Another snippet from Marina Warner’s Phantasmagoria : Spirit Visions, Metaphors, And Media Into The Twenty-First Century (2006):

“After the death of his much loved daughter Léopoldine in a drowning accident, Victor Hugo became very involved in table-turning, planchette or Ouija board experiments, and other means of contacting spirits. Léopoldine frequently spoke to him. But he also began receiving copious messages from all kinds of visitors, including Dante, Galileo, and Voltaire, and even ‘the Ocean’, who held forth to the company in an astonishing outpouring of rhetorical bombast scattered with furious expletives. Some of the communications passed straight into print. As someone observed at the time, ‘Victor Hugo was channelling Victor Hugo’.”

Outa_Spaceman’s cardboard signage initiative continues. Last time I mentioned it was to celebrate seven signs in seven days. Now we are in February and the Bonkers Man o’ Bognor remains indefatigable. His latest is an interesting exercise in samizdat blog advertising, extolling the virtues of the Wartime Housewife, a sentiment which I wholeheartedly endorse.

NOTE : The title of this postage should not be thought to refer to the ridiculous M Night Shamalamawopbopdadoowop film of the same name –  though I am reminded that it contains antisemitic Roman Catholic drunkard Melvin Gibson’s finest screen moment. His family is terrified at the prospect that the appearance of crop circles could be a harbinger for the arrival of woefully unconvincing green scaly alien beings, so Mr Gibson says: “Everybody needs to calm down and eat some fruit or something”. This has become our watchword at Hooting Yard, so much more resonant than the blunt “Keep Calm And Carry On” recently revived by all and sundry.

“Happily, by the goodness of the allwise Disposer of events, the unfortunate can avail themselves of a thousand sources of comfort, which, by those in prosperous circumstances, are either overlooked or neglected. We were upon a barren rock, in the midst of a waste of waters, far from kindred and friends, and the abodes of civilized man; the ship which had been our home, and on board of which we had embarked with high hopes, lay within sight, a useless wreck; still we were enabled to enjoy a moment of relief, if not of actual pleasure, derived from an event, which, though trifling in itself, is worthy of being recorded.

“We succeeded in taking an eel, a few crabs, and a small quantity of snails. Having our fire-works with us, we collected a sufficient number of sticks, with a few pieces of drift-wood which had lodged upon the rock, to make a fire; with this we cooked our fish and snails; and, with a small allowance of bread, we made what we then thought a sumptuous repast!”

Horace Holden, A Narrative Of The Shipwreck, Captivity And Sufferings Of Horace Holden And Benj. H. Nute; Who Were Cast Away In The American Ship Mentor, On The Pelew Islands, In The Year 1832; And For Two Years Afterwards Were Subjected To Unheard Of Sufferings Among The Barbarous Inhabitants Of Lord North’s Island (1836)

Given that they were cast away on an island inhabited by barbarians, it is surprising that Benj. H. Nute and his pals were not able to eke out their eel, crabs, and snails with a goodly supply of rhubarb.

“It is dangerous to throw hair-combings away instead of burning them, because birds may weave them into their nests and while the nest remains the person to whom the hair belonged will have a continual headache.”

Lafcadio Hearn, “New Orleans Superstitions” Harper’s Weekly, 25 December 1886

“Gas was given its name after Greek ‘chaos’ by the Dutch chemist J B van Helmont in a book published in 1652. It passed into English towards the end of the century, and was then defined as ‘a Spirit that will not coagulate, or the Spirit of Life’.”

Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria : Spirit Visions, Metaphors, And Media Into The Twenty-First Century (2006)

Theriac was created by the Ancient Greeks and achieved a miraculous reputation as a universal panacea. It was believed to be effective against swellings, blemishes, fevers, poisons, heart problems, epilepsy, and palsy and it restored lost speech after a stroke.

“Venetian treacle” took forty days to make, twelve years to mature, and contained up to sixty-four ingredients including opium, myrrh, frankincense, saffron, gentian, liquorice, cinnamon, gum arabic, bitumen, and skinned and roasted vipers.

Information gleaned from the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garrett

One has to admire Mr and Mrs von Hohenheim, the parents of Paracelsus (1493-1541), for giving their tot the Christian names Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus. Two things worth remembering about Paracelsus are that he was the first person to call zinc zinc – actually he called it zincum – and that he kept a small avian devil imprisoned in the pommel of his sword. Samuel Butler noted this in Hudibras, where he wrote:

Bombastus kept a devil’s bird / Shut in the pommel of his sword, / That taught him all the cunning pranks / Of past and future mountebanks.

Courtesy of The Cat’s Meat Shop, some extremely detailed advice on grunting:

Take the baby hand in one of yours. Spread out the hand. Point to the thumb, and say decidedly, yet confidingly –

1. This little pig went to market.” (Grunt and let it be an ordinary pig’s grunt.)

Point to the next finger and say, in the deepest bass you can assume –

2. “This little pig stayed at home.” (Give a morose bass grunt and frown.)

Point to the next finger and say, with an insinuating tone and smile, elevating your eyebrows and bowing –

3. “This little pig had roast beef” (and add three quick little grunts of satisfaction.)

Point to the next finger and say, in a voice just ready to cry –

4. “This little pig had none.” (Give two low grunts of weariness, and look ready to cry.)

Then pointing to the little finger, say very pleasantly, in a shrill, droll voice, laughing meanwhile, “This little pig cried, ‘Tweak! tweak! tweak!'” pinching and twirling the child’s finger gently, as if you had hold of the pig’s tail.

This makes a complete harmless drama of the story of the pigs, and rouses baby’s feelings, sensations and ideas in a healthy manner. Five distinct emotions are raised: 1. Interest; 2. Fear; 3. Pleasure or sympathy; 4. Grief, almost to tears; 5. A sudden reversion to mirth, and “All’s well that ends well,” a great desideratum in baby estimation. We must remember too, that the feelings during babyhood are ephemeral in the extreme, light and evanescent….

