in the apocryphal gospel story, so the composer of the carol put in, as I have said, a different kind of embroidery. As you may or may not recall (I certainly did not, before this assignment in graduate school), St. Stephen was a clerk in King Herod's hall, and served him with bread and cloth, as every king befall. Stephen out of the kitchen came, with a boar's head in his hand; and he saw a star that was fair and bright, over Bedlam stand. That is, it is Christmas. It's the first one. Nobody has any idea of what it means. Certainly, nobody has had the time to concoct any traditions. But since this is a medieval carol, St. Stephen, a Jew himself and serving in the hall of the Jewish King, comes into the hall WITH A BOAR'S HEAD IN HIS HAND. Because that's what you HAVE on Christmas.
The next thing you know, he has cast the boar's head adown, which I'd have loved to see, and announced, "There is a child in Bedlam born is better than we all." Matters follow a predictable and not very funny course, but I take endless delight in the boar's head, as I do in the miraculous dog tongues in the Lazarus song. Sometimes the boar's head turns itself upside down in my perceptions and is emblematic of a mindset deeply provincial and oblivious, both the cause and background of horrors, which makes me flinch and sorrow. That is something that the dog tongues never do.
It has always seemed to me that anybody who likes these things ought to like baseball. But I don't. Well, it's not that I dislike it, it's that I can't pay attention to it. I can't even read about it when good writers write about it. It makes my eyes glaze over. I'll read about almost anything, but I can't read about baseball.
Maybe there should be a lot of crowing buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken at baseball games. Or miraculous dog tongues -- still, I hasten to add, attached to their dogs. That might do it.
Pamela
I was putting clean sheets on David's bed, and he had June Tabor and the Oyster Band's "Freedom and Rain" playing. The track was "Dives and Lazarus," a bright bouncy energetic song with lots of brass. I have always been deeply amused by its apparent espousal, in the final verse, of a Universalist theology. "If I had as many years to live as there are blades of grass, I would --." At this point, I always hear them sing "make it in my will secure that the devil should have no power," but Googling suggests that possibly they are actually singing something more like, "then I would have some peace secure, and the devil will have no part." However, the interesting bit comes next. "Hell is dark, hell is deep, hell is full of mice. It's a pity that any poor sinful soul should be barred from our savior Christ." When they say "mice," they probably mean "rats," that having been the generic at the time. I expect the rest means something else too, but I don't care; I like my Universalist interpretation.
Another thing about this song that I like is its embroidery of the really pretty plain Biblical version. That version just says that Lazarus sat at Dives's gate, and the dogs licked his sores. In the song, however, Dives sends out the dogs to drive Lazarus away, and "they had not power to bite one bite, and they licked his sores away." I've seldom seen a medieval version of an originally Biblical story that did not fantasticate it in this manner. Sometimes the original is fantastical enough, however, and then the embroidery has a different glitter to it. When I was in graduate school, I was assigned a paper on the carol "Saint Stephen and King Herod." I recall the matter so vividly perhaps in part because the original of the story is not in the canonical Bible, but rather in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. There is an account of Stephen's martyrdom in the New Testament book of Acts, but it is a very sober document compared to the carol. Stephen is called the first Christian martyr, a fate he achieves, in the New Testament, some while after Jesus's life and death. However, it was apparently necessary to improve upon this thoughtless timeline so that he was martyred as soon as he possibly could be, just as Christ was born. Otherwise, I conceive, somebody might have got in before him.
I had a little trouble doing my research. Some Ph.D. candidate had checked out all the English versions of Nicodemus's gospel that were available in the SUNY-Binghamton library. This sort of thing happened with great regularity while I was at SUNY-Binghamton, and my usual recourse was to take the rickety bumpy old school bus that went at an ungodly hour up to Cornell, where they had enough books for their students and for us too. But I had left writing the paper until the last minute. So I ended up removing from the library a Greek edition put together by a German scholar who wrote his prologue in German but put his footnotes in Latin. I was completely unable to cope with either of those, but I was able to puzzle out the Greek well enough to get by.
In any case, there's already a roasted but crowing capon in the apocryphal gospel story, so the composer of the carol put in, as I have said, a different kind of embroidery. As you may or may not recall (I certainly did not, before this assignment in graduate school), St. Stephen was a clerk in King Herod's hall, and served him with bread and cloth, as every king befall. Stephen out of the kitchen came, with a boar's head in his hand; and he saw a star that was fair and bright, over Bedlam stand. That is, it is Christmas. It's the first one. Nobody has any idea of what it means. Certainly, nobody has had the time to concoct any traditions. But since this is a medieval carol, St. Stephen, a Jew himself and serving in the hall of the Jewish King, comes into the hall WITH A BOAR'S HEAD IN HIS HAND. Because that's what you HAVE on Christmas.
