Drake’s Drum

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England has two sleeping heroes, one of whom … may have been active as recently as WWII. One is King Arthur, the once and future king, sleeping on the Isle of Avalon. The other, a less ideal figure perhaps, is Francis Drake.

Drake he’s in his hammock an’ a thousand miles away, 
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?) 
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay, 
An’ dreamin’ arl the time O’ Plymouth Hoe. 
Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the ships, 
Wi’ sailor lads a-dancing’ heel-an’-toe, 
An’ the shore-lights flashin’, an’ the night-tide dashin’, 
He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago. 

Drake he was a Devon man, an’ ruled the Devon seas, 
(Capten, art tha’ sleepin’ there below?) 
Roving’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease, 
A’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe. 
“Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore, 
Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low; 
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven, 
An’ drum them up the Channel as we drumm’d them long ago.” 

Drake he’s in his hammock till the great Armadas come, 
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?) 
Slung atween the round shot, listenin’ for the drum, 
An’ dreamin arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe. 
Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound, 
Call him when ye sail to meet the foe; 
Where the old trade’s plyin’ an’ the old flag flyin’ 
They shall find him ware an’ wakin’, as they found him long ago! 

Source: Sir Henry Newbolt. “Drake’s Drum” https://www.poetry.com/poem/35121/drake’s-drum

Should danger threaten England, Drake’s drum, which exists and hangs in his family’s home today, will sound and he will intervene. It is said that some of the men with Nelson heard the drum, and that it was heard in Plymouth before the battle of Jutland in 1917, and again in 1940 at Dunkirk.

Other places have Charlemagne, and Frederick II (or Barbarossa, depending on which legend you follow). Or Holger Dansk, if his second eye opens, then all Scandinavia had best beware. The tale of the sleeping, hidden champion is very common in Europe. England has a pirate, which seems fair.

Francis Drake was an admiral, a privateer (pirate with a permit), sailed around the world and survived, a thorn in the flesh of the Spanish, and defended England against all comers. He died in the New World and was buried at sea*, wrapped in his hammock despite being a noble and admiral. His drum came back to England.

I’d forgotten the poem until I was reading an essay by Dorothy L. Sayers, who quoted the lines in italics. For some reason, I thought it was Kipling. I was close. Newbolt has been called the “Kipling of the Navy,” and the men were contemporaries. It is written in dialect.

There are a few readings on the Tube of You. This one doesn’t try to use the dialect, but I like it anyway.

The legend appears in songs and novels, including Lammas Night by Katherine Kurtz.

*Tucking Drake into a keg of rum was not an option, as was done with a few other Royal Navy men. There’s a reason that a slang term for a drink is “tapping the admiral.”

A Blessed Pesach

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Source: https://www.learnreligions.com/symbols-of-the-seder-plate-2076486

“And the angel of death passed over …” Unleavened bread, bitter herbs, the egg of new life … All parts of the story of Passover and the start of the long journey out of bondage and into the promised land. A land that was not without work, and struggle, and imperfections, but a land that was free.

A blessed Pesach to all my Jewish readers!

Penned In, Sort of

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I was thinking back to last December, and my visit to Downtown Dallas. It reminded me why I prefer people-scale places. Humans build up when out is not an option, for what ever reason. It might be the need to shelter within city walls. It might be because taxes are based on the square footage of the ground floor, so people stack spaces (and hang the next floor a wee bit over the ground floor, and again, and again …). In other cases, people want to stay where their ancestors were, and if the ancestors’ remains are under the floor, and the family grows, well, you add an additional level. If the topography and climate require, the ground floor is sacrificial storage because of floods, and the upper floors are for business, then living, then servants’ quarters and then storage of valuable stuff. Downtown Dallas went up because you could get more office and store space in the sky than on the ground (hemmed in already).

The result of the post WWII explosive growth of the city’s business community was … depressing after a certain period of time. Everything is closed by ten PM, or earlier, aside from a few restaurants and bars. Loud vehicles and loud voices echo, hollow and inhuman, vaguely threatening in the night. The older, attractive buildings are concealed by metal, glass, stone, and cement towers that loom, windows dark, facades blank and empty of the human touch. The people out on the streets either hurry to reach their destination of elsewhere, or prowl the night seeking something that might be prey, or might be a way out of the mental world they inhabit (alcohol or other chemicals). A few have already sent their minds out of this reality for the evening, and call, sing, shout, and spook passers by. The people working in the area move briskly intent on avoiding trouble while collecting the trash or returning from parking a car or two. Cold wind swirled bits of paper and dust, chasing south-bound cars and pedestrians.

