Hannibal. How Real Estate Speculators Saved Rome.

In the year 211 B.C.  Hannibal brought his army to the gates of Rome and camped by the river Anio three miles from Rome.  The Romans had suffered two devastating defeats at the battles of Lake Trasimene and Cannae.

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After some skirmishing Hannibal withdrew.  Specifically, there were two reasons why at this point he gave up hope of capturing Rome.  First was that he heard that, although his army was under the very walls of Rome, yet detachments of Roman troops had set out under their colors to reinforce Spain; not to reinforce Rome but in the opposite direction - such was the force of Roman confidence.

Secondly he learned from a prisoner that about this time the land on which he had camped his army was put up for sale and was sold, and with no reduction in price despite his army being parked on the property.

It seemed to him so arrogant and such an indignity that a purchaser should have been found at Rome for the ground which he had seized in war and was himself its occupier and owner.  He considered himself to be the owner of the land and yet it was being sold from underneath him.

As a psychological countermeasure, he summoned a herald and ordered the bankers' shops which were round the Roman Forum to be sold.    

But the damage had been done.  He had been faked out.  This was the closest he ever came to capturing Rome.

There's a saying; 'When there's blood on the streets buy real estate'.

From Livy, 'The War With Hannibal'.  Book 26, Chapter11

Lindbergh's Guardian Angel

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As he fights sleep with his eyes constantly closing and opening and closing again, he finds something within himself.  Above the mind and the body he finds a third element:

"My body knows definitely that what it wants most in the world is sleep.  My mind which is constantly making decisions that my body refuses to comply with is weakening in resolution."

But something else "which seems to become stronger instead of weaker with fatigue, an element of spirit, a directive force"....... "has stepped out from the background and taken control of both mind and body".

"It seems to guard them as a wise father guards his children; letting them venture to the point of danger, then calling them back, guiding with a firm but tolerant hand."

“When my body cries out that it must sleep, this third element replies that it may get what rest it can from relaxation, but that sleep is not to be had."

"When my mind demands that my body stay alert and awake, it is informed that alertness is too much to expect under these circumstances."

"And when it argues excitedly that to sleep would be to fail, and crash, and drown in the ocean, it is calmly reassured, and told it’s right, but that while it must not expect alertness on the body’s part, it can be confident there’ll be no sleep."

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"This third element, this separate mind which is mine and yet is not, this mind both far away in eternity and within the confines of my skull, within the cockpit and outside of it at the same moment, connected to me and yet unlimited to any finite space."

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When he landed in Paris, Lindbergh had not slept for 72 hours.  Consider this; when Hannibal led his army into Italy, there was a period when he went without sleep for four days.  He caught an infection and went blind in one eye.

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Lindbergh was the 92nd person to fly across the Atlantic, and his was the 14th flight. (Thirty-one of the flyers were on one dirigible, the R-34 in 1919.)

He was the first person to cross the Atlantic alone by air, whether in an airplane or airship.

He was the first person to fly nonstop from the U.S. to Europe in an airplane (as distinct from an airship).

He broke the record for longest straight-line distance flown nonstop in an airplane, and what's more, he did it alone, (which meant of course that he could carry more gas).

And his was the first flight in an airplane (solo or not) from New York to France.

In New York, about four million people lined the parade route, equivalent to about 60% of the city's population (although this number included out-of-towners).

An estimated 25% of the entire U.S. population came out to see him on his 82-stop tour of the country after his return.

Within a few months, there was more film footage of him in existence than of any other human being, ever. 

Mark Twain and Dueling Scars

Mark Twain visited Heidelberg in Germany and described the culture of dueling that pervaded German universities.  The following is from his book, 'A Tramp Abroad', published 1881 describing dueling in H


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The dueling spot...

... a large whitewashed apartment perhaps fifty feet long by thirty feet wide and twenty or twenty-five high; a well-lighted place with no carpet, and across one end and down both sides extended a row of tables, and at these tables some fifty or seventy-five students are sitting, sipping wine, playing cards or chess, chatting and smoking cigarettes while they wait for the coming duels.

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The duelers

The students belong to one of five corps with colored caps representing the corps to which they belong.  They neither bow to nor speak with students whose caps differ in color from their own. It was considered that a person could strike harder in the duel if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with his antagonist; therefore, comradeship between the corps is not permitted.

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The swords

In the windows at the vacant end of the room stand six or eight, narrow-bladed swords with large protecting guards for the hand, and outside is a man at work sharpening others on a grindstone.  When a sword left his hand you could shave yourself with it.

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Protective clothing

The duelers eyes are protected by iron goggles which project an inch or more.  The leather straps of the goggles bind their ears flat against their heads and these straps are wound around and around with thick wrappings which a sword could not cut through.  From chin to ankle they are padded thoroughly against injury; their arms are bandaged and rebandaged, layer upon layer, until they look like solid black logs.  They resembled beings one sees in nightmares. Their arms which projected straight out from their bodies are so heavy that fellow-students walk beside them and help to support them.

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The duels

The instant the word is given, the two duelers spring forward and begin to rain blows down upon each other with such lightning rapidity that it is not possible to tell whether you see swords or only the flashes they make in the air.  Every few moments the quick-eyed seconds would notice that a sword was bent — then they would call "Halt!" strike up the contending weapons, and an assisting student would straighten the bent one. 

In time the fighters began to show great fatigue.  At intervals they are allowed to rest a for a moment, and they get other rests when they wound each other, for then they could sit down while the doctor applied the lint and bandages. The rule is that the battle must continue fifteen minutes if the men can last that long; and as the breaks do not count, the duel normally lasts twenty or thirty minutes.

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Scars

                              
           An 1896 picture of Adolf Hoffmann-Heyden, a German Corpsstudent, showing an             extensive fresh fencing scar and some minor old ones.

Scars were usually targeted to the left profile, so the right profile appeared untouched.  (This may sound counter-intuitive since, because most people are right-handed, it is usually the right profiles of the duelists that face each other, which is where you would expect the scars to be.   The right profile however is also the profile that is protected by the sword of a right-handed swordsman.)

Dueling scars were seen as a badge of honor.  They were known as 'Mensur scars' or 'bragging scars'.

American tourists visiting Germany in the late 19th century were shocked to see the students at major German universities such as Heidelberg, Bonn, or Jena with facial scars - some older, some more recent, and some still wrapped in bandages.

German military laws permitted men to wage duels of honor until World War I, and in 1933 the Nazi government legalized the practice once more.

