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Page:"Become a nurse - Your country needs you" - NARA - 513583.jpg

 Federal Security Agency U.S. Public Health Service

YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU
Write Nursing Information Bureau, 1790 Broadway, New York City


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Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/35

30 upper front teeth knocked out. This operation is performed when the boys arrive at the age of puberty. For three months after this torturing ordeal the youths are not permitted to look upon a woman young or old, as the sight of one during this probation would be the means of entailing countless misfortunes, such as the withering of the limbs, loss of eyesight, and in fact general decrepitude.

Youths, prior to the extraction of the teeth, dare not eat of emu flesh, wild turkey, swan, geese, or black duck, or of the eggs of any of these birds. Did they infringe this law in the slightest possible manner, their hair would become prematurely grey, and the flesh of their limbs would waste away and shrivel up. Any members of their tribes having malformations of limb or body are pointed out as living examples of the dire fate of those who knowingly commit a breach of this aboriginal law. These cripples that are thus put forth as living illustrations have had it impressed upon their minds from their earliest youth that their respective infirmities are entirely due to such indiscretions, and this has been impressed upon their minds so persistently, they have not a doubt on the subject, therefore give implicit credence to the story.

Having such dread penalties continually placed before them, the various kinds of tabooed food are carefully avoided by the aboriginal youth; thus the full-grown men and women of the tribe come in for many of the good things, which they would not, but for this wise decree. Nevertheless, the makers of this law were wise in their day and generation, and thereby conferred a grand benefit upon


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User talk:Phoinix

— billinghurst  sDrewth  13:10, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

title: User talk:Phoinix


text:
Author:Emil Bretschneider

Works

 * On the Knowledge Possessed by the Ancient Chinese of the Arabs and Arabian Colonies (1871)
 * "The Latest Discussion of Fusang", with T. Simson in Fusang, or the Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century, by Charles Godfrey Leland (1875)
 * Notes on Chinese Mediaeval Travellers to the West (1875)
 * Archaeological and Historical Researches of Peking and Its Environs (1876)
 * Early European Researches into the Flora of China (1881)
 * Botanicon Sinicum: Notes on Chinese botany from native and western sources (3 vols, 1882)
 * Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (2 vols, 1888)
 * Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (1910 edition, volume 1)

title: Author:Emil Bretschneider


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Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/36

31 themselves and their descendants, which is perceptible even to the present day.

As a rule the aborigines have not any great capacity for physical exertion; at least, they cannot compete with average white men, when violent and long drawn out fatigue chances to be the order of the day; they have thews and sinews enough, too; in fact, usually their whole physique is unexceptionable, but they lack what is commonly termed pluck; therefore, it takes but a small matter beyond common to make them give in. They, however, always evince a certain amount of shame at those times, as is evidenced by their invariably attributing their apparent want of stamina to the fact of their having a sore finger, or some equally trivial ailment.

They can bear the pangs of hunger, however, wonderfully well; a whole week's starvation is not by any means an uncommon occurrence with them. At those times, they will not stir out of their camps; indeed, they will scarcely turn themselves round, unless perhaps when they think it will lessen their discomfort somewhat if they give their waist-belts an extra twist, thereby contracting the vacuum which lack of food has made so painfully apparent.

CHAPTER IV.

BLACKFELLOWS' OVENS, HOW FORMED; MOURNING FOR THE DEAD, SIGNS THEREOF; OF SEPULTURE, AND THE CEREMONIES CONNECTED THEREWITH.

Blackfellows' ovens, or cooking places, have been a fertile source of argument for many years, some holding that they


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32 are not cooking places at all, but a description of Tumuli, left by some race long since passed away, and quite forgotten; still, so far as the general public are aware, none of the writers on the point have had sufficient curiosity to dig into the mounds, and so set it at rest once and for all.

Blackfellows, ovens are not misnomers, but to all intents and purposes are genuine cooking places, and the following is the manner of their formation:—

A family, or perhaps several families, as the case may be, select a site for their camp, where abundance of game and other sources of food exist, and are procurable with the least expenditure of time and trouble. Towards the middle of the afternoon the hunters drop into camp, with the result of the day's industry, consisting, in all probability, of all sorts and sizes; for our present purpose, however, we will imagine the game to consist of opossums only.

As soon as the hunters have seated themselves comfortably, they set to work skinning the opossums, whilst several of the lyoores go off with their yamsticks. When they reach the spot which they had before selected for the purpose, they begin with a will to excavate a hole three feet in diameter and eighteen inches deep. During the digging of the hole, any pieces of clay of about the size of cricket balls which are turned out are carefully placed on one side. When the hole has been dug sufficiently deep, it is swept or brushed out with some boughs, or a bunch of grass; it is then filled to the top with firewood (which the lyoores had previously collected for that purpose), upon which the


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33 selected pieces of clay are carefully placed. The wood is then ignited, and by the time it is all burned the clay nodules have become baked, until they are exactly similar to irregular sections of well-burnt brick; of course, they are red hot. When this result has been properly achieved, the hot clay is removed from the hole; for this purpose they use two pieces of stick, about eight inches long, holding them both in one hand, and working them deftly, even as a cook-maid uses a pair of tongs. The natives now term these sticks tongs. Prior to the advent of white men, they had no name for them, other than kulky. The use of these tongs is an accomplishment possessed by old and young alike. This dexterity almost seems an aboriginal gift, as few, if any, white men have ever attained to any degree of proficiency in their use.

After the hot clay is removed from the hole, the ashes are carefully swept out, and a thin layer of grass slightly moistened, placed over the bottom, and round the sides, upon which the prepared opossums are nicely packed, and then covered over with more damp grass. The hot clay nodules are then spread equally over the top of the grass, when the whole oven is then closed with the finer earth which originally came out of the excavation. Should this covering be too thin to keep the steam from escaping, it is supplemented by earth, dug in immediate proximity (this supplemented soil accounts fully for the depressions always found about the bases of these ovens). Ashes are never employed for the outside covering, because, being tine, they would percolate through the interlining both of the grass and clay nodules, thereby adding an amount of grit which


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34 would not improve the flavour or appearance of the food. Before the heat in the clay nodules, and the bottom of the hole has become exhausted, the opossums are beautifully cooked, as perfectly so indeed as though the operation had teen performed in the most improved kitchen range extant.

When the cooking has been completed the covering is scraped off, and this debris, consisting of calcined clay, ashes, and burnt earth, becomes the nucleus of a black fellow's oven. This process being repeated at short intervals, over a series of years, perhaps indeed for centuries, results in the mounds, which are in reality blacks' ovens, although frequently termed (most improperly so) tumuli.

As long as the camp remains in one place, the same hole is used for baking their food in, and when it is understood that at least a barrowful of fresh clay is required every time the oven is heated to replace the unavoidable waste by crumbling, which is by no means inconsiderable, in consequence of the clay being used in an unwrought state, it will readily be seen how these mounds gradually, but surely increase. Bones, too, of the animals which they use for food, besides charcoal, etc., tend materially to hasten their growth.

As a general rule the natives do not erect their loondthals, on these cooking mounds. An exception to this exists, however, on the extensive reedy plains of the Lower Murray, which are annually inundated, and remain so for at least five months out of the twelve.

