Who was Ossian Macpherson?

October 30, 2018December 31, 2018 Daniel Kelly7 Comments

When a certain flavour of fundamentalist Christian has a public and pious rant about the satanic evils of Halloween, I cannot help but feel sympathy and sadness. It isn’t fair to blame people for their ignorance, and in most cases a logical argument about the historical evolution of this and other festivals won’t do much to broaden their view. Having grown up under this ideology, I would have made the same public rants at fifteen.

The key sadness is that this is exactly the type of xenophobia and intolerance of mind which eventually escalates into crusades, racism and killings like the tragic incident in Pittsburgh this week.

Why is this worth blogging about? Well, during the course of a short social media discussion, in an effort to show that Halloween wasn’t ‘just something we imported from America in the last few years’ I found this fabulous poem published in the Hamilton Spectator on 12 November 1864, under the name Ossian Macpherson. Here is the full text of the poem:

AN AUSTRALIAN HALLOWEEN

By Ossian Macpherson.

Bright years, sad years are numbered with the past,
Since, Scotland, I beheld thy green hills last;
My hair is growing grey in manhood's prime,
With painful re-collections, not with time.
But here, once more, if not on Scottish land,
I see around a happy Scottish band.
With hills and dales, till fancy —not in vain.
Has led me back to Scotland's hills again.

Wootong,— I sought upon thy peaceful crest,
For this worn frame, a shelter and a rest.
From many a outstretched hand the welcome kind,
For ever in this heart will be enshrined;
And can I e'er forget, where'er I roam,
Whatever my lot may be, where'er my home,
The hours I passed amid the happy scene;
The mirthful crowd I joined at Halloween.

Tis not for me, too humble is my verse,
The varied fairy mysteries to rehearse;
The varied trials spread before my view,
Each one to seek if some one else was true.
But when I saw the bonny lassies there,
Each for the apple ducking wait her share,
Such laughing faces, rarely to be seen,
Hech! how it thrilled my heart! at Wootong Halloween.

'Tis not for me, else may be I might sing.
Who made the batter, and who found the ring ;
Who found the apples, and whose nuts were cracked,
Who might have stole to where the hay was stacked.
All these and more, perhaps I might unfold.
But they by Scotia's bard have all been told;
Enough for me — the hours were bright and green,
I passed that night at Wootong Halloween.

The poet tried his nuts, with anxious gaze,
And picturing one form amid the blaze;
Perhaps he thought the emblem might be true,
Alas, — his nuts were cracked ere half burnt through.
And when blindfold, before each fairy plate.
He wished— his fond desire— for gentle mate,
His hand thrice grasped the platter that was clean!
No wife for him at Wootong Halloween.

Bard of all coming time, immortal Burns,
When with each coming year that night returns;
That night that thro' all Scotland far and wide,
The midnight fairies still are wont to glide, —
With what bright fire thy spirit would have glowed,
What strains of rapture would have from thee flowed,
Couldst thous have dreamt there ever would have been
Another Scotland here and Halloween.

Thou didst not dream, when burst to life thy strains.
Never to die while Scottish life remains,
That in this land to white men then unknown,
Peopled by hideous barbarism alone,
Thou didst not reck there e'er would come the day
That, distant o'er tie ocean far away.
There, on a lovely hill top, would be seen.
The glorious revelry of Halloween.

Oh! that thy spirit would upon me rest,
And for one lonely moment till my breast;
'Twould be ere from this friendly root I part,
To speak the thanks, warm from the poet's heart
Wootong, farewell! I yet may see the day,
When back my happier footsteps yet may stray,
And treasured up in memory, I ween
'Twill be again to join in Halloween.

Konongwootong, Nov. 1, 1864.

I made a recording of this poem set to my own tune here.

So many questions arise from this find! Who was Ossian Macpherson? What was he doing in a tiny town in the middle of Victoria in 1864? Was there really a Halloween celebration or is this imaginative reverie?

To the first question, Ossian Macpherson, is almost certainly a pseudonym. James Macpherson (1736-1796) was a relatively famous Scottish writer, poet and politician who claimed to have discovered and translated a set of ancient epic poems by the (mythical?) bard Ossian. James was instrumental in the highland clearings and the veracity of his work on the Ossian poems is questioned by scholars. ‘Ossian Macpherson’ would have been a fitting pen name for any aspiring Scottish poet travelling in Australia in the 1860s.

To the second question, we first need to answer “where in the world is Konongwootong?”. I initially assumed this would have been a mining town named by Chinese immigrant miners, but it is a native phrase describing a creek in grassy land. Konongwootong is a place of sadness as the Whyte brothers who owned the pastoral run killed between 55 and 60 men, women and children of the Konongwootong gunditj clan there in April 1840 after they had taken 40 sheep. There is a memorial here. So it is likely that ‘Ossian Macpherson’ was either visiting or working in the Konongwootong on the pastoral property.

A search on Trove shows that the latest poem, A Modest Minister, published in the Hamilton Spectator, March 1874 was a biting piece of political satire directed at a local Minister (political or church?), whose name probably rhymed with Cozey, regarding the way in which he acquired his land. This shows our author remained in the area for at least another ten years and was not afraid to ruffle feathers.

A John A. Macpherson was running for the seat of Dundas in the 1871 election and appears in several Trove articles relating to property issues in the region, his fellow candidates were James Gardner and David Gaunson, possibly one of them was ‘Cozey’.

