Starfarers, 37.
To understand Jean Kilbirnie, who has just died, Mamphela Mokoena plays "Flowers of the Forest."
For the Wikipedia article, see here.
For one version of the lyrics, see here.
"Flowers of the Forest" was played at the funeral of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
When Mokoena reduces the volume:
"Pipes and drums became background, like wind wailing along a seacoast." (p. 347)
Again in an analogy rather than a pathetic fallacy, wind comments and mourns, in this case by wailing.
Some songs in the British Isles are about fighting the English.
11 comments:
Mostly about getting massacred by the English, like "Flowers of the Forest"... 8-).
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
And I looked up that song. "Flowers of the Forest" was inspired by the Battle of Flodden in 1513, when an English army commanded by Queen Katherine of Aragon and the Duke of Norfolk crushingly defeated and killed James IV of Scotland.
The big problem for the Scots in their wars with England was that the latter was always so much stronger and powerful than the Scots.
Ad astra! Sean
There is a song:
"Rise again, rise again,
"Rise like the sun,
"Scotland will rise again!"
Kaor, Paul!
And probably get walloped yet again by the English!
Far better for the Scots to keep in mind the old adage "If you can't lick 'em, jine 'em!" I was amused by how often it was the Scots who seemed to be running the UK. Not that many years ago there was a Scottish PM, and a Scottish Leader of the Opposition. Even the Queen is Scottish!
Ad astra! Sean
Scotland did very well out of the Union. In 1707, Scotland was a poor and in many respects backward country, though it did have a fairly good school system. There were killing famines in Scotland as late as the 1690’s, something that England hadn’t had for centuries.
By the Victorian period, Scotland was the second-richest country in the world, and had compressed changes that had taken England centuries into a far shorter time.
If you look at an aerial picture oof the Scottish Lowlands — say, East Lothian — notice how much tidier and neater and more “new country” it looks compared to most English country areas.
That’s not an accident — it’s because the ‘Improvers’ of the late 18th century swept the old landscape and social-economic system aside in only two generations with a ruthless consistency that made the English enclosure movement look like a model of incremental and organic traditionalism.
It was on the same period that Glasgow became the ‘second city of the Empire’, which was quite true and an astonishing feat. For a while, 1/3 of all the steamships and steam engines and hydraulic cranes in the entire world were made on the banks of the Clyde.
The English made a very good thing out of the British Empire, but proportionately the Scots did even better, as everything from soldiers and settlers to technical specialists (hence ‘Scotty’, the ship’s engineer on ‘Star Trek’) to bankers, financiers and Governors-General.
Which is why, even when it was common to refer to the whole of mainland Britain as ‘England’, people always called it the ‘British’ Empire. Because it was always a full partnership.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Your comments about the Scottish version of the enclosure movement reminded me of Sir Thomas More's furious denunciation of enclosures in UTOPIA. And I have read of how ruthless those Scottish "improvers" were. Compared to the Scottish form, English enclosures were slow and incremental.
Scottish Nationalists keep yelling about how they want out of the Union. I strongly, strongly suspect they will be bitterly disappointed by the results if they succeed in breaking up the UK!
Ad astra! Sean
Scotland was sometimes referred to as "North Britain."
A wit back in the nineteenth century once remarked that the most terrible blow the Irish could strike against England and the Ascendancy would have been mass conversion to Anglicanism - which would have destroyed the foundations of their power at a stroke…
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Well, Scotland is the northern part of the island of Great Britain!
Mr. Stirling: Ha!An Irish Catholic jest is that "The Catholic Church was built on the Rock of Peter but the Church of England was built on the two stones of Henry VIII" !
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
If I did accept the authority of bishops, then I would think that the Archbishop of Canterbury, like the Orthodox bishops, should be co-equal with the Bishop of Rome.
However, the authority of the Apostles was based on their claim to be witnesses to the Resurrection. They founded churches and appointed assistants. As each Apostle died, his church elected one assistant to be his successor because, in the absence of a witness, the next best authority was someone who had known the witness and heard his testimony. But, two thousand years later, a newly consecrated bishop is no closer to evidence for the Resurrection than anyone else. He can only read the New Testament like anyone else. So there should no longer be bishops.
This was not meant to happen because Christ was meant to return when Paul had completed his mission to the Gentiles and while some of that generation were still alive. That is why Evangelicals, reading the NT and applying it to their own experience, think that the Apocalypse is imminent now.
Paul.
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