On these wide-spreading reed-beds the blackfellows' ovens are of a larger size, and more numerous, than they are in


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35 any other portion of Australia, thus plainly denoting the at one time denseness of the population in that locality, as well as the abundance of food pertaining thereto. When the mild rains of spring dissolve the snows on the alps, the liberated waters rush down the innumerable tributaries of the Murray, until the volume becomes greater than the capacity of the river's bed; therefore, on reaching the vast expanse of the lower river, they have perforce to spread themselves out on each side, until many hundreds of square miles are submerged.

All over the submerged country, cooking mounds stand up out of the flood, perfect little islands, looking bright, green, and refreshing to the eye, by reason of the great growth of succulent saltbush, dillines, and giant mallow with which they are prettily dressed. These oven islands the natives utilise in the flood season for their village sites, conveying their firewood and other requirements over miles of water from the main land in their canoes. A village, or native encampment, will often times remain on one of these tiny islands for a whole month, feasting upon the oleaginous codfish and his congeners, taking ample toll from the great Murray lobster, as well as from his more delicate, though pigmy brother, the crawfish. Aquatic birds, too, of many species, together with their eggs, have to contribute pretty heavily to the aboriginal cuisine, and by way of salad they have the watery ionty, and the bitter sow thistle, which, all combined, go a long way towards forming a delectable


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36 melange, such as even a diciple [sic] of the famed Epicurus could scarcely cavil at.

It will thus be seen that everything used by the dwellers in these island villages has to be brought there from outside places, and the daily refuse therefrom aids very materially towards the growth of these mounds. So long as the game and fish continue plentiful, the natives never think of moving to fresh quarters—that is to say, unless the tiny spot becomes too offensive for even aboriginal olfactories to bear with any degree of pleasure. When it does so, they shift away to another mound, leaving natural agencies to purify the contaminated atmosphere round about the abandoned spot.

Aboriginal skeletons are frequently discovered in the cooking mounds, hence the idea which generally prevails of their being tumuli. This fact can, however, be accounted for in a very simple manner. For example, a death takes place on one of these isolated spots, when their happens to be only a small section of a tribe located thereon; and as grave-digging is very arduous when hands are few, and the implements merely yamsticks, the easiest method, therefore, of covering up the dead from their sight is at once adopted, and that is done by scraping a hole in the friable soil of the mound, in which the body is placed and covered up. Immediately after one of these hurried burials, the mound is vacated, and ere much time has passed, the defunct subject is entirely forgotten. Be it understood that this description of sepulture is only given to old women, or those who had been invalids of long standing, and who had become troublesome thereby to their unwilling attendants.


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37 We once had occasion to remove the whole of a blackfellows' oven; it contained fully three thousand cubic yards of soil. During its removal we exhumed twenty-eight skeletons This large number was a matter of considerable surprise to us, but on making due inquiry amongst the very old natives, we discovered that they were the remains of some of the smallpox victims who had died during the earlier stages of the epidemic, when sepulture was yet being given to those who succumbed to the loathsome plague.

When men of consequence and consideration, or young people, die, there is much mourning and grief in the tribe, and amongst those related by blood to the deceased. The mourning takes the shape of very violent physical suffering. At those times these (the relatives) score their backs and arms (even their faces do not always escape) with red hot brands, until they become hideous with ulcers. These ulcers stand them in good stead, however, in this way: if their grief is not sufficiently acute to induce a genuine cry, they have only to come against the ulcers roughishly, when they will have cause enough for any quantity cf lachrymosity. At sunrise and sundown the one who is principally bereaved begins to cry, or howl, in a long, monotonous kind of yodling tone, which is taken up by old and young. At first it is begun very low, but gradually swells into such volumes of uncouth, excruciating sound, as is heard under no other circumstances, and, we think, amongst no other people. The mourning cries at a good large wake are considerable, and not by any means pleasing, to the generality of mankind; still, they are as music of the spheres, when compared to the hellish din created by a camp full of mourners.


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38 Each period of daily mourning lasts for about an hour; the rest of the twenty-four hours the mourners, to all appearance, are as free from grief and trouble as though no such evils had being. Of course, every member of the tribe has his or her head plastered over with a white pigment, which is made by burning gypsum, and then mixing it with water, until it reaches the desired consistancy [sic]. The face is also painted with the same stuff in such designs as best pleases each individual savage. When the whole tribe are so decorated they give as perfect a representation of a host of demons as the most imaginative in demonology could well pourtray [sic], and a stranger, unacquainted with the aborigine and his customs, coming suddenly on an encampment, where all the members thereof chanced to be figged out in this guise, could scarcely be blamed if a thrill of real terror did imbue his every nerve.

They prepare their dead for burial by wrapping them up tightly in the opossum cloaks which they wore during life, winding numberless plies of cord round the body to keep the cloak in its place. This operation is performed as soon as the body has become rigid, and when completed the body is borne to the grave at once. The graves are usually about four feet deep, and always bearing east and west. In the bottom of the grave a sheet of bark is placed, or, if bark is not to be had, it is thickly strewn with grass; the body is then let down, with the feet towards the east. All the property, such as weapons, bags, etc., belonging to the deceased are laid beside the body, then sticks are placed across the grave, the ends of which rest on ledges a few inches above the body; over these, and crossing them at right angles,


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39 sticks the length of the grave are arranged; then bark, or a good thick covering of grass, hides the body from view, and prevents the earth (which is now filled in) from coming in contact therewith. When all this is properly completed, the relatives of the deceased fling themselves prone upon the grave—howling, tearing their hair out by handfuls, and rubbing earth in quantity over their heads and bodies; ripping up the unhealed ulcers in the most loathsome fashion, until with blood and grime they become a hideous and ghastly spectacle. There is about an hour of this performance before the ceremony comes to an end. After it is finished, the mourners trudge back to the camp in twos and threes. On their arrival there, they sit down silently and stolidly for perhaps an hour more, after which they seem again to wake up into life; their grief thenceforth is forgotten (unless at the morning and evening intervals of mourning), although the self-inflicted sores remain long unhealed, and should, consequently, have the effect of keeping their bereavement fresh and green in their memories.

Should the person buried have been esteemed of consideration in the tribe prior to death, a neat hut is erected over the grave; the covering thereof being generally thatch, made of a hard knotty grass, having many joints, therefore probably akin to Polygonum. This thatch is firmly secured to the frame by means of cord, many hundred yards of which are used in the process. Upon some occasions a net is made, having meshes four inches square, with which the whole hut is securely enveloped.

These mausoleums cover the graves entirely; they are five feet high, and are of an oval shape. A small opening


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40 or doorway is left at the eastern end. These openings are never more than two feet high; in fact, they are only just large enough to allow of a full-grown man to get in by creeping on hands and knees. The tops of the graves, or floors, are covered with thin layers of grass, which is renewed from time to time, as it becomes withered.

The tombs are enclosed with brush fences; the forms of the enclosures always take the shape of a diamond, the tomb being the centre thereof. All the grass inside of the fence is neatly shaved off, and the ground is swept quite clean. It is kept in this tidy condition for two or three years. After the lapse of that time, however, the whole arrangement is permitted to dwindle to decay, and after a few more years the very site of it is forgotton [sic].

