regimental colours

Whereas the claim that Union Jack properly only refers to the naval ensign flown at sea is vexillologically vexing and likely a historical misunderstanding (or pedantic overreach), in an attempt to make my blog more bedecked with the Union Flag than it already is and therefore a more definitive and trustworthy source of information we recall that on this day in 1606 it was decreed for maritime purposes the nations of England and Scotland would use a joint flag symbolising the regal and personal union under James VI/I (see previously) upon inheriting the two crowns plus the Irish throne. The Cross of Saint Andrew countercharged with the Cross of Saint Patrick, overall the Cross of Saint George, heraldically speaking, was officially adopted with the Act of Union of 1800 that merged came into effect the first day of the next year—merging Great Britain with the Irish kingdom. Even before the Republic of Ireland won independence, the saltire of Saint Patrick was not embraced as representative of the island or its patron and associated with the personal coat of arms of the FitzGerald-FitzMaurice family dynasty.

terra nullis

Via Super Punch, we learn about the Debatable Lands, a tract along the English and Scottish border whose ownership or allegiance was questionable (and doubtful either kingdom could or would want to stake a claim) whose name, despite aptly suggesting disputed grounds comes from the Old English word battable—that is, pasture land suitable for fattening up cattle. Between the rivers Esk and Sark, people could act with impunity in this place beyond the reach of the law and outside the jurisdiction of either England or Scotland under conditions that spanned three centuries until finally annexed by James VI of Scotland in 1590.

phys ed

From Weird Universe we learn that in 1943 the University of St. Louis added utility pole tossing to the curriculum as a general conditioning exercise, demanding strength, rhythm and coordination as a group to pass around these ninety kilogram logs. The coach who instigated this regiment was inspired by the Highland Games and the traditional caber toss, said to have been developed out of a need to throw timber over streams and ravines in order for lumberjacks to cross them. More at the link above.

the french word for hobbyhorse

Via Colossal, we are introduced to the extensive portfolio of Glasgow based artist and illustrator Lola Dupré through her didgitally distorted portraiture and other painterly compositions informed by the dadaesque movement of a century ago. Her cat Charlie is featured prominently in her repertoire, many impossible angles suggesting mirror reflections but other means of doubling and reduplication as well. More at the links above.

imbolc

Traditionally celebrated as one of the four Celtic, Gaelic seasonal festivals and marking in the Northern Hemisphere the beginning of Spring—complete spring-cleaning, well-dressing with weather divination and forecasting to watch for serpents or badgers to emerge from their dens, directly informing Groundhog Day customs. Displaced and ensconced with the Christianisation of the ancient lands were these rituals emerged, Saint Brigid of Kildare, the co-patron of Ireland, is regarded as a syncretion of the goddess of the same name associated with the light half of the year, smithing, healing, poetry and fertility, attributes which are reflected in the saint’s patronage—plus the state of Florida.

the wise wife of keith

Garrotted and burned at the stake for witchcraft on this day in 1591 on the order of James VI and said to haunt the halls of Holyrood as a naked ghost, Agnes Sampson was a healer and midwife and one of the more notable defendants of the well documented North Berwick witch trails.

The Scottish king inspired by his experience in the court of Denmark-Norway, visiting his in-laws on the occasion of marrying Anne of Denmark, and accounts of witch-hunting and practicing the dark arts—convinced during a fraught return voyage that a curse was responsible for the stormy passage. Subsequent arrests and interrogations conducted by the king himself in a specially convened tribunal was covered by a contemporary pamphleteer in the Newes from Scotland, which contained proceedings and quoted Sampson’s litany of confessions, implicating others and admitting with a seemingly taunting air that she had tried to drown the newly-weds and another had fashioned a charm out of a toad to make the king impotent. Reportedly James had been willing to declare Sampson innocent until her final confession which detailed the nuptial night of the James and Anne in Oslo with accuracy only one in communion with the devil could know. The writer with the by-line, James Carmichael, of the reportage later advised James on his other famous book (besides his patronage for the Bible), Dæmonologie.

