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reetings from Australia.
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As lame as St Giles Cripple-gate. Why weep you? Did you think I should live forever? I thought dying had been harder. The pigeons were picked up and piled in heaps, until each [hunter] had as many as he could possibly dispose of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder. |
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When an individual is seen gliding through the woods and close to the observer, it passes like a thought, and on trying to see it again, the eye searches in vain; the bird is gone.
John James Audubon, on the Passenger pigeon
In summer they feasted on wheat and oats and were
easily approached as they rested on the trees along the sides of the field after
a good full meal, displaying beautiful iridescent colors as they moved their
necks backward and forward when we went very near them. Every shotgun was aimed
at them and everybody feasted on pigeon pies, and not a few of the settlers
feasted also on the beauty of the wonderful birds. The breast of the male is a
fine rosy red, the lower part of the neck behind and along the sides changing
from the red of the breast to gold, emerald green and rich crimson. The general
color of the upper parts is grayish blue, the under parts white. The extreme
length of the bird is about seventeen inches; the finely modeled slender tail
about eight inches, and extent of wings twentyfour inches. The females are
scarcely less beautiful.
John Muir on
Passenger pigeons; The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
Source
The pigeon was a biological storm. He was the lightning
that played between two opposing potentials of intolerable intensity: the fat of
the land and the oxygen of the air. Yearly the feathered tempest roared up, down
and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie,
burning them in a traveling blast of life.
Aldo Leopold;
A Sand County Almanac, 'On A Monument to the Pigeon'
Source
I bear the Scales, where hang in equipoise
The night and day; and when unto my lips
I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise
Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships;
The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips;
Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight;
The hedges are all red with haws and hips,
The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night.
HW
Longfellow (1807
- '82);
The Poet's Calendar for
September
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
Sarah Josepha Hale; 'Mary's Little Lamb', from Poems for Our
Children, published on September 1, 1830
Happy we who can bask in this warm
September sun, which illumines all creatures, as well when they
rest as when they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude; whose
life is as blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be, on the
Lord's Mona-day as on his Suna-day.
Henry
David Thoreau (1817
- 1862)
Grey winter hath gone like a wearisome guest,
And, behold, for payment,
September comes in with the wind of the West,
And the Spring in her
raiment!
Henry
Kendall (1841 - 1882),
Australian poet; 'September in Australia'
Though poor and in trouble I wander alone,
With a rebel cockade in my hat;
Though friends may desert me, and kindred disown,
My country will never do that!
You may sing of the Shamrock, the Thistle, and Rose,
Or the three in a bunch if you will;
But I know of a country that gathered all those,
And I love the great land where the Waratah grows,
And the Wattle bough blooms on the hill.
Australia! Australia! so fair to behold
While the blue sky is arching above;
The stranger should never have need to be told,
That the Wattle-bloom means that her heart is of gold,
And the Waratah red blood of love.
Australia! Australia! most beautiful name,
Most kindly and bountiful land;
I would die every death that might save her from shame,
If a black cloud should rise on the strand;
But whatever the quarrel, whoever her foes,
Let them come! Let them come when they will!
Though the struggle be grim, 'tis Australia that knows,
That her children shall fight while the Waratah grows,
And the Wattle blooms out on the hill.
Henry
Lawson (1867 - 1922); 'Waratah and Wattle', 1905. Today is Wattle Day in
Australia.
So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O' those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!
Henry Lawson; 'Freedom on the
Wallaby' (read the context
of this poem: the Shearers' Strike of 1891); first published in William Lane's
Worker on May
16, 1891. Today is Wattle Day in
Australia.
I am one of those fellows who ... always gets to the fire after it is out.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, born on September 1, 1875, American author, creator of Tarzan
I had just left the warmth of a wide circle of friends in Australia to come to this desert island. The contrast was painful.
"It will take you ten years to learn the English," said Will Dyson, the Australian cartoonist, whom we found crouching over a sinking fire in a large dark studio, nursing a great grief at the death of his wife.
Will, despite his sadness, was a great comfort in the cheerless winter of
1919 - 20. From his early Bulletin days I had been his great admirer as one of the master caricaturist-cartoonists. Will Dyson had broken up the pattern with his striking Socialist cartoons in the Herald from about 1910 onward, and had led the field during the First World War with his large war cartoons in which the monumental and the satirical had been powerfully blended.
Sir David Low, New
Zealand cartoonist, on his arrival in London in 1909, when he made
firm friends with Australian cartoonist, Will Dyson, born in
September, 1880 Source
The highest result of education is tolerance.
Helen Keller, who graduated from college on September 1, 1904
A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and
promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much
surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.
HG Wells, who on September 1, 1939 published The Shape of Things to Come
I am determined to solve (1) the Danzig question; (2) the question of the
Corridor; and (3) to see to it that a change is made in the
relationship between Germany and Poland that shall ensure a peaceful
co-existence.