When a first-born child dies, should it be a son (if a daughter it is hidden out of sight as soon as possible), and under two years of age, instead of being buried in the usual manner, the body is tightly swaddled in an opossum cloak, and well fastened round with cords, until the body assumes the appearance of a long narrow bundle; not, however, showing the outline of the figure, as is the case with a body prepared for burial, but looking exactly similar to a bale of skins ready for despatch to market. This bundle the mother carries with her wherever she goes, and at night sleeps with it by her side; and this she continues persistantly [sic] to do for six months, until from decay nothing but bones remain. After this, they (the bones) are put in the ground and forgotten.

These decomposing atoms of mortality do not tend to make the atmosphere in the vicinity of the camp either


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title: Wikisource:Extracts


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41 pleasant or healthful. These savages, however, bear with the offensive effluvium without the slightest murmur, deeming it doubtless the correct thing to do, more especially as it was a custom which had been handed down to them by their progenitors from ages long since forgotten.

When very old women die, or wittols of long standing (of whom there are generally a few in each tribe), a shallow hole is merely scraped in the most convenient spot, both with regard to proximity and softness of soil, wherein the body is thrown without any preparation or ceremony, and covered slightly up, is so left, and forgotten; unless, indeed, the shallow grave chances to be scraped out by the dogs—which frequently happens—and the poor remains of humanity are voraciously devoured by the ghoul like brutes. Instead of the natives viewing such desecrations with horror, they actually make merry thereon, and bandy obscene facetiæ with each other on the subject, deeming such occasions fit in every way for the display of their vile and prurient wit.

CHAPTER V.

In the matter of sports, games, and pastimes, the aborigines have no great diversity, but such as they have are enjoyed to the fullest. Indeed they frequently continue some of their rude play until fatigue culminates in exhaustion.


text: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina

title: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina


text: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina/Prefatory note


text: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina/Chapter 1


text: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina/Chapter 2


text: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina/Chapter 3


text: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina/Chapter 4


text: The Folk-Lore Journal/Volume 2

title: The Folk-Lore Journal/Volume 2


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42 If they only displayed one half the zeal in procuring and conserving food for consumption during the cold wet months of winter that their various frames call forth, there would not be a tithe of the misery in their midst that now prevails, and which is principally due to the many privations of that inclement season. The conserving of food for hard times should be a duty of the highest moment to them, but being deemed an irksome task, it is consequently distasteful; whereas playing their games, however hard they may work in doing so, is merely recreation, and not at all imperative. Play is, therefore, held in high esteem, and enjoyed accordingly.

During summer, when food of all kinds is abundant, and procured with little labour, the friendly tribes have great gatherings together, at which wrestling and other games are the business of the season.

The natives are great wrestlers, and enter into the exercise with every zest. Their method is different from that which obtains in the wrestling counties of England, or as far as we know, in any other country where the exercise is indulged.

Their system is as follows:—A stalwart native goes out quietly from the camp, to the ground which has been carefully prepared, by the removal of all the inequalities, such as stumps, tufts of grass, etc. In short, the ground is made quite smooth and flat. He is perfectly nude, with the exception of his waist-belt and opossum skin armlets. When he reaches the arena, he walks round it after the fashion of a race horse getting his preliminary canter. During this walk or march, there is abundant opportunity for


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43 his finely-developed figure; the muscles down his back stand out as distinctly and hard as though they had been fashioned from straight clean saplings, and the biceps of his legs and arms looking like knotted ropes stretched to their fullest tension.

When he has satisfied himself as to the arena, he stalks majestically into its centre, gives one defiant shout, stoops forward, places his hands on his thighs just above the knees, and in that position remains perfectly still, as though he were merely a bronze statue, instead of a muscular savage full of life, with the excited blood coursing exultantly through his throbbing veins.

His patience is not tested very severely, however, as his challenge of defiance has scarcely ceased, when an equally muscular competitor starts out from the camp at a smart run, which he continues, until within about two yards of his opponent, when he stops as suddenly as though his progress had been stayed by a bullet. The position he assumes when he thus stops, is precisely similar to that of his adversary. For a few moments they remain in this statuesque attitude; then they begin to sway from side to side, glaring at each other the while, as though they were veritable enemies about to begin an encounter which could only terminate in the death of one or both. All at once, and without any signal, they make a simultaneous spring at each other, coiling their sinewy arms and legs round each other as opportunity offers, endeavouring by every ruse to gain the advantage in the first of the struggle. When closed in the struggle, they twist and screw their oily bodies into all kinds of contortions, raising each other from the ground.


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44 as opportunity offers by sheer force of muscle; the raised one, however, generally managing to get his legs firmly twisted round the body of his friendly competitor, and when in that position, no powers of muscle, however exerted, will put him to the ground; that is to say, unless his opponent goes with him, and then of course it is a drawn match, and this result they always endeavour to avoid, as defeat even is not greeted with so much derision as a climax of this nature.

The struggle continues with very equal success for a considerable time, neither gaining any perceptable advantage. A casual observer would be inclined to think it an interminable affair at first sight, but this idea would only be of limited duration, for as the struggle advances, the wind of one begins to fail more rapidly than that of the other; the end soon becomes apparent; the short-winded one is raised from the ground for the last time; he is not quick enough to grapple his weary legs round the body of his opponent, so with a huge and final effort, he is flung into the air, and comes down with a thud of sufficient force to shake the ground. The victor walks quietly to a little distance, and squats himself down in silence. The spectators, however, are more demonstrative, consequently the sleeping echoes are awakened with exultant shouts.

After a fairish interval has elapsed, the victor, nothing loth, shakes himself once more together, gives his waist-belt an extra twist, walks into the arena, and round it as before; only in this instance, he gesticulates violently with his arms, whilst he challenges another to meet him in the wrestle, letting it be well known at the same time, that if any man has


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45 the temerity to attempt his proved prowess, it would not be advantageous to that man's welfare. With this flourish of trumpets, he again pauses in the middle of the arena, with his hands on his thighs as before. And so the fun goes on, the victor meeting rival after rival, until he disposes of all who are courageous enough to try conclusions with him, or he himself is brought to grief by some one abler or fresher.

These muscular encounters generally end in many bruises, and not infrequently collar bones are broken, and shoulder joints dislocated. Still, these mishaps do not deter them from repetitions of the play whenever opportunity offers; said opportunities being comprised in a goodly muster of tribes, warm weather, and abundance of easily-procured food.

Ball playing is another game to which they are exceedingly partial. They make it much more boisterous and noisy than are the wrestling bouts, although it results in much fewer serious mishaps. The women participate in this game as well as the men. We have seen as many as two hundred—including sexes—engaged in it at one time.

The ball is composed of old opossum skins, tightly rolled up, and covered over with a fresh and strong piece of skin, nicely and firmly sewn together with opossum tail sinews. Before they begin to play they arrange sides, each side having a captain, whose place it is to guide his often times unruly squad.

