The glory is departed

Boarzell School in Sussex where Mr Dumbreck taught me English in 1961

I had a terrific English teacher when I was 12 called Mr Dumbreck and were he here today he would strike a big red pencil through that word “terrific”, on the grounds of being a cliché, and furthermore terrific means inducing terror. Another rule for our English compositions was that no sentence was to begin either with the word “it” or the word “suddenly”.

I want to tell you about my swotty boy moment. One day the word “hectic” cropped up and Mr Dumbreck asked us for examples of how it might be used. Up I piped with “yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red”, a line from Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”, which we had recently been reading in class. Mr Dumbreck heaped praise on me for quoting both correctly and appositely, and even after all these years the memory calls up a glow of satisfaction. Lindsay by the bye tells me that at her school quoting Shelley wasn't considered comme il faut, and would quite likely have earnt me a whack on the back of the head with a pencil box.

Mr Dumbreck and the Fifth Form room. The events related here took place in the Sixth Form room next door, but no photo is available.  
All photos courtesy of Michael Salmony

Whenever I think of Mr Dumbreck the phrase “Ichabod, the glory is departed” comes to mind. It's an essay he read to us about a hat box festooned with luggage labels. You have to be as old as I am to remember what this meant. The hat box is sent away for a lock repair and when it comes back it's been steam cleaned, and the lovingly preserved collection of labels has vanished. I've gone looking for this essay, which turns out to be by Max Beerbohm, and after fifty-four years I've just read it again. I see the title is simply “Ichabod”, the phrase “the glory is departed” occuring only at the very end. I imagine Mr Dumbreck read us this verse from the Old Testament: “And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken, and because of her father in law and her husband.” He was a brilliant teacher. He taught us art too. We weren't allowed erasers, and had to ask to borrow his bungy. This was occasionally permitted but normally he would claim to have lost it.

It's hard to say why I've started reminiscing about Mr Dumbreck. My age you will say. But I think I can trace it back four years when I read PD James's Death Comes to Pemberley and was startled to come across this sentence: “Suddenly Mrs Reynolds was with them.” Proof that PD James had not attended Mr Dumbreck’s lessons, and considering that she was writing a Jane Austen sequel, very bad; for Austen, though she used the word “suddenly” about 50 times in her novels, never once began a sentence with it. I know this because I have the internet. Mr Dumbreck knew it in his bones.

Finally, in a couple of hours we in Cork Astronomy Club will celebrate the centennial of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which prompts me to ponder the relativity of time. From leaving Boarzell in 1961, to 1972 the year my mother died and I moved to York, was 11 years, and appears to me like half a lifetime. From leaving York to now is nearly 11 years, and it seems like yesterday.

Note 1 : For a read-out of every sentence in which Jane Austen used the word “suddenly”, all you need is this website http://www.pemberley.com/etext/ and about eight seconds of your time. Charles Dickens had no such compunction by the way. I found the following instances in David Copperfield, and I suspect, had I continued searching, would have found many more:-
“Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard placard, beautifully written, which was lying on the desk …” Chap 5
“Suddenly Miss Murdstone gave such a scream that I all but dropped it.” Chap 8
“Suddenly there passed us ─ evidently following them ─ a young woman …” Chap 22

Note 2: The Biblical quotation is 1 Samuel 4:21 in King James version.
  

In which I seek an historical fact and don't find it

Last week in Portugal I conducted some historical research about Christians under Muslim rule. According to the historian A R Disney, Christian monasteries and nunneries continued to function under Muslim rulers in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, and he cites two centres of Christian pilgrimage in the Algarve which were respected by the Muslim authorities.  In search of one of them, a sanctuary of the Virgin Mary, I took the bus to Faro, and was in luck, for prominently displayed in the small municipal museum is a modern tapestry telling the legend of Santa Maria de Faro.  During the years of Muslim rule, Muslims and Christians quarrelled over an image of the Virgin, which for the sake of a quiet life the Christians were obliged to ditch in the harbour. No sooner was the deed done however, than to the distress of the local fishermen all fish disappeared from the sea. Realising their mistake, the Muslims dredged the image up and restored it to its rightful place, whereupon the fishermens’ nets were filled more bounteously than ever before.  This is numbered amongst the miracles of the Virgin. Incidentally, Mary is venerated in Islam, indeed according to Wikipedia is mentioned more times in the Koran than in the New Testament. 

Tapestry in Faro municipal museum. The panels show: a fight, throwing the statue into the sea, empty fishing nets, pulling the statue out of the sea, statue restored on the wall, full fishing nets

I showed the curator the passage in Disney's book (A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire) about the shrine to the Virgin, and asked him if any evidence of it has survived. Sadly not. Moreover, whilst he was familiar with the book, he told me that other than the legend, there is no evidence for these events.

Hmm ... history books are full of facts and you can hardly have history without them; but the one and only fact that I've actually checked for myself seems to have evaporated before my eyes.

