The stag sprung up from his mossy bed
      When he caught the piercing sounds,
And the oak-boughs crash’d to his antler’d head
      As he flew from the viewless hounds;
And the falcon soar’d from her craggy height,
      Away through the rushing night !

The banner shook on its ancient hold,
      And the pine in its desert-place,
As the cloud and tempest onward roll’d
      With the din of the trampling race;
And the glens were fill’d with the laugh and shout,
      And the bugle, ringing out !

From the chieftain’s hand the wine-cup fell,
      At the castle’s festive board,
And a sudden pause came o’er the swell
      Of the harp’s triumphal chord;
And the Minnesinger’s thrilling lay
      In the hall died fast away.

The convent’s chanted rite was stay’d,
      And the hermit dropp’d his beads,
And a trembling ran through the forest-shade,
      At the neigh of the phantom steeds,
And the church-bells peal’d to the rocking blast
      As the Wild Night-Huntsman pass’d.

The storm hath swept with the chase away,
      There is stillness in the sky,
But the mother looks on her son to-day,
      With a troubled heart and eye,
And the maiden’s brow hath a shade of care
      Midst the gleam of her golden hair !

The Rhine flows bright, but its waves ere long
      Must hear a voice of war,
And a clash of spears our hills among,
      And a trumpet from afar;
And the brave on a bloody turf must lie,
      For the Huntsman hath gone by !

Felicia Hemans : The Wild Huntsman
 
 
It is a popular belief in the Odenwald, that the passing of the Wild Huntsman announces the approach of war. He is supposed to issue with his train from the ruined castle of Rodenstein, and traverse the air to the opposite castle of Schnellerts. It is confidently asserted that the sound of his phantom horses and hounds was heard by the Duke of Baden before the commencement of the last war in Germany.
 
 
 
 

However, two of the cast, Mr. Don Estelle the singer, and Mr. Windsor Davies who played a Welsh Sergeant, collaborated on this rendition of Whispering Grass.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Of the right dressing of trees

William Lawson — A New Orchard And Garden : Or, The best way for planting, grafting, and to make any ground good, for a Rich Orchard: Particularly in the North and generally for the whole kingdome of England, as in nature, reason, situation, and all probabilitie, may and doth appeare. 1631

A. Al these squares must bee set with trees, the Gardens and other ornaments must stand in spaces betwixt the trees, & in the borders & fences.

B. Trees 20. yards asunder.

C. Garden Knots.

D. Kitchen garden.

E. Bridge.

F. Conduit.

G. Staires.

H. Walkes set with great wood thicke.

I. Walkes set with great wood round about your Orchard.

K. The out fence.

L. The out fence set with stone-fruite.

M. Mount. To force earth for a mount, or such like set it round with quicke, and lay boughes of trees strangely intermingled tops inward, with the earth in the midle.

N. Still-house.

O. Good standing for Bees, if you haue an house.

P. If the riuer run by your doore, & vnder your mount, it will be pleasant.

“You shock me sometimes, Jean,” he said, a statement which amused her.

“You’re such a half‑and half man,” she said with a note of contempt in her voice. “You were quite willing to benefit by Jim Meredith’s death; you killed him as cold‑bloodedly as you killed poor little Bulford, and yet you must whine and snivel whenever your deeds are put into plain language. What does it matter if Lydia dies now or in fifty years, time ?” she asked. “It would be different if she were immortal. You people attach so much importance to human life — the ancients, and the Japanese amongst the modern, are the only people who have the matter in true perspective. It is no more cruel to kill a human being than it is to cut the throat of a pig to provide you with bacon. There’s hardly a dish at your table which doesn’t represent wilful murder, and yet you never think of it, but because the man animal can talk and dresses himself or herself in queer animal and vegetable fabrics, and decorates the body with bits of metal and pieces of glittering quartz, you give its life a value which you deny to the cattle within your gates ! Killing is a matter of expediency. Permissable if you call it war, terrible if you call it murder. To me it is just killing. If you are caught in the act of killing they kill you, and people say it is right to do so. The sacredness of human life is a slogan invented by cowards who fear death — as you do.”

Edgar Wallace : The Angel of Terror [1922]

        The concept of the balancing of powers ( proposed by Montesquieu ) has always appeared to me only as a conceptual error of the English constitution, impractical in its application, because the concept of such a balancing is rooted in the assumption of an eternal struggle, instead of in that of peace, the first necessity for the life and prosperity of states.
        The care for the inner life of states has always had for me the worth of the most important task for governments.
        As the foundations for politics I recognise the concepts of right and equity and not the sole calculations of use, whilst I look upon capricious politics as an ever self-punitive confusion of the spirit.