Within the duel, it was seen as a way of showing courage to be able to stand and take the blow, as opposed to inflicting the wound.  In fact, the victor was seen as the person who could walk away from the duel with a cut that would become an obvious scar.  It was important to show dueling prowess, but also that one was capable of taking the wound that was inflicted.

The scars showed that one had courage and also would make 'good husband material', because they implied strength of character and were an indicator of social standing insofar as dueling occurred in the better universities; and the wounds were not so serious as to leave a person disfigured or bereft of facial features.

The scars were judged by Otto von Bismarck to be a sign of bravery, and men’s courage could be judged "by the number of scars on their cheeks".

Minority groups in Germany also indulged in the practice, some seeing it as an aid in their social situation, including some Jews who wore the scars with pride. 

The swords used are so razor-like that they cut without bruising, so that the lips of the wounds can be closely pressed, leaving no great disfigurement, such as would be brought about by the loss of an ear.

Sometimes, students who did not fence would scar themselves with razors in imitation.  Others paid doctors to slice their cheeks. 

Face wounds from dueling are so prized that youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible.

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A colored silk band or ribbon worn diagonally across the breast signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision was reached — duels in which he either whipped or was whipped — for drawn battles do not count.  After a student has received his ribbon he is 'free'; he can cease from fighting, without reproach.  He can volunteer to fight if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so; but most volunteer to fight again and again. 

Prince Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when he was in college.  So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given him the right to retire from the field.

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Fortitude

I had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, and yet had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan.  Such endurance is to be expected in savages and prize-fighters, for they are born and educated to it; but to find it in these gentlemanly bred and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise.  It was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play that this fortitude was shown; it was shown in the surgeon's room where the doctor's manipulations brought out neither grimaces nor moans. 

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Bismarck's wisdom:

A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

The most significant event of the 20th century will be that the fact that the North Americans speak English.  How true!

He who is not a socialist at 19 has no heart.  He who is still a socialist at 30 has no brain.

Darwin's Earthworms

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It is appropriate that the naturalist who studied the infinitely slow progress of change as a species evolved over hundreds of millions of years, that this same scientist should focus on the minutely small changes of the surface of the land as effected by the workings of one of the lowliest creatures on the Earth, the earthworm.  Darwin spent considerable time on this study.

Initially his earthworm work drew as much or even more attention than his evolution work.  During Darwin's lifetime his book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits, published in 1881, sold even better than On the Origin of Species.  The section concerning the intelligence of earthworms was chiefly responsible for this success.

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Until he started looking at earthworms, no one appreciated the role they had in agriculture.  Most people thought of them as pests.  Darwin showed that they were valuable for turning over the soil, which they did in part by chewing it up and pooping it out, thereby making it more fertile.

He realized that England’s lush topsoil was the product of ceaseless soil consumption and defecation by earthworms; about 54,000 of them per acre, depositing ten tons of fresh soil on each acre of English countryside, every single year.

He wrote:

     'It may be doubted whether there are any other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly, organized creatures'.

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To find out how fast the worms were turning the soil, Darwin did experiments.  He spread small coal stones across a field behind his house and left them for 20 or 30 years.  Then he dug a trench across the land and looked in the walls of the trench to see how far down the stones had sunk through the action of the worms.

He concluded that the cumulative effect of millions of worms in a field chewing their way through the soil and depositing it on the surface is that the worms actually raise the surface of the soil.  Darwin worked out that the soil increased in depth by 0.2 of an inch per year.  After 10 years an object in the soil will go down two inches, and after 1,000 years it will sink almost 20 feet.

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He found that earthworms were sensitive to touch and vibrations but not to sounds; also that they had a 'selective sense of smell', and were sensitive to light, preferring darkness or very low light, except when they were mating.  He also concluded that they had favourite foods.

Caricature from 'Punch', 1882.  Man is but a worm.

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Concerning intelligence

Darwin observed that earthworms plug the mouth of their burrows with leaves, leaf stalks, or twigs and considered that an intelligent animal would draw such irregular-shaped objects into a cylindrical hole by their narrowest part.  Therefore he placed leaves and triangular pieces of paper of various sizes around the burrow entrance.  In the majority of trials, these objects were drawn into the burrows by or near their narrow apex. The only exception was pine needles that were drawn in by (or near) their base.  He concluded that worms possess 'some degree of intelligence instead of a mere blind instinctive impulse'.

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The New York Graphic wrote: 'The result of the author's observations is proof that the small and apparently insignificant earth-worm is the cause of mighty changes in the surface of the earth, seeing that each of them, on the average, passes about twenty ounces of earth through its body every year, which earth it brings often from a depth of eight or ten feet below the surface to deposit it as mould at the top, thus doing the work of a plow.'

Little Foxes and Mushrooms and The History of Civilization

The following popthems are from Robert Graves' book, 'Food for Centaurs'.  They are about this mushroom, the amanita muscaria, aka. fly-amanite, fly-agaric:

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Fear of mushrooms.

Mycophobia, the irrational fear of mushrooms, felt by a great part of mankind, is a leftover from some ancestral religious awe.  Mushrooms were used by initiates in ancient religious ceremonies that were choreographed to inspire awe.  The purpose was to reserve the "religious" experience for a select few, and to use the awe as a barrier to keep the remainder of mankind at a distance.

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Mucous.

The ordinary Greek word for 'mushroom' is 'mukes', which also means 'nasal mucous' or 'snot'.  To turn something into a taboo item you associate it with something disgusting; perhaps some body function.

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Horseflesh.


The English abstain from horesflesh because their Saxon and Danish ancestors had once participated in a sacramental October horse-feast, the greatest holiday of the year, though horseflesh was taboo at all other times.  When the Church banned this feast as idolatrous, the awe it had inspired changed to revulsion.  It's an example of how taboos work.

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The food of the gods.

What is 'ambrosia', the food of the gods, the drink that confers immortality?  The grammarians of ancient Greek define ambrosia as a thick porridge of honey, water, fruit, olive-oil. fruit and pearl-barley.
So lets take the recipe and write it down in tabular form:

                                                    MELI
                                                    UDOR
                                                    KARPOS
                                                    ELAIOS
                                                    TUROS
                                                    ALPHITA

Now the recipe for nectar specifically:

                                                    MELI
                                                    UDOR
                                                    KARPOS

Finally the recipe for 'kukeon' ('mixture'), the draught that the Goddess Demeter accepted in the palace of King Celeus, by which she broke her fast and which was thereafter imbibed in her honor by the initiates of the Greater Mysteries, 'Kukeon' is mint-water mixed with pounded barley:

                                                     MINTHAION
                                                     UDOR
                                                     KUKOMENON
                                                     AIPHITOIS

Now lets examine the three sets of the initial letters:

MUKETA, MUK, MUKA - MUSHROOM.  No way to misinterpret this - the letters spell out 'mushroom'.
MUKA, an earlier form of MUKES, answers the question, 'What substance grants the mystic vision?'
MUKETA, the accusative form, answers the question, 'What do the gods eat?'