When all is in order, a Lyoore starts off with the ball in her hand. She walks a little way out from her own side, and towards that of her opponents, drops the ball with seeming carelessness, but ere it has time to reach the ground,


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46 she gives a dexterous, and by no means gentle kick, which being correctly aimed, sends the ball spinning high into the air. Thereupon the fun begins in downright earnest. Such screaming, jumping, and frothing at the mouth, we are certain was never seen at any other game outside the walls of Bedlam; and then again such intermingling of bronze limbs, nude and glossy; or such outre groupings was never yet beheld under any circumstances other than those attendant upon an aboriginal ball match. They have not any goal to which the ball has to be driven, the whole of the play is merely to keep the ball in motion, and to prevent its coming to the ground; whilst the struggles of the game consist in trying which side can retain the ball longest in possession. Those holding the ball throw it from one to another, and it is during such nights that the opposing side vigorously run and jump with the view to its capture. As the eyes of the players are never by any chance bent on the ground, tumbles during a game are numerous, and in many cases indecorous enough, more especially when one goes down, and so becoming a stumbling block, over which a dozen or more come toppling in a heap. These incidents, however, add mirth to the game, without creating the least ill temper.

These games are frequently kept up from noon until dark, and even at that late hour they are given up with reluctance.

The many laughable incidents which occur during these games, provide ample matter for consideration round the camp fire, besides affording abundant opportunity for boasting, to which they are addicted pretty much, old and young. In fact it is a trait characteristic of the people.


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47 Another of their games at which they spend considerable time is Wotchwie; that being both the name of the game and the toy with which it is played.

The toy is made of an elongated oval piece of wood; its extreme length being five inches, and its greatest diameter an inch and a half to one of the long points. A slender wand two feet and a half long, made tough by means of fire, is firmly attached by gum and twine, and the toy is complete.

The game can be played by any number above one. Both sexes, from eight years of age and upwards, join in it. When they start from their camps to commence the game, they select a stretch of three or four hundred yards of flat smooth ground, at one end of which a mark is made by way of a start point. Then the game begins after this fashion:—One takes a short run up to the starting mark, throws his Wotchwie from him, so that it strikes the ground in a particular manner (an awkward cast is certain to result in a broken toy), when the tiny thing bounds away very quickly, the long tail-like wand being visible all the time that the momentum continues, twirling and twining above the grass like the tail of a kangaroo mouse when running away in a hurry. These toys sometimes go as much as four hundred yards in their eccentric running bounds. The game merely consists in each striving to make his Wotchwie pass that of his fellows. As the breakages during the progress of a game are numerous, each player supplies himself with several of the toys before the game commences.

No doubt but what this Wotchwie racing seems a simple enough kind of pastime when thus described on paper, still


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48 we have seen as much excited enthusiasm engendered bywatching the fluctuating of the tiny hoppers as ere a rink of curling gave rise to on a well-frozen Scottish loch.

Spear-throwing also induces much good-natured rivalry whenever the tribal chivalry may chance to meet for pastime. All the males, from those on the confines of pubescence, up to the hoaryest [sic] sage in the tribe, put forth their skill on these occasions, and proud is the victor who walks off the triumphant master of the field after one of those friendly spear-throwing tournaments. These matches are conducted as follows:—A thickish disc of gum bark is procured, a foot or so in diameter, which is taken by a stalwart youth forty or fifty paces from where the competitors are drawn up in line, with their spears all ready shipped. He stands with the disc in his hand opposite the extreme right-hand man in the line, and at the word of command (which is usually given by one of the old men who is not competing) he hurls the disc from him, giving it at the same time sufficient impetus to make it roll swiftly from one end of the line to the other, and it is during this rapid progression that the competitors launch their spears at it as it passes their respective line of vision. By the time the disc ceases rolling it presents the appearance of a gigantic shuttlecock, the spears sticking therein representing the feathers, and the bark the cork. When one makes a bull's eye (as riflemen have it) he is greeted with loud applause, and it is farcical to see how modest he endeavours to appear under the praise, as though the performance were a very commonplace result;


text: Index:1980-10-15 Letter FourthChannel LordCledwyn.pdf


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49 therefore not worth boasting of, although, perhaps, he never came even near doing such a thing in his life before.

Throwing the boomerang is another of their amusements. They do not, however, compete in this exercise, nor have they any object or mark at which to throw. It is merely thrown because of the whizzing noise it makes, and to witness its eccentric gyrations during flight, and notwithstanding the seemingly aimlessness of the pastime, many hours at a time are spent in the exercise.

Another favourite amusement of theirs is the skipping-rope—not the tiny clothes-line affair, with two handles of wood, which schoolgirls so much affect. No, indeed, their skipping-rope is from twenty to thirty feet long. It is usually made of a long duck net loosely twisted. It is worked by two young men, one at each end, and just far enough apart to allow of the rope to touch the ground. As it is being swung round and round the skippers jump in one after another, until there will be as many as a dozen skipping away at once. As they get tired they jump out, but the vacancies thus caused are always filled up as soon as made by fresh muscle and wind, abundance of which are generally waiting, in the shape of stalwart young men and vigorous girls. Thus the rope is kept going until those swinging it become tired, when two fresh hands take their


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50 places, and so the fun continues, until they are one and all pretty well fatigued by the violent though pleasing exercise.

They do not award any trophies for superiority in their various trials of skill. Even the historical "pickle parsley for their pains" is not given; therefore the victors must content themselves with a consciousness of their own superior skill, and doubtless this sense of premiership lends considerable self-importance to the deportment of the successful ones during these tribal gatherings as we have frequently seen demonstrated; yes, even to the very verge of the ludicrous.

CHAPTER VI.

BREVITY OF ABORIGINAL LIFE; THE SICK AND HOW ATTENDED; BLEEDING AND OTHER MODES OP CURE; THE LAST DRAUGHT; SNAKE-BITE AND ITS TREATMENT; OBSTETRICAL.

As a rule longevity is not a feature which pertains to these people. Old age seems to set in ere thirty-five years have been attained; in fact, long before these few years have been passed they are quite grey, and often bald. About that time, too, their muscular development begins to tend towards attenuation. Few of the women reach even those years, being mostly worn out by drudgery and disease together before they are well past their teens.

Unless in the cases of old worn-out women or bedridden subjects of long standing (who are grudged the very slightest attention), the sick are attended carefully enough. Not being subject to infectious diseases, they have not any cause to fear infection; in fact, they are quite ignorant of the


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 From: The Rt.Hon Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos P.C., C.H.,

15 October, 1980.

Dear Nick,

I have not seen you since I received Willie Whitelaw's letter of the 17th September but, needless to say, I was delighted that you both felt able to come to what I regard as the only possible decision given the developing circumstances.

You will probably be aware that an enthusiastic meeting in Cardiff decided to set up an Association of Welsh Broadcasters representing all those who work in radio and television both Welsh and non-Welsh speaking. They have sent me the enclosed paper, a copy of which I have sent to Willie Whitelaw, and which you will also with to study. I hope it will help you in your thinking and feel sure you will agree that it is important to start the whole thing off on the right kind of co-operative basis.

Yours ever,

Cledwyn.

