Leea sings to Skafloc and concludes:
"...when the sea their life is reaving.
"And their women will be grieving." (p. 66)
Does this sound a bit like Dies Irae?
1 Day of wrath and doom impending.
David's word with Sibyl's blending!
Heaven and earth in ashes ending!
David's word with Sibyl's blending!
Heaven and earth in ashes ending!
7 What shall I, frail man, be pleading?
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing?
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing?
-copied from here.
Something resonates when lines end in "-ing"!
This also reminds us of another verse by Kipling:
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
-copied from here.
I have quoted the two best parts of Kipling that I know and unfortunately will sail no further with Skafloc tonight.
16 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I like Thomas of Celano's hymn, the DIES IRAE used to be the standard hymn sung at the funerals of adult Catholics. Something I should request for my own obsequies.
The quotes you took from Kipling's were also good, an apt description of how restless and warlike so many men were during the Viking Age. And I agree most of their women would have far preferred them to be content staying home.
Kipling, like Anderson, had a vast output, and you only liked best the two poems you recently quoted from his works? Did you like any of his prose stories?
Ad astra! Sean
Well, in Viking-age Scandinavia, raiding was often the difference between extreme poverty and getting by. So the women would have been for it too.
I have liked some short stories (can't remember titles) but did not get a lot out of KIM.
When "Dies Irae" is mentioned it is the version by Verdi that comes to my mind.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling, Paul, and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: I should have thought of that, the narrow margins between poverty and "getting by." That would have encouraged Scandinavian women to be as fierce as their men.
Paul: Kipling wrote vastly more than just KIM. I was thinking of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, THE JUNGLE BOOKS, THE LIGHT THAT FAILED, PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS, and any number of his poems and stories.
Jim: Good, albeit rotten hearing makes me more a reader of texts.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that Viking men didn't do raids just because they were fun. They enjoyed them (or at least some of them did), but the basic reason was to accumulate stuff.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, those Viking bandits wanted to grab portable look like gold and silver (preferably in coins), jewelry, and women. By King Alfred's reign some of the more ambitious Vikings were trying to grab land and territory. Which is what Orm the Strong did in THE BROKEN SWORD.
The disintegration of the Carolingian Empire after the death of Louis the Pious and the disunity of England and Ireland into many states made them all easy prey to the Vikings.
Ad astra! Sean
Correction: First sentence of my comment immediately above should have "loot" not "look."
Ggggrrrrrrrrrrr! Sean
Sean: there was a famous occasion on which the women of a "reiver" clan along the Anglo-Scottish border brought out dinner -- only there was no stew in the bowls and no bread beside it.
The women dumped the men's spurs into them instead.
Which meant: "Get on your horses and go reive some livestock."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
They make our Wild West, in the US, look tame and genteel!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, because there was (at least in theory) a rule of law in the Wild West, and it eventually made itself work.
Along the Anglo-Scots border, for eight hundred years there was no law but the law of sword and lance.
Which is why all the stone buildings there look like forts. You either built a fort, or a shack that you could replace easily when it was burnt down.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, the US Wild West had at least the framework of a State: territorial governors, magistrates, sheriffs, military garrisons, etc.
A bit surprised that anarchy along the Anglo/Scots border lasted so long. I would have thought James VI and Elizabeth I would have put an end to it in their times.
Ad astra! Sean
James VI/II of England and Scotland -did- put an end to the anarchy there -- not least, by shoving the reiver clans off into Northern Ireland, whence they eventually emigrated to the Americas as the Scots-Irish. They were trouble wherever they were; hereditary bad habits, you might say.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha! Many of the descendants of those Scots/Irish also took part in the Whisky Rebellion and rum running during the nonsense of Prohibition.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Note that they generally lived where the rule of law was a bit theoretical -- and indulged in blood feuding with enthusiasm. They were prominent on the Western frontier too.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Scots/Irish feuds and vendettas? I immediately thought of the bloody feud waged by the McCoys and Hatfields in the Appalachians. It took the heavy hand of the State (Kentucky and W Virginia) to put a stop to that.
Ad astra! Sean
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