Castle Aching

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, sem34090 said:

I say - This conversation ought to be enough to get me through the exams. Tudor history suddenly makes a good deal more sense!  

 

I have always found these sources of Historical Reference very helpful...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Island_Story

 

Edited November 22, 2019 by Hroth
spelin agane...

[Compound2632]

30 minutes ago, Hroth said:

As I said, a Spanish toyboy, lurking in the Escorial, dispatching Jesuits hither and yon!

 

 

Purely in the interest of accuracy:

 

King Philip spent fifteen months in England following his marriage at Winchester in July 1554.

 

The Jesuit Mission to England, launched from the English College in Rome in 1580, was at the behest of William Allen, leader of the English catholic clergy in exile. It received no direct support from King Philip II of Spain &c.*, though Allen was later involved in planning for the Armada invasion, largely through the intrigues of Robert Parsons SJ, who was about as near to an intriguing Jesuit as one actually gets. 

 

*According to the Act of Parliament sanctioning his marriage, Philip was King of England**, France and Ireland only so long as the Queen lived.

 

**including Wales

Edited November 22, 2019 by Compound2632

[Hroth]

Getting back to Railways and Norfolk for a moment, I see that the folk in Poppyland have been sampling "stuff" again...

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-norfolk-50504911/norfolk-lights-express-makes-poppy-line-debut

 

Wheeeee!!!!!

 

 

[Allegheny1600]

SO sorry about my earlier 'faux pas' - how I could get eddie mixed up with 'enry, I don't know!!! At least there were eight of each of 'em!

 

It's the scenery, you know. 

Err, senilery?

Senility!!!

 

[wagonman]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

Getting back to Railways and Norfolk for a moment, I see that the folk in Poppyland have been sampling "stuff" again...

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-norfolk-50504911/norfolk-lights-express-makes-poppy-line-debut

 

Wheeeee!!!!!

 

 

 

I saw that last night as it crossed the bridge at Dead Man's Hill. Appropriate really as it nearly caused a traffic pile up on the A149 ! Spooky it was...

[Northroader]

3 hours ago, sem34090 said:

I say - This conversation ought to be enough to get me through the exams. Tudor history suddenly makes a good deal more sense!  

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Indeed, as Q observes, it was Henery the Eighth (he is). 

 

And that one was not killed.  Catherine of Aragon lived to a bitter old age. 

 

Henry was a religious conservative, so really just wanted a version of the Catholic church in which the Pope couldn't tell him what to do.  He also thought that he could look after the wealth of the church much better than the church could. So, he Nationalised it.  Something to do with bringing super-fast broadband to rural communities, if I recall correctly. He had no plans to Nationalise anything else, he said.  Just bishoprics.  Oh, and monasteries, abbeys, priories, chantries etc.   

 

Eddie was his son and he and his advisers were the hardcore proddies who wanted to stop dressing up in, well, dresses, mumbling in Latin and hiding behind rood screens, all of which, in their view, tended to get in the way of the People knowing what the Feck was going on and what God really thought.  These proddy Calvinists were pretty sure they knew what God really thought, because He'd chosen to tell the Calvinists.  It was a good job that God only spoke to Calvinists, because what God really thought, according to the Calvinists, was that only a few people would be saved on Judgement Day, these few being, quite coincidentally, the Calvinists.

 

 

 

    

 

 

Congratulations on a full house of reactions.

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, Edwardian said:

it was Henery the Eighth (he is)

Or, pace Flanders and Swann, "We are Henery the Eighth, we are".

[CKPR]

On 21/11/2019 at 16:32, Edwardian said:

 

Well, I'm sure that we will soon be able to take back control of our calendar!

 

I can already hear the cries of .....

 

"Every year the NHS will have an extra 11 days in which to treat patients!"

 

"Get Julian done, no ifs, no buts!"

 

"But the People had no idea what kind of 11 days they were voting for!"

 

"We'll avoid the backstop by putting an international date line down the Irish Sea!"

 

"This is a betrayal, this is JUNO (Julian in name only (and his friend, Sandy))"

This has cheered me up and not just because my middle name is, well, Julian !

[CKPR]

8 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

The Australians arriving in the Dardenelles in 1915 were a revelation to the Brits. 

 

The British army was struggling with the effects of, by then, a century of intense urbanisation upon the recruitment pool.  The products of manufacturing towns, damp and unsanitary slum dwellings, coal dust and smoke, were found to be very far from those "good yeoman whose limbs were made in England".  

 

By contrast the Aussies were noted by an English officer as taller, fitter and healthier; bronzed giants who - and here's the relevant bit - spoke in a sort of cockney accent.  All of this had been entirely unexpected by those who had never left the "Mother Country".

Post-grouping I know, but I recall reading that when the British army was recruiting for the Kings African Rifles in WW2, they expected legions of war-like Masai warriors but found that the recruits were mostly factory workers and office clerks from Nairobi...they still put the wind up the Imperial Japanese Army though !

