Water World as Another Home for the English Nation Reflected in the English Folklore - Иностранные языки - Скачать бесплатно
impending doom. At the same time during
lunch at a Weymouth torpedo works the stem of a wine glass had suddenly
cracked with a loud retort; and in London’s Eaton Square the ship’s Admiral
Tryon was seen coming down the stairs at his home. He was in fact aboard
the “Victoria”, where he survived the impact but made no effort to save
himself. As he sank beneath the waves he is said to have lamented: “It was
all my fault” – and so it was, for he had given the incorrect order which
led to the collision.
Generations after her loss the “Titanic” is still a byword for
hubris. In 1912 the “unsinkable ship” struck an iceberg on her maiden
voyage and went down with 1 500 passengers and crew. Again, a variety if
omens anticipated the disaster: a steward’s badge came to pieces as his
wife stitched it to his cap, and a picture fell from the wall in a stoker’s
home; then aboard the ship a signal halliard parted as it was used to
acknowledge the ‘bon voyage’ signal from the Head of Old Kinsale lighthouse
– and the day before the collision rats were seen scurrying aft, away from
the point of impact. After the calamity Captain Smith, who went down with
the ship, is rumoured to have been seen ashore.
One cause of the “Titanic” disaster is said to have been an unlucky
Egyptian mummy case. This is the lid of an inner coffin with the
representation of the head and upper body of an unknown lady of about 1000
bc. Ill-fortune certainly seemed to travel with the lid – first of all the
man who bought it from the finder had an arm shattered by an accidental gun
shot. He sold, but the purchaser was soon afterwards the recipient of the
bad news, learning that he was bankrupt and that he had a fatal disease.
The new owner, an English lady, placed the coffin lid in her drawing –
room: next morning she found everything there smashed. She moved it
upstairs and the same thing happened, so she also sold it. When this
purchaser had the lid photographed, a leering, diabolical face was seen in
the print. And when it was eventually presented to the British Museum,
members of staff began to contract mysterious ailments – one even died. It
was sold yet again to an American, who arranged to take it home with him on
the “Titanic”. After the catastrophe he managed to bribe the sailors to
allow him to take it into a lifeboat, and it did reach America. Later he
sold it to a Canadian, who in 1941 decided to ship it back to England; the
vessel taking it, “Empress of Ireland” , sank in the river St Lawrence. So
runs the story, but in reality the coffin lid did not leave the British
Museum after being presented in 1889.
The former prime minister, Edward Heath, in his book “Sailing” (1975)
revealed that he too had experienced the warnings of ill omen. At the
launch of the “Morning Cloud 1” the bottle twice refused to break, and at
the same ceremony for the “Morning Cloud 111” the wife of a crew member
fell and suffered severe concussion. This yacht was later wrecked off the
South coast with the loss of two lives, and in the very same gale the
“Morning Cloud 1” was blown from the moorings on the island of Jersey, and
also wrecked. Meanwhile, the Morning Cloud 11” had been launched without
incident and was leading a trouble free life with the Australian to whom
she had been sold.
As recently as December 1987 a strange case came to light as a result
of a Department of Health and Social Security enquiry into why members of a
Bridlington trawler crew were spending so much time unemployed. In
explanation, Derek Gates, skipper of the “Pickering”, said that putting to
sea had become impossible: on board lights would flicker on and off; cabins
stayed freezing cold even when the heating was on maximum; a coastguard
confirmed that the ship’s steering repeatedly turned her in erratic circles
and in addition, the radar kept failing and the engine broke down
regularly. One of the crewmen reported seeing a spectral, cloth-capped
figure roaming the deck, and a former skipper, Michael Laws, told how he
repeatedly sensed someone in the bunk above his, though it was always
empty. He added: “ My three months on the Pickering” were the worst in
seventeen years at sea. I didn’t earn a penny because things were always
going wrong”.
The DHSS decided that the men’s fears were a genuine reason for
claiming unemployment benefit, and the vicar of Bridlington, the Rev. Tom
Wilis, was called in to conduct a ceremony of exorcism. He checked the
ship’s history, and concluded that the disturbances might be connected with
the ghost of a deckhand who had been washed overboard when the trawler,
then registered as the “Family Crest”, was fishing off Ireland. He
sprinkled water from stem to stern, led prayers, and called on the spirit
of the dead to depart. His intervention proved effective because the
problems ceased, and furthermore the crew began to earn bonuses for good
catches.
