Author Archives: Graham Seal

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A THYLACINE?

May 28, 2018 By in THYLACINE FILES Tags: , , , 1 Comment

 

Almost certainly not. Unless it was one of the 756 listed specimens bottled up in museums and other institutions around the world.[1]But soon, you might just be able to see one again.
Extinct on the mainland of Australia and Papua New Guinea, the Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger, was hunted to oblivion in its one remaining haven. The last of these enigmatic animals died of neglect in Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo in 1936. Someone forgot to put the creature back into its cage and it perished of exposure. 
But the Tiger still haunts us. Ever since then, people have reported seeing ghostly survivors in the wild and there is a long history of Thylacine hunting in Tasmania and beyond. Substantial rewards have been offered for verified sightings or other evidence of the beast’s existence. As with other modern ‘ABC’ (Alien Big Cat) legends, these tales quickly vanish into the air. But the belief remains strong with many and the quest continues.[2]
The Thylacine was certainly a striking animal. Appearing like a brown wolf with black-brown stripes across its back and down its long tail, the ‘Tassie tiger’, as locals say, was more of a kangaroo than a dog or wolf. It was a carnivorous marsupial, its young suckled and protected in a pouch, kangaroo-style. This perceived oddity was reflected in the scientific name given to it, Thylacinus cynocephalus, meaning a pouched dog with a wolf-like head.
Full grown, the animal stood around 60 centimetres high, grew up to 180cm long and weighed around 30 kilograms. Thylacines barked or yelped infrequently and were anything but tiger-like in demeanour, preferring to hide rather than fight. They sometimes died of fright as soon as they were caught.[3]
Aboriginal traditions on the mainland and in Tasmania provide evidence in rock art and lore of the tiger’s once wide distribution around the country. But the advance of European settlement, the possible effects of natural selection and disease, as well as the exaggerated fear of attacks on livestock, eventually eradicated the animal.The  loss of these creatures was foretold as early as the 1850s when the famous naturalist John Gould predicted: 
‘When the comparatively small island of Tasmania becomes more densely populated, and its primitive forests are intersected with roads from the eastern to the western coast, the numbers of this singular animal will speedily diminish, extermination will have its full sway, and it will then, like the Wolf in England and Scotland, be recorded as an animal of the past…’[4]
Scientists are now planning to resurrect the species. This possibility exists because so many stuffed, desiccated and otherwise preserved Thylacine specimens with intact DNA are kept in museums around the world. Researchers have recently turned their attention to this ‘archive of bodies’ created from the colonisation of Australia and the European desire for the exotic. 
Ostensibly, this was proper scientific curiosity. But while all the specimen-collecting preserved genetic material that might make resurrection of the Thylacine possible, the museums in which the bodies are stored are still ‘repositories of loss’. They suggest that our ongoing fascination with the Thylacine, reflected in the alleged sightings and the quest for resurrection, are projections of our shared guilt over the extinction of what was a shy and relatively harmless animal. 
Australia holds the unenviable world record for mammal extinctions.[5]National Threatened Species Day is held on the anniversary of the sad and lonely death of the last Tiger each September 7.Tasmanian Tiger skins have become expensive collectors’ items. If scientists do manage to resurrect the creature, at least that will end.
Graham Seal
[1]The International Thylacine Specimen Database at 
http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/mrp/itsd/itsd_1.htm, accessed May 2018.
[2]There is an extensive literature on the long history of posthumous thylacine hunting, see Col Bailey, Lure of the Thylacine: True Stories and Legendary Tales of the Tasmanian Tiger, Echo Publishing, South Melbourne 2016, for some examples of sightings, as well as innumerable online sites, including the Wikipedia entry, which provides a reasonable and referenced overview.
[3]Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania at http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/?base=4765, accessed April 2018.
[4]Quoted in Robert Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, p. 223.
[5]Penny Edmonds and Hannah Stark, ‘On the trail of the London thylacines’, The Conversationat https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-on-the-trail-of-the-london-thylacines-91473, accessed April 2018.