Ambrosia, the food of the gods, that which confers immortality refers to mushrooms, (specifically - hallucinatory mushrooms).

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Mystic visions.

The mystic vision was granted only to the initiates, who guarded the secret under penalty of death.

Here's some of what they saw in their visions:

        'The corn was orient, and immortal wheat,
         That never had been sown and never could be reaped'.

(from Thomas Traherne)

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The Mysteries.

Consider the following - the word for 'mystery' in ancient Greek is 'musterion'.  The Mysteries were held in Autumn which is the mushroom season, and the word for this Autumn ceremony is likewise 'musterion', and the word begins with 'mu' which means 'mushroom'.

In Spring, which is the flower season, there was another ceremony which was called 'anthesterion'.  Since this word begins with 'anthos' which means (flower), doesn't it follow that the 'mu' at the beginning of 'musterion' would refer to mushroom.  Seems like a no-brainer.

'Mukes' is mushroom and 'muos' is fly (as in the insect), and the syllable 'mu' as in musterion could come from either one or the other. What is the significance of 'fly' in this context and what is its connection to "mushroom"?  I don't know.

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Conspiracy of silence.

And yet not a single mushroom figures in the works of Hesiod, Homer, and the Greek dramatists; no admission that it even exists.  Could it be a conspiracy of silence - quite natural if mushrooms were the hallucinatory agents used by the mystagogues of the Eleusinian Mysteries - a secret that nobody blabbed in the course of all those early centuries; and we must believe that there was a secret, for other wise we are left believing that the recipe that made the adepts of the Mysteries gasp in wonder was a soft drink of mint-flavored barley water - hardly!

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Foxes with fire in their tails.

Little foxes with fire in their tails - that's what Samson sent against the army of the Philistines (Book of Judges), and this is how Graves explains this unlikely story:


How did Samson collect three hundred foxes and send them into the Philistine's cornfields with torches tied to their tails?  The Palestinian fox is not gregarious and the task of capturing three hundred of them, at the rate of one or two a day, and feeding them all until he had collected the full number would have been a senselessly exhausting one.  Besides, how could he make sure that the foxes would run into the cornfields and that the torches would stay lit?  The truth seems to be that Samson organized a battalion of soldiers - three hundred was the conventional Hebrew battalion strength, as appears in the story of Gideon-and sent them out with torches to burn the Philistines' corn.  Indeed, in the 1948 Jewish War of Liberation a raiding battalion was named 'Samson's Foxes'.

So what's the significance of the foxes?

Well, the juice of the amanita muscaria mushrooms (which still grow under the pines of Mount Tabor)

would make the raiders into a completely fearless fighting force - note the Viking Berserkers; and this variety of amanita mushroom, when dried, is fox-colored.  Are these 'little foxes' the amanita mushrooms?

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Solomon's erotica.

Here's another mention of "little foxes' in the bible - In the Song of Solomon the Shulemite bride has been amorously addressing Solomon, calling him the turtle-dove in the clefts of her rock, and  urges her lover to fetch her 'the little foxes that spoil the vines, for my vines have tender grapes'.  She means that Solomon must fortify his manhood with mushroom-juice laced with wine, the better to enjoy her young beauty.

The term 'little foxes' is used in a number of cultures as a name for mushrooms.

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The Spartan boy.

Remember the Spartan boy who brought a fox into the school unknown to the Ephor (one of five rulers of Sparta elected annually), and made no sound though the foxes teeth were gnawing at his vitals.  Surely it would have been easier to throttle the fox than to disguise its presence under his short tunic.  But what if he had eaten fiery little foxes as a wager and the poison started working in his stomach, and yet he managed by a great effort of will to control himself before the ephor like a true Spartan.  Doesn't that make a whole lot more sense?

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Alice In Wonderland.


And then there's the magical mushroom that Alice found growing in Wonderland.  The caterpillar sat on it smoking his hookah.  Lewis Carroll had read about its properties not long before he published the book; the properties  included the same hallucinations about height from which Alice suffered after nibbling the mushroom.

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A cocktail.

A mixture of amanita muscaria with whisky has long been used as a drink by salmon-poachers in Scotland to celebrate a successful catch.  It is called a 'Cathy', in honour of Catherine the Great of Russia who is said to have been partial to it.

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Deluded scholars.

Dionysus's source of intoxication has always been politely attributed by Greek scholars to wine. Ambrosia is identified in the Oxford English Dictionary with Asclepias (milk weed); and by various Encyclopedias with almost every sort of plant except mushrooms.

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The serpent of Eden.

The word paradise means 'orchard' in the Semitic languages; an orchard-garden of fruit trees, flowers and running water.  The inevitable serpent, familiar to readers of the Paradise chapter in Genesis might well be that bright snake-like formation which is a common symptom of a cerebral deoxygenization induced by hallucinogenic drugs; and seeing snakes is a common occurrence among alcoholics, saints who starve themselves, drowning sailors and sufferers from meningitis.

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Connection of toads and mushrooms:

Why mycophobes called mushrooms 'toadstools' can readily be explained. When the toad is attacked or scared the warts on its back exude bufotenin, the poison secreted in the white hallucinogenic warts of the amanita muscaria.

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The Mushroom City.

In ancient Greece the toad was the emblem of Argos, the leading state of the Peloponnese.

The capital city of Argos was Mycenae ('Mushroom City') said to have been built by Perseus ('the destroyer').

Sculpture by Cellini

According to Pausanius,  Perseus had found mushrooms growing on the site beside a spring of water.

Mycenae is the home of Agamemnon who, from here, launched his campaign against Troy to gain the release of Helen - the basis of The Iliad.

The division of the Peloponnese into three states had been made by a legendary king named Phoroneus, which seems to be a form of Phryneus, meaning 'Toad-man'.  The emblems of the two other states are also connected with the mushroom: namely fox and serpent.

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Aztecs.

The toad was also the emblem of Tlaloc, the Mexican God of Inspiration, and appears surrounded by mushrooms in an Aztec mural painting of Tlalócan, his Paradise.

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Slavs are not mycophobic.

Probably because their remote ancestors were nomads on the treeless steppes and unacquainted with amanita muscaria.  Their fermented mare's milk, called kavasse (Kumis), satisfied their need for occasional intoxication.  Like the Arabs in their desert poverty they had learned to eat any growing plant or living animal that was not poisonous.  Bavaria which was once invaded by Slavs is not mycophobic, while the rest of Germany is.

