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Mistletoe is, however, seldom found on a hard-oak, and when it is discovered it is gathered with great ceremony, and particularly on the 6th day of the moon (which for those tribes [Druids] constitutes the beginning of the months and the years) and after every thirty years of a generation, because it is then rising in strength and not one half its full size.
Pliny the Elder (Plinius maior or Gaius Plinius Secundus; 23 CE - 79), Natural History XVI xcv. 250 (see Coligny Calendar)

[It was called] the Hobby-horse dance, for a person that carried the image of a horse between his legs, made of thin boards, and in his hand a bow and arrow, which passing through a hole in the bow, and stopping upon a shoulder it had in it, made a snapping noise as he drew it to and fro, keeping time with the music; with this man danced six others, carrying on their shoulders as many reindeer's heads, three of them painted white and three red, with the arms of the chief families to whom the revenues of the town chiefly belonged, depicted on the palms of them, with which they danced the hays, and other country dances. To this Hobby-horse dance there also belonged a pot, which was kept by turns, by four or five of the chief of the town, whom they called reeves, who provided cakes and ale to put in this pot; all people who had any kindness for the good intent of the institution of the sport; giving a pence for themselves and their families; and so foreigners too, that came to see it; with which money (the charge of the cakes and ale being defrayed) they not only repaired their church but kept their poor too.
Robert Plot, 1686

 Druids cutting mistletoe

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 249th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (250th 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 18th 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.

Lascaux antler manThe 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

The ancient rite is held two weeks before the Vernal Equinox and no doubt has pagan origins despite its Christian associations today. Ostensibly held to commemorate the acquisition by the local people of hunting rights to the nearby Needwood Forest, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is similar to the Yakut dance of Russia and certain dances of Finno-Ugranian tribes, and it might have originally been a Scandinavian/Viking ritual dedicated to Frey, god of fertility and Lord of the Light Elves of Alfheim. In the Celtic world of the Iron Age, the Horned One is most commonly called Cernunnos, the Stag Lord, or the Horned God, and this custom might hark back to the pre-1st century CE times when his cult was widespread.

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 7th 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 12th-Century Priory Church of St Mary and St Bega in Cumbria, there are a number of old relics, including a 12th-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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Mary Nuestra Senora de los Remedios, depicted on the crescent moon ; click for more on Mary as goddessVirgin 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)
Children parade through the streets with paper-mache lanterns (rificolone) tied to sticks. Parties are held in the squares and theatrical productions in the street.

The following song is sung (thank you, Almaniac Sylvia de Vanna):

Ona, Ona, Ona,
O che bella Rificolona,
La mia l'é coi fiocchi,
La tua l'é coi pidocchi!
 
[Ona, ona, ona,
What a beautiful Rificolona,
Mine with bows is tied,
In yours do lice reside!]

Ona, Ona, Ona, 
ma che bella Rificolona!
L'e' piu' bella la mia 
di quella della zia!

[Mine is more beautiful than my aunt's.]

First Monday in September, Labor Day, USA
Labor Day is a United States federal holiday that takes place on the first Monday in September. The holiday began in 1882, originating from a desire by the Central Labor Union to create a day off for the "working man". It is still celebrated mainly as a day of rest and marks the symbolic end of summer for many. See also May Day.

More

Ganesh Chaturthi (Hinduism; date varies annually, approx. Aug 20 to Sep 15)

Weekend following Labor Day, Burning of Zozobra, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Zozobra is a hideous fifty-foot bogeyman created and burned each year as part of the Santa Fe Fiesta. The burning of Zozobra dates from 1924, when William Howard Shuster, Jr came up with the idea of creating the effigy, also called Old Man Gloom.

Video of Zozobra burning, 2005    More

Unification Day, Bulgaria

Defence Day, Pakistan

Independence Day, Swaziland (from the United Kingdom, 1968)

Stillbirth Remembrance Day
Commemorated in 39 US states and three Canadian provinces (as of 2006).

 

 

 

On which day of the week were you born? Find out here

1620 Isabella Leonarda, composer

1757 Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (d. 1834), French aristocrat considered a national hero in both France and the United States for his participation in the American and French revolutions

American Friends of Lafayette

 

1766 John Dalton (d. July 27, 1844), British chemist and physicist

John Dalton (No. 23 in our series on bachelors of quiet and frugal habits)

Born at Eaglesfield, Cumberland, England, John Dalton was the son of a yeoman. At 13 he began to earn his living by teaching; at 27 he was a maths lecturer at the institution that became the University of Manchester. A bachelor of quiet and frugal habits, and a Quaker, he did not read many books.

Physically, it is said he resembled Sir Isaac Newton, and like him, attributed his success to industry rather than genius. His greatest achievement was to propose the Atomic Theory. In A New System of Chemical Philosophy, he proposed standard symbols for the elements, the first to do so. Dalton was the first to construct a universal atomic theory.