If I'm back in the Algarve next year I'll dig some more. And I hope I shall be, because I missed out on the museum of dried fruit in Loulé.  A circumstance which when mentioned occasions unaccountable hilarity, but I intend to prove the scoffers wrong.

More about that disputed image

A thought on the dispute between the Christians and Moors over the image of Mary. The legend mentions that the Moors resented the statue, with no explanation offered as to why. It occurs to me that to those who first heard the story no explanation was necessary – for the Moors’ prohibition of images would be too well known to need mentioning, and Mary being a figure of reverence to Muslims would make the Christians’ statue all the more abhorrent.

The source of the legend appears to be an old Spanish poem, or song, translated: “In Faro, there was a statue of the Virgin. It had stood on the seashore since the time of the Christians, and captives prayed to it. Christians called the city ‘Holy Mary of Faro’ because of the statue. The Moors resented this and threw the statue into the sea. As long as the statue lay in the water, the Moors could not catch any fish. When they realised this, the Moors recovered the statue. They placed it on the wall between the merlons [battlements]. Afterwards, the Moors caught even more fish than they had before.”

Note: The poem is “The Moors of Faro who Threw a Statue of the Virgin into the Sea”. It's no 183 in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of poetry in medieval Galician composed at the Court of King Alfonso X of Castile in the second half of the 13th century. See the Oxford database of Cantigas de Santa Maria. This poem departs from the legend given in the Faro museum, where it's the Christians under duress who threw the statue into the sea, whereas in the poem it's the Moors.

Another note: I've seen medieval Persian depictions of Mohammed, which shows that the detestation of images has not always been a consistent feature of Islam.

Algarve chimneys, a speciality on the way to extinction

View of Albufeira

Back from a week in the Algarve, at Albufeira.  A pleasant holiday beside a calm Atlantic in warm sunny weather, never out of shorts, and no need of a sweater even in the evenings.  The only drawback was most of the voices you hear are English and the entire town which was once a fishing village consists of restaurants and bars and shops selling beach umbrellas, and some quite nice pottery.  If you were local it would depress you to behold a hillside quite covered in tourist apartment blocks, and you might wonder what the planning department has been doing. Though since all this is done for my benefit, it's hardly my place to complain.  It is however Abel’s place.  Abel is a new friend I've made in Albufeira and along with a couple of thousand others he’s part of a Facebook group devoted to preserving the distinctive Algarve chimneys, which were first drawn to my attention by a tourist guide last year.  Here are some:-

Photos by João Lelo from the Facebook page

Chaminés Algarvias – Uma Espécie em Vias de Extinção
(Algarve chimneys, a specialty on the way to extinction)

I was astonished to learn that many instances of these chimneys are even now being demolished, and that some of those whose photos I have seen, actually no longer exist. Before I left, I sent a message to the Director of Turismo do Algarve, expressing my dismay and concluding “Surely something should be done?”  There seems little confidence in the local authorities however. A Facebook group member posted (in English) “A very well meant initiative, but probably going to the wrong address. Authorities are the last to take appropriate measures. It's up to every single Portuguese to be aware of their beautiful heritage. But not even most of the architects have the right feeling for it. This group is a good approach to reach that goal!”

By the way for a bit more on the history of the chimneys and of Muslim-Christian relations in Portugal, you can read “Of mosques and chimneys in the Algarve”, a blog I wrote last year.

He and Me, or, How we played Kick the Can

Kicking the can down the road is a cliché of political journalism that bugs me. It cropped up in a Guardian editorial in connection with Greece, as I mentioned last time. But on this occasion no blame attaches to The Guardian because they acknowledged it as someone else’s cliché.  No such excuse however on 27 September 2013:-
 

Here “kicking the can down the road” appears not only within the article but dear oh dear, in the headline.  And dear oh dear, not just any old headline, but an editorial.

And here's a particularly lame instance in the Irish Examiner last year.  It's in an op-ed piece which finishes:-

“Scandal has been kicked down the road, where, history warns, it will rear its head again.  But with a bit of luck for Shatter and Callinan, that will be on somebody else’s watch.”  Two sentences groaning under the weight of three clichés. 

I'll spare you further examples. It's a metaphor that appears to have no precise referent. Or maybe there really is a kicking the can down the road game that all other kids played, and I didn't, due to my privileged upbringing? If so then I withdraw that part of the objection.  (Note: idly kicking a can down a road doesn't count; it has to be a purposeful game.)

Kick The Can

At my school we did have a game called Kick The Can and very satisfying it was too. No road was involved - we played it in a clearing in the woods at one side of which a steep bank fell away to a pond on which (I think) moorhens swam. The can was a large upside-down floor polish tin. One boy would be “He”, while the rest of us ran to hide behind trees. The He's task was to catch sight of one of us. Suppose he spied me he would shout “one two three Household” and then I was caught, and had to stand at the edge of the clearing. When we were all caught, the He had won the game.