Et Tu Brute

So who was Marcus Brutus of 'Et Tu Brute' fame?

Bust of Brutus by Michelangelo

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His father was Marcus Brutus Sr., his mother was Servilia, reputedly one of Rome's most beautiful women.  But here's the interesting part - it was widely rumored that Brutus' real father was Julius Caesar.  It was well known that Caesar and Servilia had had a teenage affair, but Caesar would have been fifteen at the time of Marcus junior's birth.  Servilia, Marcus' mother, was in fact thirteen when he was born.

Caesar treated Marcus Brutus like a son, but when the Civil War broke out between Caesar and Pompey, Brutus sided with Pompey and the Roman republic.

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Caesar loved him like a son...

Brutus wasn't much of a soldier.  In fact he had no military experience.  The day before the climactic battle of Pharsalus, Brutus spent the day in his tent writing a condensed Latin version of a work by the Greek writer Polybius.  More scholar than soldier.

On August 9th., 49 B.C., the day of the battle, Caesar gave orders that if his soldiers should come across Brutus on the battlefield, they must allow him to surrender and then bring him to Caesar.  If Brutus refused to surrender they must allow him to escape unharmed.

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And forgave him...

After the defeat of the Republican forces, Brutus made his escape, traveling without stop through the night of August 9 -10 to the coastal town of Larisa.  From there he wrote a letter to Caesar and sent a messenger to find Caesar and deliver the letter.

Caesar arrived in Larisa and accepted the surrender of the town, but he was more interested in finding Brutus.  They were reunited, apparently at the city gates.  Caesar forgave Brutus for siding with his enemies and welcomed him to his side.  Together the pair then rode a short distance from Caesar's staff and bodyguard. They dismounted and then walked through the countryside deep in conversation.

It all points to the deep affection that Caesar held for Brutus.

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And pardoned Cassius...

At this meeting Brutus solicited a pardon for his brother-in-law, Gaius Cassius Longinus, who was at this time commanding a senatorial fleet somewhere in the Aegean Sea. Caesar agreed to the pardon.  This is the Cassius of whom Shakespeare's Caesar says:

     "Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; ..."

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Who later conspired to kill Caesar.

Cassius was the instigator of the plot to assassinate Caesar.

In Dante's Inferno, Cassius is one of three people deemed sinful enough to be in the very center of Hell and for all eternity to be chewed in one of the three mouths of Satan, as a punishment for killing Julius Caesar.  The other two are Brutus, his fellow conspirator, and Judas Iscariot. (Canto XXXIV)

Tydder/tudor

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Recreation of Henry VII.

Henry Tudor, father of Henry VIII, grandfather of Queen Elizabeth I, effectively became king of England when his Lancastrian forces decisively defeated Richard III's Yorkist army at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485. - Richard is Shakespeare's hunchback king who cries out, "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" before he's killed in the battle, thus ending the Wars of the Roses.

Miniature of Henry VII.

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But Henry Tudor never called himself by the name Tudor.  That name was imposed on the dynasty by future historians starting with David Hume's History of England Under the House of Tudor published in 1759.  Henry shunned the name, preferring his peerage title of 'Richmond', after his father, the Earl of Richmond.  In sixteenth-century accounts of his life before he became king he was always called Richmond, including in Shakespeare's play 'Richard III'.  Thereafter of course he was called King Henry VII.

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The name 'Tudor' was virtually meaningless to residents of the sixteenth century.  It doesn't appear in official documents of the time, nor does it appear in the accounts written by chroniclers of the age.

The name comes from the old Welsh name 'Tewdwr', derived from the Latin 'Theodorus', (a Roman name of Greek origin meaning 'divine gift'), which gives us the modern English personal name of Theodore.  In more modern Welsh 'Tewdwr' became 'Tudur', which was rendered into English as 'Tudor'.

Henry was descended from Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur (anglicized to Owen Tudor) of Wales.

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 Lawrence Olivier as Richard III.

‘Tydder’ was used by Richard III as a derogatory form of 'Tudor' to draw attention to Henry's allegedly low social origins.  In a letter he writes of 'Henry Tydder, son of Edmund Tydder, son of Owen Tydder..... for he is descended of bastard blood, both of father's side and of mother's side; for the said Owen was bastard born...'  Kind of like Gene Hackman's character in the movie 'Unforgiven" calling the Richard Harris character 'The Duck' instead of 'The Duke'.

Later came Perkin Warbeck, calling himself Richard IV, a pretender to Henry's throne, who issued a proclamation during the Bodmin uprising of 1497 in which he declared that Henry, grandson of "Owen Tydder of low birth in the country of Wales" had seized the throne.

These Tudor/Tydder associations may explain why Henry himself and his successors avoided using the word.

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Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur decided to adopt an English style surname.  The obvious choice should have been for him to have anglicised his father's name and become 'Owain Maredudd' or 'Meredith'.  For reasons unknown Owain rejected this option and selected his grandfather's name 'Tudur', and therefore became 'Owen Tudor'.

Today we could be speaking of the 'Meredith' dynasty instead of the 'Tudor' dynasty.

Boys in Pink

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Until quite recently in the 20th century blue was the color for dressing girls and pink for dressing boys.

This painting by Renoir is of a boy not a girl:

Coco eating his soup by Renoir, 1905.  Claude nicknamed 'Coco' was Renoir's son.

The Sunday Sentinel,  March 1914, noted:  "use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention."

In June 1918, the US magazine Ladies' Home Journal wrote that despite some confusion "... the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls.  The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

Even as late as 1927 there was ambivalence on the subject.  Time magazine reported that Princess Astrid of Belgium had decked out the cradle for her unborn child in pink, only to give birth to a
daughter.  The correspondent decided to run a straw poll among U.S. department stores but found they could not agree which way it should be either.

Note Gainsborough's 'Boy In Blue':

Either an exception, or tastes in children's color were the same in Gainsborough's time (mid-1700's) as today.

Source - BBC History magazine


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I remember a western movie in which Burt lancaster, or is it Robert Mitchum, is caught in flagrante delicto in a woman's bedroom and he escapes through the window in pink, whole body button-up underwear.

Bin Laden Pops

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A possible clue as to how bin Laden was able to function satisfactorily among his three wives was the Avena syrup - a sort of natural Viagra - that was found in the compound where he died.

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He regularly applied Just For Men dye to his hair and his beard to maintain a youthful appearance.

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While publicly calling for young men to join his holy war, bin Laden was privately advising that his son decamp for the tiny, prosperous Persian Gulf kingdom of Qatar.

