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'Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push'.

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International Day in Solidarity with Leonard Peltier

February 6 of each year has become The International Day in Solidarity with Leonard Peltier. Protest gatherings to publicize Peltier's plight and help gain his release are held around the world, from a few individuals in small towns, to thousands on the Internet registering their protest with elected officials and the White House.

Peltier is considered by many to be a political prisoner and has received support from individuals and groups including Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchú, Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Tenzin Gyatso (the 14^th Dalai Lama), the European Parliament, the Belgian Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Michael Apted, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Matthiessen, Madonna, Bono, Sting, Vivienne Westwood, Giorgio Armani, Cher, Kylie Minogue, Elton John, Oliver Stone, Danielle Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev, Raquel Welch, Joan Collins, Ozzy Osbourne, Bianca Jagger and Kate Moss ...

Categories: activism, activist, law, legal, crime, usa

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Traditionally on this day, any new shepherd was tricked by his fellows in a game similar to 'hunting the gowk', a Scottish custom of fooling young and naive people which is associated with April Fools' Day.

The novice shepherd was asked to take any uneaten porridge from the dwellings, into the hills to feed the shepherds all summer. However, the porridge was actually replaced in the pails with water and after his burdensome trip up the long hills the new shepherd was initiated by being doused with the water ...

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Candlemas and Groundhog Day

Candlemas is one of the Scottish quarter days in the Christian calendar and formally marks the end of the Christmas season. Formerly called by Roman Catholics the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, now called by them the Presentation of Our Lord. In Roman Catholic churches all the candles that will be needed in the church throughout the year are consecrated on this day.

The festival comes 40 days after the traditional day for celebrating the birth of Jesus in the Western church, December 25, and therefore corresponds to the day on which his mother, Mary, according to Jewish law (see Leviticus:12), should have attended a ceremony of ritual purification, as described in the Gospel of Luke 2: 22-39.

The customs of Candlemas have an ancient pre-Christian heritage: the ancient Romans had a custom of burning candles to drive away evil spirits, and the purification goddess Juno Februata, celebrated today in ancient Rome, was commemorated with candles as later applied to the Virgin Mary. Februata (also called Juno Februa) was the Roman goddess of love, marriage, and women.

It is not actually known if it was a Christian ceremony engrafted onto the Roman rite of februation, or purification, or not, because it has been a Christian ceremony for a very long time, but the parallels are striking and it is probably more than coincidence.

Groundhog Day
Candlemas is also known as 'Groundhog Day' in the United States and Canada, from the saying that the groundhog first appears from hibernation on that day. If he sees his shadow, he goes back for another six weeks – indicating six more weeks of bad weather.

European settlers brought the custom with them, mainly from Germany, but also from Czechoslovakia, England and other parts of Europe, where a badger had performed the same prognostications for centuries prior ...

Categories: religion, calendar-customs, christianity, pagan, ancient-rome, folklore

Sexology pioneer Havelock Ellis

1859 Havelock Ellis (d. July 8, 1939), British psychologist, author (Sexual Inversion; The Task of Social Hygiene; The Dance of Life) and sociologist noted for his studies of human sexual behaviour, and one-time resident of Sydney, Australia.

In about 1877, Ellis was at 18 years of age the stand-in headmaster of Grafton Grammar School, Grafton being a northern regional city of New South Wales not far from where this almanac is produced. His Australian experience informed his only novel, Kanga Creek (1922) ...

Categories: author, science, sex, australia, history, biography

 

 

1984 The Medicare free universal health care scheme was formally adopted in Australia ...

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February origins and folklore

January and February were introduced into the Roman calendar by the emperor Numa Pompilius. Februare = 'purification'; this was the month of expiation and purification for Romans. Numa arranged for it to have 29 days except in leap years when it had, by the intercalation of a day between the 23rd and 24th, thirty.

When Augustus Caesar added a 31st day to the month named after him, so that it would not lack the dignity of having the full complement of days, he took a day from February, which could least spare it.

Now we drop a day from each century except those of which the ordinal number can be divided by four – again we take it from February. So there was no February 29 in 1800, 1900 and will be like this again in 2100, 2200, and so on.

Saxon name: Sprout-kale, sprouting of cabbage. Afterwards called Sol-monatt, return of sun.

