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 Stourbridge (or Stirbitch) Fair,
for a fortnight in September, Stourbridge, England
If the
husbandmen who rent the land, do not get their corn off before a
certain day in August, the fair-keepers may trample it under foot
and spoil it to build their booths, or tents, for all the fair is
kept in tents and booths. On the other hand, to balance that
severity, if the fair-keepers have not done their business of the
fair, and removed and cleared the field by another certain day in
September, the ploughmen may come in again, with plough and cart,
and overthrow all, and trample into the dirt; and as for the filth,
dung, straw, etc. necessarily left by the fair- keepers, the
quantity of which is very great, it is the farmers' fees, and
makes them full amends for the trampling, riding, and carting upon,
and hardening the ground.
Daniel Defoe, Tour through Great Britain,
'Stourbridge
Fair', 1724
This
ancient fair started in 1211 with a
grant
from King John formalizing an annual fair held by
the
Leper Chapel of St
Mary
Magdalene at Steresbrigge, between August 24
and September
29. In 1589,
King Henry VIII granted
a
charter
to administer the fair to the magistrates and corporation of
the University
of Cambridge. The university vice chancellor had
the same powers at the fair he had at the university, with the University
controlling the weights and measures. In the
17th
Century it was
the largest fair in England, and at one time Stourbridge was the
largest fair in Europe.
Stourbridge Fair was
described
by Daniel Defoe in
1724 as "not only the greatest in the whole
nation but in the whole world".
In the drapers' section, called the "Duddery," it was
said that over £100,000 worth of woollens had been sold in less
than a week. By the mid-18th Century it had declined.
Its importance dwindled even more thereafter and the fair was
abolished in 1934.
The name came from a Cam tributary, the Stour, at the eastern end of
the common. English Nonconformist
author John Bunyan
(1628 - 1688)
used Stourbridge Fair as the model for Vanity
Fair (pictured) in Pilgrim's
Progress, which in turn prompted William
Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity
Fair.
Fast
of Thoth, ancient
Egypt
In the Alexandrian calendar, a one-day fast for the God
of Wisdom and Magic.
Pennick,
Nigel, The
Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont,
USA, 1992, 108
Greater Eleusinian Mysteries,
ancient Greece
(Sep 10
- 19)
Final day: "The initiates process along the Sacred Way, stopping at a sacred fig
tree and crossing two bridges. At one of the bridges they encounter
Baubo who tries to lighten Demeter's heavy mood by lifting up her
skirts and making the goddess laugh. At the second bridge, they pass
through some sort of challenge, which requires knowing a password.
They enter the Initiation Hall and see the beatific vision." Source
"The
9th and last day of the festival was called Plemo Choai,
earthen vessels."
John Lempriere (c. 1765 - February 1, 1824), Bibliotheca
Classica or Classical Dictionary (1788), Hippocrene Books, 1986
Source A note about the
dating of items in Wilson's Almanac
"The last day of the Great
Mysteries at Eleusis was devoted to plenty in its liquid form.
This was the day … of the Plemochoai, the 'pourings of plenty'.
So called, also, were the two unstable circular vases that were
set up for this ceremony. The writer who is our source on this
point (Athenaios 496 B) cites a line from a tragedy according to
which the Plemachoai were poured into a cleft in the earth, a
chthonion chasma … One vessel was set up in the east, and the
other on the west side, and both were overturned. The liquid
with which they had been filled is not named."
Carl Kerenyi,
Eleusis,
Princeton University Press; Reprint edition (August 12, 1991)
Source
"Numerous
and important were the advantages supposed to redound to the
initiated, from their being admitted to partake of the [Eleusinian]
mysteries, both in this life and that which is to come. First, They
were highly honoured, and even revered, by their contemporaries.
Indeed, they were looked upon as a kind of sacred persons: they
were, in reality, consecrated to Ceres and Proserpine. Secondly,
They were obliged by their oath to practice every virtue, religious,
moral, political, public, and private. Thirdly, They imagined, that
sound advice and happy measures of conduct were suggested to the
initiated by the Eleusinian goddesses … Fourthly, The initiated
were imagined to be the peculiar wards of the Eleusinian goddesses.