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He complained that Faisal Shahzad - a U.S. citizen of Pakistani heritage, who had tried to blow up an SUV in Times square on May 1, 2010 - had broken the oath of allegiance he had sworn to the U.S.  He said, 'it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant."

Source - Time magazine

Cromwell and Jewish Immigration

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In 1290 England expelled its Jewish population entirely.  Under Oliver Cromwell Jews were readmitted to England, but not for reasons of banking or commerce as we might expect.  The reason might seem quite off the wall to our way of thinking.

Cromwell and his Puritan advisors were convinced that the 'Last Days' were about to happen, and the return of the Messiah was near.  They believed that the sign of the last days would be that all the Jews in the world would be converted. The problem was that there were no Jews in England, so a group of Jews from the Netherlands offered to come to England and fill the void.  Their offer was accepted.

From 'How God Made the English', a BBC TV production.

Nature's Totally Natural Facelift

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How can you get a facelift that's permanent and totally natural?  A facelift that needs no plastic surgery, no medicine, no creams, no massage.  A completely natural facelift that actually works, and that requires no effort - or to rephrase - that requires no physical effort.  What it does require is WILLPOWER, and the simple question is, "Do you have the willpower?"

All that you need to do is to exercise two muscles at the back of your head.

It's truly amazing that something so simple should be so little known, and indeed, such a big secret.  The media never mentions it.  You never see it discussed on the morning shows.  Plastic surgeons don't seem to have heard of it.  All those movie stars spending fortunes on surgical facelifts haven't heard of it.  Yet it's a completely natural facelift.  A gift from nature, requiring nothing more than a little self-discipline.

Just think how much money is spent by women (and men these days) on surgical face lifts.  How much is spent on beauty treatments.  Whole industries existing solely to make our faces look younger.  And yet nature has given us the secret to get all of this for free and with so little effort, and NO-ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT!  So what's the secret ?  

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THE SECRET

At the back of your head there's a pair of muscles; one on each side of the head just behind the ears.  They're called the occipitalis muscles - AND THEY NEED TO BE EXERCISED.  If you try to find them you probably won't be able to, because in most of us the muscles have become atrophied. 

You have to rediscover them.

So that's where the muscles are located.  But how do you go about finding them?

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The first step is to learn to "wiggle" your ears.  Sounds strange but read on -

When you tighten your occipitalis muscles, you also tighten your forehead, and you tighten the area around the top and sides of your eyes - (note: don't raise your eyebrows. In fact you must resist that tendency.) - and simultaneously your ears get pulled back.

So place your fingers in the general area of the muscles and try to detect the muscles as you attempt to move your ears back.  It'll take some time, so be patient.

When you release the tension on your occipitalis, your forehead will relax and your ears will move forward.  That's what the trick of wiggling your ears is all about - you alternately tighten and relax the occipitalis muscles, making your ears move backward and forward, and the faster you do this the faster your ears move.  Don't laugh.  That's part of the exercise.

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Once you've learnt to do this, the next step is to tighten your occipitalis muscles and KEEP THEM TIGHT.  Don't relax them.  It's as if you begin the process of wiggling your ears but stop half way.  Keep the occipitalis muscles tight for as long as you can.  This tension will keep your forehead tight and the area around your eyes tight!   At first you'll maintain this tension for a few seconds, later for a few minutes, even for  a few hours.  But don't worry.  You won't have to keep up the tension for that long.  Sporadic tension is enough.  It keeps you from furrowing your forehead, and that in itself is all you need.  When you begin to furrow your forehead you will instinctively pull back on the muscles.  It'll become as easy as flossing, driving a car, or watching TV.   

So there it is.  By keeping these muscles tensed, you keep your forehead and the area of the eyes tight.  That is the secret; and it's nature's totally natural facelift.

Best of all it's free.

And now that you know the secret, the rest is up to you.  Do you want a forehead of 'frozen furrows', drooping eyelids etc?

Or do you want to have control of how you look?!

Think of all the people exercising and building up their body muscles in all the health clubs all around the country, and not one of them exercising their forehead muscles!  Incomprehensible!

If you get discouraged, keep this in mind, that learning the secret and mastering the method is just like learning to ride a bike; you learn it once, but it's your's forever.

Live long, die quickly

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Francis Bacon in his book of Apothegms writes the following:

Bias of Ancient Greece,  being asked 'How a man should order his life?' answered: "As if a man should live long, or die quickly."

It makes sense - I guess it means to look after yourself and prepare for old age as if you're going to live a long life, but yet live every day to the fullest as if each day is going to be the last day of your life.  ('quickly' being synonymous with 'soon').

Bias of Priene of Ionia 570 BC was considered one of the seven Sages of Greece.

Michelangelo and hygiene

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Michelangelo's father, Lodovico, in a letter to his son during his stay in Rome at the age of 25, writes:

"Whatever happens, do not expose yourself to hardships, for in your profession, if you fall ill (which God forbid), you are a lost man.

Above all take care of your head, keep it moderately warm, and never bathe: have yourself rubbed down, but never bathe."

This is an era before modern medicine when any slight illness could be a major setback.

George Bernard Shaw and Downton Abbey

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In the TV series Downton Abbey a maid employed at the abbey gets herself pregnant by an army major who is convalescing there after injuries received in the War.  He returns to the front and is killed.  The maid contacts his parents with the news that they have a grandchild.  They wish to pay her for the child on condition that she have no contact with the child.  She rejects their offer.  George Bernard Shaw would have approved.  He seems to have  a low opinion of the parenting skills of the upper classes as evidenced by this letter, dated April 10, 1929.  It  can be seen at Bookman's Alley bookstore in Evanston, Illinois.

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This is what it says:

'If this case is genuine what difficulty does it present?  The girl is lucky enough to have a healthy baby.  She is ignorant enough to think that it would be for the baby's good to sell it into "a wealthy home where it would be loved as  an only child and petted and cared for and given every chance".  She evidently knows nothing of such unfortunate children.  The silly people who are giving her unnatural advice to throw her treasure away would be the first to recoil from her if she took it.  Her omission to provide the child with a legitimate father is pardonable: but she would never be forgiven - nor forgive herself - if she sold it to a rich woman.  If she really feels unfit to be a mother let her present it to a capable woman as poor as herself if she can find one willing.'

G. Bernard Shaw

Wyatt Earp begs the question

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Someone once observed that Wyatt Earp's most vivid recollections of his days as a frontier lawman involved people who were entering, occupying, or leaving saloons.

Earp responded "We had no Y.M.C.A's."