Here I am running up behind the He to kick the can and release three boys who have been caught. However, my run is likely to be in vain, because his foot is on the can.

But there was a catch. While shouting “one two three Household”, the He had to have his foot on the can, else it didn't count. If another boy ran from behind a tree and succeeded in kicking the can while the He’s foot wasn’t on it, then all those who had been caught were released, and the He had to run to retrieve the can, giving us all time to hide again. Or the He was deposed, and the can kicker became the new He. Of course the He could avoid all this inconvenience by the simple contrivance of staying put in the middle of the clearing with his foot placed firmly on the can. But this defensive tactic entailed disadvantages. Firstly, the He would be unlikely to discover any of us who were hiding. To have a good chance of this, it was necessary to go on patrol amongst the trees. The other disadvantage was the rest of us from our hiding places would taunt him with a chant of “Can Sticker! Can Sticker!”

It was a brilliant game.

By the way, although I've depicted us all in Billy Bunterish school caps, these were worn only on Sundays, not for kick the can. The caps were similar in style to the one shown but they were pink, indeed Leander pink according to one of my informants. It was a prep school in Sussex called Boarzell that I attended from 1956 to 1961, age 7 to 12. Finally were my illustration accurate, I feel the can would have frequently ended up in the pond. But as I don't recall this happening, at least not often, maybe the pond wasn’t as close as I remember it.  

On being British

The day of the Scottish referendum is a good time to say a few words about being British. Which is something I'm not.  I sometimes say I'm English, and sometimes half English and half Swedish. But never British.  Half English and half Swedish is an ungainly expression, so I think in future I'll say “both English and Swedish”.  The other day I caught myself calling Luleå my home town.  A surprising thing to say, perhaps, seeing as the longest I have ever spent there is six weeks when I was 17. But though I was brought up in the south of England, there's no one place we lived more than a few years. Consequently no place in England I can think of as my home town.  I spent more than half my life in York. But you can't call a place your home town if you didn't get there till you were 23. Whereas Luleå is the one place that has been in my life ever since I can remember. I still have my mother’s sister Kerstin there and my cousin Tolle, and we visit every other year or so.  By contrast, when I go to either Bristol or Brighton (which I haven't done for a long time, and maybe never again) I don't feel as if I'm going home, and I have no connections there. 

Luleå: my home town in the north of Sweden

But I've drifted from the Scottish referendum. I just need to comment that it was a disappointing result.  A vote for an independent Scotland would have shaken politics up a bit. Whether it would have shaken English politics up in a good way is a question worth pondering. Maybe it would have boosted English nationalism which has always been a right wing phenomenon. Unlike Scottish nationalism which has a wholesome social democratic flavour. Taken all in all, nationalism has been and remains the bane of world politics and if I could abolish it I would. A foolish and unhistorical thing to say, but there I've said it.

But back to Scotland. The question has to be asked, and would have been asked loudly had the vote been for independence: independence from whom and from what? Who would have governed Scotland, the government in Edinburgh or the multinational corporations? Escaping from under the neoliberal Tory yoke suggests a hopeful answer to that question; but the soon to resign Alex Salmond’s support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the European Union and the United States (TTIP) suggests a bad answer. 

The TTIP deal hands sovereignty to multinationals, but according to Salmond “For Scotland, given that the United States is our largest individual trading partner outside the UK, this agreement will be especially good news”. 

Feeling English

This essay, I am beginning to see, is a ramshackle affair. Because now I am going to tack back to the beginning and say something about feeling English and not British. And I just want to address those who, for fear of being suspected of Ukippery or racism, would be shy of saying they feel English.  Whilst England is a place, Britain and British to me are political expressions and suggest the Empire.  My father was a big believer in the British Empire and its unique civilising mission in world history, and was always intensely proud to call himself British. But that’s not for me. English is Shakespeare, Milton, the Lollards, the Levellers, William Blake’s Jerusalem (which requires a separate essay but I'll spare you it on this occasion), Thomas Paine, the Luddites (another essay), the Tolpuddle Martyrs.  When I say I'm English, that’s what I associate myself with.

Finally, these ramblings have been an exercise in displacement activity, since what's really important, and what's stopped me writing on this blog for the past month, is the Islamic State. I still haven’t yet worked out what to say about it - and until I do, I don't really feel like writing about anything else. But the Scottish referendum handed me an excuse for this riff on Britishness.

Of mosques and chimneys in the Algarve

We spent last week in Albufeira on the Algarve.  Not the place to go, according to the Rough Guide, if you're looking for unspoilt Portugal, but it has an archaeological museum of which more below. The image on the left is an ornament in the garden of our apartment block. It's a typical Algarve chimney, and if you look closely at the image on the right, the view from our balcony, you'll see several more, all inspired by Moorish design. Probably not in use, as none of them are sooted. 

