Swinburne, Tyndrum and Sawney Bean

It started with a joke.

Some of us, in our small community of poets, enjoy games, challenges, exercises. They help us flex the poetic muscle to keep it fit and in good shape for the Great Inspiration that will surely arrive in time. Recently, one such challenge was to render a well known English limerick into modern Scots. Easy, I thought, little dreaming down what depths of depravity this path was going to lead me. The limerick, which most will recognise, reads:

There was a young fellow called Dave

Who kept a dead whore in a cave

He said, "It's disgusting.

I know it needs dusting,

But think of the money I save".

Translation, even between such similar languages as English and Scots, is never a simple exercise of word substitution, especially when the integrity of a verse form must be preserved. So, a first, and superficial, effort might yield something along these lines:

There wis a wee fella caad Davie

Wha keepit a hoor in a cavie ...

And already we are encountering several problems. Though wee fella is good idiom, we have unjustifiably substituted size (wee) for age (young). Perhaps this doesn't matter. Davie is certainly a good substitution, being the preferred Scots diminutive of David. But the rhyme cavie is deeply suspect, locating the poem firmly in the North East, and in a very quaint corner of it too.

We also see that in correctly using the standard Scots past tense keepit we have had to drop dead (or rather, deid) for metrical reasons. As this detail is central to the narrative, we must correct the error. One possibility is:

Wha keepit deid hoors in a cavie

But the plural raises questions of its own. Are we depicting some grim Sawney Bean* scenario with corpses everywhere, or are we suggesting that, with some measure of fastidiousness, Davie would occasionally replace an old one with a new one? Neither option is particularly palatable, and here we should take a step back and do what we should have done from the outset - examine the sources.

*Sawney Bean

Sawney Bean's cave is on Scotland's South Ayrshire coast. Some 500 years ago, Bean was the head of a family of cannibal outlaws and footpads who murdered innocent wayfarers for their flesh, under cover of darkness, dismembering, cooking and eating the victims in their cave.

My research turned up many versions of this limerick, mostly dating from late Victorian England. Versions are known to exist in the United States, but all appear to be of later date. Commentators have long wondered if the thematic material has any factual basis. In particular, is 'Dave' anyone real? One popular and recurring idea is that the limericks are inspired by the decadent poet Swinburne. Some have gone so far as to say that Swinburne is to be identified with 'Dave', and that the name was chosen as much for his protection as for the rhyming punch line.

Certainly, Swinburne cultivated his decadent image during his lifetime. Several of his poems deal with death, and beauty in death, and there is no doubt he had a fascination with morbidity. He even, on more than one occasion, declared himself an acolyte of the Marquis de Sade. However, he was well aware that decadence sells, and current academic opinion considers his decadence to have been, for the most part, playing to the gallery.

In spite of all this speculation, no-one has been able to pin a charge of genuine 'practical' necrophilia on him - until now!

My own research finally took me to the village of Tyndrum in Scotland's Rannoch Moor, now popular with tourists but in Victorian times surely as remote a spot as one could wish to find. It was here, in the local public library, that I made an astounding discovery - an inept but telling Clerihew, unpublished of course. An anonymous manuscript tucked into the flyleaf of a volume of Swinburne's 'Century of Roundels'. The Clerihew reads:

 

found in Tyndrum Library

Charles Algernon Swinburne

took a cottage in Tyndrum

to be a necrophile

quietly for a while.

Tyndrum (correctly pronounced tyne drum, not tin drum) is a particularly poor rhyme for Swinburne, and the writer has also mis-ordered the poet's forenames, but both of these details merely add veracity to the Clerihew. Though we cannot know who penned it, or why, who can doubt its ring of truth?

And now we understand there was no cave. A cottage in Tyndrum, in those days as secluded as anywhere in the Kingdom. Where better for a society poet to escape the limelight and the prurient eyes and indulge in a little practical research? All in the name of Art, of course.