These deities were supposed to watch over them, and often to avert
impending danger, and to rescue them when beset with troubles …
Fifthly, The happy influences of the teletae, were supposed
to administer consolation to the Epoptae, in the hour of
dissolution; for says Isocrates, 'Ceres bestowed upon the
Athenians two gifts of the greatest importance; the fruits of
the earth, which were the cause of our no longer leading a
savage course of life; and the teletae, for they who partake of
these entertain more pleasant hopes both at the end of life and
eternity afterwards' …Sixthly, After death, in the Elysian
fields, they were to enjoy superior degrees of felicity …"
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1810 Edition; 'Mysteries'
Commemoration of the birth of the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates
of Kos, Greece
Celebrate life and health; send a thank-you note to someone who has
helped you heal.
Circensian
games, ancient
Rome (Apr 12 - 19; Sep 4 - 19)
Ginger Festival, at Daijin
Shrine, Tokyo, Japan (Sep 11 - 21)
Blessed Rainy Day, Bhutan
Source: The
Phoenix
and Arabeth 1992 Calendar
Autumn Equinox festival at Chichén Itzá,
Yucatán,
Mexico
(Sep 17 - 26)
Feast day of
St Acutius
Feast day of
St Alphonsus de Orozco
Feast day of
St Arnulph
Feast day of
St Constantia
Feast day of
St Desiderius
Feast day of
St Dorymedon
Feast day of
St Elias
Feast day of
St Emily de
Rodat
Feast day of
St Eutychius,
Bishop of Tours
Feast day of
St Felix
Feast day of
St Festus
Feast day of
St Goeric
Feast day of
St Hugh of
Sassoferrato
 Feast day of St Januarius
(San Gennaro) Bishop
of Benevento, and his companions, martyrs
The patron saint of blood banks, Naples and volcanic eruptions,
Januarius (or, Gennaro) was martyred in the Diocletian
persecution. He was the Bishop of Benvenuto. His head and a glass
phial of his blood are
preserved in a cathedral of Naples, where eighteen times a year the
blood is shown publicly, having
miraculously
liquefied. The blood
relic has been known since 1389, more than a millennium after the
saint's death.
No mention of the liquefying blood was made until 1389, when on August
17, the phenomenon was first reported, by an anonymous traveller.
The 18 days on
which the liquefaction takes place annually include his saint's
day (September19), the Saturday
before the first Sunday
in May, and December 16.
Diocletian had him roasted in a furnace, but he
survived; he then set wild beasts on him, but they licked his feet.
Then Januarius's head was severed, and a woman collected two
phials of his blood. Later, the ghost of Januarius directed a
Neapolitan to find the severed head in a thicket. When the head and
body were reunited, the woman approached with the solidified blood,
which re-liquefied. On the appointed days, it has done so ever
since. Or, so it is said.
"[Y]esterday's ceremony, which marked the 1,700th anniversary of the martyrdom of San Gennaro, was overshadowed by a claim made by an Italian scientist that the liquefaction was nothing but a fake.
"Margherita Hack, an astrophysicist, said: 'There is nothing mystical about this. You can make the so-called blood in your kitchen at
home.'
"Professor Hack and fellow scientists at the Italian Association for the Study of the Paranormal said that the phial contained
'an iron-based chemical compound dating from medieval times'.
"The dark brown gel was solid until shaken , when it liquefied. Professor Hack said that the compound was hydrated iron oxide, or FeO (OH), which had the characteristics of blood.
"Her report has caused outrage in Naples. Marchese Pierluigi Sanfelice, an aristocrat who is one of the official guardians of the phial and takes part in the liquefaction ceremony, said that the Church had conducted tests on the phial in the 1980s which showed that its contents included haemoglobin, the key pigment in blood corpuscles."
Source
Feast day of
St Lucy, virgin
(Devil's bit
scabious, Scabiosa succisa, is
today's plant,
dedicated to this saint.)
This Lucy's cultus was
suppressed in 1969 due to the untrustworthy nature of her history,
and she is no longer in the Roman Catholic calendar.
Feast day of
St Mary de
Cerevellon
Feast day of
St Nilus
Feast day of
Ss Peleus,
Pa-Termuthes, and companions, martyrs
They were
enslaved in a rock quarry and martyred in the persecution
of Diocletian.
