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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| apparently in the sixteenth century the town was known for brick making and hat making, especially the manufacture of straw hats. |
I hadn't thought of that. They also famously torched their own Town Hall (after World War One)... with the Mayor inside... whilst playing Keep the Home Fires Burning on pianos looted from the music store.
'Ere. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica said:
| Luton is the principal seat in England of the straw-plait manufacture, and large quantities of hats and other straw goods have been exported, though in recent years the industry has suffered from increased foreign competition. The industry originated with the colony of straw-plaiters transplanted by James I from Scotland, whither they had been brought from Lorraine by Queen Mary. |
Maybe it's not all coincidental... Luton has a large Irish contingent (overshadowed by other immigrants these days)... If pubs can signal their allegiance in their choice of name, why not whole towns be known as Catholic enclaves...? If I really wanted to stretch it, I'd point out that Waulud's Bank is an ancient Celtic site and that the name Luton might come from the Celtic god Lugh ("loo").
Early spellings of Luton include Lintone, probably meaning the same as London, and the two are joined by the River Lea.
Catesby and others were supposed to have stayed at one of the inns on the Watling Street at Dunstable on their flight north, I think.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I think the Howards are the root of it all. They are always termed "Catholic" but on inspection they more often turn out to be whatever-it-takes. Now we mostly think of that as being outwardly conformist, but in the Howard case that would seem to be more a case of being outwardly-dissident. They never quite fit in ideologically but nevertheless seem to flourish mightily -- which would seem to include an insouciant attitude to being executed with great regularity. They control the coronations of British monarchs which, as I understand it, is considered to be of enormous significance to 'the Old Religion'.
We should always be on the lookout for informal networks that seem to obtain power with suspicious ease and the Vaux are specially prominent in the 'beerage'. These, a small collection of brewing families, were said to 'control' the British parliament right up until Lloyd George's time by opportunely supporting candidates in the Commons and buying peerages in the Lords with stupendous amounts of cash.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| We should always be on the lookout for informal networks that seem to obtain power with suspicious ease and the Vaux are specially prominent in the 'beerage'. |
Can't see any immediate Vaux family connection with 'beerage' but did wonder about the De Vere family, Earls of Oxford from the twelfth century
| The known origin of the family is quite clearly at Ver in the Cotentin, in Normandy and close to Brittany. (Many Flemish families were settled here, and the early adoption of their quartered coat, gules and or, hints at a de Vere connection with Boulogne.) Aubrey (or Alberic), the first of the family to settle in England, enjoyed high favour at the court of King William and by 1086, when the Domesday Book was completed, he held vast lands in the south |
Alberic is derived from Alberich, the name of the "sorcerer king of the elves in Germanic mythology" according to Behind The Name; his son was appointed Lord Great Chamberlain of England in 1133, a title which became hereditary, though the family fell out of favour from time to time, and lasted until 1626.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The founder of the Knights Templar is said to be one Godfroi de Vere de Bouillon
| In 1070 A.D., a group of monks from Calabria, the southernmost region of Italy, relocated to France to territory owned by one Godfroi de Vere de Bouillon, of the House of Vere, senior branch of the House of Anjou... The Calabrian monks, who called themselves the Ordre de Sion, were given a tract of land owned by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the founder of the Cistercian Order and author of the Rule of the Knights Templar |
A fascinating, but also unconvincing, snippet
| In The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, the authors reproduce the family crest of Clan Plantard, the contemporary representative of which was, until recently, the Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion, an Order which, according to [Henry] Lincoln, dominated the Order of the Knights Templar and various other highly influential institutions which, at certain periods of history, included the Vatican. The crest which supplies the key to the [Typhonian/ Draconian] Current represented by the Merovingian bloodline and the Order of Sion, comprises the symbols of the Typhonian line of descent: the two bears, eleven bees, and the fleur de lys |
For those who go in for conspiracy theories there's some colourful 'history' attached to De Veres
The Draconian Current refers to the demonic bloodline which is represented by the Dragon Order. The Dragon Court was constituted in 1408 for the express purpose of preserving the ancient Vere bloodline. Of this bloodline Godfroi de Bouillon was a member, according to "From Transylvania to Tunbridge Wells" on the Dagobert's Revenge website:
"The Dragon Court exists as an organization solely for the bloodline descendants of the ancient Vere family -- the senior bloodline successors as a Scythian-Merovin, Elven House of Princess Maelasanu -- and for those whose bloodlines are extracted from this descent and its ancient Dragon Court." |
According to what I read, the first de Vere (Aubrey or Alberic) was Breton, from a place called Vair.
