Mythology

Way out west – Christmas 2015

From the St Ives tourist association website:

“St Ives enters recorded history with the arrival of St. Ia or Hya, the Irish princess who introduced Christianity to the area in the 5th Century.

The legend tells how Saint Ia, a Virgin Saint of noble birth went to the seashore to depart for Cornwall from her native Ireland along with other saints. Finding that they had gone without her and fearing that she was too young to undertake such a hazardous journey alone, she was grief stricken and began to pray.

As she prayed she noticed a little leaf floating on the water and touched it with a rod to see if it would sink. Lo, as she looked it grew bigger and bigger. Taking this as a sign from God, she climbed aboard the leaf and was straightaway wafted across the Channel, reaching her destination well before the others.”

http://www.stives-cornwall.co.uk/about-our-town/history/

Eustace – 8th Dec 2015

“Eustace, which first was named Placidus, was master of the chivalry of Trajan, the emperor, and was right busy in the works of mercy, but he was a worshipper of idols. And he had a wife of the same rite, and also of the deeds of mercy, of whom he had two sons, which he did do nourish after his estate. And because he was ententive to the works of mercy, he deserved to be enlumined to the way of truth.

So on a day, as he was on hunting, he found an herd of harts, among whom he saw one more fair and greater than the other, which departed from the company and sprang into the thickest of the forest. And the other knights ran after the other harts, but Placidus siewed him with all his might, and enforced to take him. And when the hart saw that he followed with all his power, at the last he went up on a high rock, and Placidus approaching nigh, thought in his mind how he might take him. And as he beheld and considered the hart diligently, he saw between his horns the form of the holy cross shining more clear than the sun, and the image of Christ, which by the mouth of the hart, like as sometime Balaam by the ass, spake to him, saying: Placidus, wherefore followest me hither? I am appeared to thee in this beast for the grace of thee. I am Jesu Christ, whom thou honourest ignorantly, thy alms be ascended up tofore me, and therefore I come hither so that by this hart that thou huntest I may hunt thee”

Source:

‘The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints’. Compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, 1275. First Edition Published 1470. Englished by William Caxton, First Edition 1483, Edited by F.S. Ellis, Temple Classics, 1900 (Reprinted 1922, 1931.)

http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/goldenlegend/GoldenLegend-Volume6.asp#Eustace

Eumenides – 3rd Dec 2015

“As the Ladies in this blessed Islande are devout and brave, so are they chast and beautifull, insomuch that when I first behelde them, I could not tell whether some mist had bleared myne eyes, or some strang enchauntment altered my minde, for it may bee, thought I, that in this Island, either some Artemidorus or Lisimandro, or some odd Nigromancer did inhabit, who would shewe me Fayries, or the bodie of Helen, or the new shape of Venus, but comming to my selfe, and seeing that my sences were not chaunged, but hindered, that the place where I stoode was no enchaunted castell, but a gallant court, I could scarce restraine my voyce from crying, There is no beautie but in England.“

John Lyly, ‘Euphues and his England’ (1580)

Graeae – 26th Nov 2015

“Which of the daughters
Of Phorkyas are you?
Since I liken you
To that family.

Are you perhaps one of the Graeae,
A single eye and a single tooth,
Owned alternately between you,
One born of greyness?”

Goethe, ‘Faust part II’
Translated by A. S. Kline

Good as red – 25th Nov 2015

“Mr. James Hennessy offered a resolution that the entire body proceed forthwith to Newark and get drunk… Then the Democrats charged upon the street cars, and being wafted into Newark proceeded, to use their own metaphor, to ‘paint the town red’.”
New York Times 1883

“…because they would be paid up in Chicago for their half-year’s work, and would then do their best towards painting that town in purest vermilion.”
Rudyard Kipling, ‘A Little More Beef’ 1889

“And there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink without a beggarly stiver.”
James Joyce, ‘Ulysses’ 1920

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres…”
Matthew 23:27 (King James version) 1611

Sleeping giants – 24th Nov 2015

“Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair.”

Opening lines to John Keats,’Hyperion’ Book 1 (1820)

Of Comets – 22nd Nov 2015

“Now it must be asked if we can comprehend why comets signify the death of magnates and coming wars, for writers of philosophy say so. The reason is not apparent, since vapour no more rises in a land where a pauper lives than where a rich man resides, whether he be king or someone else. Furthermore, it is evident that a comet has a natural cause not dependent on anything else; so it seems that it has no relation to someone’s death or to war. For if it be said that it does relate to war or someone’s death, either it does so as a cause or effect or sign.”

‘De Cometis’ Albertus Magnus (1200-1280ad)