Dalton was colour blind. He delivered a paper called Extraordinary Facts Relating to the Vision of Colours, and henceforth colour blindness became known as Daltonism. He left instructions that his eyes be dissected for science after his death. 

The city of Manchester arranged for Dalton's body to lie in state and the scientist had a funeral fit for a king. More than 400,000 people viewed his body and the procession was more than a mile long.

 

1781 Anton Diabelli, music publisher, editor and composer

 

Frances 'Fanny' Wright1795 Frances Wright (Fanny Wright; 'the Great Red Harlot of Infidelity'; d. December 13, 1852), Scottish-born (Dundee), American writer, activist, freethinker, editor, orator, advocate of sexual liberation and free love, and lifelong rebel.

Born to a wealthy Scottish linen manufacturer, Wright grew up in London. She had the opportunity of travel and, already having been to America in 1818, in 1824, with her sister Camilla Wright (1797 - February 8, 1831), she joined her close friend the Marquis de La Fayette (see above, his date of birth is also today) on his celebrated tour of the USA to see the almost 50-year-old nation he had helped liberate. With his help, she gained introductions to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, with whom she discussed the evils of slavery. However, the young women had trouble mixing with La Fayette's family, who kept the Wright sisters at arm's length, so they eventually struck out on their own.

Fanny and Camilla mixed among Manhattan's intelligentsia before journeying through the northern and eastern states. In 1824, while visiting New Harmony in Indiana, the socialist intentional community established by Robert Owen (1771 - 1858) and his son Robert Dale Owen (1801 - '77), Fanny was immediately converted to Owenism and decided to form her own co-operative community.

With George Flower (1788 - 1862), her true soul-mate (and probable lover), Fanny Wright founded the Nashoba Commune in 1825 on the Wolf River (whose Chickasaw name was Nashoba), 15 miles east of Memphis, Tennessee, and spent her entire personal fortune on it, intending to educate slaves to prepare them for freedom and colonization in Haiti. Nashoba was based on the New Harmony community and theories of racial equality, but,

"To overcome decades of being lied to and abused; to convince slaves of the improbable notion that one who held ownership papers on them was planning their liberation, and, with all this, to lead them through a transformation of their culture from that of slaves to that of free and independent educated people – without the two tremendously gifted organizers, the process would founder."   Source

However, Nashoba outlasted Robert Owen's scheme, until Wright became ill with malaria and moved back to Europe to recover. The interim management of Nashoba did not take Wright's benevolent approach to the slaves living in Nashoba. Rumours spread of inter-racial marriage and the Commune fell into financial difficulty, eventually leading to its closure.

With Robert Dale Owen she advocated socialism, the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, free secular education, birth control, and changes in the marriage and divorce laws. She also attacked organized religion, greed, and capitalism and demanded that the government offer free boarding schools.

Always ahead of her time, Wright advocated a new dress code for women, developing styles that were later promoted by feminists such as Amelia Bloomer, Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Fanny Wright was the co-founder of the New Harmony Gazette, which was renamed the Free Enquirer and was the author of Views of Society and Manners in America (1821), A Few Days in Athens (1822), and Course of Popular Lectures (1829), which gave impetus to the birth of the struggle for women's suffrage in America.

Wright returned to Britain where she tried to recruit enlightened Europeans to take part in the building of a new world. She found one taker, another Frances, or 'Fanny' – Mrs Trollope. (Frances Trollope [1780 - 1863], the mother of Anthony Trollope [1815 - '82], wrote a book on the Domestic Manners of the Americans, without the "nauseous flattery" [as James Fenimore Cooper had termed it] of Wright's views of the USA.)

Fanny Trollope described Nashoba, and the Frances Wright of Nashoba, thus:

    "Desolation was the only only feeling – the only word that presented itself; but it was not spoken. I think, however, that Miss Wright was aware of the painful impression the sight of her forest home produced on me, and I doubt not that the conviction reached us both at the same moment, that we had erred in thinking that a few months passed together at this spot could be productive of pleasure to either**. But to do her justice, I believe her mind was so exclusively occupied by the object she had then in view, that all things else were worthless, or indifferent to her. ...

    "It must have been some feeling equally powerful which enabled Miss Wright, accustomed to all the comfort and refinement of Europe, to imagine not only that she herself could exist in this wilderness, but that her European friends could enter there, and not feel dismayed at the savage aspect of the scene. ... Each building consisted of two large rooms furnished in the most simple manner ...