The Rt.Hon Nicholas Edwards M.P. Secretary of State for Wales, Welsh Office, Gwydyr House, Whitehall, London SW1.


text: The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina/Chapter 5


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 Derby (afterwards Henry IV.), Sir Thomas de Swynford and other distinguished persons. In August 1386 he was elected one of the two knights of the shire for Kent, and with this dignity, though it was one not much appreciated in those days, his good fortune reached its climax. In December of the same year he was superseded in both his comptrollerships, almost certainly as a result of the absence of his patron, John of Gaunt, in Spain, and the supremacy of the duke of Gloucester. In the following year the cessation of Philippa’s pension suggests that she died between Midsummer and Michaelmas. In May 1388 Chaucer surrendered to the king his two pensions of 20 marks each, and they were re-granted at his request to one John Scalby. The transaction was unusual and probably points to a pressing need for ready money, nor for the next fourteen months do we know of any source of income possessed by Chaucer beyond his annuity of £10 from John of Gaunt.

In July 1389, after John of Gaunt had returned to England, and the king had taken the government into his own hands, Chaucer was appointed clerk of the works at various royal palaces at a salary of two shillings a day, or over £31 a year, worth upwards of £500 present value. To this post was subsequently added the charge of some repairs at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. He was also made a commissioner to maintain the banks of the Thames between Woolwich and Greenwich, and was given by the earl of March (grandson of Lionel, duke of Clarence, his old patron) a sub-forestership at North Petherton, Devon, obviously a sinecure. While on the king’s business, in September 1390, Chaucer was twice robbed by highwaymen, losing £20 of the king’s money. In June 1391 he was superseded in his office of clerk of the works, and seems to have suffered another spell of misfortune, of which the first alleviation came in January 1393 when the king made him a present of £10. In February 1394 he was granted a new pension of £20. It is possible, also, that about this time, or a little later, he was in the service of the earl of Derby. In 1397 he received from King Richard a grant of a butt of wine yearly. For this he appears to have asked in terms that suggest poverty, and in May 1398 he obtained letters of protection against his creditors, a step perhaps rendered necessary by an action for debt taken against him earlier in the year. On the accession of Henry IV. a new pension of 40 marks was conferred on Chaucer (13th of October 1399) and Richard II.’s grants were formally confirmed. Henry himself, however, was probably straitened for ready money, and no instalment of the new pension was paid during the few months of his reign that the poet lived. Nevertheless, on the strength of his expectations, on the 24th of December 1399 he leased a tenement in the garden of St Mary’s Chapel, Westminster, and it was probably here that he died, on the 25th of the following October. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his tomb became the nucleus of what is now known as Poets’ Corner.

The portrait of Chaucer, which the affection of his disciple, Thomas Hoccleve, caused to be painted in a copy of the latter’s Regement of Princes (now Harleian MS. 4866 in the British Museum), shows him an old man with white hair; he has a fresh complexion, grey eyes, a straight nose, a grey moustache and a small double-pointed beard. His dress and hood are black, and he carries in his hands a string of beads. We may imagine that it was thus that during the last months of his life he used to walk about the precincts of the Abbey.

Henry IV.’s promise of an additional pension was doubtless elicited by the Compleynt to his Purs, in the envoy to which Chaucer addresses him as the “conquerour of Brutes

Albioun.” Thus within the last year of his life the poet was still writing. Nevertheless, as early as 1393–1394, in lines to his friend Scogan, he had written as if his day for poetry were past, and it seems probable that his longer poems were all composed before this date. In the preceding fifteen—or, if another view be taken, twenty—years, his literary activity was very great, and with the aid of the lists of his works which he gives in the Legende of Good Women (lines 414–431), and the talk on the road which precedes the “Man of Law’s Tale” (Canterbury Tales, B. 46-76), the order in which his main works were written can be traced with approximate certainty, while a few both of these and of the minor poems can be connected with definite dates.

The development of his genius has been attractively summed up as comprised in three stages, French, Italian and English, and there is a rough approximation to the truth in this formula, since his earliest poems are translated from the French or based on French models, and the two great works of his middle period are borrowed from the Italian, while his latest stories have no such obvious and direct originals and in their humour and freedom anticipate the typically English temper of Henry Fielding. But Chaucer’s indebtedness to French poetry was no passing phase. For various reasons—a not very remote French origin of his own family may be one of them—he was in no way interested in older English literature or in the work of his English contemporaries, save possibly that of “the moral Gower.” On the other hand he knew the Roman de la rose as modern English poets know Shakespeare, and the full extent of his debt to his French contemporaries, not merely in 1369, but in 1385 and in 1393 (the dates are approximate), is only gradually being discovered. To be in touch throughout his life with the best French poets of the day was much for Chaucer. Even with their stimulus alone he might have developed no small part of his genius. But it was his great good fortune to add to this continuing French influence, lessons in plot and construction derived from Boccaccio’s Filostrato and Teseide, as well as some glimpses of the higher art of the Divina Commedia. He shows acquaintance also with one of Petrarch’s sonnets, and though, when all is said, the Italian books with which he can be proved to have been intimate are but few, they sufficed. His study of them was but an episode in his literary life, but it was an episode of unique importance. Before it began he had already been making his own artistic experiments, and it is noteworthy that while he learnt so much from Boccaccio he improved on his originals as he translated them. Doubtless his busy life in the service of the crown had taught him self-confidence, and he uses his Italian models in his own way and with the most triumphant and assured success. When he had no more Italian poems to adapt he had learnt his lesson. The art of weaving a plot out of his own imagination was never his, but he could take what might be little more than an anecdote and lend it body and life and colour with a skill which has never been surpassed.

The most direct example of Chaucer’s French studies is his translation of Le Roman de la rose, a poem written in some 4000 lines by Guillaume Lorris about 1237 and extended to over 22,000 by Jean Clopinel, better known as Jean de Meun, forty years later. We know from Chaucer himself that he translated this poem, and the extant English fragment of 7698 lines was generally assigned to him from 1532, when it was first printed, till its authorship was challenged in the early years of the Chaucer Society. The ground of this challenge was its wide divergence from Chaucer’s practice in his undoubtedly genuine works as to certain niceties of rhyme, notable as to not rhyming words ending in -y with others ending -ye. It was subsequently discovered, however, that the whole fragment was divisible linguistically into three portions, of which the first and second end respectively at lines 1705 and 5810, and that in the first of these three sections the variations from Chaucer’s accepted practice are insignificant. Lines 1-1705 have therefore been provisionally accepted as Chaucer’s, and the other two fragments as the work of unknown translators (James I. of Scotland has been suggested as one of them), which somehow came to be pieced together. If, however, the difficulties in the way of this theory are less than those which confront any other, they are still considerable, and the question can hardly be treated as closed.

While our knowledge of Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose is in this unsatisfactory state, another translation of his from the French, the Book of the Lyon (alluded to in the “Retraction” found, in some manuscripts, at the end of the Canterbury Tales), which must certainly have been taken from Guillaume

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text: Index:Notes for SoS Wales’ interview on Panorama Programme on 14 August 1980.pdf


text: The Folk-Lore Journal/Volume 3

title: The Folk-Lore Journal/Volume 3


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The secretary of state may find the following notes of some help to him for his interview on Thursday 14 August.

1.Discussions have been going on for nearly 10 years about Welsh language television programmes. In the meantime, the position of the language is steadily deteriorating - there is a need for action. The Government felt that its prime objective was to ensure that additional Welsh language programmes appeared on the screen as soon as was practicable. Their proposals set a target date of Autumn 1982.