The first poem that appears by Ossian Macpherson was published on 23 December 1857 in the Kyneton Observer:

THOUGHTS ON SIGHTING BALLARAT.

Slaking my thirst beside this cooling rill,
Uncertain what my future lot may be ;
Driven about, the sport of fortune's will
Footsore, I've wandered Ballarat to thee.
My breast is fill'd with many an anxious thought.
A stranger—in this giant infant land;
A wanderer—in these fields with riches fraught
Seeking a crust amid a varied band.
Shall I succeed?

Oh! do not droop, my heart,
Tho'all looks dark—yet fate is sometimes kind;
Do not sink now—all wearied as thou art,
For little mayst thou reck what lurks behind -
Yon sun now hid behind the blacken'd cloud,
Methinks ev'n now its voice is speaking loud,
And bids me yet a little longer wait.

For I have traversed many a spot on earth,
And climb'd full many a dreary hill in life ;
Thought that my star was darken'd at my birth,
Foreboding nought but endless care and strife
But hope is strong—and though the past has been
A chain of trials, I would fain forget;
That star would yet shine brightly and serene
And I will not despair—not yet—not yet.

OSSIAN MACPHERSON,

Ballarat.

So this John Alexander MacPherson, who arrived in Ballarat around 1857 seems to be a very strong candidate for Ossian Macpherson. John was born in 1833, so would have been just 24 when writing his first poem. Strangely, the Wikipedia page for John makes no mention of his likely ventures as a brilliant poet. John ended up being the Premier of Victoria for just over a year, Sep 1869-April 1870 and died in England at the age of 60 in 1894.

There are around 90 other poems penned by ‘Ossian Macpherson’, many of which look like they have never been published outside the newpaper they appeared in.

Happy Samhain/Halloween to all, I suspect there will be more to this story!

UPDATE: Since writing this post, you will see in the comments that I have been contacted by a relative of Ossian Macpherson. It looks like the John Alexander link was not to be. I have started publishing the poems of Ossian Macpherson (now under the right name) on AllPoetry.com, you can read all the poems here.

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music · Lyrics and Chords · Poetry · Spirituality and Philosophy

The Stolen Rhyme

February 9, 2018 Daniel Kelly4 Comments

I have always loved the haunting ethereal beauty of Loreena McKennitt’s setting of William Butler Yeat’s poem, The Stolen Child, to music. I tried to practice singing the song before doing this recording for my YouTube channel, but even after 4-5 days I just couldn’t get the verses to flow.

This fired my curiosity, and so I looked a little deeper into the structure of the poem. For reference, here is the complete poem:

The Stolen Child – W.B. Yeats, 1886

    Where dips the rocky highland
    Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
    There lies a leafy island
    Where flapping herons wake
    The drowsy water rats;
    There we’ve hid our faery vats,
    Full of berry
    And of reddest stolen cherries.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand.
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

   Where the wave of moonlight glosses
    The dim grey sands with light,
    Far off by furthest Rosses
    We foot it all the night,
    Weaving olden dances
    Mingling hands and mingling glances
    Till the moon has taken flight;
    To and fro we leap
    And chase the frothy bubbles,
    While the world is full of troubles
    And is anxious in its sleep.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

   Where the wandering water gushes
    From the hills above Glen-Car,
    In pools among the rushes
    That scarce could bathe a star,
    We seek for slumbering trout
  And whispering in their ears
    Give them unquiet dreams;
    Leaning softly out
    From ferns that drop their tears
    Over the young streams.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

    Away with us he’s going,
    The solemn-eyed:
    He’ll hear no more the lowing
    Of the calves on the warm hillside
    Or the kettle on the hob
    Sing peace into his breast,
    Or see the brown mice bob
    Round and round the oatmeal chest.
    For he comes, the human child,
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

I realised that what was causing me the problem is that the length of verse and rhyming pattern within the last lines of each verse is not consistent. Note the rhyming structure in the first verse:

Where dips the rocky highland, Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island, Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berry, And of reddest stolen cherries.

Yet in the next stanza we have:

Where the wave of moonlight glosses, The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses, We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

There are an extra three half-lines, and their rhyming doesn’t fit the model. Verse three is similarly muddled, yet verse four goes back to the structure of the first verse.

As a ballad singer, I am acutely conscious of the way that repetition in metre and rhyme makes it much easier to memorise and perform songs. I imagine that William B. Yeats would have been very familiar with the work of the Irish Bards and the use of this style of verse.

It could just be that this poem is intended to be read, not sung, and the discontinuity was intended as part of the work. However, the confusion goes beyond just the rhyme structure. The third verse is about gushing water, which seems to align with the ‘frothy bubbles’ in verse two. This phrase appears to be out of place in verse two, which is about pagan dances in the moonlight.

Yeats purists will probably chide me, but in my ballad version I have restructured the verses so that they are all four line stanzas with a repeated rhyming structure. So verses two and three become:

Where the wave of moonlight glosses the dim grey sands with light
By far off furthest rosses we foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances, mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight To and fro we leap

Where the wandering water gushes from the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes that scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout, leaning softly out
Hoping to find Fintan, knowledge for to gain

From ferns that drop their tears, over the young streams
And whisper in their ears, giving them unquiet dreams
And stir the frothy bubbles, whilst the world is full of troubles
Eyes blind but open, and anxious in their sleep.