I felt hemmed in. Even if I wanted to go out and roam a little, see if I could find the famous old landmark buildings in downtown Dallas, I could not have seen them. They hid in the forest of facades. I didn’t know the territory, had no map, and dared not be distracted from keeping track of the other people moving in the night. I stayed put, penned in even though nothing tied me to the hotel. This wasn’t my place. I”m not a city mouse, can’t read the hazards enough to know who belonged and who did not. Besides me, that was. I did not fit there.

The scale of modern downtowns is superhuman to the point of masking humanity. Steel, glass, stone reflect sound and light, bouncing them back and forth hundreds of feet into the air. Everything imposes on the spirit rather than celebrating it, or so it feels. The point is to look out, or down, not meet eye to eye, so to speak. Towers without the gracious details of art deco or the prairie style of the early 20th century discourage looking and loitering. They are for business, and if you don’t know what that business is, or have a role in it, the place is not for you. When night comes, they empty and loom, silent and dark, lairs of … Who can tell?

Fire codes, cost of real estate, reducing places for vandalism, the problem of keeping shops and grocery stores and schools in downtown areas so that residential and business mix, they all play roles. Americans never got used to living at their work, and having a house with a yard was an ideal that many people could attain in the 1900s. So city centers became business-focused, not blended like some stayed in Europe and Britain. With hight came prestige, so sky-scrapers went up, and up, and up, where the local geology and technology permitted. The result over time? “Concrete canyons,” and a place that feels less and less people-oriented.

Tuesday Tidbit: A Bard’s Place

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Tuathal, master allav and gifted with awan, settles into his younger half-brother’s court.

Oh, he did not want to move from the warmth of the bed and the softness of his bed companion, come the morning. Tuathal made himself get to his feet and wash face and hands, then dress. By the time he did, the serving woman, Seren, arose as well, gathered her clothes, and hurried away without a word. He’d give her a little something later. With a grumble for the foolishness of so much strong drink after so long, Tuathal made his way to where the warriors practiced with sword and spear. No one else moved save the servants, bond and free. Soft rain pattered down, cold and persistent. Harvest had finished just in time, all gods of land and sky be thanked. 

He found a sword of wood and stretched, then began to work on attacks and blocks. It had been too long, far too long, but no bard went with a blade of this kind in the south. Too many might ask questions he did not care to answer without strong men at his back. His hand and arms recalled the basics, sufficient that he did not hurt himself or look the fool. He drank some water, then traded sword for staff. This he wielded with practiced ease. 

Crack. The wood in his hand hit wood, not air, and his hands stung. Tuathal parried and struck, then dodged a blow. He and his opponent sparred for some time before the other man called, “Halt.” 

Tuathal stepped back and planted the butt of the heavy oak staff in the dirt. The man facing him pushed back the hood on his cloak, revealing Odhran. Gray hairs almost outnumbered light brown. “You fight like an easterner,” the old man observed.

“I should. What is first learned remains, yes?” He extended his hand, and they shook. “All expect a traveler to carry a staff.”

“As they should. Your sword arm bears rust.”

The words came as an observation, not an insult. Tuathal nodded. “It does. The farmers and herders of the south carry no swords, not even of the old metal. Knife, aye, sling, staff, bow and arrows, spears a few, but not sword. They say it’s no use against beasts, only men.” Given how some men acted worse than beasts, well, he’d considered disagreeing, but had held his tongue. 

“Farmers would say that, aye,” Odhran replied. “You ride still?”

“Only a ship since I left these halls.” 

“Thought so. Ye’d do well to regain the skill. Word from the west’s the high king’s younger sons grow restless. Northern men as well, but when do they not come south in the winter?”

Tuathal tried to recall. “The year the sea froze and the wolves broke into the women’s hall? That’s the last I recall.” He’d first come to these lands that summer. All the signs had warned of a hard winter, but none had expected cold so deep trees shattered, and wolves and men walked over the sea’s ice almost as far as the Isle of White Birds. The tribe to the north had not visited then, perhaps because they were fighting cold and beasts both, too busy to raid as usual. 

“Not today, but soon,” Odhran warned. “And work your sword arm, master bard. Fewer respect the clarsach and awan than in days past.” He frowned, frost-touched eyebrows drawing down an aging thatch roof over his eyes. “Something comes on the wind, but what I do not know.”

Tuathal weighed the man’s words against his own witness. “Several halls had no praise singers or even harpers. Pyder’s lack is understandable, but others? I am warned, and will practice.”

