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The night has gone: dawn breaks. I'm called upon to sing The Parilia ... was
naturally a popular holiday, especially for the young. Athenaeus
describes how a learned discussion was suddenly interrupted by a great
uproar, in which the shrill music of fifes, the clash of cymbals, and
the rub-a-dub of drums were blent with singing into a confused hubbub
of sound; it was the people rejoicing at the coming of the Parilia … |
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In this (i.e. Pennant's)
account of the Beltane festival the spilling of the caudle (composed
partly of milk) on the ground answers to the offering of milk to Pales,
and the Highland herdsman's prayer to the being who preserved his flocks
and herds corresponds to the prayer which the Italian shepherd addressed
to Pales, as we learn from the following verses of Ovid. Tibullus tells us
that it was his wont to purify his shepherd every year and to sprinkle
Pales with milk, referring no doubt to the libation of milk to the goddess
at the Parilia. Perhaps Ovid's expression, "when the viands have been
cut up", is explained by the Beltane custom,
described by Pennant, of breaking a cake of oatmeal in pieces and throwing
the bits over the shoulder as offerings to the 88 preservers or destroyers
of the flocks and herds. Among the viands so cut up at the Parilia were no
doubt included the millet cakes mentioned by Ovid in a previous line.
These the Italian shepherd, like the Highland herdsman, may have broken
and thrown over his shoulder as an offering to Pales. Certainly the cakes
were an important part of the festival.
Sir
James
George Frazer (1854
- 1941), The
Golden Bough, 1922, pp 411 - 415
I looked for no marriage bond, no
marriage portion ... The name of wife may seem more sacred or more
binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word mistress, or, if
you will permit me, that of concubine or whore.
From a letter by Héloise to
her lover Peter Abelard (who died on April 21, 1142, aged 63)
I shall be thirty-one … My youth
is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it.
Charlotte Brontë, 1847, as her 31st birthday (April 21,
1816) approached
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I
consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a
man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly
and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and
kill him.
Mark Twain, American author, humorist,
anti-imperialist, who died on April 21, 1910
My books are water; those of the
great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.
Mark Twain
Good-bye. If we meet ...
Last words of Mark Twain; spoken to his daughter Clara before the author fell
asleep. He died several hours later.
[Krazy Kat is] an immediate
progenitor of the Beat Generation and its roots could be traced back
to the glee of America, the honesty of America, its wild,
self-believing individuality.
Jack Kerouac
(see below, On This Day in
History, 1918)
... after World War II, when I came
home, Krazy Kat became my hero. I had never seen Krazy Kat up
until then because neither one of the papers in the Twin cities
published it, so I didn't know Krazy Kat. But then it became my
ambition to draw a strip that would have as much life and meaning and
subtlety to it as Krazy Kat had.
Charles
M Schulz, Peanuts
cartoonist, interviewed by Rick Marschall and Gary Groth in Nemo
31, January 1992
Climb the mountains and get their good
tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their
energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir, American conservation writer, born on April 21, 1838;
Our
National Parks , 1901
John Muir; ibid, p. 4
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we
find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
John Muir;
My
First Summer in the Sierra , 1911
When we contemplate the whole globe as one
great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying
through space with all other stars all singing and shining together as
one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
The clearest way into the
Universe is through a forest wilderness.
John Muir; John of the Mountains, 1938, p. 313
I know that our bodies were made to thrive
only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.
There is not a
'fragment' in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is
a full harmonious unit in itself.
John Muir;
A
Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, 1916, p. 164
Of all the upness accessible to
mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
John
Muir
I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons which threatens this whole region.
Mordechai
Vanunu, peace activist released from Israeli prison on April 21, 2004
April 21
is
the 111th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (112th in leap years), with 254
days remaining.
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First
Palilia (or
Parilia) festivals, ancient
Rome
These are festivals celebrated on April
21 honouring Pales, the Roman god (later a goddess) of
shepherds and their flocks, whose name might be related to phallus,
or penis. The festivals were held on the anniversary of the day
on which Romulus, the boy suckled (with his brother
Remus) by a she-wolf,
drew the first furrow at the foot of the hill, thus laying the foundations
of Rome.
Sheepfolds were decorated with green branches on this day.
Fires were kindled and animals driven through the smoke; milk and cakes
were offered to the deity today.