    "** [Frances Trollope's footnote]: The Frances Wright of Nashoba, in dress, looks, and manner, bore no more resemblance to the Miss Wright I had known and admired in London and Paris than did her log cabin to the Tuileries or Buckingham Palace. But, to do her justice, I believe her imagination was so exclusively occupied on the scheme she then had in view that all her other faculties were in a manner suspended, for she appeared perfectly unconscious that her existence was deprived of all that makes life desirable. I never saw, I never heard or read, of any enthusiasm approaching hers, except in some few instances, in ages past, of religious fanaticism. When we arrived at Nashoba, they were without milk, without beverage of any kind except rain water; the river Wolf being too distant to send to constantly. Wheat bread they used but sparingly, and to us the Indian corn bread was uneatable. ... She herself made her meals on a bit of Indian corn bread, and a cup of very indifferent cold water, and while doing so, smiled with the sort of complacency that we may conceive Peter the Hermit felt when eating his acorns in the wilderness.

    "I shared her bedroom; it had no ceiling, ... The rain had access through the wooden roof, and the chimney, which was of logs, slightly plaistered with mud, caught fire, at least a dozen times in a day; but Frances Wright stood in the midst of all this desolation, with the air of a conqueror ..."   Source

She relocated the Free Enquirer to New York, purchasing a former Baptist church which she dubbed a "temple of science". It held a lecture hall with seating for 3,000, as well as museum, bookstore, and headquarters for her activism. Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) described her in this period as:

    "a brilliant woman, of beauty and estate, who was never satisfied unless she was busy doing good – public good, private good. [much of the public criticized her morals but] we all loved her; fell down before her; her very appearance seemed to enthral us. [She was] the noblest Roman of them all ... a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs – to large to be tolerated long by them: a most maligned, lied-about character – one of the best in history though also one of the least understood."
    Eckhardt, Celia Morris, Fanny Wright: Rebel in America, Harvard U. Press, 1984, p189

However, by 1836, for some reason, following a complicated divorce from Guillaume Phiquepal D'Arusmont (or Darusmont), Fanny Wright drifted close to the political mainstream, campaigning on behalf of Martin Van Buren and the Jacksonians' banking policies.

As an activist in the American Popular Health Movement between 1830 and 1840, Wright brought acceptance to women being involved in health and medicine. After the midterm political campaign of 1838, Wright suffered from a variety of health problems. A her request, her headstone in Cincinnati carries the epitaph: "I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life."

A Brief Biography of Frances Wright, With Particular Emphasis on Nashoba

Women's suffrage    A world chronology of women's electoral rights    More    More    And more

1800 Catharine Beecher (d. 1878), educator

1829 Marie Zakrzewska, physician

1839 Louise-Lëonie Rouzade, writer, socialist

1857 Zelia Nuttall, archaeologist, historian

1859 Boris Yakovlovic Bukreev (d. 1962), Russian mathematician

 

Jane Addams1860 Jane Addams (d. 1935), Nobel Prize-winning American social worker and peace advocate.

Addams was the founder of Hull House in Chicago, and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 with Nicholas Murray Butler. Influenced by Toynbee Hall in the East End of London (founded by Samuel Barnett in 1884), settlement houses like Hull House were a type of welfare house for the neighbourhood poor and a center for social reform. She was a member of the American Anti-Imperialist League.

Annually in the USA, a 'Jane Addams Children's Book Award' is made to the author of the children's book that 'best combines literary worth with a strong statement of faith in people' - it is presented by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the Jane Addams Peace Association. Addams's birthday is observed in Hull House and by peace organisations and social agencies.

eText of Twenty Years at Hull House, one of Addams's books, at Project Gutenberg

More   And more

 

William Lane, and members of the New Australia colony, Paraguay1861 William Lane (d. August 26, 1917), pioneer of the Australian Labor movement, and certainly its most famous leader and newspaper editor in the 1890s. He is best remembered today for leading a large proportion of Australian labor activists and many working class people to found a utopian colony in Paraguay. The colony struggled for some years, but eventually failed and Lane became a conservative newspaper editor in New Zealand.

Before Australia, Lane had been a newspaperman in the USA but was born in Bristol, England, and died in Auckland, New Zealand. In 1885, aged 24, after having worked in the US and Canada, he immigrated to Australia and worked in Brisbane as a journalist, eventually becoming editor of The Worker and publishing, among others, Henry Lawson, Australia's national poet, who worked under him from March-September, 1891 in Brisbane on the radical Boomerang newspaper.

In the USA, Lane had worked first as a printer, then as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press (1881). In Brisbane, he worked on the Courier and Evening Observer until, in 1887, he established his own weekly labor paper, the Boomerang, soon becoming a power in Queensland labour politics. He was also a supporter of Emma Miller and the Women's suffrage movement, and a strong proponent of Henry George's Single Tax Movement, very popular in Australia following George's 3-month tour. Lane was also influenced by writings on Lemuria, Shangri-la and Utopia, and the utopian writings of Edward Bellamy and writings and experiments of Etienne Cabet. (In his many endeavours he worked with his wife, Annie Lane [c. 1863 - 1928], and it appears that it was she who wrote many of the articles under the nom de plume of Lucinda Sharpe, for which Lane himself was incorrectly credited for decades.) A smallish man with gold-rimmed spectacles, a club foot and walking stick, he seemed an unprepossessing and unlikely character to become a major labour leader, but that is exactly what happened.