BOILING DOWN THE BODIES AND OTHER TRENCH MYTHS OF THE GREAT WAR

May 2, 2018 By in WAR LORE Tags: , , Leave a comment
Cartoon from a trench newspaper
The defeat of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Mons in August 1914 was a crushing early blow that gave rise to a still controversial legend of divine intervention and assistance known as ‘The Angels of Mons’. This persistent story is well-known, but the war generated an endless array of other enigmatic trench legends, myths and rumours.
BOILING DOWN THE BODIES
According to this grisly tale, the Germans were recovering bodies from the battlefield and boiling them down in specially-constructed factories to make tallow for candles. Despite no evidence ever being presented to support this fantastic rumour, it was widely believed and re-told throughout the war. So poor was the credibility of atrocity stories that Lord Northcliffe the newspaper mogul, offered a prize for any authentic photograph of a German atrocity. The prize was never claimed.
THE PHANTOM MAJOR
There were ongoing rumours of enemy agents in the allied trenches, usually disguised as officers, like the mysterious German spy, usually in a British major’s uniform, who was said to appear in allied trenches just prior to an attack.
As well as the creepy major in the trenches, spies were spotted everywhere, as they would be for the rest of the war. At this early point in the conflict there were reports of suspicious characters all over Britain and throughout the forces in France.
These stories were given some credence by real events in which a number of German espionage operations had been uncovered. But most of the stories, such as the German arrested on his way to the local water supply with a pocketful of deadly poison, were urban legends of the time, the result of fear rather than clandestine enemy activity.
THE COMRADE IN WHITE
In 1915, another mysterious story began to circulate. It was said that wounded British and French soldiers had been assisted in the trenches by a ghostly white figure. Usually the soldier was sheltering from a hail of bullets and shrapnel, through which the white figure seemed to pass without difficulty or injury. The phantasm reached the soldier who then lost consciousness for a moment or two, and subsequently found himself magically removed from danger. He then notices that there is a wound on the apparition’s hand. The figure explains that it is an old wound which has recently reopened.
The French called this apparition or hallucination ‘The Comrade in White’, a term adopted by the British, who also called him the ‘Helper in White’. Many found this legend a much-needed consolation and it would continue to be heard throughout the war.
THE CRUCIFIED CANADIAN
The Times of May 10, 1915 ran the first press report of the story which claimed that a group of Canadians wounded in the fighting near Ypres had come across one of their officers who had been crucified:
‘He had been pinned to a wall by bayonets thrust through his hand and feet, another bayonet had been driven through his throat and, finally, he had been riddled with bullets.’
A similar horrific tale was picked up by the Canadian press and related in a number of versions and stories of crucified Canadians, as well as British and Australian troops, continued throughout the war. There were numerous attempts to verify the stories, but they never were, though the belief that the event, or something like it had occurred, was certainly strong among Canadian troops at the front and also many on the home front.
SNOWY RUSSIAN SOLDIERS
An early legend involved mysterious brigades of Russian soldiers in sealed trains passing through transportation junctions. They were said to be in full battle dress and with snow upon their boots – in summertime. These were usually said to have originated in the Russian city of Archangel and to be travelling to the Western Front to reinforce the British and French.
CATASTROPHIC LOSSES
It was said that the British had suffered catastrophic losses against the Germans, that hospitals were full to overflowing with wounded troops and that there had been an insurrection in Paris.
A large naval battle had been fought off Holland in which the British were also rumoured to have suffered devastating losses, including the death of Admiral Jellicoe. British naval ports were said to be clogged with war ravaged ships.
RENTED TRENCHES
 It was said that the defenders of the forts at Liege were not Belgians but British soldiers in Belgian uniforms. The British were paying the French rent for the trenches they were occupying and Vickers machine gunners fired their water-cooled weapons in order to boil water for tea.
Many other rumours swirled through the home front and battlefront during the war years:
·      One was a tale told in many wars of the ‘Wild Deserters’, a horde of refugees from all armies, who lived underground, emerging onto the battlefields at night to forage and pillage the dead and dying.
·      Most World War 1 soldiers were familiar with the rumours about ‘free shooters’ who were not fussy which side they shot at.
·      There were stories born of envy or wishful thinking, such as those about the enemy having women in their trenches.
·      Other rumours were spawned by fear and suspicion, including the belief that disloyal Belgians had signalled allied positions to German gunners
·      And there were revenge stories, like that about ‘The Admiral’, a crazed inventor who was horribly killed when one of his own devices of death malfunctioned.
Like most myths, these were the product of ignorance, fear and wishful thinking.
KEYWORDS: World War One trench myths, soldiers newspapers

