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Pip Wilson

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However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike, assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly. It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race. Are they cultivated? - so is society polished and enlightened. Are they ignorant? – so is it gross and insipid. Are they wise? - so is the human condition prosperous. Are they foolish? – so is it unstable and unpromising. Are they free? – so is the human character elevated. Are they enslaved? – so is the whole race degraded. Oh! that we could learn the advantage of just practice and consistent principles!
Frances Wright, Scottish-born American social activist, born on September 6, 1795

There is but one honest limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the rights of another sentient being. Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others – we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others – unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
Frances Wright

The industrious classes have been called the bone and marrow of the nation; but they are in fact the nation itself. The fruits of their industry are the nation's wealth; their moral integrity and physical health is the nation's strength; their ease and independence is the nation's prosperity; their intellectual intelligence is the nation's hope. Where the producing laborer and useful artisan eat well, sleep well, live comfortably, think correctly, speak fearlessly, and act uprightly, the nation is happy, free and wise. Has such a nation ever been? No. Can such a nation ever be? Answer, men of industry of the United States! If such can be, it is here. If such is to be, it must be your work.
Frances Wright

More Frances Wright quotes

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - '62), US philosopher, author, naturalist; Walden, 1854

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. 
Henry David Thoreau

America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what it is taught; hence we must watch what we teach it, and how we live before it.
Jane Addams, Nobel Prize-winning American social worker and peace advocate, born on September 6, 1860

Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited.
Jane Addams

You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning.
Jane Addams

In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life.
Jane Addams

We are for this Australia, for the nationality which is creeping to the verge of being ...
William Lane, Anglo-Australian labor leader and utopian socialist, born on September 6, 1861; The Boomerang, 1887

Words cannot express our contempt and hatred for those whites who are fighting against their own kith an kin in this racial struggle. They deserve no consideration. The Chinese must go and their friends, those white traitors had better be flung out with them.
William Lane; The Boomerang, March 17, 1888

Class governance is a usurpation, a tyranny which has its roots in the ages when military castes, ground the peaceful tillers of the soil into slavery. Our parliamentary system, of which the very opponents of one-man-one-vote profess to be so proud, is only a degenerated survival of the assembly at which in primitive times our Teutonic forefathers gathered, free and equal, to make for themselves laws for their common governance.
William Lane; Brisbane Worker, June 13, 1891   Source

"You know what being a Socialist means, Ned?" asked Geisner, looking into the young man's eyes.
"I've got a notion," said Ned, looking strait back. "There are socialists and Socialists, just as there is socialism and Socialism. The ones that babble of what they do no feel, because it's becoming the thing to babble, the others have a religion and that religion is Socialism."
"How does one know a religion? – When one is ready to sacrifice everything for it. When one only desires that the Cause may triumph. When one has no call for self and does not fear anything that man can do, and has a faith which nothing can shake, not even one's own weakness."
William Lane; The Working-man's Paradise, 1892   Source

Colonia Cosme is a commonhold of English speaking whites, who accept among their principles, Life marriages, Teetotalism and the Colour Line. And who believe that communism is not merely expedient but is right.
William Lane; Cosme Monthly, September, 1896   Source

We must be White first, or nothing else can matter.
William Lane; The Worker

... when I say God, I mean neither the idol built of wood or stone by the crude hands of savages nor the idol built of words and phrases by the equal heathenism of higher races. I mean by God the sense of oneness, the livingness, the completeness, of that inconceivable power which working through matter called us and all the wondrous universe we see into being. That power I know and feel is supreme beyond all conceiving. Nothing is beyond its control.
William Lane; Cosme Publication, September, 1898   Source

He is a madman, a knave seized with the madness of ambition, overpowered with a sense of the divinity of himself and his mission, and for that he will barter truth, justice and the whole world plus the handful of bigots he terms the faithful. I believe everybody can perceive how shamefully he betrays his friends, cheerfully leaving them to bear a burden of reproach which he at least should share.
Larry Petrie (1859 - 1901), American anarchist and New Australia colonist, on William Lane; letter to WG Spence, c. 1899