SAILORS’ LUCK
Sailors used to be very superstitious – maybe they still are – and
greatly concerned to avoid ill-luck, both ashore and afloat. Wives must
remember that “Wash upon sailing day, and you will wash your man away”,
and must also be careful to smash any eggshells before they dispose of
them, to prevent their being used by evil spirits as craft in which to put
to sea and cause storms.
Luck was brought by:
- tattoos
- a gold ear-ring worn in the left ear
- a piece of coal carried
- a coin thrown over the ship’s bow when leaving port
- a feather from a wren killed on St. Stephen’s Day
- a caul
- a hot cross bun or a piece of bread baked on a Good Friday
The last three all preserved from drowning. David Copperfield’s caul
was advertised for sale in the newspapers “for the low price of fifteen
guineas”, and the woman from the port of Lymington in Hampshire offered one
in “The Daily Express” as recently as 23 August 1904. One Grimsby man born
with the caul has kept it to this day. When he joined the Royal Navy during
World War 11 his mother insisted that he take the caul with him. Various
other sailors offered him up to L20 – a large sum for those days – if he
would part with it, but he declined.
For over two hundred years now a bun has been added every Good Friday
to a collection preserved at the Widow’s Son Tavern, Bromley – by –Bow,
London. The name and the custom derive from an eighteenth – century widow
who hoped that her missing sailor son would eventually come home safely if
she continued to save a bun every Easter. Some seamen had their own version
of this, and would touch their sweetheart’s bun (pudenda) for luck before
sailing.
Other things had to be avoided because they brought ill-luck.
For example:
- meeting a pig, a priest or a woman on the way to one’s ship
- having a priest or a woman aboard
- saying the words: pig, priest, rabbit, fox, weasel, hare
- dropping a bucket overboard
- leaving a hatch cover upside down
- leaving a broom, a mop or a squeegee with the head upwards
- spitting in the sea
- whistling
- handing anything down a companionway
- sailing on a Friday
- finding a drowned body in the trawl (in the case of Yorkshire
fisherman)
Although many of these beliefs are obscure in origin, others can be
explained.
For example, the pig had the devil’s mark on his feet – cloven hoofs –
and was a bringer of storms; furthermore the drowning of the Gadarene swine
was a dangerous precedent. Then the priest was associated with funerals,
and so taking him aboard was perhaps too blatant a challenge to the malign
powers – if he were to be designated in conversation he was always “The
gentleman in black”. The pig was curly tail, or in Scotland “cauld iron
beastie” since if it were inadvertently mentioned the speaker and hearers
had to touch cold iron to avoid evil consequences; if no cold iron were
available, the studs to one’s boots would do. The other four animals were
taboo because they were thought to be the shapes assumed by witches who
were notorious for summoning storms.
Perhaps women were also shunned because they were considered potential
witches, although a good way to make a storm abate was for a woman to
expose her naked body to the elements. Bare - breasted figure – heads
were designed to achieve the same result. Nevertheless, during HMS “Durban”
’s South American tour in the 1930s the captain allowed his wife to take
passage on the ship. Before the tour was halfway through there were two
accidental deaths on board, besides a series of mishaps, and feeling
amongst the crew began to run high. At one port of call a group of men
returning to the ship on a liberty boat were freely discussing the run of
bad luck, attributing it to “having that bloody woman on board”. They did
not realize that the captain was separated from them by only a thin
bulkhead and had overheard the whole conversation. But instead of taking
disciplinary action, he put his wife ashore the next day; she travelled by
land to other ports, and the ship’s luck immediately changed for the
better.
Fridays were anathema – “Friday sail, Friday fail” was the saying –
since the temtation of Adam, the banishment from the Garden of Eden, and
the crucifixion of Christ had all taken place on a Friday. One old story,
probably apocryphal, tells of a royal navy ship called HMS “Friday” which
was launched, first sailed and then lost on a Friday; moreover her captain
was also called Friday. Oddly enough, a ship of this name does appear in
the admiralty records in 1919, but the story was in circulation some fifty
years earlier. This fear of Friday dies hard. A certain Paul Sibellas,
seaman, was aboard the “Port Invercargill” in the 1960s when on one
occasion she was ready to sail for home from New Zealand at 10pm on Friday
the thirteenth. The skipper, however, delayed his departure until midnight
had passed and Saturday the fourteenth had arrived.
Whistling is preferably avoided because it can conjure up a wind,
which might be acceptable aboard a becalmed sailing ship, but not
otherwise. Another way of getting a wind was to stick a knife in the mast
with its handle pointing in the direction from which a blow was required –
this was done on the “Dreadnaught” in 1869, in jury rig after being
dismasted off Cape Horn.