He doesn't expand on his career choices, or his choice of amusements.  His answer tells us nothing.  It is as if a man's life is spent in one form or another of social club, with Y.M.C.A's simply being a gentler form of the saloon.

He avoids answering.  What he does here is 'beg the question'.  Like the joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" - the response, "To get to the other side" says nothing and leaves us no wiser.

TV journalists and interviewers constantly 'beg the question' but......

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........ they simply don't understand the concept.  They say to the person they're interviewing, "That begs the question", and proceed to ask their next question.  What they mean is "That raises the question".

Even Charlie Rose, who should know better, doesn't get it right.

So what does 'begging the question' really mean?

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It means to take something for granted in a discussion, although that 'something' is precisely what is being discussed.  In a more technical sense, it's a logical fallacy in which a proposition uses its own premise as proof of the proposition - a statement that refers to its own assertion to prove the assertion.  For example:

"God exists because the Bible says so, and what the Bible says is true because the Bible was written by God".

In the movie 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' the manager of the hotel announces "Everything will be alright in the end, and if it's not alright it means it's not yet the end" - perfect circular reasoning.

A riddle - What since the beginning of time has never seen the sun?  Answer - a shadow.

Shakspeare's real name

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The only examples in existence of anything written by Shakespeare are six signatures.  None of them are written as Shakespeare.

The earliest is on a deposition (1612) spelled "Willn Shaks(blotted )p"; one on a conveyance (1613) was spelled "W(blotted)illiam Shakspe"; one on a mortgage (1613) was spelled "Wm Shakspr".  The signatures on each of the three pages of the will (1616) are spelled respectively, "Willia(blotted)m Shakspere", "Willm Shakspere", and "William Shaksper".

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Elizabethan spelling was diverse and phonetic.  If it fairly represented the sound of a word it was considered correct.  Some thirty spellings in the Stratford records of christenings, marriages and burials of the family all spelt the 'Shakespeare' name in such a way as to require the first syllable to be pronounced with a short "a" as in "hat", not a long "a" as in 'lake' or 'shake'.  In some eighty variations of the name used in England none hyphenated the two syllables into the name Shake-speare as the author's name originally appeared in the first published poems, in the sonnets and in a number of the quarto plays.  None of the names suggest the first syllable as being "shake" as in shaking an object; or "spear" as in the weapon to be thrown.

So what's the point?  The point is that in no written document was William Shaksper's name ever associated with the name Shakespeare as used by the author of the plays.

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The family name of Shaksper was not derived from the idea of a spear shaken.  In fact it derives from the French names "Jacques" and "Pierre" being joined into the family name "Jacquespierre" which, over the centuries, became "Shaksper".  If you repeat the name "Jacquespierre" fast, using the French pronunciation, you'll notice it sounds like "Shaksper".

Many people believe that the the plays of Shakespeare were not written by William Shaksper of Stratford.

Prostrate Cancer tests and fate

MSNBC.  May 23, 2012

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One in a thousand helped.

A top panel of U.S. medical experts (the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force) has concluded that no man of any age should routinely be screened for prostate cancer using the popular PSA test.  They gave the prostate-specific antigen test a grade of D, saying that the risks of population-wide screening outweigh the benefits.

The panel said that there was convincing evidence that the number of men who avoid dying of prostate cancer because of screening after 10 to 14 years was very small.  Citing large epidemiological studies from both Europe and the United States, they said that the benefits of PSA screening and early treatment amounted to less than one prostate cancer death avoided for every 1,000 men screened.

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Harms of unnecessary preemptive treatment.

The test, which measures a protein in the blood, does not diagnose cancer.  It looks for a particular sign that cancer may be present.  The surgery that follows a positive test includes radiation, chemotherapy and hormone deprivation.

The test often results in false positives.  It can’t tell how aggressive or benign a cancer may be so that doctors are often in the dark about whether the tumor requires treatment.  Erring on the side of caution, most men with positive PSA tests are biopsied and, if cancer is found, treated.  The result is that many men are being subjected to the harms of treatment and overtreatment for something that would never have become a problem.

Typical side effects of treatment include impotence, incontinence, even death.

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The other side of the argument:

Retired University of Washington professor Jim Kiefert of Olympia, Wash. said of the task force,
“They do not give a damn about you.  They use population statistics to justify not giving PSA tests. They forget about people at the other end of the Bell curve."  His first PSA test at 50 led to a diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer.  He has waged a battle against the cancer ever since, including surgery, radiation, and hormone deprivation therapies and he says “I wish I could have gotten a PSA test at 40 or 45 and gotten that cancer before it escaped the gland”.

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Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, defends the panel’s decision:

He says: 

"Just about every man who undergoes treatment after a PSA test will say that the test saved his life, though often he would have been just fine had the cancer never been detected and treated.”.......

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......... Like the traveller in classical times who built a monument to the gods to honor them for saving him from drowning after a shipwreck, and who was asked where were the monuments to all those through history who had not been saved.

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Agitation to continue testing is driven, at least in part, by financial incentives - makers of drugs, PSA tests, and doctors who prefer that the whole nation be composed of people who think they are sick.

Medicare and private insurers could use the conclusion to justify ending reimbursements for the tests.

No-Man's-Land

Set during World War I, the film Beneath Hill 60 tells the story of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company’s effort to mine beneath a German bunker and create a massive explosion to aid the advance of British troops.

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A band of Australian soldiers is setting off across no-man's-land to take out an enemy bunker.  One of them who has had more experience of this sort of night attack gives the following advice:

If an enemy flare goes off in the night sky, lighting up the ground for a few seconds, the soldiers should 'freeze' in place and not dive to the ground since the enemy machine gunners would react only to movement.  This counter intuitive advice requires considerable courage because diving for cover is the instinctive reaction.  It also demands great trust in your fellow soldiers since it would only need one of the band to dive and the remaining standing soldiers would be cut down by the machine gun fire.

Secondly, when the flare goes off they should close one eye so that when the light of the flare has died they would be able to see in the night with the other eye, and not be temporarily blinded in both.

Fast Guns and Wyatt Earp

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In the Old West cowboys wore their guns on their hips, not low-slung on their thighs. That was a Hollywood invention designed to enable fast-draws and trick shooting.  After World War II, the U.S. military adopted the thigh holster - life imitating art.  The screenwriters fell in with this Hollywood fad with dialogue to match - "faster than greased lightning", and The Fastest Gun Alive Alive, the title of a Glenn Ford movie in which the eponymous lead character proves just how fast he is by having someone hold a beer glass a couple of feet above the ground and then drawing and shooting the glass after it is dropped and before it hits the ground.