Feast day of
St Proculus
Feast day of
St Sabbatius
Feast day of
St Sequanus, or Seine, abbot
Feast day of
St Sosius
Feast day of
St Susanna
Feast day of
St Theodore
of Tarsus, Archbishop of
Canterbury
Commemorated
in the Church
of England. Theodore (602
- September 19, 690)
was the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury. He was born at Tarsus
in Cilicia
(in present-day Turkey).
Feast
day of St Trophimus
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days
Day
of the Glories of the Army, Chile
Feast
of San
Gennaro, New York, USA (c. Sep 11 - 22) Independence
Day, Saint
Kitts and Nevis (from the United Kingdom, 1983)
Women's Suffrage Day, New Zealand
A
world chronology of women's suffrage
US
chronology Louisa
Lawson, Australian suffragette
Mumia Awareness Week (Sep
19 - 25)
Mumia
Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook, 1954)
is a black American journalist and political activist. He is most famous for
his 1982
conviction and death sentence on charges of murder, and
for the large subsequent campaigns for and against him.
Source of date and info: The Daily Bleed
Mumia
is still the issue (ZNet, August 29, 2005)
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
86 Antoninus Pius (d. 161), Roman Emperor
866
Leo
VI (d. 912),
Byzantine
Emperor
1377
Duke Albert
IV of Austria (d. 1404)
1551 King Henry III of France (d. August
2, 1589)
1737 Charles Carroll of Carrollton (d. 1832),
Declaration of Independence
signatory, US Senator
1759 William
Kirby (d. 1850), English entomologist
1828 Fridolin Anderwert (d. 1880), Swiss Federal
Councillor
1839 George Cadbury,
third son of Quaker
John Cadbury, the founder of Cadbury's
cocoa and chocolate company, now part of the TNC
(transnational corporation) Cadbury-Schweppes.
With his brother Richard he took over the family business
in 1861
and in 1878
they acquired 14 acres of land in open country, four miles south of Birmingham
where they opened a new factory in 1879. Over
the following years more land was acquired and a model village was built for his workers
which became known as Bournville.
1867 Arthur Rackham
(d. September 6, 1939), British book
illustrator – Rip
van Winkle (1905), Peter
Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), and
Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland
"Rackham was born in London in 1867. He began to
draw at a very young age and became a full time artist at the
age of 25 working at the Westminster Budget. His very early
illustrations gave no indication of the fancy that was to come.
It was with the publication of the Zankiwank and the
Bletherwitch in 1896 that the style that made Rackham famous
first began to emerge, but it was the appearance of his Rip Van
Winkle in 1905 that set Rackham upon his course to fame.
Beginning with Rip Van Winkle, Rackham produced a series of
lavishly illustrated books, most of which were published in
signed/limited editions as well as in cloth bound trade
editions."
Source
Arthur Rackham
Society Online gallery
1869 Ben
Turpin, cross-eyed American silent film comedian. As a gag, Turpin had his eyes insured by Lloyd's of London in case they
might come uncrossed.
St Ben Turpin
1894
Rachel Field, American
novelist (All This and Heaven Too
– movie)
"Rachel
Field was born in New York City, grew up in western Mass., and
summered as an adult on Sutton's Island, one of the Cranberry
Isles off of Mount Desert. Although she died in her 40s, after an
operation, she was a prolific writer of children's and adult
books, and she was the first woman to win the Newbery Medal, for Hitty,
Her First Hundred Years (1929)." Source
Newbery
Medal
1901 Joe Pasternak (d. 1991),
Hungarian-born
American film director in
Hollywood
1904 Dr Bergen Evans (d. 1978),
American
lexicographer and educator, question
supervisor for
$64,000 Question
1905 Leon
Jaworski
(d. 1982), Watergate scandal special prosecutor
1908 Mika
Waltari (d. 1979), novelist
1909 Ferry
Porsche (d. 1998), automobile pioneer
1910 Jesse Lasky Jr (d. 1988), screenwriter
1911
Sir William Golding (d. 1993), British
author; winner of the
Nobel prize for Literature, 1983 (Lord of the Flies;
The
Inheritors)
1912 Kurt Sanderling, conductor
1913 Frances
Farmer (d. 1970), actress
1919 |
reetings from Australia.
International
Talk Like A Pirate Day
