Irish Rebels Handkerchief; My Irish Roots

The Irish harp and shamrocks are a give-a-way to its Irish connection. It is a large silk handkerchief, ivory in color, with deep hems. It looks remarkably like one I found in a greeting card with a note of dating from 1906. Five portraits appear.

When this handkerchief appeared on eBay I knew it was 'something' and placed my bid. No one bid against me.

Lord Edward FitzGerald

The date 1798 and name Lord Ed. Fitzgerald soon brought up 'google' hits. He was a trained soldier who assumed leadership of the United Irishmen, whose goal was independence from England. They planned an insurrection in March 1798 but he was arrested and died in prison in June 1798.

 Robert Emmet in 1802 wanted to renew the Irish struggle for independence. He was eventually arrested and tried for high treason. He was hung and decapitated, only 24 years old. He had asked, "When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written."

 

General Edward Roche was involved in the battle of New Ross in the 1798 rebellion. 

 Henry Joy McCracken helped to form the first United Irishmen in Belfast and fought in 1798. He was arrested and hanged at age 31.

Theobald Wolfe Tone  envisioned an Ireland formed on the ideals of the French Revolution, a country where Protestants and Catholics could live in harmony. He was defeated in the Rebellion of 1798. Upon capture he was 34 years old. He died of a self-inflicted wound.  He was said to have been "brave, adventurous, sanguine, fertile in resource, buoyant under misfortune, warm-hearted...[and] near being almost as fatal an enemy to England as Hannibal was to Rome."

*****

I really need to learn more about Irish history! I have Irish ancestors; my great-great-grandfather father John Smith was born in Ireland. Smith is the fifth most common name in Ireland. Smith was the Anglicization of the Irish surname Mac an Ghabhain, "son of the smith." Early Smiths were MacGowan, with variations McGowen and McGowin. John's daughter Delia (or sometimes Della) Victoria Smith was my great-grandmother.

Family lore has it that John's father bred horses in Ireland and sent John to sell some horses in England. Instead, he kept the horses (or money from their sale) and started a new life. I have also been told that my great-grandmother and siblings could 'ride before they could walk'. John and his wife Bridget Allen, of Scottish background, lived on Irlam-on-Barton at Chat Moss far m in Lancashire.

John was killed by a train in 1901; his wife had died in 1898. My great-grandmother would have been twelve years old at the time of her father's death, one of eleven children. The next I know of my grandmother was in 1906; she was a domestic servant coming to join her future husband in America. On the passenger list her age was given as 20 years old, not her actual age of 17. She married Cropper Greenwood of Bacup, England. I never had figured out how they met, but I expect they were both working in the Manchester area as servants. Cropper was mechanically trained as a quarry worker and later became a chauffeur.

Eccles & Patricroft JournalFriday 13th December 1901
Killed on the railway at IrlamAn inquest was held on Wednesday evening at the Ship Hotel, Irlam by Mr E Birch, deputy coroner, touching the death of John Smith of Moss Farm who was killed at the railway station last Monday. Mr J Mayall was foreman of the jury, Mr F Simpson was present of behalf of the Cheshire Lines Railway Co. Philip Smith said the deceased, his father was about 50 years of age. He last saw him a fortnight at home when he was in good health, he was unaware of this father habitually crossing the railway when returning from Manchester. Deceased was in no trouble and had not threatened to commit suicide, he sometimes got drunk – By a juryman: He did not know if it was a nearer way home to cross the line – several jurymen said it was three-quarters of a mile nearer at least. William Herbert Holland, booking clerk, said on Monday he was collecting tickets from the passengers travelling by train from Manchester, due at 20:03. It was a rough and dark night. Deceased came to him from the north end of the platform and had lost his ticket and paid 8d. He was sober and did not appear strange. He must have come back on to the platform while witness was engaged with other passengers. He had a right to go under the subway. After collecting all the tickets he saw deceased beyond the entrance to the subway apparently intending to cross the line, he called him back but deceased took no notice. Witness followed him and saw the headlight of an engine coming along the loop-line. The engine whistled. The train from Manchester returned from Irlam, and was being reversed. The engine stopped before getting into its usual place and the stoker came into the Station master’s office for assistance to deceased, who had been run over. His legs were cut off. Witness had not before seen deceased attempt to cross the line, though the stationmaster had cautioned him about doing so. There were notice boards at each end of the platform, warning passengers to cross the lines by the subway - Juryman: It is not fact that so many Moss people cross the lines? – Witness: No they cross by the subway and go by the end of the wall. – By the Coroner: He had seen deceased drunk many a time but he did not think he was on Monday night. He often travelled without a ticked, and paid his fare without demur, - Enoch Johnson, Fireman on the train, deposed to seeing the deceased at the end of the platform. The engine which was running tender first was about 12 yards off. Witness sounded the whistle, and when he saw the deceased attempt to cross the line told the driver to stop, and applied the hand brake. Deceased was lying face downwards in the four foot. The engine and tender has passed over him. Deceased died almost immediately – By a juryman: Instead of crossing the line he expected deceased intended to go through the goods yard – the coroner said it was a fatal short cut, deceased having come to his death by his own folly, - A verdict of “accidental death” was returned. The jury passed a recommendation that a public mortuary was desirable.The Warrington Guardian - Saturday 14th Dec 1901Railway Fatality On Monday night about 8 o'clk John Smith - commonly know as "Pigeon Jack" was killed on the Cheshire Lines Railway near Irlam Station. The deceased lived for many years at the end of the new road, Cadishead. The inquest was held on Thursday afternoon and the jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

