"Bare Ruin'd Choirs"

In 1534, Henry VIII (1491 to 1547), King of England, broke with the Church of Rome, ostensibly because the Pope refused to grant him an annulment of his 24-year marriage to Catherine of Aragon. (The marriage had given him no male heirs.) That same year, Parliament declared him the Supreme Head of the Church of England. To this day, Queen Elizabeth II holds the title, "Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England."

Between 1536 and 1541, Henry enacted the "Dissolution of the Monasteries," which called for Roman Catholic church lands, monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Ireland, and Wales to be forfeit to the crown. Some of the properties Henry sold for ready cash; some he granted to his favorites; and a few he gave to the Church of England to be used as churches or cathedrals.

In the course of this process, many of the buildings were plundered for building materials and fell into ruin.

Now, as I happen to know from a footnote or commentary for Sonnet 73 that I read in college, "Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang," is, among other things, a reference to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, for the choir is the part of the church where the choristers sat or stood during Mass.

Curiously, I can find no reference to this, which I take as a valid interpretation, in internet commentaries on the sonnet. A valid interpretation, and possibly a poignant one, if Shakespeare (1564 to 1616) did in fact have Roman Catholic roots or beliefs, as some scholars think.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

  William Shakespeare

Francis Towne, Netley Abbey, 1809. Tate Britain.

A Word Nerd's Idea of Fun

I've been planning to write a post about the word "moat" for a while now.

The word "moat" comes to us from the medieval Latin word "mota," meaning mound. (The word "mota," whose etymology is lost in time, may come from the Gaulish word "mott" or "motta.") In the mid-fourtheenth century, medieval Latin "mota" became Old French "mote," the mound on which a castle is built, or, with the part standing in for the whole, the ditch dug around the castle and often filled with water for an added line of defense.

Hmm, I thought, digging a moat to help protect a castle seems like a pretty basic idea, right up there with building a wall. I wonder whether moats were used for defense in ancient times.

Well, yes, they were, and I must have encountered this fact in college, because I read my Herodotus. In his Histories, Herodotus (484 to 425 BCE) describes of the ancient city of Babylon as surrounded by a "broad and deep moat."

Just for fun, I thought some more, let's see if I can find out when Babylon, founded circa 2300 BCE, first included a moat in its plans. I may need to cite this information in passing.

Well, the answer is, no, I cannot find out when Babylon first had a moat. This after a couple of hours of research on the Internet. The answer may be there somewhere, but I cannot find it.

However, I did find something absolutely wonderful.

Go to this website for SOAS, University of London: http://www.soas.ac.uk/baplar/recordings/. Now listen to someone read a poem to Ishtar, in Babylonian, from the Old Babylonian Period, 1900 to 1500 BCE.

And that is my idea of fun.

In Praise of Coffee

One good thing about being a writer is that you get to leave the dishes in the sink when it's time to write. Or, maybe I should say, you get to make another cup of coffee and then leave the dishes in the sink.

I love looking forward to my morning coffee the night before, dreaming about it while I am sleeping, and, against all reason, even leaving my warm bed to get it started. I love smelling the grounds and measuring them into my filter and pouring (or, in my case, if your teakettle has lost its lid and you are using a soup ladle for the moment, scooping) boiling water over it. I love watching the water drip over the grounds into my cup--which, by the way, is glass, so that I can see the magical process--and turn into coffee or, in Turkish, kahveh, from the Arabic قهوة, qahwah.

From what I can find out, coffee came to us from Yemen: according to Wikipedia, the "first credible evidence" we have of people drinking coffee dates from the mid-fifteenth century at a Sufi Muslem monastery in Mocha, Yemen. From there, coffee spread to the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa; to Venice, the trade-route link between East and West; and then to the rest of Europe.

Pope Clement VIII, instead of banning the "Muslim drink," wisely blessed coffee--in Italian, caffè--in 1600. Or maybe I should say that he "allowed," instead of "blessed," coffee. The first European coffee house began serving coffee to Romans in 1645.

A now-discounted tale claims that, in 1683, Viennese bakers, who as a matter of course stayed up all night to make pastries for breakfast coffee, heard the Ottomans tunneling under the besieged city and sounded the alarm, thus saving the citizens. In celebration of the victory of Christendom over the Turkish Empire, the bakers formed their pastries into the shape of the crescent on the Islamic flag.

Of course, as a writer newly restored by coffee, I would just as soon reinstate this story to the canon. What could be more perfect than freshly brewed coffee and newly baked croissants?