“He is free of his horse, who never had one” — a saying by a wise-man named “Hendyng” who thrived in the mid 1200s, and was from what is now the south of the West Midlands (though he may have modified his language so as to be intelligible to a more southerly audience).

In April 2016, hearing about the new sci-art blue.dot festival which was set to happen at the nearby Jodrell Bank radio telescope observatory, I made a proposal on Facebook for some kind of Stoke-on-Trent fringe event that might link up with it. The core idea was a suggestions for a new “symphony” in 2018 called Skywave which would link our science heritage with ceramics. I’ve now remembered it again, and have found a little time to work it up as a poster proposal.

Slight correction: I’ve since found, during the research for my book on H.G. Wells in Stoke, that Lodge’s demonstration of electricity must have been at his new home at Wolstanton.

There’s an essay on “Romantic Quest in the West Midlands. Staffordshire and Cheshire Landscapes in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,'”, in the book collection of essays The Gawain Country: Essays on the Topography of Middle English Poetry, Leeds Texts and Monographs series, 1984.

The essay is not online, but the book may possibly still available by mail-order for £9 — according to this order page which dates from about circa 2011. (Update: no, still totally out-of-print and not online, at early 2019).

It also appeared as “Staffordshire and Cheshire Landscapes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” in the North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies 17, 1977, pages 20-49.

Incidentally, the pentangle on the shield (seen above) is not a pagan artist’s modern imposition on an ancient text, it’s something detailed in the text…

It is a symbol that Solomon designed long ago
As an emblem of fidelity, and justly so;
[…]
Therefore it suits this knight and his shining arms,
For always faithful in five ways, and five times in each case,
Gawain was reputed as virtuous,

The Folio Society found a way to detach the symbol from its contemporary “naff hippie-shop pentangle” connotations, by ingeniously and elegantly making it more like a figure…

My early-alpha version of a basic annotated catalogue of the contents of the North Staffordshire Field Studies journals and successors has been expanded to 1895. It’s currently a rough ‘finding aid’, rather than a proper polished bibliography to library standards. The gap in coverage of the main annual volume is now narrowed to: 1896-1959. Also, keyword search from the search-box is now enabled.

Did slavery profits bankroll the Midlands industrial revolution, as local socialist M.P. Tristram Hunt (Labour) would have had you believe in his recent speech in Stoke?

Erm, no. Slavery did not fund a major share of the capital that went into our industrial revolution. If you put together all the combined profits of the slave trade and the West Indian sugar plantations in general, together they did not even add up to five percent of Britain’s national income, either before or during the Industrial Revolution. Even a Midlands-specific claim doesn’t hold water — that exports to colonial settlers might have made huge profits for our early textiles and small metalworking industries. Such activity was at best of minor importance, and overall profits from the colonial trade were low…

“Profits from the colonies and imperial trade and capital accumulation in Britain”: [when put together, all of the] commerce with the ‘periphery’ [i.e.: with fringe areas of the world and colonies] generated funds sufficient to finance only 15 per cent of gross investment expenditures during the Industrial Revolution [… and such] external trade was only a small proportion of Europe’s economic activity and most industries did not depend upon imported raw materials … historians have argued that sugar did not furnish a sufficiently large total output to be a major contributor to the savings that funded the Industrial Revolution … It is equally difficult to prove that merchant capital amassed from colonial commerce [even taken as a whole] was decisive for British industrial growth.” — Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660–1800, Cambridge University Press.

The book is described by Cambridge University Press as… “An up-to-date synthesis of work on slavery, Atlantic trade and the British economy … essential reading”.

The socialist notion that that the industrial revolution was funded largely by slavery arose from the rabidly Marxist 20th century historian Eric Williams, about whose work…

“the majority of scholars working on British industrialization tend to be highly skeptical” [today, because…] “Eric Williams and his followers probably exaggerated the profitability of the slave trade and slave plantation complex.” — from a review of Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660–1800, in Reviews in History, June 2002.

Further, it’s more recently been determined that only around 7 percent of the UK’s historic national elites can be in any way connected with slavery. Indeed, far more of our elites actively fought against it.

Long unavailable except at huge cost, there’s now to be a second printing of one of the most important books for fantasy research. The cheap paperback edition of the collected correspondence by letters between R. E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft. The two-volume set will be officially released on 22nd January 2017, albeit at a still-hefty $60 plus shipping for both volumes. Advance orders are now being taken at the Hippocampus website. Hopefully there will eventually also be a cheaper Kindle ebook version, in time.