In a series of Boomerang editorials in 1889, Lane wrote of the necessity of an alliance between labour and capital, both of which should have their own associations, or unions. They must organise to cooperate, not compete, and labour should restrain its demands. All have vested interests, so those of others should be respected. Out of unionism would grow "one great industrial Brotherhood, in which employer and employed shall hold hands". During the Shearers' Strike of 1891, he saw the intransigence of the pastoralists and felt he should encourage the militancy of the workers, though he still used the word "barbaric" to qualify the concept of striking. He also would have been aware of the establishment by striking Barcaldine shearers of a commune on the Alice River in Queensland.

He helped to form the Labour Federation and was a fundraiser for the 1889 London Dock Strike (Australians sent 30,000 pounds in a lump sum), though his sentiments were still those of parliamentarianism and he had no stomach for industrial conflict. Also in 1889, he wrote and published his first novel, White or Yellow? A Story of Race War 1908, which was not the last time that his writings were stridently racist, in keeping with much of Australian radicalism of the day and for decades later (it was Labor that co-invented the notorious White Australia Policy).

Lane was also active in the Maritime Strike of 1890. In March, 1890 he sold the Boomerang and founded the Worker, with its rallying motto "Socialism in Our Time". He was a strong supporter and sometime harsh critic of Australian suffragism. Never one to mince words, he described Australia's political order as "that which produces scrofulous kings and lying priests, and greasy millionaires, and powdered prostitutes, and ferret-faced thieves".

Lane's intentional community, New Australia

Following the defeat of the Shearers' Strike, Lane was completely disillusioned with the trustworthiness and class consciousness of the elected Labor parliamentarians of New South Wales. (Rose Summerfield was another person in the same boat, and she did literally end up in the same boat, with Lane's later venture, 'New Australia', though she arrived at the colony after Lane and his supporters had split and founded Cosme.) He was also deeply disappointed by the passing in March, 1892, of the Polynesian Labourers' Bill, which extended the period that the Melanesian labour trade would be lawful. 

In 1892, Lane (as 'John Miller') wrote a novel, The Working-man's Paradise. Mary Gilmore later wrote in one of her letters "the whole book is true and of historical value as Lane transcribed our conversations as well as those of others"; both she and Henry Lawson were characters under other names, he being 'Artie', according to Gilmore, although this is disputed by some. Perhaps even before the novel Lane had it in mind to establish an intentional community (it might be that the novel was written to promote the idea, or at least to sow the seeds). Alf Walker, William Saunders and Charles Leck went to Paraguay and negotiated a land grant with the government – 450,000 acres on the Tebicuari River, about 20 miles from Villarrica (sometimes spelt Villa Rica) in eastern Paraguay, an old Spanish colonial town, the largest in the country's interior, 70 miles north-west of the capital, Asunción.

Following many delays, and obstructions set in train by the conservative Dibbs Government, the 598-ton Royal Tar, purchased for 1,350 pounds and refitted, departed Mort Bay in Sydney on July 16 (some sources say July 17, but historian Gavin Souter said it was on a Sunday afternoon), 1893, bearing 220 men, women and children, the advance party of those who would "write the history of humanity on the rocks of the Andes", arriving at Montevideo on September 13, and he worked hard to establish the New Australia utopian communist settlement (he called it "socialism with a small 's'"). From the time the first idealistic people set sail for New Australia, Lane's writings consistently insisted that there was no other way for socialism to be reached in the lifetime of the Australian worker. Hundreds of workers believed him. Lane was no fringe lunatic, but one of the country's best-known labour leaders. By today's standards it may be likened to one of the best known Australian Labor Party politicians inspiring thousands of workers to pack up and sail for South America – or the Moon.

The Articles of Association guaranteed freedom of "thought, religion, speech and leisure and in all matters whatsoever". Wealth was to be shared "without regard to sex, age, office or physical or mental capacity". Disputes would be settled "in equity by an arbitrator mutually agreed upon between them". Domestic work would be collectivised, with "co-operative laundries, cooperative kitchens, co-operative kindergartens and co-operative sewing rooms". The project may be described as 'exemplarist', a feature of utopian socialism. That is, one of its purposes (and Lane made this quite clear) was, by example, to "show the world that change is possible". He was not deterred by the history of the failure of so many previous utopian socialist dreams in many parts of the world.

His opponents in the labour movement were sure that it would fail, and bring disrepute to socialism. Indeed, it was almost certainly a factor in a certain decline of social activism in the 1890s. The colonists were singularly unprepared. One opponent said that they had taken a brass band, but not enough tools, to Paraguay.

