Monthly Archives: January 2016

Jan 25 2016
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Burns' Night

For Auld Lang Syne, My Jo

Robert Burns

Robert Burns, the national bard of Scotland, was born on the 25th of January, 1759. Burns died in 1796, and not long after that, a group of his close friends organized the first Burns Night celebration on the bard’s birthday. It’s not unlike a custom that I rather like and have tried to hold in my family: celebrating the birthdays of those who have passed, even though they are no longer with us physically. I first read about this in a book titled Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First One Hundred Years, written by Sadie and Bessie Delany in 1993. It’s a custom that was kept in their family, and, at least in the case of Robert Burns, it’s a custom kept by an entire nation each 25th of January. Any why not? Remembering those who came before us is, I think, a wonderful thing.

The custom in Scotland (and indeed for people all over the world who love Robbie Burns) is to prepare a Burns Supper on this night. Here is the traditional menu for a proper Burns Supper: haggis served with mashed neeps and tatties, together with a wee dram of whisky accompanied by the recitation of plenty of Burns’ poetry. The “neeps and tatties” are rutabagas and potatoes––two of my favorite things. The haggis is something I’ve not quite built the gumption to try, and I’m going to leave it to you to look up so I don’t have to describe it. I am not a vegetarian but I do lean a bit that way… and haggis, well… it’s a bit too meaty for my tastes. Let’s just say not much goes to waste when making haggis, which, I suppose, is a good thing… plus Robbie Burns was all for haggis and in fact wrote a poem in honor of this great Scottish dish. Be that as it may, I’d probably pass on the haggis myself. I am, however, all for wee drams of whisky and good poetry. As for the poetry of Robert Burns for your Burns Night Supper, a good place to begin may be with the “Selkirk Grace,” an old suppertime grace that Mr. Burns made a bit more Scottish through the addition of the Scots dialect.

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

It may take some time for a non-Highlander to become accustomed to the dialect of Robert Burns’ poems, but it comes with practice (and perhaps more wee drams of whisky). If you know a piper, you’ll want to invite him to your Burns Supper, and you should encourage him to wear his kilt. In the absence of a piper, you could include any recorded traditional music of Scotland. The table linens should be tartan. And there should plenty of poetry read aloud. And in closing the night, you should gather together, be you one or two or twenty-two, to sing Mr. Burns’ most famous song and poem, “Auld Lang Syne.” We sang it at New Year’s and we sing it at Burns Night, two holidays both sacred and dear to Scotland, and so with it we open and close the month.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!
and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

The words “auld lang syne” translate essentially to old long since, or old times. The song is one about remembering. And it is right, it is good, to spend some time remembering. Tonight, we remember Robert Burns and we remember those who love him. He was a sentimental poet, Robert Burns, and we need this on occasion. We need the laughter and the tears that come with remembering. A wee dram of whisky and an old song with friends: this is a good way to remember and to warm a cold winter’s night.

 

Image: “Robert Burns” by Alexander Nasmyth. Oil on panel, 1828, Edinburgh: Scottish National Gallery. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jan 20 2016
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St. Agnes Eve

A Night of Spells & Conjuring

La_vigilia_di_San'Agnese

Tonight brings St. Agnes Eve, another old and obscure holiday, and with St. Agnes Eve we begin to set our sights toward the romance that burgeons forth each Valentine’s Day. For the old belief is that on St. Agnes Eve, young girls could expect to see visions of their future loves. I am always fascinated by these old ways of conjuring that incorporate magic spells of sorts, for they hint at the strange bedfellows the Church has kept in its history––especially with old customs that are hard to keep down. And so in this odd dance we honor St. Agnes by casting spells that most certainly have come down to us from the Old Ways––pagan earthbound religions. It is this very sort of thing that would get old Cotton Mather and his Puritan flock all worked up about just about any holiday… Christmas most especially, and, one can easily imagine, St. Agnes Eve. But we are human, after all, and these are our ways, passing customs on generation after generation from time immemorial. I think that’s a wonderful thing, and I don’t think Cotton Mather and I would agree on much of anything.

And so in Italy young girls might go to bed tonight without supper, quite voluntarily. The idea is that this will help them dream of their future husbands. Young girls in Scotland, meanwhile, will go to bed sated, but they may stay up later than usual. There, the custom is to throw grain onto the soil of a field at midnight while reciting the following spell:

Agnes sweet and Agnes fair,
Hither, hither, now repair;
Bonny Agnes, let me see
The lad who is to marry me.