[TT-Pete]

11 hours ago, webbcompound said:

 co-opted our gods and goddesses as saints when they couldn't get rid of them,

 

In that vein perhaps a little bit early to be wishing everyone at CA (but having experienced the horrors of the new local Aldi store this evening and therefore in line with the avalanche of commercial Xmas carp already being shoveled at us mere consumers at the moment); "Io Saturnalia!"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia

 

And some intriguing coincidences; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism_in_comparison_with_other_belief_systems  - analagous to what I believe is known in the Marvel Universe as a "crossover"? :-)

 

[phil_sutters]

8 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

The Australians arriving in the Dardenelles in 1915 were a revelation to the Brits. 

 

The British army was struggling with the effects of, by then, a century of intense urbanisation upon the recruitment pool.  The products of manufacturing towns, damp and unsanitary slum dwellings, coal dust and smoke, were found to be very far from those "good yeoman whose limbs were made in England".  

 

By contrast the Aussies were noted by an English officer as taller, fitter and healthier; bronzed giants who - and here's the relevant bit - spoke in a sort of cockney accent.  All of this had been entirely unexpected by those who had never left the "Mother Country".

Here are two Yeomen of Berkshire - I was recently shown this memorial, erected for the centenary of Trooper Potts' VC, in Reading. My great-uncle Percy was also at Gallipoli, with the Hereford's. He was invalided to Malta with frostbite.

[Hroth]

12 minutes ago, TT-Pete said:

In that vein perhaps a little bit early to be wishing everyone at CA (but having experienced the horrors of the new local Aldi store this evening and therefore in line with the avalanche of commercial Xmas carp already being shoveled at us mere consumers at the moment); "Io Saturnalia!"

 

And if you've ever wondered what the Romans ever did for us

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia_(Davis_novel)

 

Just watch out for cobnuts either propelled or underfoot...

 

[Nearholmer]

And another way of remembering the Australian sacrifice at Gallipoli https://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/eric_bogle/and_the_band_played_waltzing_matilda-lyrics-782826.html

 

Northroader - who is the 'Enery artist? Its a brilliant piece of work.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Nearholmer

[brianusa]

12 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

And another way of remembering the Australian sacrifice at Gallipoli https://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/eric_bogle/and_the_band_played_waltzing_matilda-lyrics-782826.html

 

Northroader - who is the 'Enery artist? Its a brilliant piece of work.

 

Probably one of the most famous songs from war or anywhere else for that matter, up there with "Keep the Home Fires"........

Used effectively in the movie "On the Beach"!

     Brian.

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, brianusa said:

 

Probably one of the most famous songs from war or anywhere else for that matter, up there with "Keep the Home Fires"........

Used effectively in the movie "On the Beach"!

     Brian.

 

"And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda", whilst a very fine song, was written in 1971 and though inspired by the Australian involvment in Vietnam, was recast to Gallipoli as there was more cultural resonance to that terrible campaign.

 

"Keep The Home Fires Burning" on the other hand, is a genuine patriotic tearjerker written in 1914 by Ivor Novello (lyrics by Lena Ford), at a time when "It would all be over by Christmas" and before the terrible bloodshed of the Western Front.

 

[Buhar]

9 minutes ago, brianusa said:

 

Probably one of the most famous songs from war or anywhere else for that matter, up there with "Keep the Home Fires"........

Used effectively in the movie "On the Beach"!

     Brian.

I think you're mixing that up with Waltzing Matilda itself.  The song Nearholmer referenced is from, IIRC, the early 1970s and has been covered by many artists.  It's heart-rending.

 

Many years ago I toured the military museum in Istanbul and seeing stuff about Gallipoli (or Gelibolu) from the perspective of the other lot was quite an eye-opener.  The is one exhibit I recall; two bullets fused together, one piercing the other as they collided in mid-flight.  That summarised for me the intensity of the fighting.  Touring the battlefields is also poignant, at points the front-line trenches we only 10s of meters apart and the bays the ANZACs were directed to land at are coves below steep hills. Fish in a barrel.  Terrible business.

 

Alan

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Buhar said:

The song Nearholmer referenced is from, IIRC, the early 1970s and has been covered by many artists.  It's heart-rending.

 

 

 

Try this one ...

 

 

 

 

[webbcompound]

1 hour ago, Buhar said:

 The is one exhibit I recall; two bullets fused together, one piercing the other as they collided in mid-flight. 

 

 

Having spent some time recovering missing soldiers from WW1 battlefields I have encountered this a couple of times. It is actually either a manufactured amulet, or a bullet embedded in the ammunition held in the pouches on the front of a soldier. The amulet idea was derived from the  fervently held belief that you would only die if you were hit by a bullet specifically meant for you. By wearing the bullets you hoped that you had short circuited the problem. The ones I have seen were worn by German soldiers and the two bullets were a French Lebel and a British 303 covering all eventualities.  The Turks faced both French and British Empire troops at Gallipoli. The Allies faced Turks who were armed with Mausers in both 7.62 and 9.5mm calibre. The photograph shows a number of examples. The ones where the bullet pierces the cartridge are clearly from ammunition pouches, whilst for the ones where two bullets are paired you would need to measure the bullet to be sure what is going on, although they all look to me like bullets in pouches from the way they are distorted. In this picture it looks like at the top a 7.62 Mauser piercing a Lebel cartridge (the one with a rim), a .303 piercing a 9.5 Mauser cartridge (the one without a rim) but without measuring things I couldn't be sure.