Lane's authoritarian, puritanical idiosyncrasies in no small part caused New Australia to fall to bits (the main issues seemingly the ban on alcohol and Lane's own egotism, arrogance and Napoleonism), and two spin-off settlements, Loma Rouga and Cosme were established in 1894, peopled by settlers who left Adelaide on December 31, 1893, W Gilmore being one of the 100 or so adult passengers – his name appears in the list in New Australia magazine of January 27, 1894, above an article by one of its journalists, 'MJC' (Mary Cameron, who met and married Gilmore in Paraguay, becoming Mary Gilmore, known as the famous Australian poet).

"Lane attempted to bolster his flagging communities by bringing in fresh blood but in 1899 he gave up his leadership. His colonies were divided up by the Paraguayan state and the colonists either remained in South America, making livelihoods for themselves on an individual basis, or went back to Australia."   Source

Descendants of some of the 500 settlers still live in Paraguay.

 

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"Eastward we flee from that wrath and woe,
And Paraguay shall yet be Paradise."
Douglas Stewart; 'Terra Australis'

"Whips of dogma, stacks of selfishness, yards of words and absolutely no liberty"
Larry Petrie, May, 1898

Henry Lawson had briefly wanted to go, just as Rose Summerfield and Mary Cameron, the young woman Lawson had asked to marry him, did actually go and stay six years, and as the anarchist Larry Petrie lived and died in Paraguay. However, he didn't have the necessary sixty pounds, and, in May, 1898, Lawson turned away from the ideology and methods of Lane, his former boss at the Worker. Petrie wrote of Cosme: "Whips of dogma, stacks of selfishness, yards of words and absolutely no liberty". Lane himself left Cosme in 1899. In 1909, the Cosme residents voted to allow private property.

The collapse of New Australia, Loma Rouga and Cosme broke Lane's spirit. In January, 1900, New South Wales Labour Council invited him, to edit, in Sydney the new Worker journal. His politics had shifted considerably rightward by then, and he even supported the second British imperialist war in South Africa, which earned the ire of his colleagues and former comrades. In May, he resigned and returned to Auckland, New Zealand, as editor of the New Zealand Herald (using the pen-name 'Tohunga') where his writing never showed the old radical zeal; in fact Lane turned his tub-thumping abilities to the cause of the British Empire at war.

For the rest of his life he paid off debts from his brave but cursed utopian experiment, forgave a large debt owed him by Cosme, and it seems rarely spoke about his South American experiences. When his daughter showed him a picture of the Royal Tar, he snatched it from her and told her never to mention the ship in his presence again. His biographer wrote: "He passed into the silence of the petit-bourgeois life of Auckland, New Zealand." He had been editor of the Herald for nearly four years when he died on August 26, 1917, in Auckland, from bronchitis and a weak heart, having lost one son at a cricket match in Paraguay, and another on the beaches of Gallipoli. "This journal has lost a great editor and the country a great Imperialist", said the memorial editorial in the New Zealand Herald.

"Early in 1893, the New Australians were all assembled in a camp at Balmain waiting embarkation on the Royal Tar. There were poets, dreamers, a few neurotics, some hefty men from outback, and all in all a strange cross-section of humanity.

"One of the first problems was the question of leadership. If all men were equal, how could one be greater than the rest. Lane quickly settled that problem. He was Treasurer and also Prime Minister. Still there was some discontent before they embarked. Rations in Balmain were light, and the would-be settlers had too much time on their hands. So they got into mischief.

"Lane was a Quaker by conviction. He was not only against all violence, but also against strong drink as well. Some of his followers were Bohemians. But Lane had no time for any Free Love ideas. He even objected to the men and women mixing on deck after lights out had been sounded. There were disputes before the Royal Tar sailed. There were many after it was on its way. When some of the Communists spent their money in port and became drunk, Lane was most irate and showed it. He insisted that they must bow to his discipline.

"Lane was rather a small, insignificant figure, and also a cripple from birth. Many of his followers towered over him. They refused to accept the idea that he should be a dictator. So even early Communism had its woes.

"The total capital amounted to £30,000 and Lane controlled it all. On arrival in Paraguay, they found that Lane had wangled the powers of magistrate for himself from the Government, and had a guarantee of military support if required.

"His plan was that the New Australians should build their own homes, the communal settlement houses, and grow their own food, make their own clothing and furniture. The women were to be emancipated and given equality with the men in all things. Property was to be shared equally and there were to be no private possessions. That was the theory."
 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

"In May 1901, Cosme had 84 members. John Lane, William's brother, left in July to garner recruits for Cosme, his steamship fare paid by the ever-optimistic Paraguayan government. He enrolled 7 adults in England and 18 in Australia after an epic journey across the country by bicycle and train."   Source

Bibliography

  • Grahame, Stewart 1924 Where Socialism Failed – An Actual Experiment, John Murray, London.
  • Molesworth, James 1918 New Australia, a complete account of events leading up to the establishment of the New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association, the transportation of the 'pioneers' of Paraguay, and the life and the ultimate collapse of the scheme Manuscript held at the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
  • Nickson, R. Andrew 1993 Historical Dictionary of Paraguay The Scarecrow Press, Inc., Metuchen, N.J. & London.
  • Quinn, D. J. 'Utopia Limited' Daily Telegraph (21 July 1923), Sydney.
  • Souter, Gavin 1981 A Peculiar People – The Australians in Paraguay, Sydney University Press, Sydney.
  • Treweeke, Olivia and Andrew Frazer 'The Currency of Utopia' Australian Coin Review (Issue No.384, August 1999), Sydney.