Whips of dogma, stacks of selfishness, yards of words, and absolutely no liberty. Therefore as my ideas and the ways of Cosme did not harmonize I got.
Larry Petrie on New Australia, 1898   Source

We first heard of Lane's plan for a New Australia in 1892. He had just published a Socialist novel which he called The Working Man's Paradise and became so wrapped up with the idea that he decided to start one of his own. When it came to swaying people to his ideas, Lane was a regular Savonarola.
  After intensive reading, he decided that the only way Utopia could succeed was by setting it up well away from the contamination of the capitalistic world. Australia was not big enough. So his attention turned to South America. He used the AWU and WG Spence to promote the idea through its various branches. In Sydney the unofficial headquarters of the venture were in McNamara's Bookstore [221 Castlereagh St – PW]. Most of the followers were recruited personally by Lane in Brisbane.
  That was how the New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association came to be formed. The basis of it was to be communal ownership, that is pure Communism. The means of production, distribution and exchange were to be owned by the community. All were to be equal. There was to be no capitalism. Lane was going to show the world that Socialism could be achieved before the 19th Century closed.
  Those joining up were required to pay a deposit of at least £10, and another £50 before they sailed. More wealthy converts put in bigger sums. There were varying accounts that Lane put in £100, and up to £1000. Lane elected himself Chairman.
  Although believing in Socialism, Lane was also very colour conscious. He was against black labor, and had helped to inspire the White Australia policy, which had its origin in the sugarcane fields of North Queensland, where Kanaka labor was introduced. He had to find a white man's country for his settlement. He decided on South America.
  Some of my friends tried to persuade me to join up. But there were two obstacles. In the first place I didn't have the necessary £10. In the second place, I saw no reason why I should leave Australia for some foreign country.
  [William Morris] Hughes, [William] Holman and leading members of the Labor Party turned down suggestions that they should abandon politics and test out their theories in a new land. They were just getting on their political feet, and were quite satisfied to keep their Socialism for Hyde Park, the Domain and Leigh House.
  Many young people were attracted to the band of Utopians. Mary Gilmore, the poetess, was an ardent follower, Holman's brother, Charlie, also joined up.
  When they had collected sufficient money, Lane sent three experienced bushmen across to South America to negotiate for a grant of land. He insisted that it must be well away from any settlement. The Argentine Government refused to have anything to do with the idea. It had enough problems of its own without encouraging any new-fangled Socialist ideas. If it wanted revolutions, it could manufacture its own without any aid from across the world. So the delegation next turned its attention to Paraguay, which was more broadminded. They were offered 500,000 acres of fertile country free of cost and without taxes. But it was a thousand miles up the River La Plate.
  Lane next purchased a barque of some 600 tons, which had been built at Nambucca and singularly enough it was christened the Royal Tar, a rather strange title for the first ship of the Communist Navy.
Jack Lang (1876 - 1975; Premier of New South Wales 1925 - '27, and again from 1930 - '32, and brother-in-law of Henry Lawson), on Australia's experiment in communism under William Lane

LANE, with his ideals destroyed, his hopes blasted, and all his airy castles tumbled to the ground, is worth a whole shipload of the dogs who licked from his plate in his prosperous days, but who yelp at his heels now that he is discredited ... He gave up an assured literary success, and certain worldly reward, for his ideal. He has failed, because the day for crusaders has gone by, the age of chivalry is dead, and enterprises of that kind now attract only the cranks, the permanently dissatisfied, and the mentally unbalanced. A latter day DON QUIXOTE, LANE never allowed for the windmills (nor the windbags) and even his Sancho Panzas were humbugs always prepared to steal his kingdom and his brains. Future generations will regard Lane as an heroic figure in an unheroic age, and history will forgive him for what he failed to do, and remember that he tried.
JD Fitzgerald; letter to The Bulletin, September 29, 1894

On the assumption that life among wild oranges and yerba mate scrub has capabilities which it does not offer in Australia, one of the most feather-headed expeditions ever conceived since Ponce de Leon set out to find the Fountain of Eternal Youth, or Sir Galahad pursued the Holy Grail, is about to set forth.
The Bulletin, commenting on the William Lane-led New Australia expedition which left Sydney on July 17, 1893

Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia ... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.
Rutherford B Hayes (1822 - 1893), US president; Charles Richard Williams, ed., Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States, vol. III, p. 443, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 5 vols. (1922 - 1926), Diary (September, 1877)

I shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you more of the South Seas after very few months than any other writer has done – except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese.
Robert Louis Stevenson ('howling cheese'??); letter to Charles Baxter, September 6, 1888, Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vol. 2, Ch. X   Source

September 6 is the 249^th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (250^th in leap years), with 116 days remaining.
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Abbots Bromley Horn (Antler Dance; Ceremony of the Deermen), Abbots Bromley, UK

Wakes Monday, the first Monday after September 4

Originally this was danced during the Yuletide on Twelfth Day (January 6) at Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire, England. Now the Abbots Bromley Horn is danced on the first Monday after September 4, the date having been moved in the 18^th Century. Six male dancers hold white and brown-painted (formerly red and white) genuine reindeer antlers on wooden poles.

The antlers were obtained from reindeer that were castrated, or domesticated during the eleventh century. As reindeer are believed to have become extinct in the British Isles by then, and we know of no domesticated herds, the antlers were possibly of Scandinavian origin. In 1976, a small splinter was radiocarbon dated to around 1065. (At Star Carr in Yorkshire, Mesolithic antler 'frontlets', apparently meant to be worn, have been dated to 7600 BCE.) Since 1981, the Abbots Bromley horns have been legally the property of Abbots Bromley Parish Council and for 364 days of the year, they are on display in St Nicholas Church.

The dance starts at 7 am with a service of Holy Communion in St Nicholas Church. The dance begins on the village green, then passes out of the village to Blithfield Hall, currently owned by Lady Bagot.

The dancers hold the antlers to their heads as they dance. They go round neighbouring farms before the event (a distance of about 16 kilometres, or ten miles), which is possibly left over from a more ancient fertility dance. At the end of the day, the antlers are returned to the church. The Horn Dancers comprise six 'Deer-men', a Fool, Hobby Horse, Bowman (Robin Hood) and Maid Marion, performing their dance to a traditional tune provided by a melodion player.

The sight of a bowman following men wearing antlers is reminiscent of scenes in the celebrated cave paintings of Lascaux, France, which date to Paleolithic times 20,000 years ago, which depict men wearing antler head-dresses being stalked by archers (pictured at left). The Kalahari Bushmen's ritual mimicry of hunters stalking antelopes also comes to mind, as does the Apache horn dance.

The dancers return to the village in the early afternoon, and make their way around the pubs and houses. Finally, at about 8 pm, the horns are returned to the church, and the day is completed with the church service of Compline.

Reminiscent of other antler rituals

More

Feast day of St Bega (Bee; Bees), virgin

Some saints aren't easy to nail down. The folklorist William Hone (The Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, William Tegg and Co., London, 1878) gives this as her feast day, but Attwater (Attwater, Donald, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints, Penguin, Middlesex, UK, 1965) gives it as October 31: "The origin of the name of a village and headland on the coast of Cumberland, Saint Bees, is a matter of uncertainty. It seems more likely that they are named after Bega, legendarily said to have been a refugee from Ireland, veiled a nun by St Aidan, than after either of the two seventh-century Northumbrian nuns, Bega and Heiu, mentioned by Bede." There is another Bega, feast day October 31, who confuses the issue, but they might well be one and the same (although it's possible that one Bega is Irish, the other Anglo-Saxon).

St Bega is said to have been a member of the Irish royalty in the 7^th Century, whose family arranged for her to marry the Prince of Norway. However, Bega wasn't fond of Vikings, or at least this one, and preferred to be a nun, so she fled the planned marriage. Legend has it that on the eve of her wedding, as her father and her groom were celebrating in the hall, she escaped with the help of a bracelet, and she was carried across the sea to the coast of Cumberland by riding on a clod of earth.