But used or not, a remark by our tour guide Carlos led me enquire into the history of Jews and Muslims under Christian rule in Portugal. Pointing out these distinctive Algarve chimneys, Carlos told us they are descended from minarets which Muslims erected on their houses after the Christian reconquest when all the mosques were abolished. And their Christian neighbours were so impressed with these domestic minarets that they copied them, and over the course of time the minarets became chimneys. This tale had a dubious ring to it, and I checked it out with the archaeologist at the local museum, a helpful lad called Luís, who flatly contradicted it. It's a story favoured by anthropologists he told me, for which there is no archaeological evidence.  These Moorish chimneys first appear in the 18th century.

Nonetheless, all this set me wondering about the lives of Muslims immediately following the reconquest. Reconquest by the way is a highly loaded term but it's the cornerstone of Iberian historiography and usually capitalised as “Reconquista”.

My reason for disbelieving the story about minarets and chimneys was the implausibility of Muslims wishing to advertise their presence when their religion was banned and inquisitors were prowling around. But since coming home I've done a bit of digging and discovered that my reasoning was quite mistaken.

Iberia in 1147 (Wikipedia). No-one in 1147 would have predicted that by the 16th century Muslim rule would be finished and all the Christian kingdoms except for Portugal would be merged and called Espania. In this map The Algarve is still part of Almohad territory. It was conquered by the king of Portugal in 1250.

Because for at least 250 years there were no inquisitors. Religious pluralism was the rule. After the reconquest, Jewish and Muslim minorities of various sizes cohabited more or less peacefully alongside a dominant Christian population. Jews and Muslims were permitted to practise their faiths and live in autonomous communities under royal protection, provided that they paid discriminatory taxes and did not challenge the Catholic religion. All this I got from Google Books: The persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the end of religious tolerance (1496-7) by François Soyer, 2007.

This history of religious toleration under Christian rule was quite new to me and it set me wondering, during this time, where did the Muslims pray? Because the way I've heard it, as soon as the Christians conquered a city they converted all the mosques to churches.  

I've had a long email from François dealing with that question, but as I've probably gone on long enough, I'm going to put all that in a separate file so you can follow it up if you're interested. Other questions I've looked at are: how did they view mosque to church conversions, what distinctions were made during the period of religious pluralism between Jews and Muslims, and how did the regime compare to Christians and Jews under the previous Muslim rulers?

A final note about those chimneys. I've heard that identical chimneys, though perhaps less elaborate, exist in North Africa and Spain. And by the way if despite the Rough Guide you decide on Albufeira I can highly recommend the apartment - we'll probably go back next year. Look up Apartamentos Rainha D. Leonor.

In which I worry over response to concentration camp

To Berlin last week with my friend Vincent, and to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Pronounced Saxon-hausen, a common placename in Germany. I would fain have avoided this visit but Vincent was keen. I'm glad we went, and I may have more to say about it in due course. But for now I just want to relate my own feelings as I went round.  The point is, I had none.  It was as if I were visiting any other archaeological site, a castle say with medieval dungeons, or a cathedral.  I was bothered about this. Some inadequacy of sensitivity on my part.

Members of our Sachsenhausen tour group inspect a hut charred by an arson attack in 1992

Only two original huts remain. The compound has been vandalized several times by Neo-Nazis. In 1992 they set fire to a hut now used as Jewish museum. And the foundation that runs the camp, instead of restoring the burnt beams, has preserved them in their charred state. This is good. The arson attack is itself part of the site’s history.  But what is not good, is that here I am again harping on about archaeology rather than concentrating on the misery and suffering that occurred there.

The banality of evil

From a photographic exhibition depicting Nazi terror during my Berlin visit a couple of weeks ago  [1]. There were atrocity photos too, but the image that spooked me most was this ... …

The caption was : SS female auxiliaries (“SS Maids”) and SS men from Auschwitz concentration camp at the SS retreat Sola-Hütte 30 kilometers south of the camp in an idyllic mountain landscape, undated (probably July 22, 1944). At center is Karl Höcker, adjutant to camp commandant Richard Baer.

I look at the date, July 1944, and I ask myself: didn't these people see that in less than a year the war would be lost and they would be called to account?  Well they weren't of course so maybe that’s not such a good question, but what would they say in later years when their children saw this photo? “I was just doing my job, it seemed important at the time”, I suppose. The banality of evil [2].

The American museum director who now curates this and similar photographs says they “vividly illustrate the contented world they enjoyed while overseeing a world of unimaginable suffering. They offer an important perspective on the psychology of those perpetrating genocide."

I see from Der Spiegel's website that the SS female auxiliaries photo came from an album belonging to Karl Höcker, who took the pictures as personal keepsakes. Prior to its liberation by the Allies, Höcker fled Auschwitz, and after the war worked for years in a bank, unrecognized. In 1963 he went to trial, claimed he “had no possibility in any way to influence the events”, was sentenced to seven years in prison, and was released after serving five. He died at the age of 88 in 2000.