Penkhull Wassail and a processional Morris in January. Apple and fruit-tree wassailing is an ancient tradition, taking the form of a New Year procession. I was pleased to see it revived recently in Stoke-on-Trent, and it’s happening again in January 2017. Traditionally, the apple and fruit trees of a district are each visited in turn, on foot. The men sing to them, toast their health in cider and the boys tap their trunks with whippy sticks in a sun-wise direction, in order to ‘wake up’ the trees and ‘turn them back toward life’.

Art by Steve Shaw.

What’s slipping into the public domain in the UK in January 2017? Of course H.G. Wells leads the public domain pack, in terms of science-fiction.

Others of note are:

* Otis Adelbert Kline who “contributed numerous stories to Weird Tales magazine”, wrote some pulp novels in the Edgar Rice Burroughs ‘planetary romance’ style, and who was later a literary agent for the great R. E. Howard.

* Lionel Atwill who was a horror and supernatural screenwriter for RKO, Fox and Universal, with films like Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Dracula.

* Walter S. Masterman, a British mystery novelist whose titles seem to put him on the ‘macabre’ shelf.

* Cyril G. Wates, who had a number of pulp stories in the science fiction pulp Amazing Stories in the late 1920s.

* Albert Leffingwell, an American author of quality mystery novels.

* Booth Tarkington, author of The Magnificent Ambersons and many others.

* Karl Hans Strobl, Austrian fantasy and horror writer. The English translations would, of course, not be going into the public domain. But the plots and approaches will be. Some of his youthful stories have been hailed as classics of the genre. Probably little published now, because in his old age he became a member of the Nazi Party.

* Dion Fortune was a British occultist of the highest degree of loopiness, but was also a 1930s imaginative novelist (mostly under the pen-name V. M. Steele)

* Ernest Thompson Seton was an American fore-runner of Baden-Powell and the Scouting movement. Lots of wood lore books, such as How to Catch Wolves, Animal Tracks and Hunter Signs, as well as some heart-tugging wild animal stories which might be suited to graphic novel / fantasy-makeover adaptation.

* Ernest Rhys, the British scholar and author of English Fairy Tales (1913). Some of the books he wrote might become the basis of a graphic novel, such as his concise historical introduction to London: The Story of the City and his novel Blackhorse Pit.

* Damon Runyon, a punchy and slick professional American short-story writer and newspaperman. He appears to have had a vast output over several decades. The slangy American wise-crack language may not be to today’s taste, but it seems likely that many of his plots would still hold up today.

A fascinating New Scientist iconographic, showing the archaic symbols that appear to have been used in-common by prehistoric cultures around the world. Possibly most are the result of mimicry of common natural forms, in combination with the limitations of very similar types of early tools. But they also tantalisingly suggest a shared mental ‘vocabulary’ of the environment. One wonders if these symbols can also be traced through into the historic era, via a study of the symbols of frontier hunters and trappers, nomad bands etc, something which might be discovered by scouring the 19th and early 20th century ethnography?

from “Hidden Symbols”, 12th November 2016.

Newcastle-under-Lyme… with a small group of placard-waving protestors against fairy tales, of all things. Not sure they’re too happy about the dancing Christmas puddings, either…

Apparently not a spoof art-stunt.

Early Tourists in Wales. A searchable database directory of… “over 1,200 published and manuscript accounts of tours of Wales, 1700-1900”. With relevant comments extracted and available on themed pages. Mostly these relate to travel and the sort of exterior material culture easily observed in travel, e.g. washing day or coracles. But there is also some focus on churches, graveyard customs and harp music.

I’m just ‘reading this into the record’, so I can link it from another post…

Obituary: JOHN GWENOGVRYN EVANS, J. Vendryes in Revue celtique 47, 1930. (Auto translated from the French and lightly polished for clarity)

Moins d’un an après sir John Morris Jones, John Gwenogvryn Evans entre à son tour dans l’éternel repos. Si ces deux bons Gallois se rencontrent aux Champs-Elysées, il faut espérer que leurs ombres, délivrées des passions terrestres, poursuivront dans le calme et la sérénité les discussions qu’ils menaient ici-bas si âprement. La violence qu’ils mettaient à se combattre, à se déni- grer, dépassait toute mesure. Comme le motif s’en ramenait tou- jours à l’interprétation d’un texte ou à la lecture d’un manuscrit, c’était pour tout spectateur impartial un sujet à la fois de tristesse et d’étonnement. Dans une polémique aussi excessive les torts étaient également partagés : on ne trouvait à qui donner raison. La postérité oubliera heureusement ces vaines disputes et ne retiendra d’eux que les bons services qu’ils ont, chacun dans leur genre, rendus à la philologie galloise.