        My conduct is a prosaic and not a poetical one. I am a man of right, and reject in all things appearance where it divides as such from truth, thereupon deprived as the foundation of right, where it must inevitably dissolve into error.

        For me the word “freedom” has not the value of a starting-point, but rather that of an actual point of arrival. The word “order” denotes the starting-point. Only on the concept of order can that of freedom rest. Without the foundation of order, the call for freedom is nothing more than the striving of some party after an envisaged end. In its actual use, the call inevitably expresses itself as tyranny. Whilst I have at all times and in all situations ever been a man of order, my striving was addressed to true and not deceptive freedom. In my eyes, tyranny of any kind has only the value of absolute nonsense. As a means to an end, I mark it as the most vapid that time and circumstance is able to place at the disposal of rulers.
        The concept of order in view of legislation — the foundation of order — is, in consequence of the conditions under which states live, capable of the most varied application. Considered as constitution, it will prove itself best for any state that answers to the demands of both the material conditions and those moral conditions peculiar to the national character. There is no universal recipe for constitutions, just as little as there is some universal means for the boosting of health.

        I did not govern the empire. Therein the powers at every level were not just strictly administered and directed to their competences, but rather in this regard were even relinquished to trepidation, which brought hesitancy to the course of affairs. The principle of government of the Emperor Francis was set forth in the motto “Justitia regnorum fundamentum”, not only as it lay in his spirit and character, but also as it served him as strict guide in all governmental affairs. He agreed with my observation that the axiom, correct in its point of origin, could be abrogated in the excessive practice of particular cases, but he usually added: “I was born and through my status appointed for the execution of justice; the inevitable hardness in particular cases is better than the slackening of rule through too many exceptions.” My motto is “Strength in Right”. Both sayings run together in meaning, except that the imperial motto has an abstractly judicial significance, whereas mine has a significance more grounded in state law. In this regard, the motto “Recta tueri”, suggested by me to Emperor Ferdinand upon his most supreme accession, bids a further nuance.

Excerpts from The Political Testament of Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar, Fürst von Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein, as translated by Deoholwulf, Keeper of The Joy of Curmudgeonry

Full text here.

 
And on your left you passed the spot
Where eight days later you were to lie,
And be spoken of as one who was not;
Beholding it with a heedless eye
As alien from you, though under its tree
You soon would halt everlastingly.

 
I drove not with you. . . . Yet had I sat
At your side that eve I should not have seen
That the countenance I was glancing at
Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,
Nor have read the writing upon your face,
“I go hence soon to my resting-place;

 
“You may miss me then. But I shall not know
How many times you visit me there,
Or what your thoughts are, or if you go
There never at all. And I shall not care.
Should you censure me I shall take no heed
And even your praises no more shall need.”

 
True: never you’ll know. And you will not mind.
But shall I then slight you because of such ?
Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find
The thought “What profit”, move me much ?
Yet abides the fact, indeed, the same, —
You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.
 
Thomas Hardy : Your Last Drive

Cunning Murrell was perhaps the greatest local conjurer or wiseman of the 19th century. Born in Rochford, Essex in 1780, James Murrell, the seventh son of a seventh son, he died — having predicted the moment of passing — in 1860, having passed most of his life in Hadleigh, Essex. Consulted by thousands, some from as far as London, which was further afield than now to our ancestors, he was memorialised by Arthur Morrison, the once famous writer of short stories around the ’90s, and could counter baneful witchcraft in many of it’s attacks, including in the case of Sarah Mott one so afflicted that she ran upsidedown upon ceilings ‘like a bluebottle‘.
 
Apart from his astronomical learning — he could point to a star and name her — and rough medical practise with both humans and other animals, he had a meagre education and lived in a tiny cottage, and his success was obviously more due, after his fairly unique psychic gifts, to force of will.

A cunningman has no connection with witchcraft in it’s myriad forms; some witchcraft can be good and much of it is bad and barren, but wisemen and wisewomen utilized their powers to shield the unwary from the terrors it inflicted upon the minds of the guileless.

[See post to watch Flash video]

One gets soon bored with people arguing that milk and poultry farming pose no harm to animals; as a vegan I’ve neither objection to straight vegetarianism nor any wish to convert people to the straiter gate: but, whilst I once made the finest omelettes imaginable, I do so no more.