    Source

"Lane was under medium height, of frail physique, and slightly lame from birth. He was completely altruistic and unselfish, and no man had higher ideals. His idealism, however, was not backed by a strong business sense, there was unnecessary muddling before the first party sailed for South America, and when he was given full authority there was a lack of tact in exercising it. But the cause of the failure lay deeper than that. His enthusiasm could so inspire his followers that they could sell all they had and put it into the common pool, but it could not give them new natures to enable them to bear patiently with one another in spite of hardships, monotony, unsuitable food, and the petty jealousies and rancours that infect people thrown much together without pleasurable distractions. The constant strain injured Lane's health and broke his spirit. What had seemed the most important thing in the world had proved a failure. He tried to put it out of his mind for the rest of his life, but occasionally his early hopes would rise again; in August 1914 he wrote: 'We shall root out the slum and the slum conditions. We shall see that no child lacks in a civilization bursting with riches.' Personally he retained his old charm and gave freely to all who needed sympathy and kindness, work or money. He was still a delightful talker, but could never be persuaded to speak of his South American experiences, and no one will ever know for certain what were his innermost thoughts during the last 18 years of his life. He was the greatest man in the early days of the Labour movement in Australia, and if his Utopia failed it failed largely for reasons he had no power to control."
Source: Dictionary of Australian Biography

"Just before Lane resigned the editorship to co-ordinate New Australia, the (Brisbane) Worker began to publish 'The Communist Manifesto'.

"It is reasonable to speculate that Lane had an anarchist utopia in mind when thinking of and planning New Australia. Note that Petrie, Robert Beattie (see biog.), the two Lanes, Mary Gilmore and Rose Summerfield all went to New Australia. (Henry Lawson wanted to go, but as with Ernie Lane in 1893, had no money for the fare, and thought of stowing away.) A number of writers on New Australia have referred to the major ideological conflict in the settlement as being between a group they call anarchists and others.

"Because of anarchists' anti-State view, the Paraguayan settlement is also important as showing the appearance of disillusion among certain more aware activists about the efficacy of the parliamentary road to social justice. Just as the labour movement and attempts to have labour representatives in the legislatures are part of a world wide phenomenon, the disillusion is also expressed at the same time in Australia as elsewhere. In Australia, just as the Royal Tar leaves for Paraguay, David Andrade leaves Melbourne for the Dandenongs to effect his communal utopianism (approximately 85 other groups in Victoria alone) while numerous other settlements are attempted around Australia including a remnant of the Barcaldine shearers' camp which is settled near the Alice River. Significantly, Lawson goes to New Zealand and Jack Andrews tries the hermit life on Bombira Hill."   Source

More on New Australia at July 16, 1893 in the Book of Days

William Lane on anarchism    The Notes of New Australia

Annie Lane: new light on William Lane's wife and comrade, in the Book of Days

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Paraguay mentions New Australia

Accounting and the Pursuit of Utopia: The Possibility of Perfection in Paraguay

William Lane, 1861 - 1917 - Nationalism and the labour struggle

William Lane, extract on Anarchism from The Working-man's Paradise

'Voluntary Communism', Robert Beattie, Honesty, Oct, 1887 (Lane not the only one writing on this topic)

Utopianism in Wikipedia     Thomas More and Utopia, in the BoD    

Utopia Britannica: British Utopian Experiments 1325 - 1945    Mary Gilmore   More    And more

Australian labor history in documents    A short history of the Australian labor movement

Letters of Mary Gilmore    Mary Gilmore: Verse for Children   Selected Poems by Mary Gilmore

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson    More    And more


 

 

1868 Margaret Dreier Robins, labor leader and reformer

1869 Felix Salten (d. 1945), author

1877 Buddy Bolden (d. 1930), American jazz musician

1888 Joseph P Kennedy, Sr (d. 1969), American business magnate; patriarch of the Kennedy family

1890 Claire Chennault, soldier (d. 1958)

1899 Billy Rose (d. 1966), American band leader

1900 WAC Bennett (d. 1979), British Columbia, Canada, politician

1912 Jacques Fath (d. 1954), French couturier

1927 Cessa and Ina Mills, members, with their sister Rita, (b. August 25, 1935) of The Mills Sisters, the Torres Strait Islands-born singing trio.