RAGTIME ARMIES: TRENCH SONGS OF THE GREAT WAR

April 24, 2018 By in WAR LORE Tags: , , , , 1 Comment
Singing was a pronounced feature of the Great War, 1914-18. Soldiers sang in camp, on the march, in the trenches and wherever else they felt the need. 1st Lieut. Elmer Hess of the 15th Field Artillery wrote in his diary:
‘The battalion moved again to the front.  The left side of the road was filled with trucks, ammunition, retreating French soldiers, field hospitals-all in great confusion.  We marched until midnight with practically no rest and on into the morning.  We could hear the songs sung by the American artillery marching ahead.’
Many of these songs were made by the soldiers themselves. They were based on their experiences and attitudes to the war and to the authority of officers and were circulated among themselves without commercial involvement or intention. Rifleman Patrick MacGill of the London Irish fought at Loos and left a brief but evocative account of such songs and their singers. He wrote:
‘Their origin is lost; the songs have arisen like old folk tales, spontaneous choruses that voice the moods of a moment and of many moments which are monotonously alike. Most of the verse is of no import; the crowd has no sense of poetic values; it is the singing alone which gives expression to the soldier’s soul.’
One of MacGill’s comrades observed the essential difference between trench songs and those sung elsewhere: ‘”These ‘ere songs are no good in England,” my friend Rifleman Bill Teake remarks. “They ‘ave too much guts in them.”’
Here are some of the most widely sung songs among British, Canadian, Australian and, later, American troops in the trenches …
The Ragtime Infantry
One of the earliest and eventually most widely-heard trench ditties of the war was known variously as Fred Karno’s Army’ or ‘The Ragtime Army’. Sung to the hymn tune ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, its lyrical variations were many, though the core of satirical self-deprecation remained the same. Ragtime was a form of popular music of the period and Fred Karno was a renowned comic, whose crazy stage antics were the perfect metaphor of the madness in which the soldiers found themselves:
We are Fred Karno’s army, the ragtime infantry,
We cannot shoot, we cannot fight, what bloody use are we?
And when we get to Berlin, the Kaiser he will say:
‘Hoch, hoch! Mein Gott, what a bloody useless lot
Are the ragtime infantry’.
The Bells of Hell
A Royal Welch Fusilier wrote home in December 1917 describing the songs he heard in the trenches. He thought they expressed ‘the men’s stoical cynicism, which is always cheerily, and usually blasphemously expressed’. He gave the lyrics of ‘The Bells of Hell’:
The bells of hell ring ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me;
The herald angels sing ting-a-ling-a-ling,
They’ve got the goods for me.
Oh death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling
Oh grave, thy victoree!
The bells of hell ring ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me.
Hush, Here Come a Whizzbang
A whizzbang was any kind of artillery shell, as in the trench parody of a pre-war pop song titled ‘Hush, Here Comes the Dream Man’:
Hush, here comes a whizzbang,
Hush, here comes a whizzbang,
Now, you soldiers get down those stairs,
Down in your dug-outs and say your prayers.
Hush, here comes a whizzbang,
And it’s making straight for you,
You’ll see all the wonders of no-man’s land
If a whizzbang – crump! – hits you.
Keep Your Head Down, Allemand
One of the popular trench ditties of the war, referring to the enemy as Alleymand (Allemand) from the French for German, described what each side did when the other was erecting barbed wire defences:
Keep your head down, Alleymand,
Keep your head down, Alleymand,
Last night in the pale moonlight
I saw you, I saw you,
You were fixing your barbed wire
So we opened rapid fire
Keep your head down, Alleymand.
I Want to go Home
A widespread trench ditty summed up the effect that machine guns had on morale:
Machine guns they rattle, Jack Johnston’s they roar,
I don’t want to fight with these Fritz anymore,
Take me over the sea where the Germans they can’t get at me,
O my, I don’t want to die
I just want to go home.
My Little Wet Home in the Trench
A soldier parody of the pre-war hit song ‘My Little Grey Home in the West’, this ditty was known not only to Canadian, but also Australian troops and would probably have been sung by British soldiers as well. ‘Jack Johnson’s’ were large, loud shells that left dark smoke in their wake, named after the African American boxer of the period.
I’ve a little wet home in the trench,
Where the rainstorms continually drench,
There’s a dead cow close by,
With her hoofs towards the sky
And she gives off a beautiful stench.
Underneath in the place of a floor,
There’s a mass of wet mud and some straw,
And the ‘Jack Johnsons’ tear
Thro’ the rain sodden air,
O’er my little wet home in the trench.
There are snipers who keep on the go,
So you must keep your napper down low,
And their star shells at night
Make a deuce of a light,
Which causes the language to flow.
Then bully and biscuits we chew,
For its [sic] days since we tasted a stew,
But with shells dropping there,
There’s no place to compare
With my little wet home in the trench.
The Purple Platoon
Some ditties were even more directly critical of the war and those running it, as in the Australian version of some short but pointed couplets:
Our officer’s out on his favourite stunt,
Taking us out for a souvenir hunt,
Taking us out in front of the wire,
Getting us killed by our own rifle fire.
We used to be fifty-odd non-coms and men,
We used to be fifty but now we ae ten,
And if this cross-eyed war doesn’t end ruddy soon,
There’ll be no Aussies left in our purple platoon
The Wrong Way to Tickle Marie
There were few subjects that the Tommies, Poilu’s, Diggers and, later, the Doughboys, did not subject to musical mistreatment. Usually their ditties were to the tune of popular songs of the war or immediate pre-war period, such as ‘Tipperary’ and were often sexually suggestive:
That’s the wrong way to tickle Marie,
That’s the wrong way to kiss!
Don’t you know that over here, lad,
They like it best like this!
Hooray pour le Francais!
Farewell, Angleterre!
We didn’t know the way to tickle Marie,
But we learned how, over there!
Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire
Comments on the perceived inequities between officers behind the liens and the fighting men at the front were not uncommon in trench songs. In one or another of many versions, this one was very popular:

If you want to see the infantry, I know where they are,

They’re hanging on the old barbed wire,
I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them,
Hanging on the old barbed wire I’ve seen them,
Hanging on the old barbed wire.
If you want to see the generals, I know where they are,
They’re miles and miles behind the lines,
I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them,
Miles and miles behind the lines I’ve seen them,
Miles and miles behind the lines.
The fresh troops arriving from America in 1917 were full of the same confident enthusiasm that the British troops had initially possessed. An American ditty to the tune of ‘I Wish I Was in Dixie’ expressed a no-nonsense approach to winning the war by finishing off, or ‘canning’, the German leader:
We’re off to can the Kaiser,
Hurray! Hurray!
In Kaiserland we’ll take our stand,
Until we can the Kaiser.
Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go and can the Kaiser.
The following year allied troops did exactly that.
MORE: Graham Seal, The Soldiers’ Press: Trench Journals in the First World War, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
KEYWORDS: World War One; Great War; trench songs; soldier songs

FBI TURN TREASURE HUNTERS

March 25, 2018 By in lost treasures Tags: , , Leave a comment

Who doesn’t love a good treasure yarn? Even the FBI, it seems. Along with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the feds have set up camp at Dents Run, Elk County PA, the rumoured site of some Civil War gold.

The story goes that a wagon load of Union gold bars was lost in the rugged mountains in this part of the country in 1863 and never seen again. Rumours have abounded ever since and many people have tried to locate the trove. As usual, details are contradictory and murky, but wait for it – there is a map! And even ‘a mysterious note found decades ago in a hiding place on the back of a bed post in Caledonia, Pa.’.

They don’t come much better than this one (though the Nazi Gold train is hard to beat). Anyway, the FBI suddenly descended on the site and started digging. They must like the yarn, as well. Perhaps they were hoping to find the gold to pay their wages in the threatened shutdown of US government functions?

No results reported yet, of course, just a lot of speculation and gold hunter excitement. It must be true if the FBI is on the job!

Read all about it here. And a further update in which the FBI reports they found nothing – sure. The legend lives!