2.The Government's proposals for Welsh language television were made in the context of the control of the Fourth Channel being vested in the IBA. The Littler working party, in its Report, had indicated quite clearly that if the Fourth Channel was to be controlled by the IBA then the one-channel solution was not a viable option. The broadcasting authorities were represented on this working party.

3.There are two main difficulties about the one-channel solution in a situation where the IBA control the Fourth Channel in the United Kingdom.

 * - valign="top"
 * style=white-space:nowrap | i.Organisational - || a.Could the BBC be happy about transmitting its programmes on a channel controlled by another broadcasting authority;
 * || b.Could it be happy about transmitting its programmes on a channel which carried commercial advertising.
 * }
 * }

 * It may be that these organisational difficulties could be sorted out in due course - the indications are that at least some of the BBC staff see no difficulties, but this would inevitably take time and delay the appearance on the screens of the additional programmes.

 * ii.Finance - Opting out of the UK Fourth Channel network for 50% of the time would inevitably have serious repercussions on the advertising revenue of the channel. Under the present proposals, where up to 12 hours of Welsh language programmes would be shown on the Fourth Channel, the IBA system as a whole would subsidise the production of the additional programmes. The IBA system could not subsidise the additional programmes if the advertising revenue were further reduced. The additional programmes would, therefore, have to be paid for from public funds. Additional BBC programmes could be funded by increasing the licence fee, but the additional independent programmes (both from the independent contractor and from independent producers) would need direct government subsidy. Leaving aside the question of finding the money, and estimates of this sum vary from £10-£15m per annum, there is also the very serious difficulty about direct funding of television programmes by Government.


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 The Chatterton MSS., originally in the possession of William Barrett of Bristol, were left by his heir to the British Museum in 1800. Others are preserved in the Bristol library.

Chatterton’s genius and his tragic death are commemorated by Shelley in Adonais, by Wordsworth in “Resolution and Independence,” by Coleridge in “A Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” by D. G. Rossetti in “Five English Poets,” and John Keats inscribed Endymion “to the memory of Thomas Chatterton.” Alfred de Vigny’s drama of Chatterton gives an altogether fictitious account of the poet. (q.v.), in his Love and Madness, interpolated a long and valuable account of Chatterton, giving many of the poet’s letters, and much information obtained from his family and friends (pp. 125-244, letter li.). There is a valuable collection of “Chattertoniana” in the British Museum, consisting of separate works by Chatterton, newspaper cuttings, articles, dealing with the Rowley controversy and other subjects, with MS. notes by Joseph Haslewood, and several autograph letters.

Among biographies of Chatterton may be mentioned Chatterton: A Biographical Study (1869), by Daniel Wilson; Chatterton: A Biography (1899; first printed 1856 in a volume of essays), by D. Masson; “Thomas Chatterton” (1900), by Helene Richter, in ''Wiener Beiträge zur engl. Philologie; Chatterton'', by C. E. Russell (1909).

 CHATTI, an ancient German tribe inhabiting the upper reaches of the rivers Weser, Eder, Fulda and Werra, a district approximately corresponding to Hesse-Cassel, though probably somewhat more extensive. They frequently came into conflict with the Romans during the early years of the 1st century. Eventually they formed a portion of the Franks and were incorporated in the kingdom of Clovis probably with the Ripuarii, at the beginning of the 6th century.

 CHAUCER, GEOFFREY (? 1340–1400), English poet. The name Chaucer, a French form of the Latin calcearius, a shoemaker, is found in London and the eastern counties as early as the second half of the 13th century. Some of the London Chaucers lived in Cordwainer Street, in the shoemakers’ quarter; several of them, however, were vintners, and among others the poet’s father John, and probably also his grandfather Robert. Legal pleadings inform us that in December 1324 John Chaucer was not much over twelve years old, and that he was still unmarried in 1328, the year which used to be considered that of Geoffrey’s birth. The poet was probably born from eight to twelve years later, since in 1386, when giving evidence in Sir Richard le Scrope’s suit against Sir Robert Grosvenor as to the right to bear certain arms, he was set down as “del age de xl ans et plus, armeez par xxvij ans.” At a later date, and probably at the time of the poet’s birth, his father lived in Thames Street, and had to wife a certain Agnes, niece of Hamo de Compton, whom we may regard as Geoffrey Chaucer’s mother. In 1357 Geoffrey is found, apparently as a lad, in the service of Elizabeth, countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, duke of Clarence, entries in two leaves of her household accounts, accidentally preserved, showing that she paid in April, May and December various small sums for his clothing and expenses. In 1359, as we learn from his deposition in the Scrope suit, Chaucer went to the war in France. At some period of the campaign he was at “Retters,” i.e. Rethel, near Reims, and subsequently had the ill luck to be taken prisoner. On the 1st of March 1360 the king contributed £16 to his ransom, and by a year or two later Chaucer must have entered the royal service, since on the 20th of June 1367 Edward granted him a pension of twenty marks for his past and future services. A pension of ten marks had been granted by the king the previous September to a Philippa Chaucer for services to the queen as one of her “domicellae” or “damoiselles,” and it seems probable that at this date Chaucer was already married and this Philippa his wife, a conclusion which used to be resisted on the ground of allusions in his early poems to a hopeless love-affair, now reckoned part of his poetical outfit. Philippa is usually said to have been one of two daughters of a Sir Payne Roet, the other being Katherine, who after the death of her first husband, Sir Hugh de Swynford, in 1372, became governess to John of Gaunt’s children, and subsequently his mistress and (in 1396) his wife. It is possible that Philippa was sister to Sir Hugh and sister-in-law to Katherine. In either case the marriage helps to account for the favour subsequently shown to Chaucer by John of Gaunt.

In the grant of his pension Chaucer is called “dilectus vallectus noster,” our beloved yeoman; before the end of 1368 he had risen to be one of the king’s esquires. In September of the following year John of Gaunt’s wife, the duchess Blanche, died at the age of twenty-nine, and Chaucer wrote in her honour The Book of the Duchesse, a poem of 1334 lines in octosyllabic couplets, the first of his undoubtedly genuine works which can be connected with a definite date. In June 1370 he went abroad on the king’s service, though on what errand, or whither it took him, is not known. He was back probably some time before Michaelmas, and seems to have remained in England till the 1st of December 1372, when he started, with an advance of 100 marks in his pocket, for Italy, as one of the three commissioners to treat with the Genoese as to an English port where they might have special facilities for trade. The accounts which he delivered on his return on the 23rd of May 1373 show that he had also visited Florence on the king’s business, and he probably went also to Padua and there made the acquaintance of Petrarch.

In the second quarter of 1374 Chaucer lived in a whirl of prosperity. On the 23rd of April the king granted him a pitcher of wine daily, subsequently commuted for an annuity of 20 marks. From John of Gaunt, who in August 1372 had granted Philippa Chaucer £10 a year, he himself now received (June 13) a like annuity in reward for his own and his wife’s services. On the 8th of June he was appointed Comptroller of the Custom and Subsidy of Wools, Hides and Woodfells and also of the Petty Customs of Wine in the Port of London. A month before this appointment, and probably in anticipation of it, he took (May 10, 1374) a lease for life from the city of London of the dwelling-house above the gate of Aldgate, and here he lived for the next twelve years. His own and his wife’s income now amounted to over £60, the equivalent of upwards of £1000 in modern money. In the next two years large windfalls came to him in the form of two wardships of Kentish heirs, one of whom paid him £104, and a grant of £71: 4: 6; the value of some confiscated wool. In December 1376 he was sent abroad on the king’s service in the retinue of Sir John Burley; in February 1377 he was sent to Paris and Montreuil in connexion probably with the peace negotiations between England and France, and at the end of April (after a reward of £20 for his good services) he was again despatched to France.