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jamesg01
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Hello,
Not sure if this has been covered, but whilst living in Germany, the wife and I discovered a related practice which takes place on November 11 every year. It's called Lantern Fest and commemorates St. Martin's Day.
The celebration at our daughter's kindergarten consisted of a procession around the local city park with paper lanterns culminating in a very large bonfire on the school grounds.
It felt just like Bonfire Night except there were no effigies or fireworks. Although I seem to recall hearing a few that evening from other celebrations.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| jamesg01 wrote: | | Hello, Not sure if this has been covered, but whilst living in Germany, the wife and I discovered a related practice which takes place on November 11 every year. It's called Lantern Fest and commemorates St. Martin's Day. |
Interesting.
The Druid Festival of Samhain, Lord of the Dead, was a Dionysian feast associated with the time of year we now know as Halloween. St. Martin is the Christian equivalent of Dionysus. And most curious, the documentary evidence associated with Guy Fawkes tells us that Dionysus was the name of his adoptive father.
In a sense then, Guy Fawkes is a son of St. Martin and his death is commemorated in England in much the same way as is the life of his "father" in Germany.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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I'm wondering if there's a French connection with Dionysius (Dennis) and St. Martin - Saint Denis is the patron saint of Paris (and of France) and was martyred on Montmartre hill. Montmartre has a distinct Bohemian reputation, renowned for its artists, ladies of the night and drinking, all very Dionysian.
According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, St. Martin's feast day is 11 November, not so distant from our Guy Fawkes night.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But curiously, the annointing and crowning of French kings -- a desperately important matter to the Old Religion -- is shoved off to the obscure Rheims under the auspices of the equally obscure St Rhemi. What's that all about?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| But curiously, the annointing and crowning of French kings -- a desperately important matter to the Old Religion -- is shoved off to the obscure Rheims under the auspices of the equally obscure St Rhemi. |
That's a good point about the coronation of French kings at Rheims. According to wiki, Clovis (modern French Louis), King of the Franks, converted to Catholicism and was baptised by Rémi, bishop of Reims, so the tradition of the coronation ceremony at Reims was intended to commemorate the event and reinforce the divine right of kings. French kings continued to be crowned at Reims up till the Revolution.
Reims is the equivalent of the capital of Champagne, which encompasses the diocese of Troyes. The first king to be crowned at Rheims, Philippe II , in 1179, was half-brother of Marie, Countess (and Regent) of Champagne, who was involved in the Albigensian 'heresy', and a patron of literature, including Chrétien de Troyes, poet and trouvere (Marie was the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, grand-daughter of the earliest known troubadour, William IX of Aquitaine).
A year after the Cathar or Albigensian (named after the French town, Albi, in Languedoc) heresy in 1209 the cathedral of Reims burnt down and was rebuilt in 1211, in the Gothic style known at the time as the 'French style', which began with the abbey of Saint-Denis in Paris.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Rheims is also associated with the Merovingian dynasty, various Merovingian kings bearing the official title of King of Rheims (also called Austrasia).