KEYWORDS
Civil War gold, treasure, FBI

MASSACRE AT CHILCOT ISLAND

March 4, 2018 By in ALLSORTS Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

 

 

Pacific Island recruiting ship ‘Para’, c 1880 (SLQ)
Thomas Harris, master of the schooner Douglas set sail from Trinity Bay in Queensland for Dunk Island in early January 1877. With ten crew aboard, their ultimate destination was the Coral Sea guano island of Chilcot owned by Beaver & Co, also the owners of the Douglas. The seeds of future trouble were sown the morning after they reached the island:
…  two canoes came off, each having a native on board ; they came on board my ship voluntarily’; I gave them tobacco and other things ; I also gave them to understand that they could come with the ship for eighteen months if they liked ; they said “ budgerrie,” and three days after, just when we were getting underway, four natives came off (the two who had previously visited the ship, and two others); three of them were allowed to come on board ; the other one I refused to take with us on account of his treacherous looks…
Harris and the Douglas were engaged in ‘blackbirding’, the then-legal procurement of black labour, including Aborigines, from Pacific islands to work the sugar cane fields of colonial Queensland.  He provided the details to the magisterial inquiry established to get the facts of the ‘massacre’, as the press termed the murders:
there was a license authority sent on board the ship at Melbourne, authorising me to recruit native black labour on certain islands in the South Pacific, or from the main land, for a period of twelve months, to be engaged in beche-de-mer fishing, or procuring guano. Natives so engaged were not to exceed twenty in number …
What happened when they arrived at Chilcot was recounted by Harris in his evidence:
… at night two of the men (Humphrey Coughlan and Alexander M’Intosh) were left to sleep on the island, two of the blacks remaining with them; the men had no arms save half-axes, which they were cautioned to be careful not to leave in the way of the blacks…
They all turned in for the night. Everyone was tired and with the boat a kilometer or more from land Harris did not consider there was any need to set watch. But:
about midnight, while the mate and I were asleep on the “lockers,” we were awoke by a cry of “Save me, they are murdering me.” I said to the mate, “For God’s sake, get up.” He rushed out and I followed. The mate went by the port side, and when I reached the deck I met one of the hands (James Purcell), all cut and bleeding. I told him to go down into the cabin. He went down but seemed half stupid. I next saw a black following the mate with a raised axe. I sang out to him and he turned round and struck at my head, severely wounding my hand, raised to guard my head. I immediately closed with him to take the foe, but could not succeed. So I made for the cabin where I found Purcell lying in a pool of blood and moaning very much.  The boy was also there. I tried to load a revolver, but could not on account of the wound on my hand.
By now their assailants were trying to smash in the skylight glass using lumps of coal and oars. Harris managed to load his revolver and got off a few shots. The attackers were now in full possession of the dock, ‘cutting and hacking everything with the axes they had.’
about fifteen minutes to 5 o’clock a.m. heard a blackfellow’s voice, and immediately afterwards the steward tumbled down into the cabin, wounded. I gave him a revolver, and told him to fire at the black stationed at the skylight. He fired and I believe hit the black, but did not kill him. He ran up on deck and put another shot into him, which killed him.
Harris heard one of the crew forrard cry out: ‘One of the blacks is overboard’. He looked through a porthole and saw a man swimming:
 I told the steward to fire at him, which he did, but cannot say whether the fugitive was hit. I saw him land on a rock, and sent the boy to the maintop to watch his movements. Next saw a sea take him off the rock. Never saw him again, believe he was drowned.
On looking around saw two blacks dead and ordered the bodies to be thrown overboard. Also saw the body of Patrick Troy, greatly mutilated. On mustering crew, found the others badly wounded, the mate and steward only being unhurt. I sent them away in a boat to the island to see how matters stood there. When they returned, they reported that the two men, Humphrey Coughlan and Alexander M’Intosh, had been murdered in the hut. The mate stated that the bodies wore much cut about the head and that decomposition was fast setting in. But before sending the boat away again, I ordered the body of Patrick Troy to be wrapped up in his blankets and taken on shore to be buried with the others. The murders were no doubt perpetrated with the half-axes. Those now produced are the weapons mentioned.[1]
The exact truth behind these grim events will never be known but it seems clear that the Aboriginal men taken aboard at Dunk Island were either tricked or forced into accompanying the crew. This was the era in which the kidnapping of indigenous people for labour was legal. Most were ‘kanakas’ from the South Pacific islands. Known colloquially as ‘sugar slaves’, it is thought that around 60 000 were forced or cajoled to work mainly in the Queensland sugarcane industry where they were often badly treated and poorly paid. The trade began in the 1860s and lasted until 1904 when those who had been indentured and their descendants were deported in accordance with the Commonwealth of Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act (the ‘White Australia Policy’).  But several thousand islanders remained in Australia, forming the basis of a descendant population now numbering 20 000 or more who live mainly in North Queensland.