Adolph
Hitler, speech before the Reichstag, Berlin, September 1,
1939 Source
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade ...
WH Auden,
Anglo-American poet; 'September
1, 1939'
Say do you remember dancing in September? Never was a cloudy day.
Earth, Wind &
Fire; 'September'
September, I'll remember a love once new has now grown old.
Paul Simon
Fine rain was falling on the gravel and glades,
The last rays of September bejewelled broken blades.
But there's someone that I long for.
Elvis Costello
September
1
is
the 244th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (245th
in leap years), with 121
days remaining.
Calendar
converter Almanacs,
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When 'Source' links
on this page move address or
die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
September birthstones: Chrysolite: signifying antidote to madness; sapphire: likewise.
A maiden born when rustling leaves
Are blowing in the September breeze,
A Sapphire on her brow should bind,
'Twill cure diseases of the mind.
Traditional English rhyme
September
The month of September
\Sep*tem"ber\,
n.
[L.,
fr.
septem
seven,
as
being
the
seventh
month
of
the
Roman
year,
which
began
with
March:
cf.
As
the except from the HyperDictionary shows, the name of the calendar month of September derives from its being the seventh
month (Latin: Septem, seven) after March, where the
Roman calendar's year used to commence. The Roman goddess
Pomona,
patroness of fruit and
orchards, is the ruling deity of the month.
The Dutch called it Herstmaand (autumn-month), and the Saxons, Gerst-monath (barley-month), or Hærfest-monath (harvest month). After the introduction of Christianity, the Saxons called it Halig-monath, or holy-month, because of the preponderance of feast days in at this stage of the year (the nativity of the Virgin Mary being on September 8, the Exaltation of the Cross on the 14th, Holy-Rood Day on September 26, and Michaelmas, or St Michael's Day, on September 29). In the French Republican calendar it was called Fructidor (fruit-month, August 18 to September 21) ...
Read on at the September page in the Scriptorium
Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days September poems and lore
Feast day of St Giles (Aegidus;
Aegidius; Egidio)
(Great sedum,
Sedum Telephium, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Saint Giles (Latin Ægidius) was a 7th - 8th-Century Christian hermit saint, initially in retreats near the mouth of the
Rhône and beside the
River Gard in France. Considered an important saint, he is one of the
Roman Catholic Church's
Fourteen Holy
Helpers.
He was said to have been noble-born at Athens (probably an embellishment of his early
hagiographers) and came to France in about
715 (or 683; sources differ), having given his patrimony to charity. Giles lived for two years with Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, and became a hermit, and so continued till he became abbot at
Nîmes in the south of
France.
The legend of Giles and the hind
As we saw yesterday with St Aidan, and have discussed at the page on
horned animals,
the horned god and Christian saints, in the Scriptorium, many saints have a close association with the deer. Giles is no exception, although his deer is of the female variety, a pet
hind, or female red deer. The Giles tradition has the following story:
While hunting, the king (by legend an anachronistic Visigoth but who must have been a Frank given the period; some sources say it was
Childeric III, who died about
751) shot an arrow into a thorn bush, hoping to hit a deer, but instead wounded the hermit in the knee. Giles remained crippled for life, refusing to be healed so that he could better mortify his flesh.
As he was wounded while protecting his pet hind, it is his symbol in art, together with an arrow in Giles's
leg, crippling him (some sources say his hand, which doesn't really suit
Giles's patronage of the lame). The animal went daily to the hermit's cave to give him milk, and protected him by causing thick bushes to grow up around the convalescing eremite. (Some versions of the tale say that even before Giles was injured, the hind provided milk for his nourishment.)
The King of France sent doctors to care for saint's wound, and though Giles begged to be left alone, the king came often to see him.
He was so grateful and admired Giles so much that he ordered to be built the
monastery of
Saint Gilles-du-Gard for the saint's followers, and Giles became its first
abbot, establishing his own discipline there. A small
town of the
same name grew up around the monastery.
There are more intriguing stories about this saint. Once, he raised the son of a prince to life, and made a lame man walk. On another occasion, he cast two doors of cypress into the Tiber River, Rome, and
"recommended them to heavenly guidance", as the 19th-century folklorist William Hone put it (Hone, William,
The Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the
Year, William Tegg and Co., London, 1878). On Giles's return to France he found those doors at the gates of his monastery, and used them as the portals to his
church ...
Read on at the Saint Giles page in the Scriptorium
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
The flower loved by Australians (except allergy
sufferers) was so named because the early British and Irish settlers used
wooden slats and sticks of these Acacia trees to make their
wattle-and-daub huts*, being made of clay spread over light timbers
in the style of the old country, or 'Home' as it was known for many
years in the colony. 