The bold lines are my own additions. As students of Irish mythology will know, Fintan is the Salmon of Knowledge. I immediately thought of this on first reading of the verse about tickling trout. I have moved the ‘frothy bubbles’ to the line about streams. Interestingly, there was a note with the published version of this poem, indicating that there is a place in The Rosses where those who lay down to sleep may have their souls stolen by the fairies.

This site has a beautiful photo of the waterfall at Glen-Car. It is definitely the type of place in which one could imagine the fairy folk coming to visit. Yeats would have visited this site in his childhood.

On this lovely site there is a story about using the starlight reflected in forests pools to create powerful wands.

A review of the huge tome of work that Yeats has left us here, will show that he was both very well read and from his work A Vision, he was no stranger to the mystic arts. I wonder what other messages he hid in this and other works.

Blog Post · Film, TV and Literature · Folk Music

The Auld Triangle

November 15, 2017 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

This post is a book review of Confessions of an Irish Rebel, an autobiography of Brendan Behan. Brendan is best known for his play The Quare Fellow, based on the time he spent in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.

In Confessions Brendan specifically refers to the prisoner that inspired the play, a man sentenced to death for homosexuality. Brendan was serving a 14 year sentence for attempting to shoot a policeman. He was released after serving 4 years under a general amnesty for Irish Republican Army IRA prisoners.

I first heard about the connection between the song The Auld Triangle and Brendan Behan when I sang it at a small singing session here in Australia. I had assumed that the song was about a prisoner in the 1700s and mumbled something to that effect before singing it. There happened to be an Irish gentlemen in the audience who explained to me that I should probably know something about a song before singing it. Fair call.

I am writing this some ten years on, and while I did do some initial research back then, it was only reading Brendan’s book that really brought the song and its subject into focus for me.

There are some fantastic versions of this song, Luke Kelly and the Dubliner’s version being my favourite. Some other notable versions include the Doug Anthony All Stars here, and Brendan singing himself here. My own attempt here. Brendan did not write the song but attributes it to Dicky Shannon, who he mentions in the video of him singing.

You can still get a copy of Confessions on Amazon. I was fortunate enough to pick my copy up for $1 at a local charity book fair last week. The book had to be dictated, as by 1964, Brendan’s fondness for alcohol made it difficult to write or type himself. The book was published in 1965, after Brendan’s death at just 41.

The debilitating nature of Brendan’s relationship with alcohol comes across strongly in the text. Whether in Dublin, Cannes or London, there is always a stop for a pint or glass of something, even on the way to prison. This aspect of the book had me wondering whether part of the subjugation of the Irish people by the English was achieved with provision of access to cheap alcohol, just as it was achieved with the original populations of Australian, America and other colonies.

When Brendan is taken on a pub crawl by his grandmother and a Mrs Murphy, on her way to a retirement hospice, it becomes clear that the taste for a drink was not a new pastime in Dublin.

I am surprised that this book was published in the 1960s at all, with its frank discussion of homosexuality, IRA operations, prostitution, swearing and blasphemy. As the book doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page, I’m not sure whether it was banned (I did find a reference to it being banned in South Africa).

I don’t think Brendan was writing for fame or notoriety, I think this quote from an Amazon review on Borstal Boy sums it up well:

Brendan Behan may have been dead these 50 years but this book is like sitting next to him on a barstool telling this slice of his life story. As a teenager, Behan was arrested for his IRA activities and spent some time in custody at various English correctional facilities. He makes friends, he deals with prejudice, he deals with stupid rules. Really nothing happens in this book and yet it was entertaining. Wicked sense of humor and wonderful sense of the man both come through in this story of a young Republican serving his time. ARG – Amazon Reviews

I greatly enjoyed Brendan’s insertion of Gaelic throughout the text, I didn’t realise that The Quare Fellow had originally been called Casadh an tSúgáin eile, which means twisting the rope again, or twisting another rope, making reference to the hanging rope, but also the traditional song Casadh an tSúgáin (and in English). Brendan made good use of his time in prison to learn Gaelic.

The other enjoyable aspect of the book was spotting the names that so frequently come up in Irish song, probably mundane to those that live in Ireland, but of great interest to me.

It is timely that I am writing this on the day that Australian’s voted to endorse gay marriage. Of course we still have a conservative government in power and a conservative lobby engine that plans to do everything it can to avoid changing the law, despite a 61% yes vote and 79.5% participation.

This hypocrisy really irks me, all through the campaign the idea of marriage as a human right was dismissed by the religious conservatives, but now suddenly their right to be a bigot is a human right. I published my own, probably controversial, views here, but now that the people have spoken, the government should get on with making their will law as soon as possible.

Around the time that Brendan Behan was in Mountjoy and Borstal, 35 people were executed for homosexuality (between 1923 and 1954).

I highly recommend reading Confessions of an Irish Rebel, by no means high literature, but a raw and fascinating view into the events that shaped Brendan’s work.

For Brendan

Another drink, another glass friends,

Another song to the heros here and gone,

Let me sing the streets of Dublin, the cells of Borstal,

Drown them both in a fine dram.