Cessa and Ina, twins, were born on Coconut Island and their sister Rita on Nagahir Island. They taught themselves to play and sing, and made all their own costumes. Rita was the first to perform professionally, at the Grand Hotel on Thursday Island. After her sisters joined her they were a hit, coming to Queensland in 1988 for the World Expo. They have been guests at big festivals around Australia and performed at Parliament House. The sisters are involved in Torres Strait Islands community work and land rights activism.

1928 Robert M Pirsig, author, creator of the Metaphysics of Quality

1929 Yash Johar, Indian film producer

 

Visit the Aragones site1937 Sergio Aragonés, Spanish-born, Mexican-raised American cartoonist (MAD Magazine)

Aragonés's personal site    Comix, comics and cartoons in the Book of Days

 

 

1937 Jo Anne Worley, American comedienne

1937 Brigid Berlin, actor and artist

1939 David Alan Coe, American country and western music star

1939 Susumu Tonegawa, Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist

1944 Roger Waters, musician (Pink Floyd)

1944 Swoosie Kurtz, actress

1947 Jane Curtin, actress

1958 Jeff Foxworthy, comedian, actor, author

1960 Michael Winslow, American comic actor

1964 Rosie Perez, actress

1972 China Miéville, writer

1974 Justin Whalin, actor

1974 Sarah Danielle Madison, American actress

1979 Foxy Brown, American rapper

1983 Ljubisa Bojic, Serbian journalist and student movement leader

1986 Raven Riley, American adult film star

2000 Breanna Lynn Bartlett-Stewart (d. 2000), first Kleihauer-Betke stillbirth

 

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3761 BCE The first day of the Hebrew Calendar.

3114 BCE On this date in the proleptic Julian calendar the current era in the Maya Long Count Calendar started.

394 Battle of Frigidus: The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeated and killed the pagan usurper Eugenius and his Frankish magister militum Arbogast.

972 Death of Pope John XIII.

1522 Ferdinand Magellan's fleet of five ships, now dwindled to just one, the Vittoria, arrived back in Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, having completed the round-the-world voyage on which the commander  lost his own life.

 

1593 During late July of this year, Grace O'Malley (Granuail), the Irish pirate and chieftain, set sail from Ireland for London, to petition Queen Elizabeth  I concerning the imprisonment of Grace's sons and brother.

Following this visit, on September 6 the Queen wrote to the chieftain's nemesis, Sir Richard Bingham:

Where our Treazurer of England, by his letters in July last, did inform you of the being here of three several persons of that our Province of Connaught under your charge, that is, of Sir Morogh O'Flaherty, Knight, Grany ne Maly and Roobuck French requiring to understand your opinion of every of them concerning their suits; we perceive by your late letters of answer what your opinion is of them, and their causes of complaint or of suit, whereof you have given them no just cause. But where Grany ne Maly hath made humble suit to us for our favour towards her sons, Morogh O'Flaherty and Tibbott Burk, and to her brother Donell O'Piper, that they might be at liberty, we perceive by your letters that her eldest son, Morogh O'Flaherty, is no trouble but is a principal man of his country, and as a dutiful subject hath served us when his mother, being them accompanied with a number of disorderly persons, did with her 'gallyes' despoil him; and therefore by you favoured, and so we wish you to continue. But the second son, Tibbott Burk, one that hath been brought up civilly with your brother and can speak English, is by you justly detained because he hath been accused to have written a letter to Bryan O'Rork, the late traitor's son, though it cannot be fully proved but is by him utterly denied; and for her brother Donald, he hath been imprisoned 7 months past, being charged to have been in company of certain that killed some soldiers in a ward. But for those two you think they may be both dismissed upon bonds for their good behaviour, wherewith we are content, so as the old woman may understand we yield thereto in regard of her humble suit; so she is hereof informed and departeth with great thankfulness and with many more earnest promises that she will, as long as she lives continue a dutiful subject, yea, and will employ all her power to offend and prosecute any offender against us. And further, for the pity to be had of this aged woman, having not by the custom of the Irish any title to any livelihood or position of portion of her two husband's lands, now being a widow; and yet her sones enjoying their father's lands, we require you to deal with her sons in our name to yield to her some maintainance for her living the rest of her old years, which you may with persuasion assure them that we shall theirin allow of them; and you also shall with your favour in all their good causes protect them to live in peace to enjoy their livelihoods. And this we do write in her favour as she showeth herself dutiful, although she hath in former times lived out of order, as being charged by our Treasurer with the evil usage of her son that served us dutifully. She hath confessed the same with assured promises by oath to continue most dutiful, with offer, after her aforesaid manner, and that she will fight in our quarrel with all the world.

 

1620 The Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in North America.

Gore Vidal once remarked that they left England "not because they were persecuted for their religious beliefs, but because they were forbidden to persecute others for their beliefs".