[1] The Mercury (Hobart), 24 March 1877, 3

STEALING THE PAST

March 1, 2018 By in ILLICIT ARTEFACTS Tags: , Leave a comment
Recent raids on and ongoing investigations of high profile artefact collectors and dealers have highlighted the extensive global trade in illegal antiquities by the many who profit from the past.
Looting humanity’s heritage has always been big business. Today, it’s even bigger. The global trade is variously estimated to be (depending on whether art is included with artefacts) as between four and six billion dollars a year – and counting. But no-one really knows the extent of the trade and these enormous figures are probably just the tip of the pyramid.
Egyptian mummies and their associated grave goods are what most of us first think of in realtion to stolen artefacts. The romance of ‘Egyptism’ has long appealed to westerners and has been mythologized by generations of books, movies and often dodgy History Channel documentaries about Tutankamun and resurrected mummies bent on wreaking bandaged havoc. But almost every other ancient – and modern – culture is being plundered right now. Even WW2 shipwrecks are the target of treasure hunters with diving gear and very bad attitudes to war graves.
Until relatively recently, most of this activity was of interest only to a few police units, academics and joiurnalists. The general public heard little about it. The business has always been necessarily clandestine at every level. It is based on alrge number of hard-strapped locals plundering tombs and burial sites. Their swags of figurines and jewellery are sold for a pittance to middleman/women traders who flog them to unscrupulous dealers at enormous markups. The dealers then unload the artefacts at yet more enormous profits to disreputable, dumb or wilfully ignorant collectors, galleries and museums, many funded largely by taxpayers.
All this used to be very hush-hush. But then ISIS began blowing up antiquity and funding their terrorism by flooding the market with ‘blood artefacts’. As a result, the trade has suddenly become very visible and a hot number for the media and politicians.
Some very prestigious and otherwise respectable institutions have been blushungly returning artefacts they illegally or otherwise dubiously acquired. In recent years both the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales have diplomatically returned illegal objects to their country of origin. Other ‘repatriations’ have been made by the J Paul Getty Msueum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others.
Some returns have been grudging and protracted. They would not have happened but for the investigations of a few academic entities like the Trafficking Culture consortium and the determined digging of journalists associated with the Chasing Aphrodite book and blog, together with patient excavations by one or two concerned legal authorities.
But what drives individuals and cultural instutions to seek and obtain pieces of the past? And to jettison ethics and legalities in the process? It’s easy to understand the limited alternative opportunities for local tomb raiders and the greed of traders and some dealers. But why are some people prepared to spend millions of theirs, and sometimes ours, on dusty objects with dubious provenances? Many objects are so ‘hot’, they can never be seen outside the anonymous vaults of private collectors. Others are purchased for public display and, sometimes, research in otherwise highly respected museums and galleries.
In the process of passing from dusty old junk to priceless antiquity, illegal artefacts become what Polish historian Krzysztof Pomian, author of  Collectors and Curiosities: Origins of the Museum, calls ‘semiophores’ – objects that lose their practical function and gain other value by virtue of where they are located and the meanings we invest in their display. In short, a sow’s ear is turned into a silk purse. As we gaze upon the purses on gallery walls and in museums we are supposed to somehow connect with the past and the humans who lived and died in it, the underground population we will all be joining in due course. But in reality, artefacts are simply old objects that, for reasons of our own, we invest with the significance we want them to hold.
Validations for acquiring ancent artefacts, illicitly or otherwise, usually include statements about ‘the treasures of antiquity’, ‘the heritage of humanity’, or how ancient art teaches us about our ancestors and so, allegedly, about ourselves. Any or all of these may be valid. But the real motivation is power – the power of acquisition and ownership. The museums of the world’s colonizing powers are still stuffed with plundered artefacts and even the bones of colonized indigenous peoples – even those who may have disappeared centuries before European invaders arrived. Nowadays, people want their stuff back. There have been some high profile and low profile returns but they barely diminish the piles of victor trophies. (And don’t mention the Elgin Marbles).
Does it matter? So a few overly wealthy relic addicts get stiffed. At least the local grave robbers earn a few crumbs to feed their families.
The trouble is that, for whatever reasons, some very knowledgeable and skilled curators feel the need to attain these objects for their institutions. Their needs, and the expectations and obligations from which they stem, motivate a massive global trade that now even involves mafias peddling the past along with prostitutes, drugs and guns.

 

It is not just greed. In the end, history thieves and their clients exist because a lot of us want to see the plunder of the past gracing museums and galleries, for our own good or bad reasons. It’s not just ‘them’, it’s ‘us’ as well.
 
Some more links:
http://illicitculturalproperty.com
https://thearabweekly.com/illicit-antiquities-trade-threatening-cultural-heritage

http://www.dw.com/en/germany-attracts-trade-in-looted-artifacts/a-18019083
http://savingantiquities.org/special-investigative-techniques-contrasting-trafficking-related-offences-cultural-property/

KEYWORDS: Illicit artefacts trade, stolen antiquities

PRIMAL EVIL

February 13, 2018 By in ALLSORTS Tags: , , 1 Comment
 
 
 