7x7

oh yeah: this supercut of Kool Aid Man crashing through barriers is somehow soothing

il cameriere: a “self-portrait” by Mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo—see previously  

warp and weft: Scotland honours its Muslim citizens with an Islamic tartan  

#wikipedia20: wish Wikipedia (previously) a happy birthday, first launched online on this day in 2001  

clip & save for g.i. joe command files: the insurrection was filled with Cobra villains—see previously 

😷: a bevy of COVID-related headlines from the New Shelton wet/dry  

start from checkpoint: an arcade style, side-scrolling game about 2020, via Miss Cellania‘s Links

8x8

ruminant digestive process: whilst bovine flatulence makes the headlines, burps are the chief source of methane and could be neutralised with a special mouth guard—via the New Shelton Wet/Dry  

caporegime: via ibīdem, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project names Jair Bolsonaro Corrupt Person of the Year, trouncing with a narrow margin Trump, Erdoğan and Netanyahu  

commander-in-cheat: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon won’t allow Trump to visit his golf course in Scotland during the pandemic lockdown to bow out of attending the inauguration in Washington, DC 

georgia on my mind: Reverend Warnock declared winner in Senate race and Democrats poised to take control of the Upper House  

grogu pains: The Mandalorian reimaged as 1990s sitcom  

die abenteur des prizen achmed: the incredible silhouette animation technique of Lotte Reiniger—more here  

population density: housing ten billion humans in one mega city could help vastly reduce our footprint, freeing up the remaining land mass for rewilding and argiculture 

all the trimmings: for this traditional day of ceremonially discarding the tree, ways to transform it into garnish and a tasty treat

zed-victor-2

Though never crossing over to the American television market as perhaps ahead of its time with its franker portrayal of the consequences of crime and its toll on law enforcement in police procedurals, Z Cars—premiering on BBC1 on this day in 1962—ran for an impressive twelve seasons, clocking just over eight hundred episodes (though sadly fewer than half are believed to have been preserved) and launched a few spin-offs.
Inspired by a childhood convalescence imposed on the script-writer spent monitoring the radio bandwidth reserved for patrols (hence the title) and set in a badly ageing seaport, fictionalised but based on any number of real places in the North, one of the first series with a regional flavour, it starred Stratford Johns as chief inspector with deputies Frank Windsor, Brian Blessed and James Ellis with numerous guest stars joining the cast and notable cameo-appearances. The theme music heard in the opening below is inspired from the traditional Liverpudlian folk song called “Johnny Todd” and was arranged by Bridget Fry and then-husband Fritz Spiegl.

7x7

repetition: an exploration of built-environments as an audio-visual landscape of infinite regression  

a pigment of our imagination: the illusory nature of colour  

nationally determined contributions: European Union agrees to more than halve its carbon emissions by 2030—via Slashdot 

awesome sauce: a safari-pak of canned-meats from 1967 

road gritters: track Scotland’s fleet of snow-plows in real time by name  

training a generation of future karens: this scholastic kids books series are clearly coding adults as happy and confident with their life choices as monsters and misfits—via Super Punch 

a universe of imagination: revisiting a classic and inspiring documentary (previously) on cosmology on its sixtieth anniversary

a dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan

Under the management and editorship of its founders, Archibald Constable, Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar, the first edition of volume of one of three of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published on this day in Edinburgh in 1768. While not the first general knowledge reference book in English, it has been the longest-lived—though digital only since the fifteenth edition was printed in 2010, ending its rather novel, assailable layout for fact-checking and more in depth, authoritative research by breaking-out the tomes into a pro-, micro- and macropædia with a compendious indices two volumes in length. The Propædia is an “outline of knowledge” that shows the framework and decision-tree that the editorial board uses for inclusion and scope of coverage, and usefully gave some insight into what otherwise might just be dismissed as academic bias or Western hegemony in topic and distribution.