The next photo is a bit fuzzy I'm afraid. It's just a snap I took as I went round the exhibition, and I haven't been able to find a better copy on the web.

The caption here is : SA men publicly humiliate Hermann Weidemann, a local council member from the SPD who had been taken into “protective custody”. Hofgeismar, May 2, 1933. Sitting on an ox with a cardboard sign hung round his neck, Weidemann was led through Hofgeismar by the SA in a pillory procession. The victim, a Social Democrat councillor in the town, was followed by a crowd of curious spectators.

I think that in mentioning the curious spectators the caption has it about right. There seems to be a party atmosphere. What would the two girls in the foreground tell their children 20 years later if this photo came to light? “I didn't understand politics, I was too young” …  “My parents told me the Social Democrats were destroying Germany and had lost us the war in 1918, something had to be done” … “It seemed like a carnival, I didn't really know what was going on” …  “Back then Hitler seemed to have the right idea but in the end he took it too far” … "Is that me? I'm ashamed ... " ?? 

By the way I see from Wikipedia that from 1933 and 1944 Weidemann was held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and for three years after the war, from 28 April 1945 to 1948, he was mayor of Hofgeismar, whose streets the Nazis had paraded him through on the ox (though the Wikipedia article fails to mention this event).

I'll close with my most disappointing Berlin photo. Hitler’s bunker. I imagined a conducted tour showing the bedrooms, the kitchen, Hitler’s office, the garage full of staff cars, all as in the 2004 film Downfall (if you haven't seen it you must). But it was not to be. This picture of me looking glum in a car park is as good as it got.

It seems that after the war the Soviets levelled the Chancellery buildings; though despite some attempts at demolition the underground complex remained largely undisturbed until the two halves of the city were reunited in 1989. During reconstruction of that area of Berlin, those sections of the old bunker complex that were excavated were for the most part destroyed. The site remained unmarked until 2006, when a small tourist information board was put up.  Some of the corridors of the bunker still exist today, but are sealed off from the public.  I wonder why this cavalier attitude to an important piece of archaeology?  To prevent it becoming a neo-Nazi shrine perhaps?

[1] At the Topography of Terror – the present-day name for the site on which the most important institutions of the Nazi apparatus of terror and persecution were located between 1933 and 1945. The buildings are all gone, replaced by a modern exhibition hall.

[2] Banality of evil : the idea that evil occurs when ordinary individuals are put into corrupt situations that encourage their conformity. The phrase was coined by philosopher Hannah Arendt after witnessing the 1962 trial of high-ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann who seemed, at least to Arendt, to be the most mundane of individuals whose evil acts were driven by the requirements of the state and orders from above.
`

I visit Berlin and puzzle

Just back from Berlin where I couldn’t resist posing at the local metro station under a sign indicating the exit for Karl Marx Alley (boulevard really), Peace Street and The Street of the Paris Commune. Or what about the inscription on the back wall of this regrettably dark photo of the main staircase of Humboldt University:

Die Philosophen haben die Welt
nur verschieden interpretiert,
es kommt aber darauf an,
sie zu verändern

Not even attributed, you're meant to know it's from Marx's Theses on Feuerbach. Cool.  “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

The building [1] stands on Bebelplatz, at the right of this panoramic view:-

On 10 May 1933, Bebelplatz made history in an inglorious manner. It was the site of the most notorious of the book burnings organized by the Nazis, in which important works of world literature were thrown into the flames.  Karl Marx's Theses on Feuerbach first amongst them no doubt. The 20,000 volumes burnt included Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Erich Kästner, Stefan Zweig, Heinrich Heine, and Kurt Tucholsky. Don't worry I haven’t heard of some of them either but you get the idea.  A monument to this outrage has been created in the square, consisting of a glass panel opening onto a white underground room with empty shelf space for (supposedly) all 20,000 volumes. A plaque bears an epigraph from an 1820 work by Heinrich Heine: Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen (That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they end burning people).

I say supposedly because my rough estimate of the shelf space was 6,000 volumes. My friend Vincent got a slightly higher figure but nowhere near 20,000. 

The books all came from the university building with the Karl Marx inscription. Though the inscription wasn’t there then of course. And we are told the ignorant thugs who did this deed were mainly “students”. I feel sorry for the librarian. I visualise him being charged with the duty of identifying all the offending volumes, which doubtless included many rare first editions. My sympathy might be misplaced of course, maybe he was a Nazi and revelled in the work. But I imagine not. A rector with Nazi tendencies, Eugen Fischer, was appointed in 1933 but I haven’t discovered if he was yet in place at the time of the book burning.