 
The ancient fear of what dwells without is invoked in this ballad, together with the dread of home invasion. Horrifyingly, the fear turns into reality as the bog-dwelling Lankin and the treacherous nurse combine to harm those inside the castle.
Beware.
*
Long Lankin, the stonemason, builds Lord Wearie’s castle high and strong. But when Lankin asks the Lord for the payment due, Wearie will not give him money.
‘I have nothing for you’, he says, ‘unless I sell my lands, and that I will never do.’
‘You will rue the day you did not pay my fee’, threatens Lankin darkly as he shuffles off to his home in the moss bog.
The next day, Lord Wearie leaves for London, trusting his lady and newborn son to the safety of his fine stone castle and the care of a nurse and the maid. As he mounts his horse, he tells his Lady: ‘Beware of Long Lankin that lives in the moss.’ He gives instructions to bolt the doors and pin the windows ‘And leave not a hole for a mouse to creep in.’ Then he kisses his fair lady and rides away, content that his house is protected from evil.
But it is not. The mason has built one little window into an out-of-the-way part of the castle, so small that everyone has forgotten it is there. But not Lankin. And not the false nurse, who was secretly in league with the mason. She makes sure the shutters on the window are unbolted. That night, Lankin creeps up close to the dark castle walls. The window is just large enough for him to slither through. Once inside the castle he speaks with the ‘false nurse’.
‘Where’s the Lord of this house?
The nurse tells him that the Lord is away in London.
‘Where’s the Lady of this house?’ he demands.
‘Asleep in her chamber.’
Knowing he now has command of the situation, Lankin hisses: ‘Where’s the little heir of this house?’
‘Asleep in his cradle’, the nurse is quick to tell him. But it is not fear or love that makes her betray her mistress. She has her own reasons for colluding with the creature.
‘Fetch the baby’, Lankin orders the nurse. ‘We’ll prick it with a pin until its cries bring the Lady downstairs’.
The false nurse gives the mason a large pin and Lankin pierces the helpless baby. The false nurse holds a basin ‘for the blood to flow in.’ The Lady hears her child screaming and calls out:
O nurse, how you slumber, O nurse how you snore,
You leave my poor baby to cry and to roar.
The nurse calls back, saying she has tried to comfort the child with an apple, a pear and:
I’ve tried him with milk and I’ve tried him with pap,
Come down, my fair lady, and rock him in your lap.
The Lady replies that she dare not come down in the dead of night without a fire kindled and no candle light. The false nurse calls back, her voice thick with envy of her mistresses’ beauty, wealth and finery:
You have three silver mantles as bright as the sun,
Come downstairs, my lady, all by the light of one.
Reluctantly, the Lady at last comes down the stairs. In the darkness at the bottom of the staircase, Lankin lies in wait. She reaches the bottom stair and suddenly:
There’s blood in the kitchen. There’s blood in the hall,
There’s blood in the parlour where the lady did fall.
Hearing these dreadful deeds from her own sleeping quarters, the Lady’s maid fearfully locks herself in the tower. As the grey light of dawn streaks the morning sky, she sees the Lord returning from London. She cries out the dreadful news of what Lankin and the false nurse have done:
O master, O master, don’t lay the blame on me,
‘Twas the false nurse and Lankin that killed your lady.
And now, although too late for the Lady and the child, justice must be done and order restored. The murderous mason is taken and hanged by the neck while the false nurse is burned to death ‘in a fire close by.’
*
NOTES
Based mainly on a version collected from Sister Emma Clewer, Berks., 1909 by Cecil Sharp.
First print version Bishop Percy, 1775 (from Kent, England).
This ballad is widespread in Britain and America.

Recorded by, among others, Steeleye Span on Commoner’s Crown and by Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick on But Two Came By.

KEYWORDS: Long Lankin, Child ballads, folksong

THE ROBIN HOOD FACTOR

December 30, 2017 By in BANDIT LANDS Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

 

Known to generations of English-speaking peoples, and beyond, as the forest archer in Lincoln green, Robin Hood is the undisputed model of the outlaw hero. His image has undergone many transformations since his first brief mention in medieval manuscripts and has come to embody all the essential elements of the noble robber. Whether we see Robin Hood as a shadowy guerrilla fighter, a cast-out noble or as a wisecracking and nimble-limbed Errol Flynn, he is the righter of wrongs, friend of the poor and foe of the corruptly powerful. In one version or another he has been, and continues to be, celebrated in literature, art, folklore, film and television, board games, placenames and tourist ventures. His progress from a few passing references to international symbol of resistance and justice has been achieved through more than six centuries of defying authority, eluding capture and escaping death. His most important activity is to rob the rich and to redistribute their wealth to the poor.
This record is especially impressive for a man who never was, or at least, who has never been found. Robin Hood’s appropriately elusive existence has been researched by many over the centuries, with nothing more to show than a few theories, suppositions and intriguing references to someone who might have been the real Robin Hood. The truth, of course, is that the ‘real’ Robin Hood is not in history but in our heads, hearts and hopes. He is a myth. Even if someone can prove that he lived and carried out just a few of the things with which he is credited, it would make no difference to the way we understand Robin Hood today. He is so engraved into the well-worn cultural grooves that sustain his image, and those of others in the same mould, that he seems likely to remain with us for a very long time.
Ever since Robehood’ or ‘Robinhood’ is first mentioned in early thirteenth century legal records the outlaw has existed in a shadow world between history and fantasy. The first passing literary mention of a hero by that name is in Langland’s 1377 poem, Piers Ploughman.  Further references appear in various chronicles and Robin Hood gradually emerges as a fully-fledged defier of authority. A 1439 petition to Parliament concerned one Piers Venables of Derbyshire, a fugitive who had gathered a band around him which “beyng of his clothinge, and in manere of insurrection went into the wodes in that county like it hadde be Robyn Hode and his meynee”.  In Southacre, Norfolk, during 1441 labourers and yeomen threatened to kill a Sir John Harsyk. They blocked the road and chanted ‘We are Robynhodesmen. War, war, war’.
By the mid-1550s Robin Hood had become a troublesome enough character to require official suppression. The Scots Parliament of 1555 banned the presence of figures representing the outlaw and his gang in public festivities such as May Day games. Those who persisted were threatened with banishment. This was a disproportionately strong punishment for the brawling, drinking and nuisance-making that purported to be the reason for banning the outlaw from a major form of revelry.
Although the notion of robbing the rich and giving the proceeds to the poor is a later refinement, the portrayal of Robin Hood as the friend of the poor is an early element of his image. In the various versions of the fifteenth century romance, A Geste of Robyn Hode, Robin is a heroic figure and ‘a good outlaw’ who ‘dyde pore men moch god’. By the early seventeenth century Robin Hood has become not just a friend of the poor but also a man who deliberately targets the rich on behalf of the poor.  In a 1622 poem by Thames waterman John Taylor, the poet writes:
…Robin Hood with little John agreed
To rob the rich men, and the poore to feed.
In ‘The True Tale of Robin Hood’ (1632) Robin is a morally upright friend of the poor – ‘all poore men pray for him,/And wish he well might spede.’ He helps distressed travellers on the road, assists widows and orphans, protects women, generally operates against the established power and corruption of the church and robs the rich, particularly those who ‘did the poore oppresse’. He does not harm the humble workers nor harm any man ‘That him invaded not’.  The outlaw is finally betrayed to death by ‘A faithlesse fryer’.
Robin Hood’s status as a commoner, one of ‘us’ is also powerful, despite the seventeenth and eighteenth-century resurrection of the medieval version of the outlaw as a wronged aristocrat. In the ballad ‘Robin Hood and the Potter’, the potter bests the outlaw, after which Robin symbolically exchanges clothes with him and in this trickster disguise goes off to Nottingham for further encounters with the Sheriff and, as it turns out, his wife. This is similar in some ways to the later ‘Robin Hood and the Pedlar’ in which a pedlar defeats Robin in a fight and is symbolically incorporated into the ‘band of merry men’, an incident echoed in the ballad of the eighteenth century English outlaw hero, Dick Turpin.
Robin Hood passed from street literature and ballads into the more respectable form of the novel from 1819 when Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe was first published. Ever since he has been the subject of countless treatments. He has featured in operas and musicals since the mid- nineteenth century, in film and television since 1908 when a silent film was produced and has a strong presence in the video gaming industry and in comic books.
Robin Hood has continued to be connected with political discontent and action. The Poll Tax rioters of 1990 who invaded Nottingham Council Chambers disguised themselves in hoods of Lincoln green and dissident French electricity workers borrowed the mantle in 2004, specifically identifying with the English outlaw. The Robin Hood mantle has been claimed by many anti-capitalist organisations and initiatives since.