February is represented in art by a man in a sky-coloured dress, bearing in his hand the sign of Pisces.

Categories: calendar-customs, calendar, almanac, folklore, history, ancient-rome, history, astrology

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Eve of Brigantia, festival of St Brighid (Bridget; Brigid; Bride; Briid), Ireland

Celtic goddess of fire and crops

People once believed that the good saint travelled about the countryside on the eve of her feast day (February 1), bestowing her blessing on the people and their livestock. Token gifts of a cake or pieces of bread and butter were left on the window-sill outside. A sheaf of corn was often placed beside the cake, as refreshment for the saint's white cow which accompanied her on her rounds.

In Ireland it was believed that Bridget would 'touch the brat' (a woman's article such as a ribbon or mantle) and imbue it with healing powers. The brat was a ribbon or a piece of linen or other cloth, or any item of clothing. The ribbon, cloth or garment would possibly be laid on the doorstep or the window sill, or thrown on a low roof; in Munster it was often tied to the door latch so that the saint would touch it when entering the house. A sash, scarf or handkerchief thus touched by the saint would keep the wearer safe from harm. Once touched by the saint, it kept its power forever, and many believed that the older it was, the more potent it became. Men, on the other hand, often put out a belt, a tie or a pair of braces to gain this protection.

The brat also gave omens for the future: its length was carefully measured, and when it was brought in again next morning it was again carefully measured against the marks made on the eve. If its length had increased during the night, this was a good sign that foretold of a long life, freedom from accident, illness and misfortune and success with crops and cattle.

In Ireland on the Eve of Brigantia the people prepared an image of Bride, fashioned out of corn straw. This effigy was supposed to come alive with the spirit of Bride during the night ...

Founding of The Bulletin

1880 Australia: The first issue of The Bulletin was published. The magazine was founded by two journalists, JF Archibald (pictured) and John Haynes. The Bulletin 's literary editor, AG Stephens, had a great deal of influence on the 'Bulletin school' ('Bully' writer Henry Lawson, one of Stephens's 'finds', thought him an insufferable snob). A very influential editor was WH Traill.

Among the many well-known contributors were the writers Banjo Paterson, George Black, Edwin Brady, Bernard O'Dowd, Joseph Furphy (Tom Collins), Miles Franklin, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Mary Gilmore, George Gordon McCrae, Roderic Quinn and Vance and Nettie Palmer, the cartoonists Livingston Hopkins ('Hop), William Macleod and David Low, and the artist and novelist Norman Lindsay. The magazine operated in Reiby Lane, off Pitt Street, Sydney ...
Categories: australia, history, henry-lawson, australian-poetry, australian-literature, poetry, literature, bush-poetry

Norman Mailer

1923 Norman Mailer (d. November 10, 2007), American novelist (Ancient Evenings; The Naked and the Dead) and journalist. In 1955, Mailer co-founded The Village Voice, and he was editor of Dissent from 1954 until 1963. He was imprisoned in 1967 for his role in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. He was president of the US Chapter of International PEN, the fellowship of writers, from 1984 to 1986.

Like Truman Capote, Mailer helped bring about the non-fiction novel. In the 1960s and '70s he developed a form of journalism, that combines actual events, autobiography, and political commentary, and adds the richness of the novel.

Adele Morales Mailer called her husband a "faggot" when he was drunk and stoned at 4 am at a party to launch his mayoral campaign, whereupon Mailer stabbed her twice with a penknife, nearly killing her. It has been said that feminist Kate Millett coined the phase 'male chauvinist pig' in reference to Mailer ...

Categories: author, literature, american-literature, biography, feminism

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Commemoration of the execution of King Charles I of England

On this day for many years after Oliver Cromwell had Charles I beheaded on January 30, 1649, supporters of the monarchy commemorated the occasion. The wainscot of the house would be hung with black and no meal was to be eaten for the whole day. Because, out of compassion, the servants would usually give the children little sweets to tide them over the fast, the children looked forward to the day as a holiday and a diversion.