I want to comment on all those old buildings you see in the panoramic view of the square. They are, from the left, the State Opera, St. Hedwig's Cathedral straight ahead and the Humboldt University building. Now I haven't found an image of Bebelplatz in 1945 but here’s a fairly typical image of Berlin in that year.

So what I puzzle over is, when I was in an old church, the Humboldt University, various 19th century museum buildings, what was I actually in? A repaired pre-war building? Or a modern replica?  On a four day visit to Berlin I encountered a fair mix of modern buildings and old ones, but how old were the old ones really? 18th and 19th century? Or 1960’s? I came away without a feel for the answer to this question.  I've plenty more to say about Berlin but I'll stop here for now.

[1] Now known so far as I can tell as the old law library

Uncle Mickey

Michael O'Brien in the uniform of the Irish Free State army, about 1923

This is Eileen’s Uncle Mickey, her father’s eldest brother. He's one of those people who habitually attracts the sobriquet “larger than life character”. Till now I never had a decent photo. His grandson Patrick brought it a few weeks ago.  For joining the Free State Army Mickey was widely reviled within the family and accused of being a turncoat. An expression I never fully grasped until Eileen told me of the following episode that occurred around 1985 (by which time Mickey had been dead some years). Eileen was with her Uncle Joe (Mickey’s younger brother) in a pub in Kilworth a few miles from here called The Butchers. An old codger accosted Joe and asked him if he was Mickey’s brother.  I say asked but it was more in the nature of an accusation. You really need to hear Eileen tell this story, I don't do it justice. Next he loudly proclaimed that Mickey had turned his coat, making the while a theatrical show of turning his own coat inside out and displaying the lining. Uncle Joe remained cool under the provocation and confined himself to muttering “he did the bastard”, which had the effect of releasing some of the tension.

Now I need to say that this coat turning business is something that Eileen and I disagree on. Mickey is held to have supported the wrong side in the 1922-23 civil war. The pro-treaty government side that is. But to my way of thinking Mickey’s conduct was perfectly consistent. During the War of Independence he gave his allegiance to Dáil Éireann and after the 1921 Treaty he continued to give his allegiance to Dáil Éireann. It seems to me that it was O’Connor and de Valera and their followers who turned their coats. They disregarded the Dáil vote to accept the Treaty, and started the Civil War. But within Eileen’s family that’s never been a popular view.

Taken this afternoon: the borheen where Jonty confronted Mickey; perhaps, for all I know, the very spot. In 1922 it was a rough unmetalled track. From here the family home was about half a mile further up the hill. Our house is about half a mile down, to the left of the picture, which was taken by my friend Mark.

Another story. This one was told to Eileen and me by another brother, Uncle Jonty, when in his eighties, not long before he died. Jonty would have been 18 at the time of this incident, the fifth in a family of 11, and Mickey was the eldest, age 22, and you need to keep that dynamic in mind. It would be late 1922 I imagine. Jonty had joined the anti-Treaty IRA and was on manoeuvres in the vicinity of the location of this afternoon's photo. A Free State Army truck drove along the road (right outside the window where I'm writing this) and out jumped Uncle Mickey in his uniform and strode up the borheen, up the hill towards the family home. Jonty ran to intercept him and challenged him. Maybe he said “Halt who goes there” I'm not sure. Anyway, Mickey brushed him aside, retorting “you know very well who I am, I'm off to see my mother, now shoot me or get out of my way”. With genuine regret in his voice Jonty told us that he was not under orders that night to shoot, so had to let him go. Quite chilling actually. Some years later Eileen was discussing Neil Jordan’s recently released Michael Collins film with some old fellows in Ballyporeen who confirmed the story and added that Mickey was lucky to survive the night. Men came to the house looking for him, but didn't find him as his mother had hidden him out in the fields.

18th August 1922: one of the Crossley Tenders in the convoy

Mickey used to claim (but no-one can positively confirm this) that he was at BealnaBlath on 18th August 1922 the day Michael Collins was shot in an ambush there. A defining event in Irish history. I've been in touch with the Collins 22 Society. They haven't succeeded in compiling a complete list of those present, though they are still trying.  There were 20 soldiers in two open trucks known as Crossley Tenders. For all anyone knows Mickey was one of the soldiers in that photograph above.

Of course his claim to have been at BealnaBlath on 18th August may not have been a claim to have been on duty in the actual convoy that conveyed Michael Collins. Doubtless troops would have been despatched urgently from Macroom as soon as the report came in. Suppose Mickey was amongst these, that would still count as being at BealnaBlath on 18th August. Or indeed the whole thing could just be a colourful tale he made up. BealnaBlath is in Co Cork about 80 miles from here. 

Mickey had huge charm. Eileen remembers him from when she was five. After falling into a clump of nettles she had to have iodine, and fled from anyone who threatened to apply the dreadful stuff. But when Uncle Mickey called her she ran to him even though she knew he would hold her down while the purple stinging liquid was dabbed on her nettle burns. I'm sorry I never met him. Eileen says he would “light up a room”.