What a sad ending. Was 'Pigeon Jack' drunk? And why 'Pigeon"? Did he race pigeons? Our ancestors are so elusive.

The Early Poems of Ezra Pound

As a school girl and early college student I would peruse the library shelves of poetry and bring home anything that caught my interest, totally without guidance. As a college freshman I discovered Ezra Pound's shorter poetry collection Personae from New Directions and some of those poems have been favorites ever since, particularly the Cathay poems. The Dover edition of Pound's early poems contain many of my favorites.

In these early poems Pound assumes a mask, an identity, of another personality that reveals both a unique character and universal truths. Voices include warriors bored with peace to gorgeous love poems.

The poems include settings in the Middle Ages, the Crusades, translations from Latin, Provencal, Italian, Chinese, and Spanish first published in Personae (1909), Exultations (1909), Ripostes (1913), Cathay (1915) and "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" (1920).

The Cathay translations are both exotic, being from the early Chinese, and poignant explorations of shared human experience. The Song of the Bowmen of Shu, 4th c. B.C. by Kutsugen, is an outpouring of grief and homesickness by weary and hungry soldiers grubbing for fern-shoots. The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter, a translation from Rihaku, tells the heart-breaking loneliness of a teenage wife whose husband has been gone five months. And my favorite, the Exile's Letter, is a story of friendship and nostalgia that catches my heart with every reading.

"And if you ask how I regret that parting:
      It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end
      Confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
There is no end of things in the heart.

I call in the boy,
Have him sit on his knees here
      to seal this,
And send it a thousand miles, thinking." 
Exile's Letter

Latter I was challenged about liking Pound's poetry when he was a Fascist and locked up as insane. I knew nothing about the man at the time. I was a naive reader who read the poems as art suspended in atmosphere, standing on their own.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Early Poems of Ezra Pound
Dover Publications
Publication March 18, 2016
$2.50 paperback
ISBN: 9780486287454

Crayon Quilts

Esther Aliu has been trying her hand at crayon tinting, and so is a lady from  my weekly quilting group. I have had a long love affair with crayons. So when I found out about crayon tinting on fabric I had fun trying it out! These quilts were made about 12 years ago. I used Prang crayons and heat set the color by laying paper towels or muslin over the crayon.

These Scotties are from vintage embroidery patterns.

 I based these animal designs on  vintage greeting cards.

This May Flower Fairy from A Year With the Fairies is hand colored and embroidered.

Sunbonnet Sue is colored with fabric paint pens and is bordered with vintage feed sacks.

Bunny Children is a vintage pattern available at Sentimental Stitches.

 Children of the World is a vintage pattern I found online.

 

My friend Judy made this cute quilt.

Have you colored on fabric?