The county of Nottinghamshire vigorously promotes the mythology for tourism and there is even an American charity named the Robin Hood Foundation, as well as a hedge fund named for the outlaw. There is no end to the presence of Robin Hood in modern culture.

The combined effect of this weight of history, myth, romance and commercial and media exploitation has produced a global icon. The man who never was is everywhere. He belongs to everyone and his name is known around the world. But the image of the ‘good robber’ is not his alone. Thousands of brigands, bandits and outlaws in many different times and different places have also been celebrated as friends of the poor and definers of the strong. Some recent examples include ‘the Greek Robin Hood’, Vassilis Palaiokostas, currently on the run, ‘the Barefoot Bandit’, Colton Moore and even the chainsaw charmer drug lord, Pablo Escobar. He was killed in 1993 but lives on in his legend as a friend of the poor in his home country of Colombia.

NOTE: For a more detailed look at the enduring mythology of the green archer, see ‘The Robin Hood Principle’.

 

KEYWORDS: Robin Hood, outlaw hero

 

THE VITUPERATIVE TONGUE – Insults Through the Centuries

December 27, 2017 By in slang Tags: , , , , Leave a comment
In the medieval period, it was an offence to take the Lord’s name in vain or to otherwise blaspheme. A first offence could mean a fine, but if you did it again there were a variety of nasty punishments up to and including burning at the stake. Since the nineteenth century swearing has more usually involved references to sexual activity or to bodily functions and usually attracts no more than disapproval unless one is unwise enough to direct your ire against an official of some kind or to insult someone in the hearing of another. Even then, using ‘bad language’ is still a minor infringement of civility.
The history of swearing cursing, invective and associated maledictions is possibly older than the development of widely communicable languages. Before speech communication was developed it is not hard to imagine our ancestors grunting and roaring unintelligible but definite expressions of pain, anger and frustration. The only thing that has changed since the first expletives were uttered or muttered is that they have become organised into a mutually comprehensible system. Not only do we know how to insult, we also know when we are being insulted. While this may not be a giant step in the progress of humankind, it has left the language with a rich and colourful body of profanity. Hurled from tongues and clenched teeth since time immemorial the oath, the curse and the sacrilegious insult smoulder their way through our linguistic history.
The Elizabethans had an outstanding armoury of abuse, some of which Shakespeare made good, or bad, use of in many of his plays. At that time, one might be called a barber-monger, one-trunk-inheriting, a worsted-stocking, a varlet, a caitiff, a churl or a coistril. If those insults were not bad enough, there were plenty more that might be thrown. You might be a lurdane, a recreant, a runagate, a pander or even a cocklorel!
 
As well as straightforward insults, to be expelled in whatever configuration the speaker felt to be appropriate to the situation and the target, the Elizabethans had many standardised curses and oaths. These were fairly carefully graded as to the situations in which they might or might not be spoken. Fie upon thee was at the mild end of the scale and oaths such as by my troth and so God mend me were generally acceptable in mixed company. Further up the ladder of offensiveness came curses such as a pox upon thee, Devil take thee and morraine (disease) sieze thee. Stronger oaths included coads-nigs, By’r Lady (the origin of the modern bloody) and pretty well anything that included ‘God’, as in God’s wounds, God’s precious blood, God’s blessed will, and the like. The humorous sounding codso, possibly a reference to a codpiece and so not unlike being called a ‘jockstrap’, was also at the duel-inviting end of the swearing scale.
 