Aughrim was lost, but Ireland fights on,

Fights with gun, and with a voice in song,

Devil take you haughty folks of pretence,

Give me a good solid girl and a bottle.

Though I am long from this world,

I lived full, and drew hard on the lit toitín of life,

Whether painting a lighthouse or a church,

I found the joy where it was to be found.

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music

Whose Thyme is it Anyway?

October 30, 2017October 31, 2017 Daniel Kelly2 Comments

I have been singing the song commonly known as ‘Will Ye Go Lassie Go’ or ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ or ‘Purple Heather’ for many years as it was one of my favourite songs on an Irish Music compilation that I picked up back in 2001 (The Ultimate Irish Ballads, here on ebay for $50!). When I went to make this recording for my YouTube channel, I found out some interesting and annoying things.

This song was first published as a poem by Robert Tannahill, The Braes of Balquither (also Balquidder), in Henry Longfellow’s Poems of Place in 1876. Robert’s life fitted the tragic archetype of the poet, just without all the women and drinking. He gave up his working life as a traveling weaver to care for his elderly parents while all six of his siblings departed. He burned a large portion of his work before drowning himself in 1810.

Thanks to the wonders of copyright lapses, the full text of The Poems and Songs of Robert Tannahill, published in 1874 with notes by David Semple, is available here. Including the Braes of Balquither. In the notes by the editor, it is mentioned that Robert probably grew up hearing this song sung by his nurse, Mary McIntyre, who had been born in the parish of Balquither. Balquither is around 60 miles from Paisley (yes, where the pattern comes from), near Glasgow, where Robert spent most of his life. So it isn’t really clear whether Robert just heard this song and wrote it down, or whether he developed it from what Mary had sung to him.

The discussion at Mainly Norfolk talks about the fact that when the industrial revolution started to destroy the towns, it was common for lovers to flee the cities to the cleaner air and prettier skylines of the highland heather in the Summer.

So this is a beautiful song that has been popular for over 200 years at least. Here is a rare version by the Dubliners.

Now to why I am annoyed.

Wikipedia says that Wild Mountain Thyme is “a Scottish folk song that was collected by Francis McPeake the First, who wrote the song himself for his wife”. If I was Francis’ wife I would be asking for my money back.

Some would say, “but if I take someone’s idea and put it to my own tune, then it is a new song”. I say rubbish. I couldn’t find a YouTube recording that claimed to be the original, but fortunately this book (Songs of Scotland, 1854) is available and I transcribed the tune into MuseScore to confirm the direct similarity between the original tune and the new tune claimed by the McPeakes. While it isn’t 100% the same, the McPeake’s wouldn’t be winning any lawsuits.

There is a Bob Dylan connection in all of this, as he recorded the song himself. Here are Bob and Joan Baez playing to a rowdy crowd using a melody which relates to neither song. This book, discussing the copyright of Dylan’s songs, notes the McPeake family (Francis McPeake the Third) claimed copyright under all three song names in 1996. It also suggests that there are versions as early as 1742. As the industrial revolution didn’t really kick off in Scotland until 1790, this date would question the whole basis of the song.

I have to say that this makes me very annoyed, when people three generations on are claiming money for work that their great grandfather borrowed (or if you are less generous, plagiarised) from a poet from the 1800s, who himself was probably only writing down what he had heard.

Bodleian also comes to the rescue with this broadsheet from the early 1800s with the Braes o’ Birniebouzle suggesting that at least the theme and some of the lyrics were in common circulation as a song when Robert was writing his poem.

I guess that back in the 1950’s, before the advent of the internet, instantly searchable databases of 1700-1800’s broadsheets and freely available copies of tunes, poems and songs from the 1800s were not a thing. It was much easier to find a copy of a rare old book, steal a few lines, match them up with an equally obscure tune and pass the whole lot off to your wife as your own song. Then your nephew can record it and start charging copyright royalties for the next 60 years.

To be honest, I like my recording of Tannahill’s original words much better. And don’t even get me started on people who misplace ‘tower’ for ‘bower’. Who has time to build a tower in the summer?

Errata: Thanks to Jack Campin for pointing me to this mudcat post where it is mentioned that a shorter version was published by John Hamilton in 1792. To be honest, I don’t think the Hamilton song resembles the Tannahill song enough to claim direct decent via the folk-process, but the subject matter is the same. 1876 was not the first published version of Tannahill’s song, just the one I referenced.

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music · Spirituality and Philosophy

Faery Exodus in 1530

October 4, 2017 Daniel Kelly2 Comments

I have been reading Rudyard Kipling’s book Puck of Pook’s Hill, after being prompted to look at his poetry after hearing some of Leslie Fish’s recordings (Oak and Ash and Thorn in particular). Earlier in the book I read Sir Richard’s Song and this melody immediately sprung into my mind while reading.

I am usually sceptical by nature, but it felt like some hidden magic in Kipling’s words carried inherit music that was just waiting to be sung. I had sadly assumed that the Disney version of Jungle Book and a ‘mildly offensive in current times’ poem about Mandalay was the extent of his work.

How mistaken I was. The story of Dymchurch Flit appears at the end of the book and tells the tale of how the Faery Folk departed England for France in the 1530’s. The story largely stands on its own, but this guide from the Kipling Society provides some useful context. I had always assumed that Henry VIII’s fight was with the Catholic Church over his penchant for new wives. After seeing the ruins of the Glastonbury Abbey firsthand, it seemed clear that he was also after some of the wealth that the Monasteries had amassed. Kipling’s story implies that a big part of Henry’s purge was actually against the remnants of the Old Religion (Druidry?) in England. This article goes into some detail on the scale of the vandalism of Henry.