To see modern day fast draw check out this YouTube clip, Fastest Shooter in the World

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The book, Frontier Marshall about the life of Wyatt Earp, ghost written by Stuart M. Lake, was published in 1931.

Frontier Marshal was so popular it became the most-read book, aside from the Bible, by U.S. troops during World War II.

The 1955 television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp was based on the book and made Lake into one of the first television moguls.

In the Gary Cooper movie, The Westerner,  Stuart Lake is credited as story creator - but not as screenwriter.

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The following is a description of Earp from the San Francisco Newsletter and California Advertiser, April 2, 1892:

'He is fully six feet tall, but of a light build, a blonde complexion and the possessor of a drooping blonde mustache, and a cold grey eye.  He drinks lemonade.  All in all, Earp is as mild a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.'

Wyatt was arrested for claim-jumping in the Searles Valley north of San Bernardino.  Federal Receiver Austin and three armed men came into the camp and ordered the 'claim jumpers' to leave.  Wyatt Earp stepped forward and snatched a rifle from one of the Austin men and then faced Austin's revolver... Then Earp retreated to a hut and came back with a rifle ready for action. Rasor, an engineer who witnessed this, said of it, "It was the most nervy thing, Earp's act, that I ever saw".

(The Potash Wars commenced shortly after the arrest.  Be patient. The link takes a few seconds to download.  It talks about Wyatt Earp and the Potash Wars with fascinating old photos.)

Here's the story as told by the other side:

"Before I got very far a tall man with iron grey hair and a mustache pushed his way to the front and in a loud voice demanded why I had come into their camp with armed men.  At the same time he grabbed hold of my shotgun held by the boy on my left and attempted to take it away from him.  At this attack on us I drew an automatic and ordered him to let go.  He did so and then ran to a building nearby saying "I'll fix you."  Before he could secure a rifle, however, the cooler-headed members of the party surrounded him and calmed him down."

Court records from 1916 state that Wyatt was acting on the request of LAPD Commissioner Tom Lewis.

Wyatt Earp is on the left.

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Towards the end of his life Wyatt Earp moved to Hollywood.

He became an unpaid film consultant for several silent cowboy movies.  On the set of one movie, he met Marion Morrison (who later became famous under the assumed name of John Wayne).  Morrison served Earp coffee on the sets, and later told Hugh O'Brian, who played Earp in the TV series that he based his image of Western lawmen on his conversations with Earp.

John Wayne became Wyatt Earp, adapting the way Wyatt walked, and the way Wyatt talked — slowly, enunciating every word. Wyatt Earp had a voice like a foghorn.

Wyatt was  an extra in a crowd scene of the 1916 Douglas Fairbanks feature, 'The Half Breed'.
If anyone can find this scene, please submit an image to this blog.

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Wyatt apparently wrote a movie script.  The following paragraph is from a letter to the film star, (and Wyatt's good friend), William S. Hart, dated Nov. 18, 1927:

'I have just received word that the script which I am having written will be ready in a short time.  As soon as I receive the same, I will immediately forward it to you as I am very anxious to get your judgment on it.  I know there is not one better qualified to pass upon it than yourself.  I am in hopes that the material in the script will be available for your use.'
 
"I am sure that if the story were exploited on the screen by you, it would do much towards setting me right before the public which has always been fed up with lies about me."

He died bitter, believing that his reputation was tarnished.  He did not live to see how kind history would be toward him; and could never have imagined the legend he would become.

In Kevin Costner's movie, Wyatt Earp single-handedly backs down a lynch mob that wants to break into Wyatt's jail to drag out and hang a prisoner.  Years later on ferry to Alaska, at the end of the movie, Wyatt says, "Many people say it didn't happen that way."  And right there we see the bitterness of Wyatt's later years.

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So what does Wyatt Earp, who was the real article, have to say on the subject of fanning your gun or shooting from the hip as depicted in the Hollywood westerns?

The following Popthems are from the book 'Frontier Marshall' in Wyatt's own words:

The most important lesson I learned was that the winner of a gunplay usually was the man who took his time.  The second was that, if I hoped to live long on the frontier, I would shun flashy trick-shooting -- grandstand play -- as I would poison.

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Take your time -- in a hurry

When I say that I learned to take my time in a gunfight, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for the time to be taken was only that split fraction of a second that means the difference between deadly accuracy with a sixgun and a miss.

Perhaps I can best describe such time taking as going into action with the greatest speed of which a man's muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick-shooting involves.

Mentally deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought.

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In all my life as a frontier police officer, I did not know a really proficient gunfighter who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, or the man who literally shot from the hip

A skillful gun-fanner could fire five shots from a forty-five so rapidly that the individual reports were indistinguishable, but what could happen to him in a gunfight was pretty close to murder. (Today we would use the term 'suicide')

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(Wild Bill was a trick shooter - but not when he got down to the serious business of a gun fight.)

Hickok knew all the fancy tricks and was as good as the best at that sort of gunplay, but when he had serious business at hand, a man to get, the acid test of marksmanship, I doubt if he employed them.  At least, he told me that he did not.  I have seen him in action and I never saw him fan a gun, shoot from the hip, or try to fire two pistols simultaneously.  Neither have I ever heard a reliable old-timer tell of any trick-shooting employed by Hickok when fast straight-shooting meant life or death.

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From personal experience and numerous six-gun battles which I witnessed, I can only support the opinion advanced by the men who gave me my most valuable instruction in fast and accurate shooting, which was that the gun-fanner and hip-shooter stood small chance to live against a man who, as old Jack Gallagher always put it, took his time and pulled the trigger once.

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That two-gun business is another matter that can stand some truth before the last of the old-time gunfighters has gone on.  They wore two guns, most of six-gun toters did, and when the time came for action went after them with both hands.  But they didn't shoot them that way

Primarily, two guns made the threat of something in reserve; they were useful as a display of force when a lone man stacked up against a crowd.  Some men could shoot equally well with either hand, and in a gunplay might alternate their fire; others exhausted the loads from the gun on the right, or the left, as the case might be, then shifted the reserve weapon to the natural shooting hand if that was necessary and possible.  Such a move -- the border shift -- could be made faster than the eye could follow a top-notch gun-thrower, but if the man was as good as that, the shift would seldom be required.

Whenever you see a picture of some two-gun man in action with both weapons held closely against his hips and both spitting smoke together, you can put it down that you are looking at the picture of a fool, or a fake.  I remember quite a few of these so-called two-gun men who tried to operate everything at once, but like the fanners, they didn't last long in proficient company.