And finally...

Lest there be any doubt - this entire story was a flight of fancy. Lies and damned lies from beginning to end. Swinburne's reputation is big enough to take it and besides, he would probably have enjoyed the attention. All rumours are good rumours. BUT:

• There is some truth in the Sawney Bean Legend.
• Swinburne was an aficionado of the Marquis de Sade
• Tyndrum is where the devil said goodnight.

Sleep well, and thanks for the read!

N _ / _ E _ N / C _ T Y

playing hangman in style 

It seems our player ran out of luck. Clearly not a Glaswegian. Who can help? 

Post-War Albania

 

The Eagle & the Stag

War weary, they agreed, the three wise men,
to carve the aftermath of five grim years
between two ideologies. The Cheese,
victorious but broken, turned a palm
of supplication to the Rooster who,
to exorcise the guilt of tardiness,
gave alms, expected and received no thanks.
The Stag appointed henchmen to control
the South-West marches of his vast domain,
their brief, to quash all insurrection, more,
to regulate the people's thoughts and deeds.
The Titan tempered these extreme demands
with such humanity as might not goad
the Stag to intervene, and wisdom born
of understanding of his people's needs.
The Eagle took his mission to the heart.
He razed the holy places to the ground -
no man should harbour dreams beyond the State -
he burned the books and sealed the borders round
and in the nurseries had children sing
his praise, the only music he allowed.
He silenced or deported learned men
and turned the universities and schools
to propagandist mockeries. By these
and many other ploys he murdered hope,
destroyed imagination and laid waste
his trust, but caused no trouble to the Stag,
continuing thus for forty dismal years.
A model of beneficence, he bought
his people's gold with freshly printed notes
each worth its weight in paper, for the gold
was never seen again. The Stag received
the lion's share, while from some dark Swiss bank
the Eagle's family draws a pension still.

Dramatis personae:

The Cheese - Churchill
The Rooster - Roosevelt
The Stag - Stalin
The Titan - Tito
The Eagle - Enver Hoxha

Synesthography, anyone?

SYNESTHOGRAPHY is a new art form with very humble origins. The essence of classic photography is to focus light, and light alone, onto the film or, more often nowadays, the image sensor. In pursuit of quality, ultraviolet and infrared are filtered out, and the lens mounting and camera body are designed to resist vibration, fast temperature and humidity changes, and the ingress of dust or other airborne agents to the vicinity of the light path or sensor. One could say that the camera is very single-minded.

The synesthetic camera (synecam), on the other hand, has no such pretensions to quality. Dust and scratches on the lens ensure that wanted and unwanted light have an equal chance, while the flimsy lens mount and less than rigid camera body conspire to couple high and low audio frequencies, respectively, to the image. (The phenomenon is akin to microphony, a notorious cause of feedback in valve amplifiers). Where can such a marvel be found? On every cheap mobile phone on the market, especially earlier models such as the Motorola L6.

The Synesthographer's technique is wholly different from the photographer's. Care, precision and planning are anathematised. Spontaneity is everything. In particular, it is important not to think visually. Your synesthographs should be influenced as much by smell, taste, sound and touch as by sight. You hear a lark singing? Point the synecam any old place, and click. Remember, it doesn't have to see the lark - it can hear it, just like you, so it will feature in the final image. It only needs faith.

THE RESULTS:

It is important to remember that the camera, not necessarily the synesthographer, is synesthetic. It does all the hard work for you. But when you first look at your images, you might be disappointed. You were expecting to see the Trooping of the Colours, while at the same time hearing the horses hooves, tasting your Cadbury's 99 and feeling the sun on your shoulders. Have faith. It is all there. To the synesthete, it is a thing of beauty; to the uninitiated, a mere jumble. Now let's talk about the Emperor's new clothes.