At Cumberland she lived as an anchoress, or hermit, being fed by the wild birds and, if left in peace, would have continued in this fashion. After being attacked by marauders, King Saint Oswald of Northumbria advised her to enter a convent. She therefore received the veil from St Aidan and established a monastery at Saint Bees (Copeland near Carlisle).

The land, on a 3-mile stretch around the headland, was granted to her by Lord Egremont in an unusual way. The lord told her that she could have as much land as was covered by snow. The next day it snowed, and she was granted the land. The best bit about this tale is that it was in midsummer.

At the 12^th-Century Priory Church of St Mary and St Bega in Cumbria, there are a number of old relics, including a 12^th-Century stoup and piscina. The picture shows the pre-Conquest carved 'Beowulf Stone', on a lintel between the Church and the Vicarage, featuring St Michael killing a dragon.

In her hermitage at the village of St Bees, the monks kept what was said to be her miraculous bracelet, which had the Old English name beag – this so closely resembled her own name that it might have given rise to her cultus.

Two famous alumni of St Bees School in Cumbria are HMS Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian and comedian Rowan Atkinson.

St Bees Man: he would not rot

In 1981, archaeologists discovered beneath an aisle on the south side of the chancel of St Bees Priory, one of the best preserved medieval human bodies ever found, and his shroud is on display.

He is known as 'St Bees Man' and he lay for hundreds of years without rotting, wrapped in thick shrouds over which a wax and honey preparation had been poured, then wrapped with a sheet of lead, packed with clay and placed in a wooden coffin. He was a man aged about 40, and buried sometime between 1290 and 1500. He had died a violent death, but whether it was in battle or perhaps in a tournament of some sort is not known.

Don Brothwell writes in The Bog Man and the Archaeology of People:

"Dr. Eddie Tapp, who undertook the autopsy, was careful to note how the body looked when first unwrapped. The skin had a fresh pink appearance, which quickly faded. The eyes were in good condition, and the mucosa of the mouth looked fresh at first. Internal tissues were similarly well preserved, indeed the blood vessels even appeared to contain 'fresh' blood. A haemorrhage into the right plural (chest) cavity from a lung injury still appeared as dark red fluid (although the microscopic cellular structure had changed). Heart and intestines were intact, and when the liver was cut open, its surface was bright pink, although this faded quickly to brown. Such a degree of preservation had clearly depended on rapid embalming and the body's enclosure within lead, clay packing and wooden coffin. There was also evidence of adipocere development, whereby fatty acids are deposited post mortem within the tissues, leading to their dehydration and acidification with a consequent deterrence of microbial activity which would otherwise cause putrefaction."

Perhaps just as strangely, human hair had been laid over his chest – female human hair.

Dr John Todd suggests that St Bees Man was not so well embalmed so that he might partake of some afterlife, like an Egyptian aristocrat, but so that his corpse might have been transported without rotting. He quotes the medieval poem Chanson de Roland, at the point where Charlemagne brings Roland, Turpin and Oliver to their rest.

The barons' bodies they then take up and wind
Straitly in shrouds made of the roebuck's hide
Having first washed them with spices and with wine.
The king calls Tibbald and Gebuin to his side,
Othon the Marquis and Count Milan likewise.
On three wains place them, and you must be their guides.
O'er each they throw a rich pall Galazine.

The monks of St Bees

Finally, William Wordsworth wrote a poem about the monks of St Bees:

Who with the ploughshare clove the barren moors,
And to green meadows changed the swampy shores?
Thinned the rank woods; and for the cheerful grange
Made room where wolf and boar were used to range?
Who taught, and showed by deeds, that gentler chains
Should bind the vassal to his lord's domains?
The thoughtful monks intent their God to please,
For Christ's dear sake, by human sympathies
Poured from the bosom of thy church, St Bees!