this article contains weasel words

Having been informed that the proper collective noun for a pack of ferrets (Mustela putorius furo, whose common name is from the Latin for furuttus, “a little thief whose males are called hobs and jills—with neutered and spayed equivalents jib, or hoblet, and sprite) is a “busyness” (see also), we are more delighted with an bonus lesson on ghost words and transmission errors. From the very real and well-documented examples of Merriam-Webster’s dord—given the definition with the utmost earnestness of density whereas it was D or d, the typesetter’s note abbreviation for the measure of said term and the spurious testentry said to rhyme ironically with pedantry and the more speculative examples of o.k. or the etymology of pumpernickel with Napoleon proclaiming a loaf as fit only for his favourite horse “C’est pain pour Nicole,” the venery term for the name of a group of ferrets devolved from busyness to fesynes to feamyng. Presented first in a public form during a presentation to the Philological Society of London, Professor Watler William Skeat coined the phrase ghost word and elucidated the audience with an example line from Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Monastery: “…dost thou so soon morse thoughts of slaughter?” A typographical, transcription error made the question more poetic than the author intended and this happy misprint of the intended word nurse prompting quite a bit of scholarship, variously explaining the use as an occurrence of verbification, anthimeria or that it was a case of a New Latin false friend, namely—mordere to bite—that is to indulge and placate those thoughts by gnawing at what’s gnawing at the character.

8x8

ginger-reveal party: photographer Kieran Dodds has spent years capturing images from red heads all over the world  

nacelle: a handy camper turned a surplus jet engine into a deluxe caravan trailer 

thursday afternoon: the video paintings of Brian Eno—see previously 

lawn and order: perhaps Spain ought to get out of the art restoration business and other items of note from Hyperallergic’s weekly digest 

we’ll let the supreme courtyard marriot decide the outcome of the vote: apropos the entry above, more roundups and rundowns from the week from Super Punch  

julia’s name is going to be julia gulia: a team of volunteer correspondents answer missives left to Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers  

matita: a treasury of vintage Italian pencils 

macroscopic: a pairing of recent posts from the always excellent Nag on the Lake celebrate capturing images of the tiny at extremely close range

animal magnetism

Intending to attend the demonstration at the Manchester Athenæum by the mesmerism (after Herr Doktor Franz Mesmer’s invisible, natural binding force he called Lebensmagnetismus) itinerant Charles Lafontaine as a sceptic, the gentleman scientist and surgeon James Braid (*1795 – †1860) who developed life-changing interventions to help those suffering from clubfoot, bandy legs and scoliosis was rather captivated by the performance he witnessed on this day in 1841. Rather than audience to the act of a fraudster, the demonstration seemed credible and genuine and bore further investigation in Braid’s mind—neither seeking to discredit the practitioner nor seeking confirmation for a preconceived pursuit of interest, and would devote the balance of his professional career, research and writing to the development of what Braid dubbed as hypnotism and hypnotherapy, documenting the corrective value of heightened states of suggestibility in rehabilitating nervous disorders—though not yet ready to entertain the possibility of the psychosomatic.

the age of consent

Released on this day by London Records in 1984, the synth-pop trio Bronski Beat’s above titled debut album was in reference to legal and social reforms in much of continental Europe that decriminalised homosexuality and harmonised the age of consent with that for heterosexual relationship, legislation which the United Kingdom did not ascribe to at the time. All members of the band were openly gay and their music contained commentary on politics and gay-related issues. Their one charting song “Smalltown Boy” is featured on the record, an eventual anthem addressing hardships of coming-out and experiencing homophobia, released also as a single earlier in the year.

1q or the feast of the archangels

Venerating Saint Michael and companions, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel in honour of their victory of Lucifer and the rebel angels in the angelomachy, Michaelmas (previously) is observed on the penultimate day of September—in some traditions, the feast extending into the next day—and has also come to one of the four quarter dates of the financial year, kept since at least medieval times to mark when school and court terms were to commence and the accounting was due to ensure that debts and unresolved cases didn’t linger (see also) into the next season.