My neighbor’s sister, who lives in Scotland, wrote last year to tell me that there in Scotland, Agnes is a common first name, and so is the name Senga, which happens to be Agnes spelled backwards. Perhaps there is some magic even in that. In other places, young girls will be baking cakes with the hope that their future husbands will come and turn them, or they will be walking to bed backwards with the hope that their future husbands will come to them in their dreams, or they will be eating a hard boiled egg before bed, yolk removed, the cavity filled with salt. The hope there, too, is to see their future husband. (With any luck, he’ll be carrying a pitcher of water, as well.)

The poet John Keats wrote, back in 1820, a long poem titled “The Eve of St. Agnes.” It would make fine reading for tonight. It is full of the romance and ghostly apparitions of that period of literature, and it is a poem that will take you some time to get through. Perfect for a cold wintry night like St. Agnes Eve. Here, if you can’t read the poem in its entirety, is the sixth stanza:

They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey’d middle of the night.
If ceremonies due they did aright,
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

Helen Barolini, in her book Festa, which I was lucky enough to stumble upon at a library book sale and which has become one of my favorite books, also writes about the Eve of St. Agnes. Helen’s husband was the writer Antonio Barolini, and for her, the night and its customs are more personal. What she wrote in her book about this night always moves me, and I hope she wouldn’t mind my closing today with her words, describing her fascination with St. Agnes Eve when she was a young girl, intertwined with the bittersweet perspective that comes with age and experience…  all that life brings our way––its joys, its sorrows:

And though I fasted and hoped to see my intended as I slept on that eve, I never did picture Antonio Barolini in my imagination or in my dreams. But now I think how strange it is that his death came on January 21, Saint Agnes Eve.

She made an error in the day (January 21 is St. Agnes Day, not St. Agnes Eve), but still, that passage remains for me a poignant one. Our joys, our sorrows, intertwined, like the intimate dance of saints’ days and the old ways that will not die. Everything blends together: religion, custom, old ways and new, all the generations through human history, even oceans at some point in geography meld together. The waters, the people, the customs: we all become one.

 

Image: “The Eve of St. Agnes” by John Everett Millais. 1863, London: The Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jan 17 2016
Sant'Antonio Abate

The Feast (literally) of Sant’Antonio Abate

AntonioAbate

It is the feast today of St. Anthony the Abbot, Sant’Antonio Abate in Italy, where this day is a very big deal. . . mainly for the food. It is the traditional day for dispatching the family pig, which is not a very good day for the pig, of course, but which brings on a feast of epic proportions revolving around dishes whose main ingredient is pork. It is a day of salting, curing, and smoking, to make sausages and salame and prosciutto and pan con i ciccioli––bread baked with pork cracklings––which is something I loved as a kid but which we rarely eat nowadays in our more health conscious world.

This is not the guy most of us think of when we hear the name “St. Anthony:” that Antonio––the one that is the subject of so many statues outside homes in Italian neighborhoods–– is St. Anthony of Padua. He lived about a thousand years after St. Anthony the Abbot, and his feast day is June 13. But back to the food. The fact that St. Anthony the Abbot’s feast day is associated with so much feasting is a bit of a paradox, for Anthony himself was an ascetic who disposed of all his worldly possessions so he could head out to the desert of Egypt to live his life in simple prayer and contemplation. He lived mostly on bread. The traditions in Italy that have arisen for his day probably have more to do with timing that with anything at all about Sant’Antonio himself, for winter is the traditional time to butcher animals and prepare their meat: better this, thinning their numbers now, than to risk their starvation in the cold hard months of winter yet to come.

On the eve of Sant’Antonio, which was last night, there are many great bonfires throughout Italy, especially at crossroads and in church piazze, to warm the cold winter’s night. And while St. Anthony’s Day may not be a very good day to be a pig in Italy, still, St. Anthony the Abbot is a patron saint of domestic animals, and as their protector, he is always depicted with a pig at his side. He also happens to be a patron saint of bakers (perhaps the same bakers who came up with pan con i ciccioli). This, no doubt, because he ate so much bread.

 

Image: Today’s Convivio Book of Days image comes with a built in little game: Find the pig. Click on the image to make it larger, then look for the disjunction here in “Virgin and Child with St. Anthony the Abbot and a Donor” by Hans Memling. Oil on panel, 1472. National Gallery of Canada, [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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