Here in the USA, Christmas still seems like Christmas did in the UK (and then some!) Easter doesn't feel the same as it did in the UK.
In England, especially during my quarter century in the civil service, we'd look forward to a welcome Easter break when our office ran on skeleton staff from mid-day on Maundy Thursday to Good Friday around 4pm - then office closed until the Tuesday after Easter Monday - even on Tuesday we'd have a quiet day, because in Leeds most solicitors' offices were traditionally closed on Easter Tuesday. So, not much going on for us in an office connected to legal matters: employment tribunals.
In my younger days, Easter at home meant lots of hot cross buns and simnel cake. My Dad baked both for his small bakery and shop; people formed a line outside to get some of 'em! Dad baked wonderful stuff - a truly talented perfectionist in the bakery he was, bless him.
In the USA, at least in Oklahoma, Easter Monday doesn't seem to exist; Good Friday isn't much different from most other Fridays, apart from extra church services being held. Hot cross buns and simnel cake are not easy to find. I don't like American chocolate, so my old annual treat of a yummy Easter egg has disappeared. But still - it is Easter weekend so...
Easter, and the run up to it, brings to mind a rhyme I used to repeat, long ago and far way near the north-eastern coast of England: Tid, Mid, Miserai (or Misere)
Carlin, Palm, and Paste egg day.
Reciting it as a child, gobbledegook-wise, I didn't care what it meant, I just wanted to get at those chocolate Easter eggs! I later grasped that it had something to do with the Sundays of Lent, and customs attached.
Carlin(g)s are black peas, eaten on Passion Sunday, On Palm Sunday sometimes dried palm leaves were handed to members of church congregations, and Paste eggs (possibly a corruption of Pasch) eggs were what all the kids eagerly anticipated.
As for the mysterious first line of the rhyme, there are two explanations:
'Tid' was the second Sunday in Lent when, it seems, the Te Deum was sung/chanted in church; Mid could refer to a hymn 'Mi Deus', sung on the third Sunday of Lent; Miserai/misere might be the psalm 'Miserere Mei', sung on the fourth. But there's also a very slight possibility, because the purpose of the rhyme was to count Sundays before Easter, that Tid, Mid was a variation of an ancient Celtic-based method/language once used in the north of England for counting sheep. Exact spelling varies with dialects of northern England, but one, two three, four, five = yan, tan, tithera, mithera, pip. Could 'tithera', 'mithera' equal 'tid' 'mid'? I'm not confident about this, it doesn't really fit snugly. Interesting though. It has been noted that even in parts of the United States the old sheep-counting method is not not unknown, possibly brought across the Atlantic by early immigrants.
The full ancient sheep-counting method went like this, with spelling variations.
(My grandmother and neighbours of her generation always pronounced "one" as "yan", by the way.)
Yan
Tan
Tethera
Methera
Pim
Lethera
Severa
Hovera
Dovera
Dik
Yan-a-dik
Tan-a-dik
Tethera-a-dik
Methera-a-dik
Bumfit
Yan-a-bumfit
Tan-a-bumfit
Tethera-a-bumfit
Methera-a-bumfit
Giggot
The sheep were counted up to twenty, the shepherd then closed one finger and repeated the count until all his fingers of one hand were down = a hundred sheep. Next he would close a finger on his other hand and begin anew. So up to 500 sheep could be counted using this method.
Regarding the mysterious custom of eating black carlin peas during Lent: there's no religious significance, but the tradition is said to be linked to the civil war of 1644. Royalist Newcastle in the north-east of England was under siege from the Scots. People were dying of starvation. The story goes that, either a French ship docked in Newcastle with a cargo of Maple Peas which were distributed to the people out of charity; or that a French ship was wrecked off the coast near Newcastle and containers of peas were washed ashore, much to the relief of starving inhabitants. Either way, a custom was born! Carlin peas are soaked overnight in water, boiled well then fried in butter and served with vinegar and bread and butter. My East Yorkshire grandmother used to prepare carlins that way, each year around Easter time.