Though the customary hiring fairs and local elections do not necessarily adhere (the tradition is retained for the election of London’s lord mayor, just as peasants during the Middle Ages would appoint a reeve from among their peers to represent their interests to the manor) to the same calendars, this time of year—still referred to as the Michaelmas term for matriculating students in England, Scotland and Ireland and for the US Supreme Court’s and the English bar’s Inns of the Court’s fall sessions and of course it marks the end and beginning of the fiscal year for budget purposes. Asters or the Michaelmas daisy are one of the few flowering plants left at the beginning of autumn, and thus inspiring the rhyme and invocation: “Michaelmas daisies among dead weeds, bloom for Saint Michael’s valorous deeds.”

popish plot

Promoted and promulgated by English priest Titus Oates, born on this day in 1649 ( †1705), the ungrounded conspiracy theory gripped England and Scotland with an anti-Catholic hysteria from its 1678 circulation and was not easily dispelled despite, Oates’ eventual arrest and conviction of perjury for giving false testimony that led to the execution of twenty-two individuals. Capitalising on fear and suspicions—and guilt by affiliation, real or attributed—of the foiled Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and fuelled by the Thirty Years’ War, framed as a Hapsburg effort to stamp out German and British Protestantism, Oates’ sermons accused one hundred Jesuits and their supporters of plotting an assassination attempt against Charles II. Owing to the recent restoration of the monarchy, the government took any accusation with gravity and led to legislation excluding Catholics from the throne with the Act of Settlement of 1701, further giving rise to two political party factions, the Tories who were opposed and the Whigs in favour of prohibiting Catholics from rule.

did ye ken...

This is probably old news for most but I was somewhat taken aback to learn that for over six years the Scots language Wikipedia has been moderated and edited by a Wikipedian who isn’t of Scottish heritage nor speaks Scots and has contributed over twenty-thousand articles to the domain that are largely accurate though not written in Scots but rather with the approximation of a Scots accent.
I feel torn because I understand the upset that this revelation causes—though arguably not malicious cultural vandalism—it does have an outsized influence on the minority language and probably represents the largest lexicon of Scots presently—with all the errata that non-native speakers would take as genuine. What do you think? Despite earnest efforts, one probably ought not to assay something this potentially influential given Scots’ status as something once the object of derision and suppressed, but there is also the fact that this was an undertaking that the administrator took on aged twelve and it presumably grew into an obsession and mission, and I think there’s something relatable in that. Again, a people and a language is not fandom but this episode recalls the spurious volume two of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda of Tordesillas—which Cervantes denounces and is probably the first occurance of metafiction in literature.

number 10

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we discover a splendid backdrop for a selfie lies just around the corner from the actual residence of the Lord High Treasurer, by convention also the prime minister (the exchequer fulfils the role of what’s regarded as the treasury in modern parlance). 
For safety and security reasons the authentic and metonymical mansion is off-limits to posing in front of with a nearly identical stoop and door at Adam House, on the eponymous neighbouring street named for its Scottish architect, of both properties, and statesman Robert Adam, one-third of the neoclassical Adamesque style of architecture of the Brothers Adam known as Federalist in the US. Whilst the Adam Street address is likely to impress in passing, but there are significant differences in the door fronts: the slightly off-kilter zero cipher, the brass knocker and the conspicuous absence of a lock, since its always opened from the inside.

hlaf-masse

From the Anglo-Saxon for “loaf mass,” Lammas Day is celebrated in some parts of the northern hemisphere on the first of August, Lammastide falling halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, by bringing bread to the church made of the first fruits of the season to be used for communion. Traditionally, members of the clergy reciprocally made a procession to local bakeries to bless them as a profession (it is a good reason to bring out ye old breadmaker) and is a syncretism, substitution for the Gaelic festival to herald the beginning of harvest time called Lughnasadh (Lúnasa, Lùnastal, Luanistyn) readopted by practitioners of Celtic neopaganism.