Many people who had an opposing political persuasion kept the day by a party at which they threw a calf's head onto a bonfire, while some would dress up in executioner's masks. As late as 1735, one group of young bucks met at a tavern in Charing Cross, calling themselves the 'Calves'-Head Club'. They kept an axe on the clubroom wall; their meal was of calves' heads and red wine, and a large pike-fish with a small one in its mouth, signifying tyranny, a large cod's head and a pig with an apple in its mouth, both representing Charles I. Present were a man dressed as Satan, and a woman with snakes in her hair, representing Rebellion ...

Festival of the Lênaia to Dionysus, ancient Greece  (c. Jan 28 - Feb 5)

The Lênaia, which was held at the coldest time of year, was for Dionysus Lênaios, celebrating his birth from Zeus's thigh and his emergence from the Underworld. It was a festival with a dramatic competition but one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece.

For nine days, beginning on the 12^th day of the lunar month of Gamelion, the ancient Greeks honoured the god. The name of the Lênaia probably comes from the lenai, who were infatuated worshippers of Dionysus. In Athens the festival was held in the Lenaion, possibly a theatre outside the city or a section of the Agora ...

Baskerville font: simplicity, elegance, clarity.

1706 John Baskerville (d. 1775), English printer and typefounder whose fonts (including the famous 'Baskerville', above) were so successful, his competitors claimed they damaged the eyes.

His masterpiece was a folio Bible, published in 1763. Among Baskerville's publications held in the British Museum are that Bible,  Aesop's Fables (1761), and the works of Horace (1770).

A native of Worcestershire, Baskerville made a fortune in a japanning business in Birmingham. He devoted his resources to the art of printing and development of typefaces, was said to be a great perfectionist and made his own ink, presses, moulds for casting, and all the apparatus.

Baskerville enjoyed a lasting friendship with Benjamin Franklin, who had built up a successful printing business in Philadelphia, and who visited Baskerville in Birmingham.

"His typography is extremely beautiful, uniting the elegance of Plantin with the clearness of the Elzevirs; in his Italic letters he stands unrivalled," wrote one commentator.

He was a man of eccentric tastes: he had each panel of his carriage painted with a picture of one of his trades. John Baskerville was buried in his own garden; in 1821 his remains were accidentally disturbed, the leaden coffin was opened and his body and shroud were in a nearly perfect state of preservation.

People were actually charged sixpence for a look at the wonder. Baskerville was an atheist and wished not to be interred in a churchyard ...

The first Australia Day

1788 New Holland (now called Australia): The First Fleet landed at Botany Bay, near present-day Sydney and Governor Arthur Phillip took formal possession of the colony of New South Wales in the name of King George III of the United Kingdom.

Following the American Revolution, Britain was deprived of penal colonies and in the 1780s was keeping large numbers of miscreants in various prisons and even on old ships ('hulks'). The discovery (by Captain James Cook) to Britain of the Great South Land, Terra Australis, or New Holland, as Australia was variously named, gave Britain another dumping ground.

January 26 is celebrated as Australia Day, the country's national day.

Captain Phillip wrote in his diary on this day:

In the evening of the 26th, the colours were displayed on shore, and the Governor, with several of his principal officers and others, assembled around the flagstaff, drank the King's health, and success to the settlement, with all the display of form which, on such occasions, is deemed propitious because it enlivens the spirits and fills the imagination with pleasing presages.

Read more about Australia Day at Wilson's Almanac

Categories: australia, calendar-customs, history

1880 Douglas MacArthur (d. April 5, 1964), American general, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific in World War II (he took part in two other major wars: World War I and the Korean War).

I will return - so keep chewing! 

In August 1943, US Colonel Courtney Whitney suggested that Macarthur's "I shall return" promise be used as propaganda to the Philippine people and that items bearing the message be dropped from planes over the Philippines. Not long after his forced departure from the Philippines, General MacArthur bought up the entire production of chewing gum made in the Wrigley's factories in Australia, and dropped the lot over the Japanese-occupied Philippines. Each piece of gum was wrapped in paper bearing the promise, "I shall return – MacArthur" ...

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The Marias River Massacre

Today in 1870 at the Piegan Indian campsite at Marias River, Montana, USA, occurred "the greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by US troops", as described by Lieutenant Gus Doane. It is also one of the least known.