The Roman writer Ovid, in his work on Roman feast days, Fasti, tells us that the
first part of the solemnities involved a public purification by fire and
smoke. Smith
relates:
"The things burnt in order to produce this purifying smoke were the blood of the October-horse, the ashes of the calves sacrificed at the festival of Ceres, and the shells of beans. The people were also sprinkled with water; they washed their hands in spring-water, and drank milk mixed with must (Ovid, Fast. l.c.; compare Propert. iv.1.20). As regards the October-horse (equus October) it must be observed that in early times no bloody sacrifice was allowed to be offered at the Palilia, and the blood of the October-horse, mentioned above, was the blood which had dropped from the tail of the horse sacrificed in the month of October to Mars in the Campus Martius. This blood was preserved by the Vestal virgins in the temple of Vesta for the purpose of being used at the Palilia (Solin. p2, d; Festus, s.v. October equus; Plut. Romul. 12). When towards the evening the shepherds had fed their flocks, laurel-branches were used as brooms for cleaning the stables, and for sprinkling water through them, and lastly the stables were adorned with laurel-boughs. Hereupon the shepherds burnt sulphur, rosemary, fir-wood, and incense, and made the smoke pass through the stables to purify them; the flocks themselves were likewise purified by this smoke. The sacrifices which were offered on this day consisted of cakes, millet, milk, and other kinds of eatables. The shepherds then offered a prayer to Pales. After these solemn rites were over, the cheerful part of the festival began: bonfires were made of heaps of hay and straw, and under the sounds of cymbals and flutes the sheep were again purified by being compelled to run three times through the fire, and the shepherds themselves did the same. The festival was concluded by a feast in the open air, at which the people sat or lay upon benches of turf, and drank plentifully (Tibull. ii.5.87, andc.; compare Propert. iv.4.75).
"In the city of Rome the festival must, at least in later times, have been celebrated in a different manner; its character of a shepherd-festival was forgotten, and it was merely looked upon as the day on which Rome had been built, and was celebrated as such with great rejoicings."
Ovid (Fasti,
iv, 721), tells us much
about how the Parilia was celebrated:
School of the Seasons tells us that at one time the Catholic Church renamed this joyful festival 'Urbs Aeterna' and declared that today was the last possible date for Easter so that this merriment would not disturb the austerity of Lent."Ye people, go fetch materials for fumigation from the Virgins' altar. Vesta will give them; by Vesta's gift ye shall be pure Shepherd, do thou purify the well-fed sheep at fall of twilight; first sprinkle the ground with water. Deck the sheepfold with leaves and branches fastened to it. Adorn the door and cover it with a long festoon. Make blue smoke with pure sulphur, and let the sheep, touched with the smoking sulphur, bleat. Burn … olives and pine and savines, and let the singed laurel crackle in the midst of the hearth. And let a basket of millet accompany cakes of millet; the rural goddess particularly delights in that food. Add viands, and a pail of milk, such as she loves; and when the viands have been cut up, pray to Sylvan Pales, offering warm milk to her. Say, 'O, take thought alike for the cattle and the cattle's masters; ward off from my stalls all harm. O let it flee away! If I have fed my, sheep in holy ground, or sat me down under a hallowed tree … if the nymphs and the half-goat god have been put to flight at sight of me; if my pruning-knife has robbed a holy copse of a shady bough … pardon my fault … forgive it, nymphs, if the trampling of hoofs has made your waters turbid. Do thou, goddess, appease for us the springs and their divinities; appease the deities dispersed through every grove … Drive far away all diseases: may men and beasts be hale, and hale too the sagacious pack of watch-dogs. May I drive home my flocks as numerous as they were at morn … Avert dire hunger. Let grass and leaves abound, and water both to wash and drink. Full udders may I milk; may my cheese bring me in money; may the sieve of wicker-work give passage to the liquid whey … And let the wool grow so soft that it could not fret the skin of girls nor chafe the tenderest hands. May my prayer be granted, and we will year by year make great cakes for Pales, the shepherds' mistress!' With such things is the goddess to be propitiated; these things pronounce four times, facing the east, and wash thy hands in living dew. Then mayest thou get thee a wooden bowl to serve as mixer, and mayest quaff the snow-white milk, and purple must; anon leap with nimble foot arid straining thews across the burning heaps of crackling straw."
Each year there were two Parilia. The Second Palilia was celebrated on July 7 [qv]. Today was also considered the date of birth of Numa Pompilius (d. 674 BCE), who succeeded Romulus as the second King of Rome, and helped create the Roman calendar.
Sacred Cave of Rome's Founders Discovered, Archaeologists Say Photo of grotto
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