On the accession of Richard II. Chaucer was confirmed in his offices and pensions. In January 1378 he seems to have been in France in connexion with a proposed marriage between Richard and the daughter of the French king; and on the 28th of May of the same year he was sent with Sir Edward de Berkeley to the lord of Milan and Sir John Hawkwood to treat for help in the king’s wars, returning on the 19th of September. This was his last diplomatic journey, and the close of a period of his life generally considered to have been so unprolific of poetry that little beyond the Clerk’s “Tale of Grisilde,” one or two other of the stories afterwards included in the Canterbury Tales, and a few short poems, are attributed to it, though the poet’s actual absences from England during the eight years amount to little more than eighteen months. During the next twelve or fifteen years there is no question that Chaucer was constantly engaged in literary work, though for the first half of them he had no lack of official employment. Abundant favour was shown him by the new king. He was paid £22 as a reward for his later missions in Edward III.’s reign, and was allowed an annual gratuity of 10 marks in addition to his pay of £10 as comptroller of the customs of wool. In April 1382 a new comptrollership, that of the petty customs in the Port of London, was given him, and shortly after he was allowed to exercise it by deputy, a similar licence being given him in February 1385, at the instance of the earl of Oxford, as regards the comptrollership of wool. In October 1385 Chaucer was made a justice of the peace for Kent. In February 1386 we catch a glimpse of his wife Philippa being admitted to the fraternity of Lincoln cathedral in the company of Henry, earl of

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Professor Jac Ll Williams advocated the maximum exposure of the language, ie. on all channels. The Government's proposals should not be interpreted as according with his views. It could justifiably be argued that the Government's proposals consigning Welsh language programmes to two minority channels also create a ghetto.

12 August 1980


text: Notes for SoS Wales’ interview on Panorama Programme on 14 August 1980


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 studies, Chatterton had to write three times before he recovered his MSS. Walpole has been loaded with more than his just share of responsibility for the fate of the unhappy poet, of whom he admitted when too late, “I do not believe there ever existed so masterly a genius.”

Chatterton now turned his attention to periodical literature and politics, and exchanged Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal for the Town and County Magazine and other London periodicals. Assuming the vein of Junius—then in the full blaze of his triumph—he turned his pen against the duke of Grafton, the earl of Bute, and the princess of Wales. He had just despatched one of his political diatribes to the Middlesex Journal, when he sat down on Easter Eve, 17th April 1770, and penned his “Last Will and Testament,” a strange satirical compound of jest and earnest, in which he intimated his intention of putting an end to his life the following evening. Among his satirical bequests, such as his “humility” to the Rev. Mr Camplin, his “religion” to Dean Barton, and his “modesty” along with his “prosody and grammar” to Mr Burgum, he leaves “to Bristol all his spirit and disinterestedness, parcels of goods unknown on its quay since the days of Canynge and Rowley.” In more genuine earnestness he recalls the name of Michael Clayfield, a friend to whom he owed intelligent sympathy. The will was probably purposely prepared in order to frighten his master into letting him go. If so, it had the desired effect. Lambert cancelled his indentures; his friends and acquaintance made him up a purse; and on the 25th or 26th of the month he arrived in London.

Chatterton was already known to the readers of the Middlesex Journal as a rival of Junius, under the nom de plume of Decimus. He had also been a contributor to Hamilton’s Town and County Magazine, and speedily found access to the Freeholder’s Magazine, another political miscellany strong for Wilkes and liberty. His contributions were freely accepted; but the editors paid little or nothing for them. He wrote in the most hopeful terms to his mother and sister, and spent his first earnings in buying gifts for them. His pride and ambition were amply gratified by the promises and interested flattery of editors and political adventurers; Wilkes himself had noted his trenchant style, “and expressed a desire to know the author”; and Lord Mayor Beckford graciously acknowledged a political address of his, and greeted him “as politely as a citizen could.” But of actual money he received but little. He was extremely abstemious, his diligence was great, and his versatility wonderful. He could assume the style of Junius or Smollett, reproduce the satiric bitterness of Churchill, parody Macpherson’s Ossian, or write in the manner of Pope, or with the polished grace of Gray and Collins. He wrote political letters, eclogues, lyrics, operas and satires, both in prose and verse. In June 1770—after Chatterton had been some nine weeks in London—he removed from Shoreditch, where he had hitherto lodged with a relative, to an attic in Brook Street, Holborn. But for most of his productions the payment was delayed; and now state prosecutions of the press rendered letters in the Junius vein no longer admissible, and threw him back on the lighter resources of his pen. In Shoreditch, as in his lodging at the Bristol attorney’s, he had only shared a room; but now, for the first time, he enjoyed uninterrupted solitude. His bed-fellow at Mr Walmsley’s, Shoreditch, noted that much of the night was spent by him in writing; and now he could write all night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his “Excelente Balade of Charitie.” This fine poem, perversely disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and County Magazine, and had it rejected.

The high hopes of the sanguine boy had begun to fade. He had not yet completed his second month in London, and already failure and starvation stared him in the face. Mr Cross, a neighbouring apothecary, repeatedly invited him to join him at dinner or supper; but he refused. His landlady also, suspecting his necessity, pressed him to share her dinner, but in vain. “She knew,” as she afterwards said, “that he had not eaten anything for two or three days.” But he was offended at her urgency, and assured her that he was not hungry. The note of his actual receipts, found in his pocket-book after his death, shows that Hamilton, Fell and other editors who had been so liberal in flattery, had paid him at the rate of a shilling for an article, and somewhat less than eightpence each for his songs; while much which had been accepted was held in reserve, and still unpaid for. The beginning of a new month revealed to him the indefinite postponement of the publication and payment of his work. He had wished, according to his foster-mother, to study medicine with Barrett; in his desperation he now reverted to this, and wrote to Barrett for a letter to help him to an opening as a surgeon’s assistant on board an African trader. He appealed also to Mr Catcott to forward his plan, but in vain. On the 24th of August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic which he there drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand.

He was only seventeen years and nine months old; but the best of his numerous productions, both in prose and verse, require no allowance to be made for the immature years of their author, when comparing him with the ablest of his contemporaries. He pictures Lydgate, the monk of Bury St Edmunds, challenging Rowley to a trial at versemaking, and under cover of this fiction, produces his “Songe of Ælla,” a piece of rare lyrical beauty, worthy of comparison with any antique or modern production of its class. Again, in his “Tragedy of Goddwyn,” of which only a fragment has been preserved, the “Ode to Liberty,” with which it abruptly closes, may claim a place among the finest martial lyrics in the language. The collection of poems in which such specimens occur furnishes by far the most remarkable example of intellectual precocity in the whole history of letters. Collins, Burns, Keats, Shelley and Byron all awaken sorrow over the premature arrestment of their genius; but the youngest of them survived to his twenty-fifth year, while Chatterton was not eighteen when he perished in his miserable garret. The death of Chatterton attracted little notice at the time; for the few who then entertained any appreciative estimate of the Rowley poems regarded him as their mere transcriber. He was interred in a burying-ground attached to Shoe Lane Workhouse, in the parish of St Andrew’s, Holborn, which has since been converted into a site for Farringdon Market. There is a discredited story that the body of the poet was recovered, and secretly buried by his uncle, Richard Phillips, in Redcliffe Churchyard. There a monument has since been erected to his memory, with the appropriate inscription, borrowed from his “Will,” and so supplied by the poet’s own pen—“To the memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a Superior Power. To that Power only is he now answerable.”