Doane, under orders from Major Eugene Baker, commanded F Company in the attack. Some 200 Piegans, most of them either elderly or women and children, were killed in and around their homes, which were later burned to the ground along with the many corpses. About 140 captives were turned loose without adequate food and clothing and some of them froze to death trying to walk to Fort Benton, 90 miles away.

General of the Army, William Sherman, deflected a public inquiry and blandly issued a press release denying any guilt, based on the fact that he "preferred to believe" what he was told by his officers.

Categories: indigenous, military, army, usa, history

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Folklore of St Vincent's Day

Weather magic charm

Remember on St Vincent's Day
If that the sun his beams display,
Be sure to mark his transient beam
Which through the window sheds a gleam;
For 'tis a token bright and clear,
Of prosperous weather all the year.
Traditional English proverb

1561 Francis Bacon (d. April 9, 1626), early English philosopher, lawyer, linguist, composer, mathematician, geometer, musician, poet, painter, astronomer, classicist, philosopher, historian, theologian, architect, father of modern science, patron of modern democracy. Some assert that he was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I of England. His philosophical works lay out a complex methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method.

Bacon was Lord Chancellor of the realm, and man of letters, author of the Rosicrucian-inspired utopian New Atlantis (1627). The English poet Alexander Pope called him "The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind". Pope also wrote, in 1741, "Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced" ...

 

The South Sea Bubble

1720 The beginning of the infamous South Sea Bubble – the name given to the economic bubble that occurred due to overheated speculation in and subsequent disastrous collapse of the South Sea Company.

In 1717, in England, a group of speculative merchants (including the English statesman Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, and Edward Gibbon, the grandfather of the famous historian), who had formed a huge corporation called the South Sea Company, proposed to the government that they should take on the national debt of 30,981,712 pounds. The public had confidence in the scheme and stock rose from 130 per cent to 300. Only soon-to-be Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, opposed the scheme, and he warned the country of the likely consequences, but was ignored.

The speculators spread rumours about their prospects in places such as Mexico and Peru, and stock went to 400, then settled at 330. Soon after the bill was passed by parliament, the stocks went up to 340. Crafty speculators made huge profits with sham or 'bubble' companies. The Prince of Wales (later King George I) was said to have reaped 40,000 pounds. Such investors merely put money in to raise the public hope, only to pull it out again as stocks rose. One of the schemes was "A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is" ...

Categories: uk, history, corporations

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Love charms of St Agnes

John Keats, in his poem, 'The Eve of St Agnes' (1819), referred to certain love prognostications, but these are not for the eve (January 20), rather for tonight, the night of St Agnes. English antiquary John Aubrey wrote in his Miscellanies of 1696 that on the night of St Agnes you take a row of pins, and pull out every one, one after another. While saying a paternoster ('Our Father', or 'The Lord's Prayer'), stick one of these pins in your sleeve, and you will dream of the person you will marry.

But kids, don't try this at home if you're already married.

Otherwise, "passing into a different country from that of her ordinary residence, and taking her right-leg stocking, she [the maiden looking for a lover - PW] might knit the left garter around it, repeating the rhyme:

"I knit this knot, this knot I knit,
To know the thing I know not yet,
That I may see
The man that shall my husband be,
Not in his best or worst array,
But what he weareth every day;
That I tomorrow may him ken
From among all other men."

Categories: saint, calendar-customs, folklore, uk

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Pioneer of rights for women

1856 Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch (d. November 20, 1940), American women's rights and peace activist and author (A Woman's Point of View; Some Roads to Peace; Challenging Years). Due to her organizing abilities, 20,000 people marched in the parade down Fifth Avenue in New York in 1914, organized by the Women's Political Union, which she founded.

Blatch worked with her mother Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony in completing their History of Woman Suffrage, contributing a large chapter on Lucy Stone's American Woman Suffrage Association, a rival organization to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's and Susan B Anthony's National Woman Suffrage Association ...

Categories: suffragette, activism, usa

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

1967 Timothy Leary, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dick Gregory, Richard Alpert (later called Baba Ram Dass), Gary Snyder and others attended the first 'Human Be-In' in a park in San Francisco, USA, one of the big events of the ‘Summer of Love’.

Among the performers were The Grateful Dead and The Jefferson Airplane (later called Starship). Estimates of numbers in attendance range wildly from 20,000 to 300,000 (estimate in Ringolevio by Emmett Grogan). Leary, in his first San Francisco appearance, uttered the sound bite of the decade: "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out".