Here's the late and much lamented Jake Thackray with one of his self-penned ditties, very appropriate to this post.
When I first posted on this old counting method, 4 years ago, some comments received added more interesting tid-bits:
David: "Hickory, dickory dock the mouse ran up the clock" is from the same counting scheme
Twilight: Hi! I didn't know that - but now you've mentioned, of course! The rhythm is the same and..."hovera dovera dik" - Wikipedia: Westmorland shepherds in the nineteenth century used the numbers Hevera, Devera and Dick.
JD : Still used by shepherds in Cumbria (it was on the BBC's 'Country File' not so long ago). Base 20 counting system goes way back to the Babylonians, I think, and was used by the Maya.
Twilight: I suppose 5, 10 or 20 counting methods were an inevitable consequence of humans finding themselves with 5 fingers on each hand - and 5 toes on each foot. :-)
Twilight: Hmm - I'd never heard of that one - clever stuff!
Looking for generally related information on finger counting, I came across the fact that, well into the Middle Ages, the Greeks and Romans seem to have used fingers for computations. The Homeric term for counting = "pempathai", which means to count by fives. It's interesting that in the sheep-counting language in my post the word for five is "pim", so it could possibly be a left-over derivation from words used by the occupying Roman legions back in the mists of time?
Yan
Tan
Tethera
Methera
Pim
Day before Good Friday in the Christian calendar is Maundy Thursday. This day in the UK is marked by a tradition of the Monarch distributing Maundy Money (see Wikipedia)
For us in government offices, Maundy Thursday meant the start of a lovely extra-long weekend off work. Most had a half day off on Thursday, then on Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon offices remained completely closed. In our legal-based office, even the following Tuesday was quiet, because in the city where I worked local lawyers, or some of them, following a peculiar local tradition, took Tuesday as holiday too. Easter was the longest and best best Bank Holiday of the year. Nowadays, in retirement, all days are much the same.
Easter. One doesn't have to be a devout Christian to appreciate the reality of resurrection and re-birth happening all around.
“In the oddity or maybe the miracle of life, the roots of something new frequently lie in the decaying husks of something old.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough
“It’s hard to walk briskly at this time of year; the accelerating pace of unfolding spring slows my own. I repeatedly stop- to watch what’s moving. Soon the torrent of migrants will completely overwhelm my ability to keep up with all the changes. But it’s easy to revel in the exuberance and the sense of rebirth, renewal.” ― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World.
“There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?” ― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale.
“If anyone or anything tries to curse or kill the Goodness at the Center of all things, it will just keep coming back to life. Forever Easter.” ― David Housholder, The Blackberry Bush.
Best to be topical! Thinking of Easter and the run up to it, into my head popped a rhyme I used to repeat, long ago and far way near the north-eastern coast of England: Tid, Mid, Miserai (or Misere)
Carlin, Palm, and Paste egg day.
Reciting it as a child, gobbledegook-wise, I didn't care what it meant, I just wanted to get at those chocolate Easter eggs! I later grasped that it had something to do with the Sundays of Lent, and customs attached.
Carlin(g)s are black peas, eaten on Passion Sunday, On Palm Sunday sometimes dried palm leaves were handed to members of church congregations, and Paste eggs (possibly a corruption of Pasch) eggs were what all the kids eagerly anticipated.
As for the mysterious first line of the rhyme, there are two explanations:
'Tid' was the second Sunday in Lent, when, it seems, the Te Deum was sung/chanted in church; Mid could refer to a hymn 'Mi Deus', sung on the third Sunday of Lent; Miserai/misere might be the psalm 'Miserere Mei', sung on the fourth. But there's also a very slight possibility, because the purpose of the rhyme was to count Sundays before Easter, that Tid, Mid was a variation of an ancient Celtic-based method/ language once used in the north of England for counting sheep. Exact spelling varies with dialects of northern England, but one, two three, four, five = yan, tan, tithera, mithera, pip. Tithera, mithera could equal tid mid? I'm not confident about this, it doesn't really fit snugly. Interesting though. It has been noted that even in parts of the US the old sheep-counting method is not not unknown, possibly brought across the Atlantic by early immigrants.