From Mercy for Animals comes this video, Tiniest Victims, which was further reproduced on Google-Youtube.

Thrown, dropped, mutilated, and ground-up alive. This is the shocking reality faced by hundreds of thousands of chicks each day at the world’s largest egg-laying breed hatchery – Hy-Line International in Spencer, Iowa.

New hidden camera footage obtained at this facility during a Mercy For Animals undercover investigation gives a disturbing glimpse into the cruel and industrialized reality of modern hatcheries.

The warm, comforting, and protective wings of these newly hatched chicks’ mothers have been replaced with massive machines, quickly moving conveyor belts, harsh handling, and distressing noise. These young animals are sorted, discarded, and handled like mere cogs in a machine.

For the nearly 150,000 male chicks who hatch every 24 hours at this Hy-Line facility, their lives begin and end the same day. Grabbed by their fragile wings by workers known as “sexers,” who separate males from females, these young animals are callously thrown into chutes and hauled away to their deaths. They are destined to die on day one because they cannot produce eggs and do not grow large or fast enough to be raised profitably for meat. Their lives are cut short when they are dropped into a grinding machine – tossed around by a spinning auger before being torn to pieces by a high-pressure macerator.

Over 30 million male chicks meet their fate this way each year at this facility.

For the surviving females, this is the beginning of a life of cruelty and confinement at the hands of the egg industry. Before even leaving the hatchery they will be snapped by their heads into a spinning debeaker – a portion of their sensitive beaks removed by a laser. Workers toss and rummage through them before they are placed 100 per crowded box and shipped across the country.

I fell on deeper trance. I was
         Where all the dead are hid.
They dreamed. They did not sleep, because
         They saw with lifted lid.
They worked with neither word nor pause:
         I knew not what they did.

I stood there with the dead in hell
         Dreaming, and heard no moan.
The light died, and the darkness fell
         About me like a stone.
I woke upon the midnight bell
         In God’s dream here alone.

Charles Weekes : Dreams

In the dying days of the Bushie Reich, the old buster omitted either to spend half of the income on covering the USA with concrete, presumably feeling this was redundant, or more pertinently, to shoot his fool head off — then again he never had a traditionalist bone in his body — but did find time to take West Virginian Flying Squirrels off the Endangered Species List.

We can only hope that Obama, despite coming not to destroy the Bush Law or the Neocon Prophets, but to fulfil, will rectify both the plight of the squirrels and the leaving of the White House in the approved manner. If only he could be persuaded to regard them as furry little bankers, wisely hoarding their nuts for the benefit of all… bankers.

However, disreputable little shysters are not really this post’s remit; but rather to mention that I have lived my entire life without knowing that Sugar Gliders existed — then again, on mentioning this to some New Zealanders, neither had they; despite the Gliders’ habitat being down under.

These noble little creatures are very similar to their cousins, Flying Squirrels, other than being marsupial. I came across them by accident whilst looking up Geothermal and finding this charming page of pets. Neither look very like regular squirrels, who both Red and Grey are adorable enough.

This slightly compensated for finding out in the search for Geothermal Installations that American business, true to that old Yankee shrewdness of yore, when they spent great time and effort in creating wooden nutmegs for sale to others, when it would have probably have been just easier to grow the damn nutmegs, have once again managed their time-honoured tradition of bait n’ switch by producing a different — not necessarily inferior, but usually so — technology and calling it by the same name the rest of the world applies to the original. When we think of geothermal installs the futuristic example of Iceland is to the fore ( admittedly this is helped by certain geological features, but it’s not as if the Western USA is stranger to earthquake, ex-volcanoes or geysers [ an Icelandic word ] ), yet according to a post on TerraPass…

True geothermal energy which is used as a prime energy source uses an underground heat source, such as hot water/geysers often heat by volcanic activity. This is what is common in Iceland. The heat may be used to heat a building or converted into electricity for other uses.

Ground-source heat pumps uses the earth as a semi-infinite heat exchanger/heat sink in order the greatly increase the efficiency of a refrigeration system, but still required outside energy input. This should not be considered ‘renewable energy’ – this would be akin to calling the atmosphere an energy source for a traditional refrigeration system. Unfortunately, in North America this system is also frequently referred to as ‘geothermal’.

This type of confusion has helped bring Google searches to the value they now possess…