Edited November 23, 2019 by webbcompound

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

15 hours ago, webbcompound said:

 

 

Is that Our Lady of Perpetual Bewilderment? 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Speaking of Henry VIII

 

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

16 hours ago, Regularity said:

I think most of them were hardly that: just poor people trying to survive rounded up to provide a workforce in taming a new wilderness, as it was seen.

 

I have heard it said that if you speak with a cockney accent (where most deportees came from) through clenched teeth (Botany Bay was an unpleasant swamp) you get close to the Australian accent*. If that's true, it goes to show how much history is hidden in plain sight.

 

*I know that nowadays teeth are only clenched when losing at cricket or Rugby to England, but accents are modified over time by the influence of the sounds we hear.

 

The hypothesis that the Australian accent has Cockney origins seems to me to be a little tenuous. While there may have been Cockneys in the early batches of transportees there was also a mix of other people from different parts of England. In any case by the 1820s free settlers were starting to arrive in sufficient numbers to skew the proportions of the early population away from the involuntary immigrants to quite voluntary settlers. These people came from all over the British Isles and naturally brought their regional accents with them. Granted there was a survival of the London criminal argot in small traces in Australian slang for some time, but to say that the later free settlers adopted the local accent, if it existed, when they arrived would be drawing a very long bow. In any case those examples of the criminal argot are now long gone - they're only heard in exaggerated renditions by non-Australians trying to mimic an Australian accent they have never heard except from other mimics. 

 

My own ancestry is a mix of English, Scots, Irish and Welsh however the earliest ancestor of mine to arrive in Australia was on my father's side and was Scottish from the west of Scotland, and he came as an indentured labourer on his way to New Zealand in the late 1830s (he was in the same batch as an ancestor of Geoffrey Robertson). It was either that or lead a starvation existence harvesting kelp.

 

Fortunately this ancestor (my great great grandfather) jumped ship in Sydney. I presume because after the many months at sea he was heartily tired of travelling on a sailing ship - can't say I blame him. He then found work as a farm labourer working his way inland down to the colony of Victoria. My mother's side is English/Welsh while my father's side is Scots/Irish. Both were born in Australia and none had anything but a standard Australian accent with no trace of Cockney. The Australian accent is somewhat more drawling with no trace of the distinctive glottal stops of the Cockney accent. But in real terms both my parents were quite well spoken within the confines of their ancestry - my father's accent had a slight nasal overtone which was common in his family. My mother's family immigrated here in the first decade of the 20th century - her father (my maternal grandmother's third husband) was from North London, but as I recall in his old age hadn't retained much trace of his accent. But he died over 60 years ago.

 

I can say that I have no knowledge of the accent of my maternal grandmother, as she died before WW2. She was of mixed English/Welsh ancestry but came from the North London area. That side of the family was quite well-to-do while on my paternal side both my father's parents were from farming families, members of which had moved to Melbourne in the 1890s it seems (I suspect because of the 1890s depression). My father's mother was of Protestant Irish descent, she died in 1960 aged 93 and was born in Australia to an early farming settler family. My grandfather on the paternal side was actually her second husband, he died in 1920. So overall both my parents were born in Australia in the early 20th century, and on my paternal side the whole family for two generations before appears to be locally born. I can't imagine that any of them would have adopted a variant of a Cockney accent, simply because they were farming settlers and had no ancestral ties to London at all. And to finish, because of my education I speak with the slightly drawling inflexion of any well educated Australian, and I can easily say that I would not be mistaken for someone with that peculiarly irritating cockney accent.

 

As for the clenched teeth that's an old furphy playing upon the need to keep one's mouth shut because of the flies, nothing to do with Botany Bay being a swamp, in fact Botany Bay's problem was not too much water but a real lack of potable water that caused the First Fleet to move to Port Jackson. Although when I was employed doing archaeological survey work in north-west Queensland up near the Gulf of Carpentaria the flies were always in plague proportion. But they were only a nuisance if one was trying to take close up photos of artefacts etc. because they would blur the image when you were trying to focus. However I can't recall actually ever eating one          

[Annie]

5 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

Is that Our Lady of Perpetual Bewilderment? 

Now now 

 

Though on reflection asking for her blessed guidance might be of use in these confused and troubled time.

[Northroader]

9 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

 

Northroader - who is the 'Enery artist? Its a brilliant piece of work.

Have a look in https://www.gxgallery.com/ (Alain mcgallon, you may recognise other people in there!)

Edited November 23, 2019 by Northroader

[webbcompound]

10 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

Is that Our Lady of Perpetual Bewilderment? 

Nope it is Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza Macarena from Seville (the Virgin of Hope, or La Macarena), who is paraded through the Macarena district of the city by the Holy Week brotherhood on Good Friday, in what is probably the biggest Marian parade in Spain.. Macarena is now a popular girl's name, hence the dance...