[The Merovingian heraldric symbols of bears and bees remind me of Beowulf, the 'bee-hunter'; bee is a kenning (because of bears' love of honey) so bears and bees could be used as synonyms or interchangeable terms]
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Back a-ways, Ishmael wrote: If guise = wuise = wise then a disguise is actually a dis-wise. And that makes perfect sense. A dis-wise is something one dons to "fool" others, or to "dis-wise" others. |
It might also be to become un-wise, to enact The Fool, a la The Wicker Man (again). I'm sure there's a life's work in understanding the Fool in folk tales, Mummers plays and so on.
The Fool made King For A Day is one of the themes: a little luxury... I dare say that's what fool and trifle (cream, custard, fruit puddings) and follies are about. Folie means 'delight'.
('Course, if fool came from Latin follis "bellows, leather bag," in V.L. used with a sense of "windbag, empty-headed person", then we should wonder why the French fou doesn't have an L... whereas, we know that in English, L can be pronounced as a W/vowel.)
While we're on fool and L = W, notice that phooey is a gesture or dismissal or contempt "from Yiddish, from Ger. pfui".
And remembering that P = F: putz, "from Yiddish, from Ger. putz, lit. finery, adornment", takes us right back on the folly/trifle theme, while putz "Nativity display around a Christmas tree (1902), from Pennsylvania Dutch" leads directly back to Mummer/Guiser Plays!
Patsy: "fall guy, victim of a deception," of unknown origin, possibly an alteration of It. pazzo "madman" or south It. dial. paccio "fool".
Patch: "fool, clown," 1549, perhaps from It. pazzo "fool".
Dunno where that T/Z comes from {Perhaps something to do with the reason the French see fit to pronounce -out as the vowel represented by L, "oo"?}, but compare fatuous and
fewtrils: [Cf. fattrels.] Little things, trifles.
fattrels: [Fr. fatraille trumpery, things of no value.] Ribbon-ends; a loose, trailing piece of cloth etc.
Why is the expression "fall guy"? Fall = fool? Look at fallacy, deception... and fal-lal, a piece of finery or frippery. The emptiness expressed in follis "bellows, leather bag," may have as much to do with the transient, insubstantial luxury of the King For A Day as with an air-head.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Fool made King For A Day is one of the themes: a little luxury
Why is the expression "fall guy"? Fall = fool? |
There is a very obvious connection. One of the drawbacks about being The King is that you had to be sacrificed every year for fertility's sake (Golden Bough et al). Since The King was the most powerful member of society it soon dawned on him that steps ought to be taken...one such is to resign the kingship on the day-of-sacrifice and appoint somebody else as king, sacrifice the stand-in, thereby propitiating the gods without...um... rupturing the reins of governance.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | There is a very obvious connection. One of the drawbacks about being The King is that you had to be sacrificed every year for fertility's sake (Golden Bough et al). Since The King was the most powerful member of society it soon dawned on him that steps ought to be taken...one such is to resign the kingship on the day-of-sacrifice and appoint somebody else as king, sacrifice the stand-in, thereby propitiating the gods without...um... rupturing the reins of governance. |
Brilliant!
I've always wondered at the origin of these various "upside down days." You have now provided a perfectly reasonable and plausible explanation. Makes perfect sense: King doesn't want to die -- appoint the village idiot to be King for the day; Village idiot gets executed in the King's place.
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Martin
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sounds like the Wicker Man
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Wicker Man, fool, fall-guy, Guy Fawkes, sacrificial victim (scapegoat?)... all are relevant to the annual 5th November burning of the guy, thereby reaffirming the right of the 'real' king to continue for another year.
From about the fifth to the sixteenth century, there was a traditional celebration called the Feast of Fools in Europe, another upside-down reversal of the social order which was condemned by the Catholic Church needless to say.
The central idea seems always to have been a brief social revolution, in which power, dignity and impunity is briefly conferred on those in a subordinate position. In the view of some, this makes the medieval festival a successor to the Roman Saturnalia. (Wiki)
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