Categories: hippie, 1960s, entheogen, psychedelia, rock-music

The Lares (Roman household gods)

In Roman mythology, the Lares were said to be the children of Mercury and the naiad Lara. Lares Familiares: Each home had a small shrine, the lararium, dedicated to these household gods, typically depicted as a pair of dancing youths ...

 

1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (nicknamed 'Mahatma', or 'Great Soul') (1869-1948) began his final fast. Ghandi had hopes of staving off war between Indians and Pakistanis, but did not live to see peace in the sub-continent; he was assassinated later in the month.

Mahatma Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  It is said that an aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better ...

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Auld New Year, Scotland

Burning the Clavie, Burghead, Morayshire, Scotland

The people of the north-eastern Scottish fishing port of Burghead enact the ritual Burning of the Clavie (tar barrel) on January 11, preferring their Hogmanay (Scottish New Year's Eve celebration) according to the Old Style calendar that was in use in Scotland until 1660.

So, on the evening of Auld New Year at 6 o'clock, the tar barrel (clavie) is set alight and paraded around town. The clavie is the bottom part of a wooden barrel, mounted on a pole and filled with tar-soaked wood, and must be lit with a piece of burning peat from a local household fire.

The barrel is pounded onto an eight-foot pole called 'the spoke' (using a round stone, never a hammer), the same nail being ritually used every year – perhaps there's a link between clavie and clavus, the Latin for 'nail', though it might come from the Gaelic word for basket, cliabh. Then the clavie is hoisted onto the shoulders of a local villager and the procession begins.

The clavie crew of nine or ten local men (led by the 'Clavie King') must make sure that the clavie isn't dropped, or else bad luck will come to Burghead in the coming year. Eventually, after the crew has stopped at a number of traditional stations along the route, it reaches its destination at an ancient mound called Doorie where it's set on a specially prepared base. It is allowed to burn for some time, before being ritualistically broken up with a hatchet. Flaming embers are then snatched up by onlookers. Traditionally these used to be kindling for a special New Year Fire in the home, but are now kept for luck and even sent to relatives or friends who have moved away from the district.

Opinions differ as to the roots of the ancient festival of the Burning of the Clavie – it might be Pictish, Celtic, Viking or Roman in origin, but it is certainly pre-Christian ...

Categories: british-folklore, pagan, calendar-customs, bonfire, scotland, new-year, pagan

Frost fairs on the Thames

The UK's extremely cold weather this winter is not a first. On this day in 1783 London's River Thames froze over and a 'Frost Fair' was held on the frozen river. It has been said that 3,000,000 people attended. Frost fairs, like the unusual weather patterns that allowed them, were a rare occurrence in London, but history records the few times they happened. 

Between 1550 and 1850, Britons endured what may be called the 'Little Ice Age', as the world was then about one degree cooler than the average for the 20th Century. The River Thames froze over 14 times in this period, becoming the location for Frost Fair festivities. Fairs were held in 1564, 1608, 1634, 1715, 1739, and 1789. In 1715 - '16, the Thames froze so solid that a spring tide lifted the ice 13 feet (about 4 metres) without interrupting the fair.

The Public Advertiser declared on January 5, 1789: "This booth to let, the present possessor of the premises is Mr Frost. His affairs, however, not being on a permanent footing, a dissolution or bankruptcy may soon be expected and a final settlement of the whole entrusted to Mr Thaw." ...

Categories: weather, climate-change, london, uk, history

1866 Richard Denis Meagher (d. September 17, 1931), notorious lawyer and politician in New South Wales, Australia, and Lord Mayor of Sydney, 1916-17. He became Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. Meagher was a law partner with the equally outrageous Paddy Crick (William Patrick Crick).

Meagher once (about 1898) fought a duel with John Norton, the notorious fellow politician and reprobate editor of Truth, outside the 137 King Street tea rooms of prominent and respect Sydney identity Quong Tart, after Norton attacked Meagher in his newspaper. Meagher ambushed Norton and flogged him from behind with a horsewhip. Norton cried out in pain, chased Meagher around the corner into Pitt Street and, at the entrance to the Imperial Arcade, took cover behind a lamp post, took out a revolver and fired several shots. No one was injured, though Norton's pride might have been as he was fined five pounds for discharging a firearm in a public place.