I have written a song to summarise the story of how the Widow Whitgift is approached by Robin (a spokesperson for the Faery Folk, Robin Goodfellow or Puck) to ask if her mute and blind sons will take the Faery Folk who have gathered in Romney Marsh across to France, where the old religion is still tolerated. As the sons are blind and mute they can either not speak of what they have seen or not see at all. The sons return safely, but the family is blessed (?) in future generations with second-sight. I have read enough fairy-tale allegory to know that pairs of sons with unusual disabilities is archetype territory, and Kipling is most likely drawing on, or implying a deeper meeting here.

The connection with bees in the story, and in the song which precedes the story, is telling. Bees have significant meaning in Occult traditions, this blog provides a good summary. This idea is far more clumsily included in the terrible Nicholas Cage remake of The Wicker Man.

So how is it that Kipling slipped this monumental revelation into his collection of stories and songs roughly framed around the history of England? I can find no other references to a Faery exodus in 1530, or any other information about Widow Whitgift. Whit or hwita is Old English for white, but that doesn’t help much.

Kipling was clearly trying to draw attention to the terrible way in which Christianity, especially the new Protestant Christianity, dealt with those who followed the old ways. The references in the story to the Canterbury Bells related to the fact that they would ring at the burning of ‘heretics’, mostly common folk or monks who had fallen foul of Henry.

Kipling was writing around 1906, the Catholic Church had only been reinstated in England in 1850, and even then it met with much hostility. I hope this story isn’t just a thinly veiled political statement about Catholics going back to France with their paganism (where they belong).

I am baffled that the pagan revival community has not picked up on this story, or sought to find its origins, or at least write about it in detail. Maybe this post will prompt some consideration. If the Faery Folk are living happily in France, I would be interested to know where.

I have included a picture by Arthur Rackham, included in the 1906 US edition of Puck, who I discovered has drawn/painted some of my favourite illustrations for stories of English mythology.

Blog Post · Folk Music · My Own Music · Spirituality and Philosophy

Charlottesville

August 19, 2017August 19, 2017 Daniel Kelly2 Comments

We live in an age, for better or worse, where ignorance is no longer an excuse for bigotry. Back in the 1500s, you could excuse the populous for joining a bloody fight over a few flavours of Christianity. Even though the printing press had been invented in 1436, it would take us another 600 odd years until we are at the point where almost everyone in the developed world can access enough points of view to come to a sensible conclusion. Obviously if you live in in China, Russia or under the Taliban in Afghanistan, your chances of access to conflicting points of view is severely limited, but in the affluent west, anyone with an iPhone or a local library has the world at their fingertips.

Back in the 1500s, the illiterate populous was forced to listen to the priest of whatever religion held power threaten them with terrifying tales of the evils of the other side. Whether it was science, witches or heathens, the balance of access to information and its creation and dissemination was entirely in the hands of the elite, the church and its ruling pawns (or the other way around, as the case may be).

In this environment where a monopoly is held on information it is much easier to encourage humans to take up arms against other humans and commit the most heinous atrocities. I am writing specifically about the recent events in Charlottesville. For anyone who doubts the thinking of the white-supremacists that marched there on 12 August, you can watch this interview with some of them.

The most telling point of the interview, which was a repeat of what Justin Moore had said in a voicemail to the reporter:

“I’m sorta glad that them people got hit and I’m glad that girl died,” Moore said in a voicemail to WBTV. “They were a bunch of Communists out there protesting against somebody’s freedom of speech, so it doesn’t bother me that they got hurt at all.”

– Charlotte Observer, 15 Aug 2017

This is an example of where a person is indoctrinated with a hate-filled ideology to the point where they are happy to see another human die for no reason other than a difference of belief. To me this is the heart of any toxic ideology, whether related to race, religion, sexuality or class. If we as a society cannot identify the sources of these beliefs and respond to them effectively, we are doomed to a future of senseless violence.

Within 24 hours of the death of Heather Heyer, it was possible to read over 20 eyewitness accounts collected by different independent websites and media companies. Footage of the march and the clashes from multiple perspectives was accessible on social media and YouTube. My conclusion is that that Nazi’s had come to Charlottesville to incite a riot and the anti-Fascist people were there to protect the populace and demonstrate that a rise of violence and intimidation by far-right groups will be met with resistance. This particular set of eye-witness accounts is most telling.

It was largely expected that Trump would respond inappropriately, but his ‘both sides are to blame’ initial statement was a new low, even for him. Apologising for Nazis on American soil must have had every veteran of WWII shaking his or her cane at the TV (or Twitter feed) in their retirement home. The statement flew in the face of the mass of evidence to the contrary. Even after he seems to have been forced to address the issue with a subsequent statement (clearly prepared from him), soon after he went back to his thinly veiled pro-racist statements.

What I am witnessing amongst my sphere of Facebook friends and other Internet contacts is the deeply polarising nature of these events. Those who I suspect have a lingering racist streak (sadly not uncommon here in Australia) are quick to decry the Socialist/Communists for violence and imply that the Nazis should have been allowed to march under ‘Freedom of Speech’.

