Cloak-not-Dagger (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Hatty]

Just having witnessed Number One Son's graduation ceremony and cooed over his mortar-board and gown made me appreciate how much uniforms lend gravitas to rites of passage occasions.

The gown/cloak is a status symbol. There must be a reason why the cloak of St Martin of Tours (the one he cut in two and gave half, not the whole mind you, to a beggar, i.e. Christ in disguise) one of Europe's most prized relics.

And Sir Walter Raleigh famously laid his cloak over a puddle for Gloriana. There seems to be a link with the celebration of the old god/goddess being replaced; what's being 'sacrificed' is the season, the half-cloak or half-year.

[Grant]

And doesn't the new speaker of the House of Commons look an irritating little dick now he's dispensed with gown and wig?

[Hatty]

The significance of rending a cloak in two is now clear. It's a theme familiar to Gnostics, both pagan and Christian, to symbolise rending the veil of ignorance and the initiation into knowledge, cf. Mark's account of the tearing of the Temple veil at the death/Resurrection of Jesus (in orthodox Judaism clothes are still torn at a funeral).

The marriage ceremony retains the custom of lifting a veil so the bridegroom can know the bride, yet another instance of the Church imitating aspects of pre-Christian practice.

The caduceus, the staff borne by the god of knowledge, separates two entwined serpents. Or maybe it unites them. They are in effect mirror images of each other. Know thyself?

[DPCrisp]

[Hatty]

[Ishmael]

Unless of course she herself is a myth.

[Ishmael]

[Hatty]

The feast of St. Martin is traditionally celebrated with lanterns, representing "fairy lights" or the light of (inner) knowledge, and also with 'begging' as at Halloween/All Souls, with which Martinmas has obvious affinities. It's tempting to see a mirror image of the fires/beacons lit on May Day, the reverse hinge of the year as it were.

The celebrations began at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Armistice Day seems to be a modern version of a much older cease-fire tradition (even raiding, rustling, etc. on the Scottish borders reportedly ended on 11th November) which is what Ishmael pointed out on the 5th November thread.

[Hatty]

The Scottish version of the Cinderella story, Rashin-Coatie, in which the heroine wears a rush-coat rather than a cloak, revolves around a sacrificial calf which suggests autumn, the season of culling.

The French version has a more obvious symbolism, going from darkness (cinders) to light (glass slipper etc.) and is interesting because of the connection between pumpkins and Hallowe'en lanterns. The pumpkin coach is the setting of Cinder's transformation, i.e. enlightenment. One of the step-sisters, acting as an imposter, cuts off her heel in order to fit the slipper, presumably an allusion to the motif of the hero wounded in the heel in Classical mythology.

[nemesis8]

[Hatty]

The Cinderella story is a retelling of the myth of the moon goddess who is also the goddess of hunting (Diana, Artemis). It's interesting how strands of folklore pile up, for instance the emphasis on the slipper fitting the foot. People used to conceal shoes inside walls, over entrances and exits especially chimneys and hearth-places.

Wearing animal disguises is the oldest trick not in the book. Fooling around with feet was one of Hermes' tricks when he stole Apollo's cattle and walked backwards to avoid being followed.

Why was Baby Bunting going to be wrapped in a rabbit skin (and at what time of year?)?

[Mick Harper]

I'd like to hear. Meanwhile here's a typical piece of 'orthodoxy'

[nemesis8]

OK I am up for the AD, QI guess.... I reckon..umm...Bunting sounds like "bonnet" therefore I would say rabbit skinned cap, to keep a baby warm...as per the Inuit.....probably explains "bonne" good and lucky as well.... time of year...err.... very cold....winter....?

[Hatty]

It's not a test! A bunny bonnet is a lovely image though Baby Bunting seems to be about hunting or rather trapping. Perhaps hunters caught warrened rabbits and used them as decoys like ducks. (Dunting means 'bobbing up and down' in Northumbria where eider ducks, famous for their down, were farmed). Bobbing or ducking for apples is another time-honoured Halloween custom.

Bunt (origin unknown) is a) the middle part of a sail where it forms a pouch to maximise the effect of the wind and b) the middle part of a net that forms a sort of pouch where the fish catch is most concentrated.

The 'half a pumpkin' suggests a seasonal turning-point, the lady on her death-bed is perhaps the waning of the sun or the dying of the year. Pumpkins are round and golden, they make quite a good model for the earth. The Halloween lanterns may have a calendrical basis that then passed into folklore. Tony Lumpkin is a variation of Jack o' Lantern, a trickster character.

[Hatty]

Actually a rabbit cap is rather apt, there are some very striking carvings found across Europe as far as China and in England, mostly in churches in Devon, of three hares running in a circle joined by one of their ears. The hares all face the same direction so they form a continuous circle. No-one knows what the three hares mean but hares in folklore are associated with the moon (the Chinese 'hare in the moon', moon-mad etc.).

The Welsh have a patron saint of hares, St. Melangell (mil, i.e. a thousand, angels?). According to legend a hare that was being hunted by a prince took refuge under her cloak. She was praying inside a thicket of brambles and thorns, again a circle. Naturally she repulsed the advances of the prince-hunter, being totally chaste like all good moon goddesses.