Mickey’s descendants have only sketchy details of his participation in the War of Independence and the Civil War. 

Black & Tan Medal (no bar)

The image is of a medal Mickey was awarded, known as a Black & Tan Medal, in reference to the Black & Tan War, the popular name for the War of Independence. The official description is Medal, without bar, to persons whose service is not deemed to be active military service, but who were members of Oglaigh na hEireann (Irish Republican Army), Fianna Eireann, Cumann na mBan or the Irish Citizen Army for the three months ended on the 11th of July 1921. July 1921 was the start of the Truce period: so this indicates that in the War of Independence Mickey had a non-combat role of some sort. However, I've seen a website which claims that despite the official description it would be wrong to conclude that all those who received the medal without the Bar were not in combat; in many cases men who had confirmed combat records did not receive the Bar, and the reason came down to politics and money - the Bar brought with it a pension.

If Mickey applied for a War of Independence pension (which Patrick says he likely did, and was rejected) and a Free State Army pension, files will exist. All medal and pension applications are being processed to be available to the public in 2016, an event eagerly awaited by historians and family researchers. The date has been selected to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising.

The old cliché 

Uncle Mickey’s story illustrates the old cliché about the Civil War pitching brother against brother. But Eileen says there was remarkably little animosity within the family arising from these events. Nobody spoke of them and it was years later that she first heard the stories I've related here.

Mickey’s son John (Eileen’s cousin) has some memories worth sharing. Chief amongst these, that his father was a devoted follower of Michael Collins and from time to time would literally cry about his being assassinated. This would turn into a tirade against Dev (de Valera), whom he held to be responsible, fervently praying that he should be shot.

John adds: “As kids we took no notice, knowing nothing of these matters, regarding all his mutterings as little short of rubbish. Anyway my mother had a very curt and common sense way of dismissing such things as totally irrelevant and a complete waste of time.”

Mickey’s occasional outbursts aside, John never at any time while he was growing up heard the civil war mentioned, or opinions being expressed anywhere, inside or outside of the home. Nor was it touched on at any school he attended. No more than if it had never occurred. He supposes that in the 1940’s everyone was too close to the events for dispassionate views to be expressed: not history yet, but rather a subject to steer clear of as memories could still be explosive. It was as if the entire nation was in denial, he says. Moreover Hitler and the world war seemed to tie up people’s thoughts in other directions.

John adds that when he was young, relations with his uncle Jonty were always most cordial “so fortunately the incident in the borheen was passed over with no lasting ill effects.”

I visit passage tombs in the Boyne Valley

With Cork Astronomy Club last weekend to Newgrange (top photo) in the Boyne Valley. A passage tomb - a vast mound covering a passage of stone slabs, and a chamber where cremated remains were interred. Older than the pyramids of Egypt. You can stand under a 5000 year old roof, as good today as the day it was built.

Am penning an essay which will include the regrettable reconstruction by O’Kelly in the 1970’s, why passage tombs were not observatories, why neolithic farmers didn't need calendars to tell them when to plant, and why I was unconvinced by a film at the visitor centre suggesting the builders of Newgrange believed they had to propitiate the sun-god to prevent it disappearing entirely in midwinter.

At Loughcrew several passage tombs are built at the top of a high hill (bottom photo - yes I'm afraid that old codger is me). I'm not clear if they had to haul the stones up the hill, or did they find them at the top?

Getting their five a day

These cows benefit from my campaign against food waste.  They absolutely delish the kitchen peelings which I bring down to them twice a week. See one of them reaching her tongue out for the bucket, and another licking the inside of it when it's empty.

Climate change comes to Glenduff

22 Nov 2012. Top, our drive torn up by the flood. Bottom Cork County Council fixing it.

We woke 3 o’clock on Thursday morning to find water cascading into the yard with such force that it completely broke up our yard and driveway, exposing electric cables. Only a little came into the house thankfully.

Before and after the repairs.  Exposed electric cable in foreground of left hand picture.

Full praise to Cork County Council who sent a gang to fix everything up again, all done within less than 12 hours of the flood.  They had to attend to a lot of other local damage as well.

This sort of thing has never happened before, and the talk is, is this climate change in action? You can't point to a single event of course, floods in Glenduff or Hurricane Sandy, and say “that’s climate change”. But it's the second time in 6 weeks our drive and the nearby borheen (mountain road) have been torn up; and the best way to describe what's going on is that climate change loads the dice in favour of extreme events such as this.  More on the way I fear. 