They move among us

Anyone who has ever, even or perhaps especially when alone in the house, posed with a gun in front of a mirror should seriously consider their mental fitness to own lethal weaponry. To any such people, I ask: What facial expression did you try to adopt? Stern? Resolute? Noble? Or just hard? What childish fantasy did you conjure up, with yourself as hero, saving the world or perhaps just felling the baddies in a shower of lead?

I'd suggest that there is a fundamental difference between the psyches of the gun murderer and the suicide bomber. The suicide bomber requires anonymity up to the moment of detonation in which his own instant oblivion is assured. The gun murderer on the other hand actively desires the thrill of firing his gun, over and over, at real people. He does it for his own sick pleasure, whatever lies he might tell himself about serving a cause.

Pilgrim felt small

He had come so far and with such hope in his heart, but would the Great Frog listen?

Tomorrow's Bread

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

trying to make the best of it.

Give us, today, tomorrow’s bread.

Picture the lilies! Jesus said

Solomon wasn’t half as fit.

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

how shall we sleep unless we’re fed?

The board is bare; why would we sit?

Give us, today, tomorrow’s bread.

We tilled your soil. Our fingers bled.

The famine struck. We took the hit.

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

with every Autumn comes the dread

of sicknesses we daren’t admit.

Give us, today, tomorrow’s bread,

you Great and Good! We're going to bed.

We pay your tax, endure your shit.

Briefly alive, a long time dead,

give us, today, tomorrow's bread.

Guns don't kill people

People kill people...

except, they don't. Not normally. I was brought up in a town of 50,000 people, on the West coast of Scotland. My childhood and teenage years were the 50s and 60s. Our parents had lived through the horrors of the 2nd World War. Now, they were living through the peacetime hardships of shortages and rationing. But of one thing they were certain: the killing had been an aberration; normality had returned, where people live in peace. Where people don't kill people. Where people don't need guns.

On cue, within minutes of every new firearm atrocity, the tired old gun lobbyists (hereinafter, the Globbies, ok?) crawl out of the woodwork with their tired old incantation – Guns don't kill people... People kill people, and every time I shake my head and think – not in my World, they don't. And before any Globby tells me that small-town Scotland is a very sheltered corner of the planet – check my Profile page for where I've lived and worked since leaving there. I still say, fifty years later – not in my World, they don't.

Guns don't kill People... Bullets kill people
It's a truism that without ammunition a gun is a pretty useless weapon. It could serve as a bludgeon of sorts, but the balance is all wrong, It would be no match for a baseball bat, far less a machete. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Let's step back and quietly consider some aspects of violence.

For one adult to kill another in unarmed combat, assuming both are in reasonable health and physical condition, is actually no mean feat. It requires either great effort and determination, or considerable knowledge and technique. Or, just conceivably, diabolical 'luck'. It also requires an absolute awareness and total involvement with what you are doing, something the vast majority of people would pull back from, in total revulsion at the enormity of the act, and its consequences.

Bring a knife into the equation and everything changes. We are all capable of lashing out in anger and, with a knife in hand, a single strike can be fatal (though usually it is not). But again, let's step back, to small-town Scotland and the day one lad brought a flick-knife to school.

He had no intention of using it, of course. He just wanted his moment of glory impressing his friends or maybe frightening a few juniors. Inevitably, he was uncovered and the knife confiscated. On the following morning the Headmaster addressed the school: Unable to make an impression on his fellows on equal terms, the culprit had sought an unfair advantage. In trying to command fear in others, he had merely betrayed his own fear. In trying to be the bully he was not physically cut out to be, he had shown himself to be – a coward. The psychology was exactly right. No-one ever again brought a knife to school.

The Headmaster was right. A knife is a coward's weapon. Yet, while it gives an unfair advantage, it still requires a degree of closeness to, and interaction with, the victim. A quick and lethal thrust does not compare with the white-knuckled sweaty intensity of wringing out a life, bare hands around the throat, and yet... A knife will still transmit its passage back from blade to haft to hand. You will feel the changes from cloth to soft tissue, to muscle wall, to vital organ. The scrape of steel on bone. You will know what you have done and most of us could not do it, or live with it afterwards. Quite literally, you will have blood on your hands.