“Good. Now go get something to eat before the young men devour it.”

Would any be awake? Tuathal gestured agreement, put sword and staff in their places, and went to where servants and women set out food for those with morning work. Bread, grain pottage with apple, and cider waited, along with some bacon. As he waited for a serving girl to give him a portion, he sensed movement and turned, then bowed to Aisling and her maid. 

“Thank you. Eat, husband’s brother. Long was your journey.” She took a place near but not too near. The servants served her first, then him. He did not protest. With any other woman, he would, but not Aisling the Bold. She’d demanded Fiachta’s hand, tested him, and declared that she’d wed him. 

Her father had sent her dower and a message that had left Fiachta rolling with laughter, a message he had kept to himself. It likely had been, “You deal with her. I cannot,” or something similar. She’d borne two sons and a daughter, all still living, and a fourth who came too young and tore her womb as he came. That Aisling herself lived remained one of the wonders of the Isles of the Strong. 

Tuathal watched the servants and two arms men. As the night before, they moved without fear, calm and practiced. One bond maid watched an older woman, likely learning how to serve, or to prepare a proper meal. Not all captives had such skills. They worked quietly, but not in the fearful silence of Pyder’s hall. What had happened to Pyder, why had he grown so tight-handed, and so feared? Tuathal drank more cider. 

His half-brother’s wife ate more than he did. Since she stood a head taller, and broader in the shoulders, well, she should. A little Northern stock ran in her family, or so the wind whispered. The wise kept such thoughts to themselves. He’d watched her use a weaving beam to beat an arms man who grew overbold. It was a wonder the beam had not broken the way his arms had. Then she’d returned to supervising her weaving women without a second glance at the bloody, whimpering creature crawling out of the weaving hall. Fiadh, her sire should have named her, for the battle queen of the time of the coming of the people to this land. 

“What think you, bard?” she asked after finishing the pottage. 

“I think the gods have blessed this land, and that a well-run hall is one of the great treasures of the Land of the Strong.” 

Broad smiles greeted his words. “A wise and observant traveler you are indeed, Tuathal map Aiden. Finish, if you so choose.” She stood and departed, her maids following close behind. He did as ordered. 

Later, as he studied the horses in the pasture, he heard a steady thumping sound from closer to the women’s hall. He smiled and went to where the threshers worked. A stool waited, not for him, but he took it even so. He checked the harp’s tune and began a steady work and marching song, then a harvest thanks song. The men and women smiled as they labored. 

That night, as he prepared for sleep, he stepped outside to glance at the stars. A cold wind brushed his cheek, wind of the west, laden with water. It carried … Tuathal breathed deeply. Bitterness, like the smoke of green hay being burned in war. The breeze and moment passed. He bowed to the wind for the warning, then went to bed. 

(C) 2026 Alma T. C. Boykin All Rights Reserved

I Am the Dust, I Cover All

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With apologies to Walt Whitman. Grass also covers a lot, but given the construction around town, dust is omnipresent, even when you think it’s not. Last week, half an hour after sunrise (so the sun was in my eyes all the way), I drove from Day Job to somewhere else to help chaperone most of the school for a Passover/Easter related event. The wind was almost calm.

Dust still made haze in the air.

One, it has been blowing in from all over because of the dry weather and high winds, so there’s a lot of soil laying around, waiting to be stirred up. Two, construction of many kinds is in progress around the area, including several housing developments on the windward side of town. The heavy equipment coming and going stirs up everything, and the least breeze moves the dust hither and yon.

It has become so omnipresent that I don’t really notice it unless I clean something. Then the difference is marked. The relative pallor of the sky despite how dry it is should also be a tell. Something is filtering the sun’s light, and it is not yet smoke. Nor is it humidity (alas). Just very fine dirt hovering, drifting on the wind, then settling on all available surfaces. I sort of shrug most of the time. If I can’t really see or taste or smell it, I ignore it. If the scent is “Feedlot #5,” I note the wind direction and keep going.

We’ve not had a true “wall of dust” like in 2011, or like they get south of us, yet. People notice dusty days, usually because they are windy as all get out, and the world turns a soft tan. Only outside of town does moving soil turn driving into a hazard with low visibility. The soil here is not sandy, so cars don’t get the paint stripped off as can happen elsewhere. Driving into a wall-o-dirt is still not recommended. Someone might have stopped, or a wreck happened, and you won’t see it until you are part of the wreck.