Barcelona: and a Roman aqueduct I nearly missed

The aqueduct at Badalona, Spain, with location map

To Barcelona last week. We stayed in Badalona, and there I walked a short way along a Roman aqueduct. It's underground now but the archaeologist at the local museum tells me that originally it was partially embedded in the natural clay, meaning I imagine that the roof was above ground.  I imagine this photo of an aqueduct in Germany possibly gives an idea of it:

Left: The Eifel aqueduct near Cologne showing vaulted roof and inspection manhole. Right: cross section of typical aqueduct at Lyon showing vaulted roof, foundations and cement lining of channel. Illustrations from Roman Aqueducts & Water Supply by A. Trevor Hodge (1992).

There’s a 38m stretch you can visit but I wasn’t comfortable crouching so I didn't venture far along, which is a pity, as at the far end I should have found a manhole in the roof for cleaning and maintenance. 

From the archaeologist I also have the following information. That no conservation work has been done – the duct’s perfect state of preservation is exactly as it was at the time of its discovery in the 1970’s. That it was located under one of the streets that ran from north to south (known as cardines). That it is presumed to have brought water to the town of Baetulo from the lower part of the Coastal Range. (Not sure what that makes the total distance - 25km perhaps.) That it was built in the early years of the reign of Tiberius and in use until the end of the first century AD. (So that's from c. 20 AD to c.100 AD. How do they know these things with such precision I wonder? Moreover it struck me as a remarkably brief period of use, requiring some sort of explanation, though the archaeologist didn't actually agree.)

Due to the steepness of the streets, the duct had a 7% fall, but a pavement of opus signinum (a tough type of mortar) prevented erosion of the duct. (According to Trevor Hodge, 1.5% to 3% was the usual gradient, anything steeper causing excessive erosion.)

They know about a stretch of 96 meters in all, the rest of the duct having disappeared due to modern construction work.

The duct has a width of 1.30 m and its maximum height is 1.50 m. The roofing system is a barrel vault with identical construction to the walls. Pepita Padrós is the archaeologist who has supplied all this information and many thanks for her trouble.

I very nearly missed the whole thing. The signage is poor. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's nonexistent. I was pondering a manhole in the street and a scruffy looking garage door when a man approached me, asked if I wanted to see the aqueduct and opened it up for me and led me down some steps.

Gaining access to the aqueduct

I have Trevor Hodge's aqueducts book (where the black and white illustrations come from) and one day if I have time I'll tell you more about what it has to say. It's fascinating stuff.

I'll need to visit this aqueduct again, and I think there's a good chance. Badalona where we stayed is a suburb just north of Barcelona, with a good metro link, hotel right next to the beach, perfect in every way. Can give recommendations if you ask. 

Crime and punishment

 

On Tuesday these two cows invaded my woodland garden. I was not a happy man. The next picture shows them being expelled pursued by the angels of the Lord.

Astronomy symposium venue sparks controversy

A 1610 portrait of Johannes Kepler by an unknown artist, probably in Prague.
Cork Astronomy Club went there to study his laws of planetary motion.

A Cork Astronomy Club symposium on Kepler’s laws, held recently in Prague, has given rise to divergent views.  At issue was the venue for this prestigious occasion in the astronomical calendar.  One club member who does not wish to be named said : “Holding it in Prague was an imaginative idea but the trouble was there were two many bars, and ultimately this negated the symposium’s serious purpose. Next year I think the committee should consider hiring a seminar room at UCC instead.”

Asked to recite Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion, the unnamed member said “Well actually I can only remember two of them and that more or less proves my point.”

A spokesperson for Cork Astronomy Club said: “Kepler did his most important work in Prague and we saw his house and Tycho Brahe’s tomb. But the point about all the bars is a fair one and we'll certainly give it due consideration in planning next year’s event.”

Other members praised the astronomical clock in the Old Town Square. 

Cork astronomers gather at the Prague
astronomical clock

Constructed in 1410 the clock was already nearly 200 years old when Kepler was in the city.  On the hour a figure of death pulls on a bell rope, the apostles pass by a window, and a real live trumpeter plays at the top of the tower, as shown in the video, at the end of which cheering Cork Astronomy Club members can be seen thronging the square hundreds of feet below. 

The clock displays the current zodiac sign and the Moon's phase, and tells the time in Old Bohemian Time, Sidereal Time and the Babylonian hour.

The symposium was held from 26th to 29th April.  Rumour has it that next year’s symposium will be held on an apple farm in Leicestershire and will be devoted to Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation.

After a punishing round of seminars, Cork astronomers relax in a Prague restaurant

Tomb of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in St Nicholas cathedral, Prague

 

Happy and somber days in London

In London last week. Spent a couple of happy days in the British Library. Also saw Three Days in May. At the Library, besides trawling through old copies of New Scientist and visiting the manuscripts exhibition (see below and below) I looked up: Einstein quotations, mid-20th century references to the canals of Mars, and John Dover Wilson’s 1936 edition of Hamlet.

Might have something to say about all of these in due course, as well as explaining why I visited this memorial, beside Tower Hill tube station, to merchant seamen who perished in the First World War:- 

At Tower Hill Memorial, 16 Feb 2012