I strongly disagree. Freedom of Speech, does not and should not cover hate speech. Whatever your ideology, if you advocate the death of a race, religion or any other set of humans based on some common attribute you have no right to publicise that belief in any way. I have been encouraged by the Jewish community’s strong response against this ‘Freedom of Speech’ argument.

Billy Bragg had the gall to support the removal of statues celebrating the defenders of slavery on his Facebook page. The vehement backlash from some of those who are supposed to be his ‘followers’ suggested that this sentiment is not just an American one. A small amount of research would reveal that the statues were erected long after the events of the civil war in order to fight for the retention of racist laws during the Jim Crow era in the South. A good article on the issue here. If you want history, go and read a book. Statues serve the purpose of dominating physical space with an ideology, they are not about history.

While writing this post, I am listening to Phil Ochs. He was a crusader against the ‘alt-right’ back in the 1960’s. I Ain’t Marching Anymore is a fine example of his work. I wrote my own song about the events in Charlottesville. I like to believe that it was the songs of Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie and their contemporaries that have helped keep the ideology of the extreme Right at bay for the past 30 years.

What is the answer to this challenge facing humanity? I think that educating our children to distil their truth from a broad basket of lies and half-truths is the best thing we can do to immunise them against these hateful ideologies. We need leaders and public figures who come out strongly and un-ambiguously whenever these ideologies emerge. That is a big ask when this particular event has shown us how many of these leaders are in the pocket of extremists.

Make no mistake, I know there are ideologies on the Left which are just as violent and dangerous as what we saw the Right exhibit in Charlottesville. However, the evidence of the behaviour and the goals of the anti-Fascists in Charlottesville does not support an argument that these ideas were present or being touted in this event. It is the tool of these extremist ideologies to point out one flaw in a group and use it to tar the entire collective and all its ideas.

I have to trust in humanity; believing that any person who is supplied with enough of the truth and the tools to interpret it will eventually put down their club, or nuclear warhead, and learn to see the humanity in all others. For those who refuse to give up their hatred, I am encouraged that there are people still willing to put their own safety at risk for the interest of the society and stand in the way of hate.

Blog Post · Folk Music · Spirituality and Philosophy

Filk the World

August 5, 2017October 2, 2017 Daniel Kelly9 Comments

This week, through a series of seemingly random events I became aware of the work of Leslie Fish. As an Electrical Engineer, Computer Programmer and a Science-Fiction/Fantasy fan I was surprised that the whole phenomena of ‘Filk’ music had largely passed me by.

I suspect it was because most of my Science Fiction/Fantasy reading was done in secret in small-town rural Australia, which wasn’t exactly overflowing with Star Trek conventions. It was probably also because my parents largely viewed that whole ‘dressing up’ scene with Pentecostal Christian fear and loathing. Dungeons and Dragons was, after all, a sure-fire pathway to demon possession.

Whenever I travel for work, my partner writes Facebook posts outlining the mayhem that often ensues with our five children. In the posts, the characters from Star Trek are borrowed as stand-ins for family members. As I am the one staying home this time, I made a few posts in the same theme and a friend mentioned ‘Banned from Argo’ in a comment (I had facetiously mentioned Mos Eisley in the context of Star Trek).

I made a recording of this amusing, raunchy, Star Trek inspired song and was surprised to get a comment back from Leslie. As I do for most of the songs I record, I researched the background. This is how I became immersed in the history of this prolific and rich cultural treasure known as ‘Filk’.

The cynic would pass the genre off as parodies and fan-fiction of little consequence. They would be wrong. Leslie’s 2012 album, Avalon is Risen, is a triumph of thought and expression in so many ways. It goes well beyond ‘space songs’ and covers issues of social commentary, paganism and fundamental questions of humanity. Fortunately, this beautifully produced booklet that goes with the album is available from Prometheus Music.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, as the same things that drive authors and fans to the genre of Science-Fiction and Fantasy are the things that make them question our history, our present society and our future. People who have a subconscious instinct from birth that the religious dogma and history they are presented with in adolescence feels contrived and doesn’t come close to fitting our lived experience find themselves looking for something else.

While Banned From Argo is an amusing romp, I picked The Sun is Also a Warrior to cover for my YouTube Channel. I read this song as a well-written rebuttal to the rose-tinted views of pacifism that often accompany the ‘New Age’ movement. Our race is, by its nature, in violent competition with our environment and each other.

The other serious song of Leslie’s that I am in awe of and wouldn’t attempt to re-record is Hope Eyrie. Set to some appropriate images in this video, the song perfectly captures the momentous nature of our mission to the moon in 1969. The song frames the event as not just a technical flea-hop off our planet, but the momentous start of the journey which will take us to other galaxies and ensure our existence beyond the small window of time in which we will consume this planet’s resources. It has taken some 50 years, but we are now seriously looking at a manned Mars expedition.

I have always appreciated artists who write and perform their songs out of a genuine desire to communicate and change society for the better, as opposed to making money giving comforting narcissistic fluff to wealthy consumers. I would place Leslie in the same league as Pete Seeger, Alistair Hulett and Billy Bragg and it is sad that her influence isn’t wider. Leslie’s song Chickasaw Mountain, on Avalon is Risen, is a tribute / letter to Phil Ochs, one of the great genuine folk writers of the 1960s.