Rain will be welcome. I’d prefer not to have great big thunderstorms, or two months’ rain in three hours (seen that. No fun in a flat place.) Not that I’d complain if either of those happen, because too many people would thump me. The land needs rain. People need rain. Tempers shorten and folks get snarly and depressed when drought drags on and on and on. No one is saying the “d word” yet, but I suspect most of us are thinking it.

The dust covers all. “From dust you were made and to dust ye shall return.” If man is made of dust, well, even when I’m alone outdoors, I’m in a crowd.

OK, So Not Italian Wedding Soup

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That’s sort of where I started, but without making the meatballs, and without adding the leafy greens or orzo pasta. Inspired by the basic idea of Italian Wedding Soup is probably the better way to describe it.

I scored a pound of ground lamb (lamburger) on clearance.

2 C chicken broth, plus water

1 c chopped onion

2 T chopped garlic (I like garlic)

Sauté the meat in oil, then add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the broth, and water to cover, plus a little more. For spices I used basil, a commercial five-pepper blend (bell, cayenne, and some others), a few bits of rosemary, and a shake of smoked paprika. I let it simmer for half an hour, then turned off the fire.

The next day I chopped three carrots into thin slices, and did the same for four stalks of celery. Those went into the pot with a bit more water, since I wanted soup. I brought it to a vigorous boil, then let it simmer for an hour or so. The flavor was very good, “bright” with a bit of warmth but not overwhelming. Lamb has a distinct flavor, and I wanted to play that up.

The original recipe is for ground Italian sausage, or a 50/50 blend of ground pork and ground beef, made into small meatballs. After you do the same things with the garlic and onion that I did, you add carrots, celery, leafy greens, and orzo. I may toss rice in next time, just a quarter cup or so, to thicken it. Letting it sit overnight helped the flavors mellow.

It’s Not Stealing, It’s Inspiration

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I’d sung it but not in German. Which made absolutely no sense, because I’ve never done Brahms in English. Except …

OK, to back up, rewind, and so on. One of the groups I sing with was working on the first movement of the Brahms German Requiem. It is not a true Roman Catholic requiem, but was inspired by the ideas and sense of the Roman Catholic Mass setting. So the first movement begins with (in German), “Blessed are those who mourn.” The second movement begins with “All flesh is as grass and our days are cut off as flowers of the field,” but becomes more lively and cheerful as it describes how the mourners will be comforted, until they come with rejoicing to the blessed place (which is described in the fourth movement). The ending is a fugue, a fancy round, focusing on the words “come with rejoicing,” or “kommen mit Jauchtzen.” It dances and bounces back and forth among the voices before resolving into a big Brahmsian chord. Start at 9:45.

As I’m studying the music, and listening to two other voice parts “woodshedding” the section, I kept thinking, “I’ve sung this, in English.” Except I have only done this composition in German. What was I hearing in my head? Something about dancing, and coming into the presence of the-

Ah hah! Randall Thompson’s Peaceable Kingdom, the end of the final movement. “As when one goeth with a pipe/ to come before the mountain of the Lord.” It is a close parallel, not stolen but inspired by, using a slightly different text, and a capella.

And the Thompson, at 3:10.

Thompson borrowed from Brahms, Renaissance motets, and perhaps others. Just like other composers borrowed themes, or chord patterns, or “put fugue here,” and still do. After all, when you have eight notes, plus sharps/flats, well, there’s going to be overlap.

I’d Forgotten How Weird

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Robert Graves’ book The White Goddess is. I first read it not long after plowing though Frazier’s The Golden Bough, and was also immersed in some New Age folklore stuff at the time. For those and other reasons, Graves’ ideas didn’t seem so strange. Coming back to the book after coughcough years, oooooohhhh boy. Even allowing for the fact that he was a poet and novelist, and not a linguist or historian of religion, he’s strange. Yes, the translations he had access to were flawed, but oh, he goes onto some odd tangents and meanderings. It is easy to see why the book gets such strong reactions, and why the New Age and neoPagan movements latched onto some of his ideas, then expanded on them.

Rereading him also reminds me why I gave up on that sort of thing, besides common sense and a healthy sense of self-preservation. That’s a deep end I’d just as soon not go off of. My mind is strange enough without that kind of help, and some of the “ancient pagan roots” lore and pathways are as seductive as they are erroneous.

Right, back to the real source material he riffed on, and how to get the sense of Iron Age bardic poetry into the book without copying actual poems and odes.

What Was the Statue Wearing?