In 1588 Francis Drake is said to have met the devil and various
wizards to whistle up tempests to disrupt the Spanish Armada. The spot near
Plymouth were they gathered is now called Devil’s Point. He is also said to
have whittled a stick, of which the pieces became fireships as they fell
into the sea; and his house at Buckland Abbey was apparently built with
unaccountable speed, thanks to the devil’s help. Drake’s drum is preserved
in the house and is believed to beat of its own accord when the country
faces danger.
DENIZENS OF THE DEEP
With the mirror and comb, her ling hair, bare breasts and fish tail,
the mermaid is instantly recognisable, but nowadays only as an amusing
convention. However, she once inspired real fear as well as fascination and
sailors firmly believed she gave warning of tempest of calamity.
As recently as seventy years ago, Sandy Gunn, a Cape Wrath shepherd,
claimed he saw a mermaid on a spur of rock at Sandwood Bay. Other coastal
dwellers also recall such encounters, even naming various landmarks. In
Corwall there are several tales invilving mermaids: at Patstow the harbour
entrance is all but blocked by the Doom Bar, a sandbank put there by
mermaid, we are told, in relation for being fired at by a man of the town.
And the southern Cornish coast between the villages of Down Derry and Looe,
the former town of Seaton was overwhelmed by sand because it was cursed by
a mermaid injured by a sailor from the port.
Mermaid’s Rock near Lamorna Cove was the haunt of a mermaid who would
sing before a storm and then swim out to sea – her beauty was such that
young men would follow, never to reappear. At Zennor a mermaid was so
entranced by the singing of Matthew Trewella, the squire’s son, that she
persuaded him to follow her; he, too failed to to return, but his voice
could be heard from time to time, coming from beneath the waves. The little
church in which he sang on land has a fifteenth – century bench – end
carved with a mermaid and her looking – glass and comb.
On the other hand, mermaids could sometimes be helpful. Mermaid’s Rock
at Saundersfoot in Wales is so called because a mermaid was once stranded
there by the ebbing of the tide. She was returned to the sea by a passing
mussel – gatherer, and later came back to present him with a bag of gold
and silver as a reward. In the Mull of Kintyre a Mackenzie lad helped
another stranded mermaid who in return granted him his wish, that he cpuld
build unsinkable boats from which no man would ever be lost.
Sexual unions between humans and both sea people and seals are the
subject of many stories, and various families claim strange sea – borne
ancestry: for example the Mc Veagh clan of Sutherland traces its descent
from the alliance between a fisherman and a mermaid; on the Western island
of North Uist the McCodums have an ancestor who married a seal maiden; and
the familiar Welsh name of Morgan is sometimes held to mean “born of the
sea”, again pointing to the family tree which includes a mermaid or a
merman. Human wives dwelling at sea with mermen were allowed occasional
visits to the land, but they had to take care not to overstay – and if they
chanced to hear the benediction said in church they were never able to
rejoin their husbands.
Matthew Arnold’s poem “The Forsaken Merman” relates how one human wife
decides to desert her sea husband and children. There is also a Shetland
tale, this time concerning a sea wife married to a land husband:
On the island of Unst a man walking by the shore sees mermaids
and mermen dancing naked in the moonlight, the seal skins which they
have discarded lying on the sand. When they see the man, the dancers
snatch up the skins, become sea creatures again, and all plunge into
the waves – except one, for the man has taken hold of the skin. Its
owner is a mermaid of outstanding beauty. And she has to stay on the
shore. The man asks her to become his wife, and she accepts. He keeps
the skin and carefully hides it.
The marriage is successful, and the couple has several
children. Yet the woman is often drawn in the night to the seashore,
where she is heard conversing with a large seal in an unknown tongue.
Years pass. During the course of a game one of the children finds a
seal skin hidden in the cornstack. He mentions it to his mother, and
she takes it and returns to the sea. Her husband hears the news and
runs after her, arriving by the shore to be told by his wife: “
Farewell, and may all good attend you. I loved you very well when I
lived on earth, but I always loved my first husband more.”
As we know from David Thomson’s fine book “The People of the Sea”
(1984), such stories are still widely told in parts of Ireland and in
Scotland and may explain why sailors were reluctant to kill seals. There
was also a belief that seals embodied the souls of drowned mariners.
The friendly dolphin invariably brings good luck to seafarers, and has
even been known to guide them to the right direction. As recently as
January 1989 the newspapers reported that an Australian swimmer who had
been attacked and wounded by a shark was saved from death only by the
intervention of a group of dolphins which drove off the predator.