The next thing you know, he has cast the boar's head adown, which I'd have loved to see, and announced, "There is a child in Bedlam born is better than we all." Matters follow a predictable and not very funny course, but I take endless delight in the boar's head, as I do in the miraculous dog tongues in the Lazarus song. Sometimes the boar's head turns itself upside down in my perceptions and is emblematic of a mindset deeply provincial and oblivious, both the cause and background of horrors, which makes me flinch and sorrow. That is something that the dog tongues never do.
It has always seemed to me that anybody who likes these things ought to like baseball. But I don't. Well, it's not that I dislike it, it's that I can't pay attention to it. I can't even read about it when good writers write about it. It makes my eyes glaze over. I'll read about almost anything, but I can't read about baseball.
Maybe there should be a lot of crowing buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken at baseball games. Or miraculous dog tongues -- still, I hasten to add, attached to their dogs. That might do it.
Pamela
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 08:59 pm (UTC)It seems unfair that a book, ONE book, be trilingual. How many people other than the author are fluent in German, Greek, and Latin?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 09:29 pm (UTC)Pamela
Condolences on your kitty
Date: 2004-10-26 09:00 pm (UTC)But that's really neat about the Christmas carols.
Re: Condolences on your kitty
Date: 2004-10-26 09:30 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 09:43 pm (UTC)I'm mostly like that, but I liked the movie Field of Dreams -- does that count as baseball? (I actually can't read about most sports, or watch them, but I think that's just me).
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:40 am (UTC)I liked "Bull Durham." But they could have been playing chess and I'd have liked it better.
I can't watch most sports and I don't like reading about them, but baseball holds a special place in the glazed-eyes department.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 09:40 am (UTC)Pamela
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Date: 2004-10-26 09:51 pm (UTC)And Obble, I adore you.
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:41 am (UTC)Pamela
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-28 10:39 am (UTC)Pamela
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Date: 2004-10-26 10:41 pm (UTC)We had the best cat in the universe and the worst cat in the universe, and it was a bit of a shock when the worst suddenly became the best, but he did it astonishingly well.
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Date: 2004-10-27 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 09:43 am (UTC)Pamela
my sympathies....
Date: 2004-10-26 11:26 pm (UTC)Re: my sympathies....
Date: 2004-10-27 09:43 am (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 04:53 am (UTC)Only the nice mice.
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:55 am (UTC)Since they are so nice? Or maybe nice cats won't chase them? My head hurts.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 10:01 am (UTC)One can't eat them, but perhaps they would like to be chased a lot?
Since they are so nice? Or maybe nice cats won't chase them? My head hurts.
I worried about this, too. Impasse!
I once told my daughter that if I had to go to Hell, I would try to build myself a little house near the Burning Lake where I could feel safe, and she said "They wouldn't let you! They'd say, 'You there! You with the house! No houses allowed here--move on!'"
I said, "Well, then, I'd try to make Hell a nicer place by being kind to people.
"Well, THAT won't happen," she said. "They'd--pull your arms out of their sockets."
no subject
Date: 2004-10-28 10:37 am (UTC)If I meet you there, I'll help you build your house. So there.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-10-28 11:06 am (UTC)In all my life, I have never had a more unusual offer!
Wait: this is an "empty promise," isn't it?
Because, even if you did meet me in Hell, Hell is Opposite Land. Niceties don't count. And if you even thought kindly enough about me to make this offer, then you probably shouldn't be in Hell, should you?
Of course, I don't make the rules. Maybe even mentioning</> Hell means you're doomed.
I wish God were nicer, or at least less cryptic.
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Date: 2004-10-27 04:27 am (UTC)And the boar's head in the St. Stephen ballad is charming.
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Date: 2004-10-27 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 09:54 am (UTC)Now, if they'd said hell was full of gerbils, that would be scary.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 04:49 am (UTC)But I'm delighted to hear about the boar's head.
Somewhere around here once I had a short story someone wrote in which Marianne Moore played for the New York Giants. It might be as unreadable as all the rest is for you, but I'll try to find it. Time I reread that myself.
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:53 am (UTC)Pamela
I found it!
Date: 2004-10-27 04:51 pm (UTC)The editor's note says "Her current writing project is Hana Schulman's memoirs," and since it's been ten years, I am off to Google Heather Henderson. There may be a whole novel out there by now.