Pax Romana and Ephemeral Power: Augustus by John Williams

Octavius was chosen by Julius Cesar to be his heir and successor. He was a teenage when Julius Cesar was murdered on the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 BC. He became Augustus, emperor or Rome, a deity, and the founder of two hundred years of Pax Romana, temporarily ending the internal warfare for power that had troubled Rome.

Augustus by John Williams shared the National Book Award with John Barth's Chimera. I read Barth's book at Adrian College but had never heard of Williams until I bought a sale ebook of Stoner, a book that still ranks as one of my favorites read in recent years. My son gifted me William's last novel Augustus.

The story is told through letters between those close to Augustus, his enemies, and his family. In the beginning we hear others write about Octavius; in the last part we hear Augustus speak for himself.

The power of the novel is not in plot but in the subtle revelation of the cost of power. The boy Octavius is journeying with his boyhood friends when he hears of the death of Julius Caesar. His life is no longer his own. He knew his destiny was to change the world. Rome was deep in conflict for power. He raised an army and ended the 'tyranny of faction' at age nineteen. What he accomplished in his seventy-six years amounts to a miracle: he created an empire at a the cost of friendship, family, and friends.

Augustus sends his beloved daughter and only child Julia into exile to save her life when her friends and lovers are implicated in a plot on his life. The most powerful man in the world died ailing and existentially alone, knowing that his stepson Tiberius was poised to take over. He ponders on how man does not choose his fate but is propelled by necessity.

When we read of Julia's life and how she was a sacrifice to Roman peace, and of her discovery of love with the man who used her and led to her exile, it is heart breaking. Even more powerful are the thoughts of an aged Augustus considering his life, any man's life and the lessons learned.

Even after forty years of Pax Romana, Augustus sees the seeds of Rome's fall. Prosperity and security has not dulled the people's appetite for warfare, played out in the gladiator rings of blood and death. Augustus knows that power is ephemeral, and so is peace and plenty.

"Rome is not eternal...Rome will fall...the barbarian will conquer....There was a moment of Rome, and it will not wholly die." from Augustus.

Read an interview about the book at LA Review of Books:  https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/john-williamss-novel-augustus-conversation. "Williams is like a medium who calls forth the voices of the dead, ever-poised on the thin edge of triumph or humiliation, for whom it is eternally now." "The book is a miracle: it shouldn't work, no way it should work---an epistolary novel about Rome's first emperor, told in the ancient yet natural and varied voices of all the key players?--and yet it succeeds beyond all measure."

How William Shakespeare Changed the Way you Talk

Shakespeare changed the way we speak. But do we know the origin of the phrases that have become household words?

It was with great excitement that I opened Jane Sutcliffe's book Will's Words about the phrases and sayings inherited from William Shakespeare. It is beautifully illustrated by John Shelley.

As I was reading the book written for Third and Fourth Grades I was wishing I could have read it to my son when he was that age. He would have loved the detailed illustrations showing London teeming with houses and people, the views of the Thames and London Bridge with boats of all sizes carrying people across the river, the aerial views of the city and The Globe, the crowds with their ruffed neckwear and doublets. There is a great cutaway of the Globe showing all the actors and stage hands putting on A Midsummer's Night's Dream, using trap doors and dangling a fairy over the stage.

And while my son studied the detailed illustrations I would have taught him about the importance of Shakespeare, an introduction to the Bard.

The book opens in 1606, a time when people sought an escape from their daily lives and the theaters offered plays six days a week. Except during an outbreak of the plague when they were shut down. We read about the theater goers, what the experience was like, and about the actors and the stories they told. We learn that Will wrote comedies that made the audience laugh themselves into stitches and tragedies about foul play that made their hair stand on end.

It ends with the publication of the 1616 first Folio, without which Shakespeare's words would have been lost.

Included is an author's note of how she came to write the book, a bibliography and a time line of Shakespeare's life.

The long and the short of it is that you'll get your money's worth out of this book!