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In the days of which I am talking, among men whom I have in mind, when a man went after his guns, he did so with a single, serious purpose.  There was no such thing as a bluff.

When a gunfighter reached for his forty-five, every faculty he owned was keyed to shooting as speedily and as accurately as possible, to making his first shot the last of the fight. He just had to think of his gun solely as something with which to kill another before he himself could be killed.

The possiblity of intimidating an antagonist was remote, although the 'drop' was thoroughly respected, and few men in the West would draw against it. I have seen men so fast and so sure of themselves that they did go after their guns while men who intended to kill them had them covered, and what is more win out in the play. They were rare.

It is safe to say, for all general purposes, that anything in gunfighting that smacked of show-off or bluff was left to braggarts who were ignorant or careless of their lives.

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(concerning the Hollywood notion of 'notching' kills on the handle of the gun)

I might add that I never knew a man who amounted to anything to notch his gun with 'credits,' as they were called, for men he had killed.  Outlaws, gunmen of the wild crew who killed for the sake of brag, followed this custom.

I have worked with most of the noted peace officers -- Hickok, Billy Tilghman, Pat Sugher, Bat Masterson, Charlie Basset, and others of like caliber -- and have handled their weapons many times, but never knew one of them to carry a notched gun.

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Two other points about the old-time method of using six-guns most effectively that do not seem to be generally known.

One is that the gun was not cocked with the ball of the thumb.  As his gun was jerked into action, the old-timer closed the whole joint of his thumb over the hammer and the gun was cocked in that fashion.  The soft flesh of the thumb ball might slip if a man's hands were moist, and a slip was not to be chanced if humanly avoidable.

On the second point, I have often been asked why five shots without reloading were all a top-notch gunfighter fired, when his guns  were chambered for six cartridges.  The answer is, merely, safety.  To ensure against accidental discharge of the gun while in the holster, due to hair-trigger adjustment, the hammer rested upon an empty chamber.  The number of cartridges a man carried in his six-gun may be taken as an indication of a man's rank with the gunfighters of the old school.  Practiced gun-wielders had too much respect for their weapons to take unnecessary chances with them; it was only with tyros (novices) and would-be's ('wanna-be's of today) that you heard of accidental discharges or 'didn't- know-it-was-loaded' injuries. 

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More images of Wyatt Earp can be seen at elizabethguthrie.  It's worth a look!

The Clowns and Hamlet - a mystery resolved

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There's this scene in Hamlet that we know is supposed to be funny because it's got two clowns talking, but it's not that funny.  Apparently, we must be  missing something because Shakespeare's audience found it funny.  So what are we missing?

Here's the scene.  Act 5,  Scene 1.  Ophelia has drowned herself.

Enter two Clowns, with spades, & c

First Clown

          
          Is she to be buried in Christian burial that

          willfully seeks her own salvation?

Second Clown

           I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave

           straight: the crowner (coroner) hath sat on her, and finds it 

           Christian burial.

First Clown

           How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her

           own defence?

Second Clown

            Why, 'tis found so.

First Clown

           It must be 'se offendendo'; it cannot be else.  For

           here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly,

           it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it 

           is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned 

           herself wittingly.

Second Clown

           Nay, but hear you, goodman delver, --

First Clown

          Give me leave.  Here lies the water; here
          stands the man; good; if the man go to this water,
          and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he
          goes, -- mark you; but if the water come to him
          and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal, he
          that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

Second Clown

          But is this law?

First Clown

          Ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law.

Second Clown

          Will you ha' the truth on't?  If this had not been
           a gentle woman, she should have been buried out o'
           Christian burial.

POP2

So what's happening here? -

Ophelia has committed suicide and the clowns are discussing whether she is entitled to a Christian burial.

The first joke is the suggestion that it wasn't suicide if she killed herself in self defense - not much of a defense if you kill yourself to prevent yourself being killed.

Next, the same clown argues that an act has three branches; namely to act, to do and to perform, which by the way are synonyms, therefore not three branches but one branch; (that's the next joke.)

He then argues that, because an act has these three branches, Ophelia acted wilfully and is therefore guilty of  suicide.  It makes no sense.......unless you know the rest of the story.

His conclusion is that a man who "is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life" - which is an absurd tautology that makes no sense.

POP3

So what's the rest of the story?

The dialogue comes straight out of the law case Hales v. Petit, recorded by Plowden in 1571, (which is some thirty-five years before Hamlet was written.) 

In the reign of Mary Tudor Sir James Hale drowned himself. The verdict was suicide.  His body was to be buried in a crossroads and his lands to be forfeited to the Crown.  His wife Margaret would get nothing. The estate was given by the crown to Cyriac Petit.  Margaret Hale sued to recover the lands from Petit.

POP4

The case hinged on this question - is the crime of suicide committed when James Hales is still alive, in other words when he's falling through the air into the water but not yet dead (in which case he would forfeit his estate), or does it become suicide only after he has died (which would mean his wife, by right of survivorship would inherit his estate at the instant of his death, precluding any forfeiture.)

POP5

Council for the wife argued that the felony of suicide consists of two parts; first the cause of death (throwing himself into the water), and secondly the death that ensues.  Until both are completed there is no felony, and by the time death has completed the felony, the right of survivorship shall have kicked in.

POP6

Council for Petit argued that "The act consists of three parts" - remember the clowns. First there is the conceiving the notion to kill yourself, secondly the decision to proceed, and thirdly the execution of what the mind has resolved to do.   Throwing himself into the water was the felonious act and the death "but a sequel thereof."

POP7

The Lord Chief Justice gave judgement for Petit:

        "Sir James Hales was dead, and how came he to his death? by drowning; and who drowned him?  Sir James Hales; and when did he drown him? in his lifetime.  So that Sir James Hales, being alive, caused Sir James Hales to die; and the act of the living man was the death of the dead man.  He therefore committed felony in his lifetime, although there was no possibility of the forfeiture being found in his lifetime, for until his death there was no cause for forfeiture."

Mrs Hales' brave but hopeless battle still resonates after all these centuries; a very strong-willed woman, but one can't help but wonder if she was not a contributing cause of her husband throwing himself into the water.

POP8

Plowden's Reports, in which the case of Hales v. Petit was recorded, were not written in English.  They were written in Norman French, or law French, an uncommon technical language restricted to lawyers, judges, and law students.  They were not translated in Shakespeare's time.  So this passage possibly constitutes evidence that Shakespeare read Law French, as students of law would have had to.  Of course he could have had friends who were proficient in Law French, so we can't be too free with our conclusions.

On the other hand the case of 'Hale v. Petit' may have been well known to the the populace at large due to its iconic nature.