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Date: 2004-10-27 04:50 am (UTC)Medieval theology usually makes my eyes glaze over, but back in 1993 I sat in on a plenary lecture on women and mysticism by Barbara Newman at the Medieval Academy meeting in Tucson. She was talking about the quietly subversive positions of women mystics in the ?eleventh? century. Apparently one of them, reflecting a common female trend, was quite exercised at the notion that consignment to Hell was forever, and that the poor souls therein were forever barred from seeing Christ. In a deliciously passive-aggressive sort of writing, she averred that she would consign herself to eternal damnation if by so doing she could stop up the mouth of hell and spare others that terrible fate. Theology of course could not accommodate the notion of a mere woman more merciful than God; in response to views such as this, the view of a God of Justice gradually shifted to that of a God of Mercy, and the concept of purgatory also emerged.
Or so I recall. This might explain that last line?
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:52 am (UTC)Pamela
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Date: 2004-10-27 05:02 am (UTC)I do love the way you use words! I never know where you're taking me, or what interesting words you'll place on each path.
our feline Eldest Inhabitant is no longer with us
I'm so sorry.
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Date: 2004-10-27 05:37 am (UTC)If you know the characters and you know the rhythm of the game and it still doesn't appeal, then I'd estimate it probably just doesn't appeal, tastes vary etc.
I often say that the second commonest prayer in my house (after the "comlorJesus" table prayer) when I was a child was, "Oh, God, please let the signal last until Kirby pulls 'em out." My exiled parents had to listen to games on the Yankton, SD, radio station, which severely decreased its power at 10:00 p.m., and the Twins at the time had a habit of waiting until Puckett came to bat in the ninth to bother with not losing the game. So religion and baseball were clearly tied in together around there.
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Date: 2004-10-27 07:09 am (UTC)Also, I can't stand baseball fiction either.
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:35 am (UTC)"Dives and Lazarus" is probably my favorite track on Freedom and Rain, which is one of my favorite albums. I haven't listened to the album in ages and I really should. I got to the point where I knew it by heart and semi-retired it.
The first thesis paper I ever wrote was about baseball; I set out to prove that it's "America's favorite pastime." I ended up making a pretty good case for it, if I do say so myself. Caused me to think a lot about the appeal.
My natural impulse is to offer to take you to a game or watch one with you or point you towards the best baseball writing I know, but I also know that none of this might do the trick and may have already been tried anyway. And it's not like there's anything wrong with not getting that sort of thing.
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Date: 2004-10-27 09:49 am (UTC)As for baseball, I was raised in Creve Coeur, Missouri when Stan Musial was with the Cardinals, and was taken to games and explained to, in a perfectly decent and kindly and non-pressuring manner. During the last baseball game I was taken to, I did my math homework. I can't even imagine what else would have caused me to do it, so really this was beneficial, but it was decided that baseball games were wasted on me. It wasn't a youthful rebellion (like Minou, I saved my hissing and swatting for skirts, also makeup, driving, and marriage) and nobody was mean to me. I just didn't care for the experience.
Thank you all for your condolences.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 10:51 am (UTC)(Often people say their cats are sorry too. I may just have insensitive cats.)
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Date: 2004-10-27 11:26 am (UTC)The version on "Fire and Rain" is much more cheerful than the other version I have, by The Young Tradition (Heather Wood, Peter Bellamy, and Royston Wood). That one's rather lugubrious. Both songs pronounce the first name as if it were "Divarus," which makes it scan better in the song, but seems to me to be cheating.
(One of the things I love about iTunes is that I can type in "Dives and L" and confirm that I have two and only two versions of the song.)
I'd always assumed I'd misheard the "hell is full of mice" line and it was actually something else, like Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear. It's more interesting this way, though.
Isn't there a story by Caroline Stevermer or Ryan Edwards or both that combines baseball and the story of the Wild Swans? Does that one work for you? I suppose it might be more like that patron in the Monty Python sketch. "It hasn't got much baseball..."
Snow White, Blood Red
Date: 2004-10-27 04:53 pm (UTC)Baseball 'N Life
Date: 2004-10-27 08:30 pm (UTC)This caused me to laugh out loud when I read it. I have _no_ time for baseball (but the sound of a game on the car radio while on a long road trip is wonderful - or at least it was when I was a kid & had something to read...).
Someone once told me that baseball was a great metaphor for life, to which I replied, "In that case, sign me up for suicide _now_!
no subject
Date: 2004-12-22 09:54 am (UTC)His comments were that
a) they had been themselves deeply amazed by the mice and concluded after some enquiry that it was probably an oral transmissionism (They used Ralph Vaughn Williams)
b) they were unable to think of anything more sensible it might be so they in the end kept it as it was, and
c) (included for pure amusement) June Tabor blew a few takes laughing on that line before they got it.
I can't even say Hope This Helps, 'cause it doesn't, but it's mildly interesting at least I think.