NOTE: BOLD print words are included in the book Will's Words.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Will's Words How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk
Jane Sutcliffe
Charlesbridge
Hardcover: 987-1-58089-638-2
E-book ISBN:
978-1-60734-855-9 EPUB
978-1-60734-856-6 PDF
Publication Date: March 22, 2016

Pat Sloan Visits Town

I went to the Great Lakes Heritage Quilters meeting this past week to see Pat Sloan. She gave a lecture on her quilting life. Pat has been seriously quilting since 1992 and in 2000 left her job to make her hobby full time. Pat has authored 30 books and designs fabric.

 I get her newsletter and have seen her patterns and books. It was great seeing her quilts up close and personal.

Pat learned hand piecing with cardboard templates making traditional quilts. Inspired by antique quilts and folk art she developed her own style. She combines piecing and easy fused appliqué.

Pat is one of 83 designers offering 100 free blocks in their Splendid Sampler. Some of the guild members are participating and displayed their blocks. Learn more here.

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe

Growing up in the Dark Ages of the 1950s I had to search hard to find female role models. Not that my teachers were not great; I admired them immensely. I longed for women who were heroic and brave--and not fictional. In junior high I read began reading biographies: Jane Addams, Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, Joan of Arc. And I have been reading biographies of women ever since.

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe by Elaine Showalter is a biography that, unlike the biographies of my childhood reading, portrays a woman both driven and intelligent and flawed and human. I liked it immensely.

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) is remembered today for writing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a rousing anthem with powerful, Biblical inspired words. Otherwise most know little about her. Her poetry, plays, and failed opera did not pass the critical eye or become timeless. Her activism as an abolitionist and suffragette now is forgotten. She worked for abolition of the death penalty and prison reform, education reform, immigrant rights, Indian affairs, worker's rights, and was instrumental in the creation of Mother's Day and the Association of American Women. In her youth she was called the 'Diva' for her sparkling wit, beauty, and intelligence; in maturity she was the 'Mother Superior' of Boston philanthropy and 'the grand old lady of America'.

Julia was born to wealth and had a top-notch education. She studied French six hours a day. Her vocal teacher was from the Italian opera company. Her father had commissioned Thomas Cole for The Voyage of Life , a series of four allegorical paintings depicting the stages of life. Julia met the greats of her time including Longfellow, Dickens, Margaret Fuller, and Charles Sumner. Still, her father kept a strong hold on Julia and she felt bored and yearned for a fuller, freer life. She became a vegetarian, secretly read George Sand, and spent her nights writing. Julia's life altered with her father's death; she adopted his strict Calvinism and was depressed for two years. Finally her friend brought her to Unitarianism and freed from guilt she bloomed. At twenty-two she was a beautiful 'bluestocking', a Diva, an heiress. And unmarried, both longing for love and fearful of childbirth with it's threat of death and the chains that came with childrearing.

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe came, literally, into her life 'a noble rider on a noble steed'. He was devastatingly handsome, a 'manly man', commanding and stern. He was eighteen years her senior, like Lord Byron was a hero in the Greek Revolution, had pioneered work in education of the blind, and was admired as a philanthropist. Samuel and Julia were both intelligent, passionate, idealistic--they should have been a perfect match. But the honeymoon ended on the honeymoon. Sam could never get past his image of woman as help-meet, mother, the angel in the house who should want for nothing more than house and home. And Julia chaffed against his tight hold, fighting for the right to a voice, artistic expression, and equality in every form. Their marriage was a failure.

Julia was an anomaly: her husband entertained John Brown in his home and she supported abolition, but also felt that slaves needed to be 'raised up' by European culture into civilization and wrote disparagingly of Southern slaves. During the Civil War she was part of a group that had gone to see the troops outside of Washington, D.C. On the long ride home she sang to entertain the men and her companions. A friend suggested she write new words to the song John Brown's Body, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Showalter's book was engrossing and fast reading; I devoured it in two days. Julia was a complex woman, the best kind to read about. I enjoyed learning how critics reviewed Howe's literary works during her life, then tracing changing views of her work across time. I was fascinated by Howe's secret manuscript about a hermaphrodite's life, now perceived as an expression of the angst and struggle that Howe and other Victorian age women endured.

I received a free ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read Howe's works on the electronic archives at http://www.juliawardhowe.org/writings.htm

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe: A Biography
by Elaine Showalter
Simon & Schuster
$28.00 hard cover
Publication March 8, 2016
ISBN:9781451645903