At best, then, the knife is a half-way house. The true coward's weapon would further reduce the involvement between killer and victim. This is where the gun comes in. The gun, or at least its bullet, kills at a distance. There is no need for the killer to feel any involvement whatsoever with the victim. You point, s/he dies. It feels no different from shooting at a target. Easier still is the semi-automatic weapon where you don't even need to know who or how many have died. Isn't this the very epitome of cowardice?

Guns don't kill people... Cowards kill people
What we've seen thus far is a progression, from unarmed equals, to knife-wielding wimps, to gun-toting cowards, to the craven cowards with semi-automatic weapons. Is this the limit of inhumanity? Sadly no, it is not. Crasser still are those who kill by proxy, who pay others to do their dirty work. Those who profit from the manufacture and sale of weapons. Those who foment conflicts and wars to advance such sales and maximise their personal fortunes.

As it is simply distasteful to dwell too long among such miserable specimens, let's look instead at the opposite end of this continuum to see what manner of people can be found there. These are the people who never pull a gun or draw a knife. Who rarely if ever raise a fist. Who will argue and agree to differ. Who will walk away and get on with their lives. Some are quite famous: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus of Nazareth. Most are relative unknowns on the World stage: me, my friends and work colleagues, the grocer on the corner, his wife and kids. Most folk, in fact - the people who don't kill people.

Thank you for reading.

Rational Express now in print

A paperback version of The Rational Express is now available from Amazon. It differs from the Kindle e-book version by being flammable, if not inflammatory. Neither will break the bank.

The Rational Express

 Now available on Kindle:

These articles were originally written as standalone pieces on HubPages, under my screen name Paraglider. The common themes that run through the articles are: that the World is better understood without reference to, or reliance on, the supernatural, that situational pragmatism is preferable to any form of dogmatism, and that faith-based belief systems are neither necessary nor helpful as the foundation of a fair society. Though the articles deal with serious topics, they are intended as entertainment and do not profess philosophical, scientific or academic rigour. Their original aim, in which they largely succeeded, was to stimulate discussion.

All this, for less than the price of a pint . . .

Tom Lehrer's Hunting Song

The Hunting Song is one of Tom Lehrer's lighter offerings. That is, unless one takes it literally, in which case it is surreal and more than a little macabre.

 By the way, I haven't really lost all my hair. This is the effect of sitting in front of a bright window!

An Open Letter

To whom it may concern, but mainly apologists for Mr Netanyahu's regime:

Please provide a list of Gazan civilians who have not been forcibly dispossessed, evicted, bereaved, herded from camp to camp, deprived of the staples of life (including food, water, medicines, shelter and energy), threatened with, or subjected to, violence and/or lethal force, and been generally disrespected, abused and dehumanised continually for the past eighteen months.
This should not take you long. The list will be short.
Thank you.

If the cap fits...

NEW REGIME

We are the resurrection of the dead

forgotten ways. We cultivate despair

in veiled anathema of womankind.

We are the ancient writings reassessed

by gunlight in the aftermath of war.

Ours is the only truth you need to know.

Fake News or False Precision?

I read this today (I won't say where because I have no wish to embarrass the writer or the publication):

In the heart of Africa, energy giant Total is about to build the biggest heated oil pipeline in the world. To extract 1,033,417,417,032 litres of oil, it will displace thousands of farmers, pass through some of the most important elephant and chimpanzee reserves, and threaten crucial biodiversity hotspots.

Call me a geek, but I enjoy reverse-engineering nonsensical or innumerate statements to find out what they are trying to say. Take the number at the heart of the statement, 1,033,417,417,032. That's quite a number. It's a fantastically precise number. The writer is claiming precision to one part in a trillion. The finest Swiss chronometers claim one part in a hundred thousand. Isn't it comforting to learn that crude oil extraction is ten million times more precise than Swiss chronometry?