Also worthy of mention here is another benevolent helper of seamen
lost in open boats: a kindly ghost known as the pilot of the “Pinta”. When
all seems lost he will appear in the bows of the boat and insistently point
the way to safety.
Other denizens of the deep inspired fear and terror. The water horse
of Wales and the Isle of Man – the kelpie of Scotland – grazes by the side
of the sea or loch. If anyone is rash enough to get on him, he rushes into
the water and drowns the rider; furthermore his back can conveniently
lengthen to accommodate any number of people. There are several tales
believed of the water horse, for example, if he is harnessed to a plough he
drags it into the sea. If he falls in love with a woman he may take the
form of a man to court her – only if she recognises his true nature from
the tell-tale sand in his hair will she have a chance of escaping, and then
she must steal away while he sleeps. Legnd says that the water horse also
takes the shape of an old woman; in this guise he is put to bed with a bevy
of beautiful maidens, but kills them all by sucking their blood, save for
one who manages to run away. He pursues her but she jumps a running brook
which, water horse though he is, he dare not cross.
Still more terrible are the many sea monsters of which stories are
told. One played havoc with the fish of the Solway Firth until the people
planted a row of sharpened stakes on which it impaled itself. Another
serpent – like creature, the Stoor Worm, was so huge that its body curled
about the earth. It took up residence off northern Scotland and made it
known that a weekly delivery of seven virgins was required, otherwise the
towns and villages would be devastated. Soon it was the turn of the king’s
daughter to be sacrificed, but her father announced that he would give her
in anyone who would rid him of the worm. Assipattle, the dreamy seventh son
of a farmer, took up the challenge and put to sea in a small boat with an
iron pot containing a glowing peat; he sailed into the monster’s mouth,
then down into its inside – after searching for some time he found the
liver, cut a hole in it, and inserted the peat . The liver soon began to
burn fiercely, and the worm retched out Assipattle and his boat. Its death
throes shook the world: one of its teeth became the Orkney Islands, the
other Shetland; the falling tongue scooped out the Baltic Sea, and the
burning liver turned into the volcanosof Iceland. The king kept his
promise, and the triumphant Assipattle married his daughter.
Perhaps, the most famous of all water monsters is that of Loch Ness,
first mentioned in a life of St Columba written in 700 AD.
Some 150 years earlier one of the saint’s followers was apparently
swimming in the loch when the monster “suddenly swam up to the surface, and
with gaping mouth and with great roaring rushed towards the man”.
Fortunately, Columba was watching and ordered the monster to turnback: it
obeyed. The creature (or its successor) then lay dormant for some 1 300
years, for the next recorded sighting was in 1871.
However, during the last fifty years there have been frequent reports
and controversies. In1987 a painstaking and and expencive sonar scan of the
loch revealed a moving object of some 400 lb in weight which scientists
were unable to identify. Sir Peter Scott dubbed the monster “Nessiterras
Rhombopteryx”, after the diamond – shaped fin shown on a photograph taken
by some American visitors; the Monster Exhibition Centre at Drumnadrochit
on Loch Ness describes it as “The World’s Greatest Mystery”. Tourists from
all over the world flock to visit Loch Ness, monster and centre.
NAUTICAL CUSTOMS
The seas will always be potentially dangerous for those who choose to
sail them and most seafarers tried hard to avoid incurring the wrath of
Davy Jones – they once were sometimes reluctant even to save drowning
comrades lest they deprive the deep of a victim which would serve as a
propitiatory sacrifice though the dilemma could be resolved by throwing the
drowning man a rope or spar. This was a much less personal intervention
than actually landing a hand or diving in to help and therefore less risky.
Various shipboard ceremonies were observed and maintained religiously:
at Christmas a tree would be lashed to the top of the mast (the custom is
still followed, and on ships lacking a mast the tree is tied to the
railings on the highest deck). At midnight as New Year’s Eve becomes New
Year’s Day the ship’s bell is rung eight times for the old year and eight
times for the new – midnight on a ship is normally eight bells – the oldest
member of the crew giving the first eight rings, the youngest the second.
“Burying the Dead Horse” was a ceremony which was continued in
merchant ships until late in the nineteenth century, and kept up most
recently in vessels on the Australian run. The horse was a symbol for the
month’s pay advanced on shore (and usually spent before sailing); after
twenty-eight days at sea the advance was worked out. The horse’s body was
made from a barrel, its legs from hay, straw or shavings covered with
canvas, and the main and tail of hemp. The animal was hoisted to the main
yardarm and set on fire. It was allowed to blase for a short time and was
then cut loose and dropped into the sea. Musical accompaniment was provided
by the shanty “Poor
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