The following exchange between Meagher and Norton took place at the Central Police Court before a magistrate:

Norton (roaring with laughter): You brothel-kept assassin.
Meagher: You –– hound. You ought to be made to crawl out on your hands and knees.
Norton: I never got my living in a brothel.
Meagher: You scaly scurvy contemptible viper.
Norton: I never kept the door of a brothel or pulled the corks.
Meagher: I will deal with you presently. I have something here (waving a sheet of foolscap). I'll show you up, you hound. (Great excitement).
Norton: You skunk. You show me up!
Meagher: You're a skunk. You're just as sick in body as you are in mind. (Hisses).
Norton: Here's Mr. Levien ready to state the truth and bowl you out in more damnable lies, you triple-tongued liar.
Meagher: I've something here (holding up foolscap) for you, you skunk, you scaly scrofulous bit of carrion, you can't grow eyebrows, you wretched creature. (Sensation, and people crowd the legal table) ...

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Feast day of St Fillan (Foelan, Foellan, Foilan, Foillan, Fulan), abbot

(Many sources give January 19 for this saint's day.)

Fillan was a Scottish saint, famous for his piety and good works. The son of Feriach, grandson of King Cellach Cualann, King of Leinster, Ireland, he received the monastic habit in the abbey of Saint Fintan Munnu. Then he accompanied his saintly mother, Kentigerna, and his uncle, St Comgan, to Scotland, where he became a missionary monk. Both Irish and Scottish martyrologies recorded his sanctity, and the Aberdeen Breviary tells of some extraordinary miracles performed by him.

At the monastery he built in Pittenweem ('place of the cave'), while transcribing the scriptures, his left hand cast light for him at night. He retired to a wild and remote valley named after him, Strathfillan, in Perthshire, where he died. There was for a very long time a bell on a grave stone there, said to be the saint's. It was there until the early 19^th Century, and no one stole it because it was said that it would only return to Strathfillan, mysteriously ...

The King's Evil

1683 King Charles II of England issued orders for the future regulations of the ceremony of touching 'the King's Evil'.

This was the name for scrofula, a a form of tuberculosis, affecting the lymph nodes (usually spread by unpasteurized cow's milk) which from the time of King Clovis of France in 481 CE was believed to be cured by a touch of the monarch's hand.

Shakespeare mentioned it in Macbeth. The famous diarist, Samuel Pepys (1633 - 1703), recorded in his diary for April 10, 1666, that he saw the cure effected by the king. From 1633, the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church had contained a ceremony for this practice.

The notion was first introduced into England by King Edward the Confessor and the belief continued to be common throughout the Middle Ages but began to die out with the coming of the Enlightenment.

In Cornwall, it was believed that the seventh son of a seventh son was able to touch-cure the disease. The seventh son of a seventh son was widely believed in Britain and Ireland to have all kinds of powers ...

Categories: superstition, health, monarchy, folklore, customs, british-folklore, calendar-customs, england

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Lesser Festival of Dionysus, ancient Greece

The Attic festivals of Dionysus were four: The Rural or Lesser Dionysia, the Lenaea, the Anthesteria and the City or Great (or Urban) Dionysia (March 9 - 14).

Dionysus (or Dionysos, pronounced dy-uh-ny'-suhs), later known to the ancient Romans as Bacchus, was the Greek god of wine, revelry and ecstasy. He was the son of Zeus, the supreme god, and Semele (in Eleusis, Zeus and Demeter) ...

Nine of Diamonds and the Curse of Scotland

1707 Death of John, Earl of Stair

Sir John Dalrymple, First Earl of Stair, who died on this day in 1707, was a Scottish lord, one in a line of three generations who were seen by Scots to have betrayed their country, he by being one of those chosen to offer the crown of Scotland to William and Mary. Dalrymple signed the orders, it was said, for the Glencoe massacre (February 13, 1692). The Dalrymple family coat of arms features nine 'lozenges', or markings. It is thought to be for this reason that the Nine of Diamonds card is known as 'the curse of Scotland'.