This interview with Leslie, by Aya Katz, gives a good overview of Leslie’s views and some background to her songs and career. You can read more about Leslie in her blog here or her website here. If you want to know more about the Filk scene, this compiled ‘history’ by Gary McGath makes for interesting reading.

Blog Post · Folk Music · Spirituality and Philosophy

The Wicker Man

May 28, 2017October 2, 2017 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

This isn’t a post about the 1973 British film by Robin Hardy, or the awful American re-make of 2006. I did enjoy these films (the first far more, obviously) because they tackle the challenge of humanity looking back at our history through the eyes of a different morality.

Looking back through an ‘us and them’ mentality of Christians vs. Pagans is a little farcical given the fact that the atrocities committed by the Spanish Inquisition out-do, in their depravity and cruelty, anything we might accuse the agrarian Egyptian and Indo-European cultures or even the more warlike Norse culture of. I guess you could develop a scale of violence and cruelty, but I’m not sure what the point would be.

I suspect that many Atheists look at people who indoctrinate their children into a belief system that incorporates ritual cannibalism of an agrarian sun-god archetype overlayed on a Hebrew rebel with similar scorn.

On May 20^th I attended the English Ale festival, held in the town of Mylor in South Australia. The day include a collection of activities taken from various aspects of culture from the United Kingdom, including Morris Dancing, burning a Wicker Man, Punch and Judy, Mummers Play and a concert at the end of the day.

I found the day thoroughly enjoyable and recommend it to anyone with a bit of a pagan bent. If you aren’t familiar with European pagan custom the day may seem a bit confusing.

On the subject of being confusing, the driving motivation behind this post is my lamenting the loss of valuable collective ritual in modern society. I doubt very much if the thousand or so people attending the English Ale had harvested their corn by hand, made a Corn Dolly to

preserve the spirit of the grain over the winter or had a personal perception that the jumps made in the Morris dance had any connection to the height of their next crop of corn. I know one or two attendees may have, but in the collective I think it is fair to say that most of us are divorced from the reality of dependence on an agrarian lifestyle.

While some would argue that this is the 21^st century and we should get on with living our shopping mall and iPhone lives, part of me still yearns for the simplicity of connection to nature and the intertwining of it in a ritual lifestyle. I know there are many groups, the Norse Heathens, the new Druids or the various flavours of Wiccans, who are trying to revive the ‘old gods’ and ‘old ways’. I sympathise with these groups, and spent some time as one myself, but ultimately struggled to find authenticity.

So what do we have left when it comes to collective ritual? Some people attend football matches and cheer or boo their respective teams. Some people march in protest against the vast collection of government incompetence, others go to see pop stars play in stadiums or preachers with their own rock-band play in bigger stadiums. I think all of these things have in common a placement of the audience in the role of relatively passive observer.

In America the Burning Man or Coachella festivals involve mass gathering of people, but I get the feeling that the narcissistic undercurrent is not the same as events where the participants are contributing for a perceived greater good. The only experience I can draw on where something transcendent is created by a group of individuals is at an Irish Music session. Thirty musicians singing or playing a common tune, working in harmony is a sublime experience.

Session music is not like listening to or performing in a choir or band with set music, but music that is generated directly in response to the flow of the tune.

I definitely recommend attending the English Ale if you get a chance. I put together some of the footage that I took along with a cover of Damh the Bard’s excellent song, Wicker Man, in a video here. The festival is a collection of echoes that call to something in the bones of our agrarian heritage. I’m not confident that we as a race are in a position to hear them clearly, but I will continue to listen.

Details for all the groups and performers can be found at theenglishale.org.

Blog Post · Folk Music · Spirituality and Philosophy

The (not so) Old Ways

May 4, 2017October 2, 2017 Daniel Kelly1 Comment

May in the Southern Hemisphere means Autumn leaves and the first taste of winter in the air. For those in the North it is the traditional beginning of Spring, with all the ritual and ceremony that was part of an agrarian culture for as far back as 10,000 years. That is of course until a small cult from the Near East rose to power and took over most of the world, stamping out ancient traditions with coercion or violence wherever they went.

I have made a recording of Hal An Tow on my You Tube channel. This website, focused on Proto-Indo-European Religion, has an excellent few pages covering May Day celebrations, including the Hal An Tow and other Furry Day activities. Furry, as in the Latin Feria, meaning Faire, rather than the Furry types that identify/dress as animals. Though having said that, I am sure there is some crossover with pre-Christian animal totems and personification of deities as animals.

Most sites indicate that the etymology of the name ‘Hal-An-Tow’ is unclear. Some claim a connection with a ‘Heel and Toe’ dance, others imply that the Cornish words mean Calender (Halan) and Garland (Tow). Most are in agreement that the original nature and true meaning of the festival held annually in early May at Helston in Cornwall are lost. The ceremony claims medieval origins, and includes many staple characters of English folklore, i.e. Robin Hood and Marion, St. George and Mary.

Some verses of the song show up in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It:

What shall he have that killed the deer?
His leather skin and horns to wear.
Then sing him home.
(The rest shall bear this burden.)
Take thou no scorn to wear the horn.
It was a crest ere thou wast born.
Thy father’s father wore it,
And thy father bore it.
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 4, Scene 2, 1599

Interestingly, the dialogue before this song references the Romans. It is unlikely, after having visited the Roman ruins in Bath and watched my share of Time Team episodes, that many of the Agrarian rituals of the Roman religions did not make their way into the traditions of Great Britain.