Less than a year after Sir John Morris Jones, John Evans Gwenogvryn also turns to his eternal rest. If both Welsh good-men met in the Champs Elysees, it is to be hoped that from their ghostly shadows would depart all their earthly passions, and that they would continue in peace and quiet the discussions they had set down in print so fiercely. Put aside the violence that they put into their fight, which involved denigration beyond [any seemly] measure. Since the final pattern of meaning is always found in the reader’s own interpretation of a text or a manuscript, then their quarrel seemed to any impartial spectator a subject of both sadness and amazement. In such a controversy the excessive wrongs were evenly split: and no-one was right. Fortunately posterity will forget these vain disputes and we shall retain these men in our memory for the good service they have, each in their way, given to Welsh philology.

John Evans était né le 20 mars 1852 à Ffynnon Yelved, Llany- byther (Carmarthenshire), et fit son éducation première au Presby- terian Collège de Carmarthen. Entré de bonne heure dans le ministère sacerdotal, il fut quelque temps pasteur de l’Église uni- tarienne à Preston (Lancashire). Atteint de tuberculose pulmo- naire, il dut cesser son service paroissial, et les médecins lui déclarèrent qu’un dénouement fatal ne pourrait être retardé — et seulement retardé — que s’il se décidait à partir pour l’Australie. Il s’y décida. Mais l’amélioration de sa santé lui parut trop lente à venir; il quitta brusquement Melbourne le 6 février 1882 pour rentrer dans sa patrie et il débarqua à Gravesend le 25 mai suivant. Il se rendit alors à Oxford, brûlant de l’ardeur de l’étude ; il y retrouva son grand ami O.-M. Edwards, qui nous a laissé un portrait touchant de cet « invalide », pour lequel vingt minutes de lecture étaient alors une pénible épreuve. Mais cet invalide avait une énergie farouche; il s’entêta si bien au travail qu’il eut raison de sa mauvaise santé. A Oxford, dans l’entourage de sir John Rhys, il trouva des condisciples qui partageaient son ardeur et dont l’émulation l’excita. Il se proposa l’édition aussi exacte que possible des vieux textes gallois, si souvent maltraités dans les publications modernes, et il devint paléographe. C’est comme tel qu’il faut le juger pour apprécier tous ses mérites. Il publia successivement un facsimile autotype du Black Book of Carmarthen (R. Celt., IX, 297) puis, avec la collaboration de sir John Rhys, l’édition diplomatique des Mabinogion et des Bruts d’après le Red Book of Hergest (ibid., VIII, 192 ; IX, 290 ; XI, 504 ; XII, 294). Vint ensuite, toujours avec la collaboration de Rhys, l’édi- tion du Book of Llandav (ibid., XIV, 205). En 1894, il fut nommé inspecteur des documents en langue galloise, fonction qu’il occupa jusqu’en 1906. Prenant sa charge au sérieux, il entre- prit la vaste enquête qui porta sur environ 900 manuscrits et aboutit au monumental Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language, en deux volumes (ibid., XIX, 343 ; XXIV, 95 et XXXI, 533) : c’est son œuvre maîtresse ; elle est pour la philologie galloise d’une importance capitale.

