It is odd to think that Nelson‘s body was placed in Cardinal Wolsey’s tomb, hundreds of years after his death, but this story is full of such odd things. That imposing black marble sarcophagus was originally built for that English statesman and Catholic bishop, who commissioned Benedetto da Rovezzano to design a magnificent tomb in… Read More Lady Hamilton & Horatio Nelson: Nelson’s Sarcophagus (part 48)
After arriving at Greenwich on 23 December 1805, Nelson’s body was placed inside a lead coffin which was in turn placed into another wooden one, made from the mast of L’Orient salvaged after the French warship had been destroyed in the Battle of the Nile, a gift to Nelson in 1799 from Benjamin Hallowell, then… Read More Lady Hamilton & Horatio Nelson: Nelson’s Funeral (part 47)
In my post about Herbert Hoover (see here) I said that when he was only two years old he nearly suffocated from a croup attack (a severe breathing difficulty caused by acute obstruction of the larynx and trachea).His aunt Agnes wrote: “ We all thought he was dead. … The eyes of the infant were… Read More Those Two Pennies (for Charon?)
As I’ve already written (here) “Barbara Allen” began as a ballad in the seventeenth century or earlier and was published and performed under many different titles, in a vast array of tunes and narrative details.The earliest text was published in London in 1690, under the title “Barbara Allen’s cruelty: or, the young-man’s tragedy”. It appeared… Read More Barbara Allen/2
On 13 February 1748, Lady Lovibond, a three mast legendary schooner, wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, off the Kent coast of south-east England. (see here) Exactly fifty years later , on 13 February 1798, the captain of the ship “Edenbridge” recorded in his logbook that he nearly collided with a three-masted schooner and also reported… Read More The Ghost Ship at the Sandbar/2
Tennyson‘s poem “Crossing the Bar” (here) was about a shoal, and one of the most notorious sandbanks is Goodwin Sands, a line of shoals at the entrance to the Strait of Dover from the North Sea, off the Kent coast. It is one of the most dangerous passages in the English Channel, often the scene… Read More The Ghost Ship at the Sandbar/1
Saint Marina is celebrated on two occasions: on 18 June her memorial day and on 17 July, when her relics were transferred from Constantinople to Venice in 1231. Marina of Bithynia is a Christian saint of Byzantine Syria, the area now part of Lebanon, venerated as a saint by the Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic Churches,… Read More Saint Marina the Monk
In addition to the legend of Cupid, (see here) there are other myths related pansies and violetsAccording to Greek mythology, Zeus, the king of the gods, fell in love with a beautiful young woman named Io, who lived in Argos, in central Greece.In order not to be discovered by his wife Hera while he was… Read More Violets/2 – Other myths: Zeus and Io (first part)
On the occasion of St. Patrick’s Day, 17 March, House speaker Nancy Pelosi hosted the usual Friends of Ireland luncheon at the White House during which she read a poem written by U2 frontman Bono.Bono has an annual tradition of sending her a limerick for the luncheon.“This year the limerick is irregular and not funny… Read More Bono and the Snakes 🐍
In the previous post (see here) I wrote I that the first word of T. S. Eliot‘s “The Waste Land” is ‘April’ but I have to rectify: April is preceded by an epigraph and a dedication that show some of the languages that the author will use in the poem: Latin, Greek, English and Italian.… Read More T.S. Eliot & the Sibyl
words and music and stories 