1628 Puritans settled Salem which later became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1666 The Great Fire of London burned itself out at Pie Corner, London. Ten thousand buildings including St Paul's Cathedral had been destroyed, but only about 16 people are known to have died.

1683 Death of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (b. 1619), French minister of finance.

1701 Death of James II of England (b. 1633).

1847 Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) left Walden Pond and moved in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts, where he had stayed before.

1859 Australia: Following Queensland's separation from New South Wales, Brisbane was incorporated as Queensland's capital.

1861 American Civil War: Forces under Union General Ulysses S Grant bloodlessly captured Paducah, Kentucky, which gave the Union control the mouth of the Tennessee River.

1863 American Civil War: Confederates evacuated Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina.

1870 Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming, voted in the morning, becoming the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.

1879 The first British telephone exchange opened in Lombard St, London.

1886 The editor of the Charleston News and Courier, South Carolina, USA, wrote that at 2.30 am of September 4, warm stones had fallen from the sky onto the footpath outside his office, and that he had witnessed further showers at 7.30 am and 1.30 pm that day. He said that they appeared to come from a point overhead and were confined to a small area in the street.

1901 American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot and fatally wounded US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

1915 The first prototype tank was tested for the British Army for the first time.

1923 Following Japan's most destructive earthquake, an Australian relief ship left Sydney Harbour bound for Tokyo with a cargo of food, clothing and medical supplies for the more than one million homeless survivors.

1936 Today was supposed to be the day the earth would die, according to George Riffert in his book The Great Pyramid: Its Divine Message (1925). Riffert wrote in later editions: "A very real problem was, and still is to ascertain the literal significance and character of the epoch whose crisis date was September 6, 1936".

Failed prophecies, in the Scriptorium

1937 Spanish Civil War: The start of the Battle of El Mazuco.

1939 World War II: South Africa declared war on Germany.

1940 King Carol II of Romania was forced to abdicate by the pro-Nazi prime minister Ion Antonescu.

1941 Holocaust: The requirement to wear the Star of David with the word 'Jew' inscribed, was extended to all Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas.

1948 Juliana became Queen of the Netherlands.

1949 Allied military authorities relinquished control of former Nazi Germany assets.

1960 At Stonehenge, ten skeletons were found in a grave site believed to be 3,800 years old.

1961 Bob Dylan debuted at The Gaslight Cafe in New York City.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1965 War of 1965: India attacked Pakistan and announced that its forces would capture the city of Lahore within the hour.

1966 In Cape Town, the South African architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, was stabbed to death by a messenger during a parliamentary meeting.

1968 The Kingdom of Swaziland became independent. September 6 is a public holiday in Swaziland.

1972 Munich Massacre: Israeli athletes and coaches were killed when police assaulted Black September members in a failed hostage rescue in West Germany.

1974 Housing occupations in San Basilio, Rome, led to legalised squatting.

1976 Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko landed a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido in Japan and requested political asylum from the United States.

1983 The Soviet Union admitted to having shot down Korean Air Flight KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace. The USSR also claimed that it had been a spy flight for the USA.

1985 Michael Jackson and CBS Songs took over ATV publishing and all its employees worldwide were made redundant.

1986 In Istanbul, two Arab terrorists from Abu Nidal's organization killed 22 and wounded six inside the Neve Shalom synagogue during Sabbath services.

1988 Thomas Gregory, 11, became the youngest person to swim the English Channel, in 12 hours.

1989 In Paris, a computer error led to 41,000 traffic violators receiving in the mail charges of murder, extortion and organised prostitution.

1991 The Soviet Union recognized the independence of the Baltic states.

1991 The name Saint Petersburg was restored to Russia's second largest city, which had been renamed 'Leningrad' in 1924.

1995 With the jury absent, Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the murder trial of OJ Simpson.

1997 The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey drew large crowds and a huge international TV audience.

2000 In New York City, the United Nations Millennium Summit began with more than 180 world leaders present.

2001 Microsoft antitrust case: The United States Justice Department announced that it was no longer seeking to break up software maker Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.

2005 The California Legislature became the first legislative body in the United States to legalise same-sex marriage without a pre-emptive judicial order to do so.

 

 

Tomorrow: Australia's humpback whales head home

 

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fnord norton

 


Beowulf synopsis to assist you with your college essay

 

Hrothgar

Let's build a big old dining hall and call it Herot.

(They do. Then Grendel, an ugly guy, takes over Herot and eats people. Beowulf rips his arm off.)

All

You rule, Beowulf.

(Some people make SPEECHES and tell IRRELEVANT STORIES. Beowulf kills some more STUFF.)

Beowulf

Wiglaf, I'm dying. See that my funeral pyre fits my greatness.


Wiglaf

Ok.


The End 

 

Author unknown

Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft' and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

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