The full ancient sheep-counting method went like this, with spelling variations.
(My grandmother and neighbours of her generation always pronounced "one" as "yan", by the way.)
Yan
Tan
Tethera
Methera
Pim
Lethera
Severa
Hovera
Dovera
Dik
Yan-a-dik
Tan-a-dik
Tethera-a-dik
Methera-a-dik
Bumfit
Yan-a-bumfit
Tan-a-bumfit
Tethera-a-bumfit
Methera-a-bumfit
Giggot
The sheep were counted up to twenty, the shepherd then closed one finger and repeated the count until all his fingers of one hand were down = a hundred sheep. Next he would close a finger on his other hand and begin anew. So up to 500 sheep could be counted using this method.
Regarding the mysterious custom of eating black carlin peas during Lent: there's no religious significance, but the tradition is said to be linked to the civil war of 1644. Royalist Newcastle in the north-east of England was under siege from the Scots. People were dying of starvation. The story goes that, either a French ship docked in Newcastle with a cargo of Maple Peas which were distributed to the people out of charity; or that a French ship was wrecked off the coast near Newcastle and containers of peas were washed ashore, much to the relief of starving inhabitants. Either way, a custom was born! Carlin peas are soaked overnight in water, boiled well then fried in butter and served with vinegar and bread and butter. My East Yorkshire grandmother used to prepare carlins that way, each year around Easter time.
Three views of Good Friday, from William Wyler via Lew Wallace; from English author G.K. Chesterton, sometimes called "the prince of paradox"; and from English painter L.S.Lowry.
Lew Wallace's novelBen Hur, A Tale of the Christ (1880) was to become William Wyler's movie Ben Hur almost 80 years later, in 1959. The movie adaptation strayed from the novel in a few places, it was less "A Tale of the Christ" than "A Tale of the Adventures of Judah Ben Hur" - and, really, none the worse for that. In the movie the scene where Judah Ben Hur first encounters Jesus occurs when Ben Hur was being taken, with a band of other slaves, across the desert. He was desperately in need of water, cruel Roman guards cynically refused it to him. In a village the slaves pass by an onlooker, Jesus, who sees Ben Hur's distress and offers him some water. This scene links to another, later in the movie, when BenHur encounters Jesus and the two thieves hauling their crosses to the place where they are to be crucified. Jesus stumbles and falls, a bystander helps him and BenHur offers him a cup of water....reflecting a reversal of the earlier scene. The crucifixion scene follows later.
In G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man (1925) the author had this to say about the events of the original Good Friday:
All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.
In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask:
‘What is truth?’ So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands for ever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgement-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world.
Lastly a northern English painter, L.S. Lowry, in 1946 painted a very different Good Friday scene: Good Friday, Daisy Nook. On 8th June 2007 it was sold for £3,772,000, the highest price paid for one of Lowry's paintings at auction.
Daisy Nook, near Oldham, in Lancashire, has hosted an annual Easter Fair since the 19th century - and possibly even earlier. Traditionally, Lancashire cotton mill workers of the region were confined to just two statutory days of holiday every year, Good Friday and Christmas Day. The fair attracted huge numbers of people. The painting depicts this annual fair in 1946, the year after the end of the hostilities of the Second World War. A local newspaper had reported at the time that there were "Record crowds at Daisy Nook", as people celebrated a return to the fair, which had not taken place for the duration of the war, and a return to normal life. The painting reflects post-war cheer and relief.
(See HERE)
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).
The silver trumpets rang across the Dome: The people knelt upon the ground with awe: And borne upon the necks of men I saw, Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome. Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: In splendour and in light the Pope passed home. My heart stole back across wide wastes of years To One who wandered by a lonely sea, And sought in vain for any place of rest: 'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest. I, only I, must wander wearily, And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.'
An astrologer's comments on Oscar Wilde's natal chart at Astrology Mundo.