This brings me to the crux of my issue, authenticity. Whether it be those attempting to revive the ritual and lore of the Norse, the Greco-Roman mysteries, the Tuatha Dé Danann in Ireland or any other culture where 1500 years of Christian suppression stands in your way, it is a daunting task.

One the one hand, many of us feel a primal pull to the ceremony and ideology. On the other hand, this innocence lends itself to exploitation by charlatans.

I recently became aware of this book, Thought Vibration by William Walker Atkinson. Atkinson operated in the early 1900s in America and wrote under at least three, possibly four or more, pseudonyms. It is not just that he used an assumed name, but that his pseudonyms were tied to assumed identities, Indian Yogi’s, French Mentalists and others. Atkinson was far from a pioneer in this form of con, with L. Ron Hubbard, Helena Blavatsky and William Westcott (Golden Dawn) being other examples. At the risk of the wrath of some neo-pagans I would also put Gerald Gardner in the same basket.

These people all claimed access to higher knowledge either through ancient races, alien cultures or uncovered texts or artifacts and in most cases used this information to part many a person from their money.

The sad reality is that Christianity did a very good job of stamping out all genuine records of the worship of Isis in ancient Egypt, Herne the Hunter in England or Odin in Scandinavia. In fact, the tradition goes back beyond Christianity, with Greek and Roman gods often swallowing the gods of the conquered.

We see only remnants of these ancient characters, so loved and respected or feared by our ancestors. I loved the way that Marion Zimmer Bradley describes the continuation of the Celtic goddesses in the figure of Mother Mary in her book Mists of Avalon. However, it seems unfair that these entities can only persist into the future while in hiding.

The version of Hal An Tow that I recorded owes a lot to The Waterson’s version, but I have also include a verse that Damh the Bard uses as nod to the undeniably pagan origins of the song.

Like many people, I am disillusioned with a belief system that has severed itself from nature. A doctrine of human ‘dominion’ that led to our pollution of the environment, pollution of our bodies and an education system that leans towards facts, impersonal logic and false certainty. I’m not looking back teary eyed at a perfect past, but wishing that there was some way to teach respect for the earth and all its creatures along with the other advances in human knowledge.

So happy May to my northern friends, in the knowledge that the turning of the earth and the movement of the sun still governs our lives, no matter how much we try and distance ourselves from it.

Blog Post · Folk Music · Spirituality and Philosophy

Crucified Chocolate Solar Bunnies

April 14, 2017 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

It’s Easter, and all around the world people will be enjoying a holiday while celebrating the death and resurrection of a Jewish insurgent purported to have lived over 2000 years ago. In a confused mash-up of agrarian sun-deity ritual and imagery, the ceremonies, story and costumes are disjointed and bizarre. Somehow no one notices the contradiction and people of the many hundred flavours of the Christian faith will participate without giving it a second thought.

“The real life of a patriotic Jewish bandit has been forced into the container of this solar myth to give us Christianity.” – Dr. M D Magee

For a thorough analysis of why Easter is so ridiculous, take the time to read this article by Doctor Michael Magee. The evidence put forward in the article, Crucifixion of Sun Gods as Atoning Saviours, that this aspect of the Christian religion is in no way unique and was probably never a core part of the teachings of an historical Jesus is irrefutable. The real question for me is, how do people fall for this rubbish?

One of the songs of my childhood which has stuck with me is Rainbow Connection, from the 1979 Muppet Movie. I recorded a version for my YouTube channel, and also link to the Kermit/Henson original. For me this song praised the right to question the universe, to look at the world with wonder and dream the impossible. This idea went directly against my Pentecostal Christian upbringing which taught that we know everything and punished asking questions.

Kermit is on a journey of discovery, with the Rainbow Connection being something waiting to be found. We don’t understand the motivation to search, but feel its pull inside us.

I have always felt this urge to discover, to ask why, to question views that are given to me with no evidence but demand unquestioning acceptance. It is sometimes scary and uncomfortable to look around and see a vast majority of the rest of society conforming.

My family and I have been watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s fantastic series Cosmos. Apart from the brilliant production and easy to follow walk-throughs of advanced scientific concepts, a key take-away has been how often the pursuit of knowledge has been violently stifled throughout history.

I would like to believe that our societal structure of limiting ideas and controlling ideologies is just an accident of history. A more cynical side of me starts to see the Christian Religion, and other aspects of society (reality TV, televised sport, talent competitions, game shows) as carefully constructed tools for control of a population, built and maintained by a heartless and power-hungry cadre of people.

This past week was marred by the loss of John Clarke, a brilliant comedian/satirist from my native New Zealand. I recorded a version of his Gumboot Song, which, in the folk tradition, was taken from Billy Connolly’s Wellies, which was in-turn taken from the Clancy Brother’s Work of the Weavers.

The work of John and people like him has been a critical part of helping the population to notice and call out the times when the engines of control show their claws. Satire gives us permission to laugh at the man in a frock at the alter dispensing unquestionable wisdom and the suited politician selling policies designed to line their pockets as policies in the interest of the people.