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No, this isn’t the set up for a joke. I was looking at images of a deity figure found in Scotland, one that had been deconsecrated (so to speak) and interred face-down in a peat bog near where it had originally stood, 3500 years ago. When found in the 1800s, it wore a skirt, possibly a shawl as well, but certainly a skirt. Alas, the Victorians didn’t have the preservation techniques we have today, so that was lost, and the figure dried and warped. Fortunately, the finders had a scientific artist with them, who documented what the statue had looked like when it was lifted from the bog, and the archaeologists described the fabric, which could not be preserved.

In the western art tradition, most statues are not dressed in additional fabric. Some religious images are, especially figures of the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus, but if you think about the main western art style going back to Classical figures, the person or deity depicted is fully dressed, or sufficiently dressed for what is being shown. Even nudes were not enhanced with cloth draperies, nor were later figures of saints, kings, and others. At least in one case, in what is now Scotland, that wasn’t true. A carefully carved female figure also had made for her and placed on her, a skirt and/or possibly a plaid that draped around the figure. Since the statue was about 1.6m (5′ 7″ or so), this was an investment of labor to make the cloth for the statue.

As it turns out, donating garments to images of deities is not unusual, globally speaking. In Mesopotamia, Egypt, places in Asia, and elsewhere, clothes and accessories were made and donated to the images of the gods, so that they would be properly honored and dressed. Ancestors also received garments, sometimes through ritual burning on a certain day, sometimes as replicas of garments. Westerners, following the Greek and Roman practices, created images wearing clothes, so outfits did not need to be made. And Christian and Jewish beliefs about the presence of the holy discouraged dressing images as a daily practice. A few statues of the Virgin and Jesus are the rare exceptions, and are known as exceptions.

SO, what does the image from the bog, now in the Scottish History Museum in Edinburgh, tell us about ancient Scottish beliefs? That the bog, which overlooked a road and waterway, needed a deity, perhaps one to protect travelers in the dangerous terrain. We know from offerings in other places that marshes and fords could be edge-lands, where the divine was close, or power of other kinds present, so offerings of various kinds were appropriate. The statue was a woman, with a niche just above her feet, perhaps for offerings. Pale quartz pebbles formed the center of her eyes, staring out of dark wood. She would have been a striking, perhaps haunting, representation of a greater power, clearly embodying something that needed to be honored, or propitiated. Beyond that?

Thus hangs world building in a prehistoric-of-sorts fictional Celtic world.

Pajamas, Turn Signals, and A Little Too Casual?

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Since 2020, drivers seem to be less careful about red lights, lane changes, using the left turn lane for passing, and occasionally assuming that the red light doesn’t apply to them. Also since 2020, I see more people wearing pajamas, or “pajama-print” clothing out and about. Not just dropping kids off at school, but going to lunch, in the grocery store in late afternoon, at the bank. Is there a cultural connection? Not directly, but I wonder if life has gotten a little too casual, or the broader culture has.

Formality is fading. The local symphony has stopped wearing white-tie, and choruses have dropped black tie, because the last tux rental place in town closed, and most people around here don’t own a tuxedo or white-tie and tails. “Casual Friday” is no longer exceptional, although people are still arguing over what is too casual. Dressing up to travel faded out in the 1990s, and really declined after 2000, to the point that airlines have returned to having dress codes for safety and to reduce problems with passenger behavior. Clothes are less tailored, and language feels less formal as well. Granted, this is not always a good thing when clarity is lost along with “rigidity,” but the older forms of speech and writing seem to be vanishing.

Casual has a pejorative sense, or used to, when talking about someone who was hired for a day and probably not reliable. The original Latin implies that something is by chance, not deliberate, which fits some forms of clothing (and driving). “I just threw it on,” can be self-depricating, or a little too accurate. A casual attitude is still seen as less-than-ideal when applied to driving a car, or other safety-related matters.

Too comfortable can also suggest a lack of consideration for others. Granted, “Don’t worry about what other people think, be yourself,” has a place, especially for kids trying to sort out who they are, and those of us on the odd an variable end of the skill spectrum. However, when we are too comfortable, and too interested in what makes us happy or gets us where we want to be, it means that others come second, or last. I wonder if sloppy-in-public and careless driving are linked in that they both suggest that other people don’t matter. I can wear pajamas to a nice business or restaurant because my comfort matters more than the experience of the people around me. I can jump the light, or run the red, or pass in the turn lane, because my errand and my schedule is more important than other people’s needs.

I’m sure there are a lot of other things going on, and people are analyzing the heck out of everything already. The coincidence of overly-informal dress and chronically poor driving makes me wonder a little, though.