A Final Chapter
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A FINAL CHAPTER Compiled By J. L. HERRERA A FINAL CHAPTER DEDICATED TO: The memory of my father, Godfrey (‘Geoff’) Allman Clarke; who saw a good book and a comfortable chair as true pleasures … AND WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO: Mirka Hercun-Facilli, Eve Masterman, Ellen Naef, Cheryl Perriman, Patrick Herrera, Sheila Given, Marie Cameron, Poppy Lopatniuk, and the Meeting House Library. INTRODUCTION So much for thinking it was time to cut and run, or descend heavily into a comfortable armchair, and say “No more”. I did actually say just that. And then the old itch came over me. Like someone becoming antsy at the sight of a card table or roulette wheel. One more go won’t hurt— The trouble is—the world may be drowning under books most of which I don’t particularly want to read but there are always those which throw up an idea, a thought, a curiosity, a sense of delight, a desire to know more about someone or something. They sneak in when I’m not on guard. I say “I wonder—” before I realise the implications. On the other hand they, the ubiquitous ‘they’, keep telling us ordinary mortals to use our brains. Although I think that creating writers’ calendars is the ultimate in self-indulgence I suppose it can be argued that it does exercise my brain. And as I am hopeless at crossword puzzles but don’t want my brain to turn into mush … here we go round the mulberry bush and Pop! goes the weasel, once more. I wonder who wrote that rhyme? At a guess I would say that wonderful author Anon but now I will go and see if I can answer my question and I might be back tomorrow to write something more profound. In the meantime may you be surrounded by the happiness of books … J. L. Herrera Hobart 2013 P.S. You’ve been wondering too? I was in Book City and saw a book called Pop Goes the Weasel by Albert Jack. Of course our rhyme—All around the mulberry bush/the monkey chased the weasel/The monkey stopped to pull up his socks/Pop! goes the weasel—was a playground parody. But Jack suggests the rhyme might originally have referred to the Huguenot weavers who carved out small livings on the edges of the more settled London communities in the 1700s because a weasel was a machine for measuring thread and it made a popping sound as it was used. On the other hand it might also be an instance of Cockney rhyming slang. Yet, given the long pedigree of many nursery rhymes, the first suggestion is more than possible. (And, sadly, since writing that Book City has closed.) 2 A FINAL CHAPTER January 1: James Frazer Mary Beard * * * * * “Why was it called golden, and why a bough, that grey-green tuffet, pearled and dotted with tiny moons? Apparently because it will turn golden if you keep it long enough, but as in this country mistletoe usually comes down with the rest of the Christmas decorations it never gets the chance of assuming this different aspect of beauty. “Shakespeare called it baleful; but, as everybody knows, it is possessed of most serviceable properties if only you treat it right. It can avert lightning and thunderbolts, witchcraft and sorcery; it can extinguish fire; it can discover gold buried in the earth; it can cure ulcers and epilepsy; it can stimulate fertility in women and cattle. On the other hand, if you do not treat it right it can do dreadful things to you. It may even kill you as it killed Balder the Beautiful, whose mother neglected to exact an oath from it not to hurt her son “because it seemed too young to swear.” “The important thing, therefore, seems to be to learn as quickly and thoroughly as possible how to treat it right. “You must never cut it with iron, but always with gold. You must never let it touch the ground, but must catch it in a white cloth as it falls. This seems easy compared with the first stipulation, since even in these days most people do still possess a white cloth of some sort, a sheet, or a large handkerchief, whereas few of us can command a golden bagging-hook or even a knife with a blade of pure gold. You must never put it into a vase but must always suspend it, and after every traditional kiss the man must pick off one fruit — which is not a berry, although it looks like one — and when all the fruits have gone the magic of the kiss has gone also. “Folk-tales? He would be a bold man who attempted to explain or to explain away such ancient and widespread superstitions, ranging from furthest Asia into Europe and Africa. Mysterious and magical throughout all countries and all centuries, these tales may be read in Sir James Frazer’s monumental work in which he honoured that queer parasite, the mistletoe, with the title The Golden Bough. “So here let me concentrate rather on some botanical facts which Sir James Frazer disregards, and try to correct some popular misconceptions about the nature of the mistletoe. “We think of it as a parasite, but it is not a true parasite, only a semi-parasite, meaning that it does not entirely depend upon its host for nourishment, but gains some of its life from its own leaves. It belongs to an exceptional family, the Loranthaceae, comprising more than five hundred members, only one of which is a British-born subject — Viscum album, the Latin name for our English mistletoe. “The mistletoe, as we know it, grows on some trees and not on others. The worst mistake that we make is to believe that it grows most freely on the oak. It seldom does; and that is the reason why the Druids particularly esteemed the oak-borne mistletoe, for this was a rarity and thus had a special value. The mistletoe prefers the soft-barked: the apple, the ash, the hawthorn, the birch, the poplar, the willow, the maple, the Scots pine, the sycamore, the lime, and the cedar. It is seldom found on the pear, the alder, or the beech; and is most rare on the oak. “Another popular mistake concerning the propagation of this queer plant. It is commonly believed that birds carry the seeds. This is only half true. What really happens, by one of those extraordinarily complicated arrangements which Nature appears to favour, is that the bird (usually the missel-thrush) pecks off the white fruit for the sake of the seed inside it, and then gets worried by the sticky mess round the seed and wipes his beak, much as we might wipe our muddy shoes on a doormat, and thereby deposits the seed in a crack of the bark, where it may, or may not, germinate. 3 “Such are a few, a very few, legends and facts about the strange and wanton bunch we shall hang somewhere in our house this Christmas.” From In Your Garden by Vita Sackville-West. * * * * * “Who does not know Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi — ‘Diana’s Mirror’, as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild. “In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood. The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove of Aricia. But the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated about three miles off, at the foot of the Alban Mount, and separated by a steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small crater-like hollow on the mountain side. In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.” And “Of the worship of Diana at Nemi some leading features can still be made out. From the votive offerings which have been found on the site, it appears that she was conceived of especially as a huntress,” (though at her annual festival “hunting dogs were crowned and wild beasts were not molested”) “and further as blessing men and women with offspring, and granting expectant mothers an easy delivery.” Her festival was held on the 13th of August.