Wordsworth Country: St Bees    More on St Bees Man   More    More

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Virgin of the Remedies (Fiesta of Nuestra Senora de los Remedios), Mexico Our Lady of Health, or La Purisima Long before the Puritans settled in the New World and brought with them the form of Protestantism that still profoundly influences American culture, the Roman Catholic Church believed that the Americas were meant to be, and would become, Catholic. Most Rev. Richard J Cushing, DD, LL D, Archbishop of Boston, writes of the patronage of the Virgin Mary over America: "The first official proclamation of it was made in 1643 by the King of Spain … but her patronage was implicit in the bull of Alexander VI in which, in 1493, he ordered the Spanish Crown in virtue of holy obedience to send to the newly discovered lands learned, God-fearing, experienced and skilled missionaries to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith and imbue them with good morals. The Holy See endorsed Spain's claim to the whole western hemisphere with the exception of Brazil under these conditions …"   Source Conquistadors such as Hernán Fernando Cortés and the Catholic missionaries who followed, appear to have innately believed that the indigenous people of America were to be subdued, converted and plundered. Archbishop Cushing describes the indigenous people of the region of Michoacan  west of what we now call Mexico City, thus: "The Indians of Michoacan, the Tarascans, were nomadic and impatient of all restraint." After the small but devastating army of Cortés had seized and killed the local nobles of Cholula, Mexico, set fire to the city, and killed an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 of the inhabitants, and before destroying almost the entire city of Tenochtitlan and killing some 120,000 to 240,000 Aztecs there, they experienced 'the sad night'. Cortés and his men pillaged the great 40-acre Aztec temple to the great feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, and placed a doll-sized wooden statuette of the Virgin Mary on the altar. Naturally enraged, on the night of July 20, 1520, the Aztecs drove Cortés and his men from the town, and this night was henceforth called by the conquistadores 'la noche triste', the sad night. The conquistadores attributed their good fortune in escaping to this little Virgen de los remedios. Madonna and the cactus The statuette (which some reported seeing actually taking up arms against the conquered race), disappeared for twenty years, until, Anneli Rufus tells us in The World Holiday Book, the Virgin Mary herself appeared to an old Indian and told him where the Madonna image could be found. Another source tells us that it was found by an Otom' Indian chief called Juan Ce Cuautli (One Eagle) under a maguey (cactus) plant: "The story goes that when Juan Ce Cuautli was going to the town of Tacuba he saw a lady who came towards him and recognized her as the one who fought along the Spanish on the Sad Night. She asked him insistently to look for her the following day in the same place, but he did not pay attention and just told the Franciscan Friars about his encounter. But soon after that, he fell from a pillar and was near dead and again he saw the lady coming towards him and gave him a belt of St Augustin, and then he decided to pay attention to his protectress and went to the place she asked. Under the maguey plant he found the lost image, in which he at the moment recognized the lady of the apparitions. Immediately he covered her with his cloak 'so that they wouldn't see her or envy him' and took her to his altar in his house. Nevertheless the lady went back again and again under the maguey in spite of Juan's offerings, prayers and supplications. He came to the extreme of locking her up in a box with a key and putting her under his bed. But everything was useless, and the image went back to her refuge in the wilderness. Our chief finished giving up and one day when he was very ill, he went to Tepeyac to beg to the Guadalupe and asked her for health. She started laughing and said 'Why do you come to my house when, having me, in yours you threw me out of it?'" Alberro 1997 'Remedios y Guadalupe. De la unión a la discordia', in Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial americano, INAH Condumex, UIA, México, pp 315-330 [There does appear to be overlapping of the Guadalupe and Remedios legends. – PW] He did find the Virgen, and a sanctuary was built on the spot. Loved by the Spaniard invaders, she was named la Conquistadora. Her shrine is in the diocese of Michoacan, to the west of Mexico City and was erected by the first bishop, the famous Vasco de Quiroga, described by Archbishop Cushing as "one of the geniuses of all time in the humane introduction of civilization among primitive peoples". On September 6, thousands make an annual pilgrimage to San Bartolo Naucalpan, enjoying fireworks, dances, food stalls and many elaborate church rituals.   "She is especially venerated at the shrine of Our Lady of Remedies at the church of San Bartolo Naucalpan. Her special feast is from Sept. 1 - Sept. 8 (the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary). Thousands of pilgrims come by plane, car, animal cart and foot to spend the eight days. Indian families jam the city, living outdoors near the church. Everyone makes time to visit the authentic image of Our Lady of Remedies, kept in a glass-covered niche on the high altar. "The presence of so many Indians, the importance of maguey cactus symbolism (which links this Virgin to the Aztec mother goddess), the concheros, and other factors, led Victor Turner to remark that while the Virgin of Guadalupe, the indigenous Mexican Virgin, has become internationalized, the Virgin of Remedies, once the symbol of Spain, has become "more indigenous, more creolized, more indianized."   Source The Catholic Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, has a similar tradition regarding the important role of a Conquistadora/Madonna statuette in the conversion and subjugation of local peoples, and the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe has echoes of both these legends, all of which raise questions on the role of Mary as goddess. Diane Stein (The Goddess Book of Days, Llewellyn Publications, St Paul Minnesota, USA, 1989), who must be taken with a grain of salt, says she is a cognate of Yemaya, Isis, Kwan Yin, Chalchiuhtlique: "A day of Tonantzin … The sixth day of the September moon belongs to Artemis, Erzulie and the Mothers." The religious virgins and saints of Mexico Sant Fe, New Mexico, USA, has a similar tradition "The group of close to 800 colonists encamped in a sheltered area outside the city, while [Don Diego] Vargas led his troops into Santa Fe for the peaceful takeover. The tribe of Pueblo Indians, however, began to prevaricate. Supporting tribes joined them to assist them in their resistance. There was no recourse but battle for Don Diego and his vastly outnumbered Spaniards, who were short on both food and water and poorly sheltered in the bitter midwinter cold. The odds favored the Pueblos. "In the civilian campsite outside the city, a makeshift shrine was erected for La Conquistadora, and fervent prayers for victory were made, Before the battle, Don Vargas knelt at the head of his companies of soldiers lined up in front of the improvised shrine and altar while all recited the Act of Contrition in a loud voice. The order for assault was given, the battle began, and the people continued praying the Rosary before the statue of their Queen."   Source   Circensian games, ancient Rome  (Apr 12 - 19; Sep 4 - 19) Inca: Citua, the Feast of the Moon "An Ancient Incan festival held on or around this date that honored  Mama Quilla, the Moon Goddess.  Her worshippers performed a ritual cleansing, then smeared their faces with a paste of ground maize. Parents would eat a special cake consecrated with the blood of their offspring."   Source Picture of Mama Quilla   "Greek: The sixth day of each month is sacred to the Goddess Artemis."   Source Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ægypticus or dies mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.) Goddess month of Mala commences   Monday and Tuesday following the Sunday following St Giles Day (Sep 1), St Giles Fair, Oxford, England "This started as the Feast Day for St Giles in the seventeenth century. Became a toy fair in the late eighteenth century and a general fair for children by the beginning of the nineteenth. By the 1930s it catered for adults as well with stalls selling clothes, baskets, tools etc. It is now a fun fair. There is also a flower festival in St Giles Church."   Source   Feast day of St Eleutherius, abbot This saint once raised a man to life, but himself died in 585, in Rome. Feast day of St Macculindus (Maccallin), Bishop of Luskf Feast day of St Magnus of Füssen (Sankt Mang of Füssen) He fought dragons both in Kempten and at Rosshaupten near Waltenhofen. At Füssen, he evicted a dragon from the land he needed for the monastery. In one version of this legend, he spared the life of a young dragon who helped local farmers by hunting rats, mice and other vermin. In a narrow valley called Rosshaupten, he threw hot pitch down a dragon's mouth, killing him. Saints, dragons and serpents in the Book of days Feast day of St Pambo of Nitria, abbot (Autumnal dandelion, Apargia autumnalis, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.) Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints   Somhlolo Day, Swaziland "… (a) public holiday, celebrating the achievement of independence on September 6, 1968, for the Kingdom of Swaziland in southern Africa. Named for Somhlolo or Subhuza, the nation's nineteenth-century chief." Gregory, Ruth W, Anniversaries and Holidays, American Library Association, Chicago, 1983 Festa Della Rificolona, Florence, Italy (Sep 6 - 7)