So, how did this fantastic number arise? From a little background reading of proper sources, I learn that the reserve in question is "estimated at 6 billion barrels". That's a believable figure, properly stated. It means "we're pretty sure the reserve is somewhere between 5½ and 6½ billion barrels". That comes from an oil professional.

Then the innumerate journos move in: Go for the top of the range, 6.5 billion barrels. How big is a barrel anyway? Google it! A barrel = 158.987295 litres. Where's the calculator? How do you write 6½ billion?

6,500,000,000 x 158.987295 = 1,033,417,417,500 litres. Look, nobody's going to believe that 500 at the end. Change it, who's to know – 1,033,417,417,032  Job done.

Sorry, guys, but the correct rendering in litres is "more than a trillion". Next time, OK?

A brief innings

I put it to you, m'Lud, that no other sport is as pleasing to the eye as cricket. And in particular, the art of batting, and within that art, the technique we used to call the straight bat (meaning, of course, the vertical bat) effected, in the case of a right-handed batsman, by raising high the left elbow while stepping into the line of the ball. As youngsters, we were told to practise our strokes in front of a mirror. I did. Back defensive: Right foot, step back, across and in front of the stumps. Then left leg close the gap, feet together. High left elbow, bat vertical, in front of the body. I had it off to a T.

One Sunday, Ayr (my team) was playing an early season friendly match against Clydesdale who had a new professional. Each club was allowed one professional player. Mr Rock, from Jamaica, was over six feet tall and a fast bowler. When it came my turn to face him, I knew just what to do. I'd been practising all winter at the mirror. His first ball flew past me at chest height before I'd even moved my feet. But I was ready for his second. Right foot back, left together, high left elbow, straight bat - perfect. The ball struck the face of the bat squarely and dropped like a stone at my feet. Unfortunately, mirror practice does nothing to strengthen the wrists, so the bat flew backwards on impact, catching me a fierce blow in the goolies which ended my brief innings. Style, 10. Effectiveness, 0.

Ex-pat Plonk

Ex-pat plonk is any alcoholic beverage made by a member of the ex-pat community while living and working abroad. Some of it is pleasant enough but most of it is more or less foul. Some is even toxic. There are reasons enough for this sad situation but no valid excuses, because it is easy to make wholesome, palatable drinks that no-one need be ashamed to serve, using readily available supermarket ingredients.

I lived in the Middle East from 2002 to 2018 during which time I evolved many methods and recipes suited to the conditions and restrictions of the region. When back in UK and effectively grounded by the corona-virus pandemic, I decided to devote a blog to the topic as a 'one stop shop' for the ex-pat plonk community and anyone else who fancies giving it a go.

In fact, I already have several web articles 'out there', most notably on HubPages, where over the years I have fielded thousands of questions from aspiring wine and cider makers, most of whom, it must be said, have got into difficulties only through not following my simple directions. Fortunately, I am extremely patient. . .

At last - The Paraplexed Crossword

 The Basic Crossword

Across 1. The newish name for Twitter (1)

Down   1. The third-last letter of the English alphabet (1)

The Intermediate Crossword

Across 1. The newish name for Twitter, repeated once (1,1)

             3. The number 20, as written by Marcus Junius Brutus (2)

Down   1. A possible shorthand for one's previous partner but one (1,1)

             2. Substitute signatures for two illiterate individuals (1,1)

The Advanced Crossword

Across 1. A winning row in noughts & crosses (1,1,1)

             4. A traditional descriptor for a premium strength ale (3)

             5. The number of days in September, as written by Caius Cassius (3)

Down   1. The newish name for Twitter, repeated twice (1,1,1)

             2. A winning column in noughts & crosses (1,1,1)

             3. An amorous appendage to a signature in a love letter (1,1,1)