Categories: scotland, folklore, britain

The death of Emperor Norton

1880 Norton I (b. 1811), Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico, died.

America's greatest leader was on his way to a lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences in San Francisco when he dropped dead on Grant Avenue.

When he died, the Chronicle newspaper featured the headline: 'Le Roi est Mort':

On the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moonless night under the dripping rain ... Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life.

Norton I lay in state for two days, his body dressed in a new imperial uniform provided by the city fathers of San Francisco, and respectfully visited by more than 30,000 of his loyal subjects; the funeral cortege on January 10 was two miles long. Area flags were hung at half mast; businesses were closed. The funeral arrangements were the most elaborate San Francisco had ever seen. On January 11, the gods blackened the San Franciscan skies with a total solar eclipse.

The people of San Francisco erected a monument over his grave, with the epitaph:

NORTON I, EMPEROR OF THE UNITED STATES,
PROTECTOR OF MEXICO, JOSHUA A. NORTON, 1819-1880

In 1934, the remains of Emperor Norton I were transferred, again at the expense of the City of San Francisco, to a gravesite of moderate splendour at Woodlawn Cemetery ...

More on Emperor Norton in the Almanac Scriptorium

Categories: eccentric, odd, san-francisco, usa

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http://www.henrylawson.info/ 

'Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push'.

Feast of St Distaff, a joke saint

Today was named by some medieval English comedian after an imagined saint, Distaff, and honours the distaff, a sort of yarn spinning device.

It was also called ‘Rock Day’ in England until the 19th Century, the custom being for women to return (after the Christmas holidays) to the spinning wheel (which was also called a ‘distaff’, or ‘rock’). Men went back to work on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Day.

Today is the first day after the ‘twelve days of Christmas’ which began on Boxing Day (the Feast of St Stephen), December 26. The women having gone back to the distaff, or rock, the men would play the prank of setting the flax on fire; in retaliation the women would drench the men from their water pails.

Most women would spin whenever they had nothing else to do. Thus, women were associated with the distaff. Because an unmarried woman was likely to do a lot of this work rather than caring for children and other domestic duties associated with marriage and motherhood in those days, she was known as a spinster, a term that was commonly used in Australia until about the 1960s and until more recently could still be found in some official documents.

The spear side and the distaff side were legal terms for male and female children with regard to inheritance. There is a French proverb "The crown of France never falls to the distaff." ...

Categories: england, britain, british-folklore, folklore, customs, saint, religion, christianity, medieval, lore, calendar-customs

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Epiphany (12th Day of Christmas), Carnival and removal from meat

Epiphany, the oldest festival on the Christian Church calendar, is a national holiday in at least 15 nations. Celebrations generally are related to children.

The name derives from the Greek word meaning appearance of a god. It commemorates the visit of the Magi, or Three Wise Men, to the baby Jesus in the stable in Bethlehem, and also His baptism as an adult. Because of the latter, many customs today have watery associations, such as the blessing of fishing fleets in harbours around the world.

In the former Yugoslavia, a cross is thrown into a body of water and young men dive after it. This ancient rite echoes even older pagan ceremonies of propitiation of gods of rivers, lakes and oceans ...

Removal from meat
The period from Epiphany (January 6), until Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day, or Pancake Tuesday; Mardi Gras in French) is called 'carnival'. In Roman Catholic countries it is a period for amusement and revelry, hence the fairground meaning of the word. Thus, the famous 'carnival' celebrations of the Christian world (such as at New Orleans, USA, Bagolino, Italy and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) take place at the end of the period when all foods may be eaten, and at the beginning of the period of fasting, although the weeks before Shrove Tuesday are in fact the period of carnival, or 'removal from meat'.

The word 'carnival' doesn't, as we might presume, originate in something like 'farewell (vale in Latin) flesh', though that's a reasonable assumption. It comes from the Latin carnis, flesh, and levare, to remove. Lent, when flesh may not be eaten, immediately follows Carnival. On Shrove Tuesday, people 'shrive' (confess) their sins and might eat pancakes to use up the last of the eggs and butter before the fast of Lent ... which is why the French called it Mardis Gras (Fat Tuesday) ...

Categories: folklore, christianity, religion, calendar-customs

http://www.henrylawson.info/ 

'Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push'.

Read more on each item at today's date, or find birthdays
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book_of_days.html