“I am not just a person who goes around peeing on tombs, but a writer with a serious oeuvre.”

So says one Eduardo Labarca, quoted in today’s Grauniad. Proclaiming oneself to be the creator of “a serious oeuvre” is akin to the claim, invariably made by humourless persons, that “I’ve got a mad sense of humour, me”. Labarca also states “Peeing on that tomb was a legitimate artistic act.” Ah! How delightfully transgressive!

It briefly occurred to me to court notoriety and publicity by desecrating the grave of, say, Anthony Burgess, but then I realised that I am no longer a teenperson. Nor, for that matter, is the absurd Labarca.

“Benjamin Rackstrow, a most enterprising showman in Georgian London, staged ‘The Chair of Beatification’, which involved irradiating a willing member of the public with the kind of flaming amazement that Ariel conjured on the shipwreck: ‘a Glass Crown being placed on the Head of the Person who sits in the Chair, immediately becomes filled with Aetherial Fire; and likewise a Glass Sceptre, wherein is to be seen one continued stream of Electrical Fire, of a beautiful Purple Colour’.”

Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria : Spirit Visions, Metaphors, And Media Into The Twenty-First Century (2006)

Swiss sage Alain De Botton excels himself:

“Airlines and travel agencies should think more about the nature of their business. At one level they’re sending passengers around the world. At a deeper level they’re connecting people with their dreams and hopes. I would like to be offered a therapy service prior to booking a ticket, and have a chance to talk to a therapeutically trained agent about why I want to travel to a particular place.”

From an interview in Lufthansa in-flight magazine, quoted in Pseuds’ Corner, Private Eye No. 1280, 21 January – 3 February 2011

“It is not hard to imagine a ghost successfully. What is hard is to imagine successfully an object, any object, that does not look like a ghost.”

Elaine Scarry, Dreaming By The Book (1999)

ADDENDUM : More on this at Think Of England

“And they make moon and stars appear on the ceiling after this manner. In the central part of the ceiling, having fastened a mirror, placing a dish full of water equally (with the mirror) in the central portion of the floor, and setting in a central place likewise a candle, emitting a faint light from a higher position than the dish, in this way, by reflection, (the magician) causes the moon to appear by the mirror. But frequently, also, they suspend on high from the ceiling, at a distance, a drum, but which, being covered with some garment, is concealed by the accomplice, in order that (the heavenly body) may not appear before the (proper) time. And afterwards placing a candle (within the drum), when the magician gives the signal to the accomplice, he removes so much of the covering as may be sufficient for effecting an imitation representing the figure of the moon as it is at that particular time. He smears, however, the luminous parts of the drum with cinnabar and gum; and having pared around the neck and bottom of a flagon of glass ready behind, he puts a candle in it, and places around it some of the requisite contrivances for making the figures shine, which some one of the accomplices has concealed on high; and on receiving the signal, he throws down from above the contrivances, so to make the moon appear descending from the sky.

“And the same result is achieved by means of a jar in sylvan localities. For it is by means of a jar that the tricks in a house are performed. For having set up an altar, subsequently is (placed upon it) the jar, having a lighted lamp; when, however, there are a greater number of lamps, no such sight is displayed. After then the enchanter invokes the moon, he orders all the lights to be extinguished, yet that one be left faintly burning; and then the light, that which streams from the jar, is reflected on the ceiling, and furnishes to those present a representation of the moon; the mouth of the jar being kept covered for the time which it would seem to require, in order that the representation of full moon should be exhibited on the ceiling.

“But the scales of fishes for instance, the seahorse, cause the stars to appear to be; the scales being steeped in a mixture of water and gum, and fastened on the ceiling at intervals.”

Hippolytus (c170 – c236), Refutation Of All Heresies, Book IV

It is fortunate that your own dear Mr Key is such a level-headed fellow, or I might begin to suffer from delusions of L Ron Hubbarddom. Notwithstanding the enduring popularity of the hideous bat god Fatso, it seems that the Goat God Catechism has captured the imagination of the masses – or, if not quite the masses, then at least of two American podcasters.

First, the catechism was given a fine treatment by golden-voiced Norm Sherman at the Drabblecast. Now it has been picked up by one Walter O’Hara. Mr O’Hara’s podcast is called Airy Persiflage, and with a title like that we can assume he is a man of impeccable taste. Indeed, he has also essayed a reading of some twaddle I wrote about venomous serpents.

The striking thing about this new version of the Goat God Catechism is Mr O’Hara’s inspired decision to have a child read the responses. The child in question is “young Gar”, who lends a splendid piquancy to the piece. I wonder if young Gar hails from the awful, spooky land of Gaar, that place of nightmares and ill-advised picnics?

Over at The Dabbler, Gaw has been taking a stroll through the “tended decadence” of Abney Park Cemetery, prompting Nige to recall a fine gravestone epitaph in his local churchyard. Which in turn prompts me to recall one of my own favourite epitaphs, that of the quack doctor Lionel Lockyer (1600-1672), whose miracle pills included sunbeams among their ingredients, in Southwark Cathedral:

Here Lockyer; lies interr’d enough; his name

Speakes one hath few competitors in fame;

A name soe Great, soe Generall’t may scorne

Inscriptions whch doe vulgar tombs adorne.

A diminution ’tis to write in verse

His eulogies whch most mens mouths rehearse.

His virtues and his PILLS are soe well known..

That envy can’t confine them vnder stone.

But they’ll survive his dust and not expire

Till all things else at th’universall fire.

This verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe

To future times without an Epitaph

Photo courtesy of Nick Garrod