John Evans was born 20th March 1852 at Ffynnon Yelved, Llanybyther (Carmarthenshire), and was educated first at the Presbyterian College in Carmarthen. He came early in the priestly ministry, and was for some time pastor of a Unitarian Church in Preston (Lancashire). Suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, he had to stop his parish work. Doctors declared to him that a fatal outcome could be delayed – and only delayed – if he decided to leave for Australia. He decided on it. But the improvement in his health seemed too slow in coming; so he abruptly left Melbourne on 6th February 1882 to return to his homeland. He landed at Gravesend on 25th May. He then went to Oxford, burning with the ardor of the study; there found his great friend O. M. Edwards, who left us a touching portrait of this “invalid”, a man for whom twenty minutes reading time were a painful ordeal. But this was an invalid with a fierce energy; he persisted in his scholarship and he had time to work because of ill health. At Oxford he became part of the entourage of Sir John Rhys, in whose company he found fellow students who shared his ardor and the interests which excited him. He also proposed the need for exact editions, as exact as as possible of the old Welsh texts – which were then so often abused in modern publications. He became a palaeographer, and it is on such work that we must judge and appreciate its merits. He successively published a facsimile autotype the Black Book of Carmarthen and with the collaboration of Sir John Rhys, a diplomatic edition of the Mabinogion and the ?? from the Red Book of Hergest. Then came, working in collaboration with Rhys, an edition of publishing the Book of Llandav. In 1894 he was appointed inspector of manuscripts in Welsh, a position he held until 1906. Taking his charge seriously, he undertook extensive investigation which brought about 900 manuscripts and leads into the monumental Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language in two volumes. It is his masterpiece; it is for the Welsh philologist a work of paramount importance.

Il avait épousé Edith Hunter, fille du principal du Presbyterian Collège de Carmarthen — elle mourut en 1923 — ; et il avait été s’installer dans le voisinage de Llanbedrog, en un lieu qu’il appela Tremvan. Sa maison était bâtie sur la hauteur dans un site mer- veilleux, dominant cette région si pittoresque du Carnarvonshire, ayant vue sur la mer de deux côtés et par un ciel clair permettant même, disait-il, de découvrir la côte d’Irlande. C’est là que tout en dirigeant attentivement l’exploitation de ses terres, il poursuivit sans relâche sa carrière d’éditeur de textes. Successivement parurent : les Mabinogion du White Book of Rhydderch (ibid., XXXI, ioé), le Book of Aneirin (ibid, XXXII, 209), le Book of Taliesin (ibid., XXXVII, 137), les poésies du Red Book of Hergest et les lois du Book of Chirk. Il a publié dans la Revue Celtique (t. XL et XLI) le manuscrit le plus ancien des Gogynfeirdd. C’est à Tremvan que la mort est venue le frapper en plein travail, le 25 mars 1930.

He married Edith Hunter, daughter of the principal of the Presbyterian College Carmarthen – she died in 1923 – and settled in the neighborhood of Llanbedrog, in a place he called Tremvan. His house was built on a site high up in a marvelous site overlooking this picturesque region of Carnarvonshire, with sea views from both sides and clear skies allowing him, he said, to sometimes discern the coast of Ireland. This is where – while careful directing the use of the surrounding lands – he continued relentlessly his career as a text editor. Successively he produced: the Mabinogion of the White Book of Rhydderch, the Book of Aneirin, the Book of Taliesin, the poems of the Red Book of Hergest and laws of the Book of Chirk. He has published in the Celtic Review the oldest manuscript of Gogynfeirdd. It was at Tremvan that death came while he was still hard at work, 25th March 1930.

Ses mérites comme paléographe étaient universellement reconnus ; ils lui valurent le doctorat honoris causa de l’Université d’Oxford (en 1903) et de l’Université de Galles. On peut regretter qu’ils n’aient pas suffi à son ambition. Les tentatives qu’il fit pour la critique et l’interprétation du Book of Aneirin et du Book ol Taliesin lurent des moins heureuses. Le meilleur service à rendre à sa mémoire est de n’en pas parler. Mais comme dernier titre de gloire, il faut signaler la part qu’il prit à la création de la! National Library of Wales à Aberystwyth. Dans une série d’articles publiés par le Western Mail en août 1928, il raconta: lui-même comment son action personnelle auprès de sir John Williams fut définitive. Il écrivait avec esprit et sa conversation avait beaucoup de piquant. Tous ceux qui ont pu le connaître de: près conserveront le souvenir d’un travailleur enthousiaste et obligeant.

His merits as palaeographer were universally recognized. They earned him an honorary doctorate from Oxford University (1903) and from the University of Wales. It is regrettable that these awards were not enough to stay his ambition. The attempts he made at the criticism and interpretation of the Book of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin proved less happy. The best service we can render to his memory is not to talk [of the contention that these aroused]. But I have left to the last his other great claim to fame – it should be noted the part he played in creating the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. In a series of articles published by the Western Mail in August 1928, he told of how his personal appeal to Sir John Williams had clinched the matter. As a writer he wrote with wit and his conversation had a lot of pizzazz. All those who have known him will retain the memory of an enthusiastic and helpful worker.

— J. Vendryes.