Thomas Dekker, collector of colloquial speech and author of Canting texts was also a playwright. He put his knowledge of the underworld and everyday language to especially good effect in his play The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599), in which the character who becomes Lord Mayor of London, Simon Eyre, vents this reasonably representative spleen across the stage:
 
Where be these boys, these girls, these drabs, these scoundrels? They wallow in the fat brewis of my bounty, and lick up the crumbs of my table, yet will not rise to see my walks cleansed. Come out you powder-puff queans! What, Nan! What, Madge Mumble-Crust! Come out, you fat midriff swag-belly whores, and sweep me these kennels that the noisesome stench offend not the nose of my neighbours …
 
Good servants were apparently as hard to get in Dekker’s time as in any other.
 
So broad, colourful and various was the range of Elizabethan abuse that there are even available on the internet a number of Elizabethan curse and oath generators. These allow you to combine a number of these terms to automatically generate new and exciting insults. Some even generate such bile on a random basis. Try hurling these some time: you loggerhead base-court dewberry, you wenching fool-born rabbit-sucker, you fobbing hasty-witted hedge-pig or you currish lily-livered gudgeon. A personal favourite is thou puking spur-galled malignancy, and the scope for creative cursing in Elizabethan English is clearly considerable.
The tradition of foul language continued lustily into the industrial revolution, and beyond. In Peter Gaskell’s survey of The Manufacturing Population of England published in 1833, the coarse speech of the workers was directly linked to their brutalising way of life. According to Gaskell, young and old, spoke foul and low:
Coarse and obscene expressions are their household words; indecent allusions are often heard proceeding from the lips of brother to sister, and from sister to brother. The infant lisps words which, by common consent, are banished from general society. Epithets are bandied from mother to child, and from child to mother, and between child and child, containing the grossest terms of indecency. Husband and wife address each other in a form of speech which would be disgraceful to a brothel …
Gaskell thought what he considered from his height of middle-class respectability to be indecent language was due to ‘the promiscuous way in which families herd together’. The impoverished conditions of working class life at this time were the main cause of these conditions, as Gaskell and other reform-minded commentators observed. He calculated there were upwards of twenty thousand Irish living in the cellars of Manchester, tenement houses were dangerously under-sanitised, with ‘fifty, or more even than that number, having only a single convenience common to them all’ and this was, ‘in a very short time completely choked up with excrementious matter.’ The staple diet was potatoes wheat bread, tea and coffee, with milk hardly used. Smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol were endemic and Gaskell also described the horrors of lodging house accommodation as ‘deplorable in the extreme’, and ‘occupied indiscriminately by persons of both sexes, strangers perhaps to each other, except a few of the regular occupants. Young men and young women; men, wives, and their children – all lying in a noisesome atmosphere, swarming with vermin, and often intoxicated …’
Little wonder that they swore and that the almost affectionately inoffensive eighteenth-century term for a silly person – a Nigmenog – had long fallen into obsolescence
A study of cases of sexual slander and defamation in the Ecclesiastical Courts of England during the nineteenth century reveals some rare examples of foul language in sexual insults hurled at that time. In the court records are verbatim transcripts of what was said to whom, including such things as ‘I’ve bulled thy wife’, one man boasted to the cuckolded husband bringing the case. ‘Yes, damnthee, I’ve fucked her scores of times and she’s fetched me to fuck her when thy pillockwouldn’t stand.’ Other accusations included ‘You have been rode by all Cheltenham’ and ‘All the crofters at Dunstead have shag’d thee’. Men came in for their share of insults, being called thieves, rogues, robbers, buggers and rascals. Women, though, seemed to be getting the worst of it. As well as being simply called whores, one was described as burnt arsed, or diseased, while another of alleged easy virtue was said to have been married by parson prick.[1]
The wives of London’s Billingsgate fishmongers were notorious for the ability to hurl sharp-edged invective when provoked, something that was apparently easy to accomplish. Some recorded examples of fishwives’ insults include ‘a health to mine A—s and a fart for those that owe no money’ and ‘You white-livered son of a Fleet Street bum sitter, begot upon a chair at noonday’, which appears to mean that the accused is lazy.
An insult that has a chequered history, as they say, is the once-taboo son-of-a-bitch. This one has its possible origins in medieval French and was given a boost by none other than Shakespeare in King Lear where ‘son and heir of a mongrel bitch’ is hurled. As son-of-a-bitch it was well established by the middle of the eighteenth century, from which time it was widely employed in America, especially in the west. A certain Wells Fargo stagecoach robber known as Black Bart used the term effectively in a ditty he left at the scene of one of his robberies, one verse of which went:

I’ve laboured long and hard for bread,For honor and for riches,But on my corns too long you’ve tred,You long-haired sons of bitches.

The poetic villain signed himself ‘Black Bart, the PO8’.
Son-of-a-bitch was banned from Hollywood films for many years and remained in the limbo of euphemism (S.O.B, son of a gun, so-and-so, etc.) until around the 1980s. By that time even a President could use the term without being censured, as did the folksy Ronald Reagan in describing journalists.
The tradition of insult and invective continues strongly today. Often referred to as slams, slam sayings, put-downs or full-deckisms, these insults are designed to humiliate their targets in much the same way as their predecessors. A few random examples give the general tenor of these slurs:

 

Don’t feel bad, many people have no talent!

She’s like train tracks – she’s been laid across the country.

I hear you were born on April 2 – a day too late!

You wouldn’t be elected dogcatcher in a ward full of cats.

 
 
And if you really want to make a point, try:
I’ve come across decomposed bodies that are less offensive than you.
 
Phew!

[1] Waddams, S., Defamation in Nineteenth Century England: Sexual Scandal in the Ecclesiastical Courts, 1815-1855, University of Toronto Press, 2000.