.—Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777) was edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt; Thomas Warton, in his History of English Poetry (1778), vol. ii. section viii., gives Rowley a place among the 15th century poets; but neither of these critics believed in the antiquity of the poems. In 1782 a new edition of Rowley’s poems appeared, with a “Commentary, in which the antiquity of them is considered and defended,” by Jeremiah Milles, dean of Exeter. The controversy which raged round the Rowley poems is discussed in A. Kippis, Biographia Britannica (vol. iv., 1789), where there is a detailed account by G. Gregory of Chatterton’s life (pp. 573-619). This was reprinted in the edition (1803) of Chatterton’s Works by R. Southey and J. Cottle, published for the benefit of the poet’s sister. The neglected condition of the study of earlier English in the 18th century alone accounts for the temporary success of Chatterton’s mystification. It has long been agreed that Chatterton was solely responsible for the Rowley Poems, but the language and style are analysed in confirmation of this view by Prof. W. W. Skeat in an introductory essay prefaced to vol. ii. of The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (1871) in the “Aldine Edition of the British Poets.” This, which is the most convenient edition, also contains a memoir of the poet by Edward Bell. The spelling of the Rowley poems is there modernized, and many of the archaic words are replaced by modern equivalents provided in many cases from Chatterton’s own notes, the theory being that Chatterton usually composed in modern English, and inserted his peculiar words and his complicated orthography afterwards. For some criticism of Prof. Skeat’s success in the very difficult task of reconstituting the text, see H. B. Forman, Thomas Chatterton and his latest Editor (1874).

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 performance at his house. In order to escape a marriage urged by the king, Canynge retired to the college of Westbury in Gloucestershire, where he enjoyed the society of Rowley, and eventually became dean of the institution. In “The Storie of William Canynge,” one of the shorter pieces of his ingenious romance, his early history is recorded.

This beautiful picture of the childhood of the ideal patron of Rowley is in reality that of the poet himself—“the fate-marked babe,” with his wondrous child-genius, and all his romantic dreams realized. The literary masquerade which thus constituted the life-dream of the boy was wrought out by him in fragments of prose and verse into a coherent romance, until the credulous scholars and antiquaries of his day were persuaded into the belief that there had lain in the parish chest of Redcliffe church for upwards of three centuries, a collection of MSS. of rare merit, the work of Thomas Rowley, an unknown priest of Bristol in the days of Henry VI. and his poet laureate, John Lydgate.

Among the Bristol patrons of Chatterton were two pewterers, George Catcott and his partner Henry Burgum. Catcott was one of the most zealous believers in Rowley, and continued to collect his reputed writings long after the death of their real author. On Burgum, who had risen in life by his own exertions, the blue-coat boy palmed off the de Bergham pedigree, and other equally apocryphal evidences of the pewterer’s descent from an ancestry old as the Norman Conquest. The de Bergham quartering, blazoned on a piece of parchment doubtless recovered from the Redcliffe muniment chest, was itself supposed to have lain for centuries in that ancient depository. The pedigree was professedly collected by Chatterton from original records, including “The Rowley MSS.” The pedigree still exists in Chatterton’s own handwriting, copied into a book in which he had previously transcribed portions of antique verse, under the title of “Poems by Thomas Rowley, priest of St. John’s, in the city of Bristol”; and in one of these, “The Tournament,” Syrr Johan de Berghamme plays a conspicuous part. The ennobled pewterer rewarded Chatterton with five shillings, and was satirized for this valuation of a noble pedigree in some of Chatterton’s latest verse.

On the 1st of July 1767, Chatterton was transferred to the office of John Lambert, attorney, to whom he was bound apprentice as a clerk. There he was left much alone; and after fulfilling the routine duties devolving on him, he found leisure for his own favourite pursuits. An ancient stone bridge on the Avon, built in the reign of Henry II., and altered by many later additions into a singularly picturesque but inconvenient thoroughfare, had been displaced by a structure better adapted to modern requirements. In September 1768, when Chatterton was in the second year of his apprenticeship, the new bridge was partially opened for traffic. Shortly afterwards the editor of Felix Farley’s Journal received from a correspondent, signing himself Dunelmus Bristoliensis, a “description of the mayor’s first passing over the old bridge,” professedly derived from an ancient MS. William Barrett, F.S.A., surgeon and antiquary, who was then accumulating materials for a history of Bristol, secured the original manuscript, which is now preserved in the British Museum, along with other Chatterton MSS., most of which were ultimately incorporated by the credulous antiquary into a learned quarto volume, entitled the History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol, published nearly twenty years after the poet’s death. It was at this time that the definite story made its appearance—over which critics and antiquaries wrangled for nearly a century—of numerous ancient poems and other MSS. taken by the elder Chatterton from a coffer in the muniment room of Redcliffe church, and transcribed, and so rescued from oblivion, by his son. The pieces include the “Bristowe Tragedie, or the Dethe of Syr Charles Bawdin,” a ballad celebrating the death of the Lancastrian knight, Charles Baldwin; “Ælla,” a “Tragycal Enterlude,” as Chatterton styles it, but in reality a dramatic poem of sustained power and curious originality of structure; “Goddwyn,” a dramatic fragment; “Tournament,” “Battle of Hastings,” “The Parliament of Sprites,” “Balade of Charitie,” with numerous shorter pieces, forming altogether a volume of poetry, the rare merit of which is indisputable, wholly apart from the fact that it was the production of a mere boy. Unfortunately for him, his ingenious romance had either to be acknowledged as his own creation, and so in all probability be treated with contempt, or it had to be sustained by the manufacture of spurious antiques. To this accordingly Chatterton resorted, and found no difficulty in gulling the most learned of his credulous dupes with his parchments.

The literary labours of the boy, though diligently pursued at his desk, were not allowed to interfere with the duties of Mr Lambert’s office. Nevertheless the Bristol attorney used to search his apprentice’s drawer, and tear up any poems or other manuscripts that he could lay his hands upon; so that it was only during the absences of Mr Lambert from Bristol that he was able to expend his unemployed time in his favourite pursuits. But repeated allusions, both by Chatterton and others, seem to indicate that such intervals of freedom were of frequent occurrence. Some of his modern poems, such as the piece entitled “Resignation,” are of great beauty; and these, with the satires, in which he took his revenge on all the local celebrities whose vanity or meanness had excited his ire, are alone sufficient to fill a volume. The Catcotts, Burgum, Barrett and others of his patrons, figure in these satires, in imprudent yet discriminating caricature, along with mayor, aldermen, bishop, dean and other notabilities of Bristol. Towards Lambert his feelings were of too keen a nature to find relief in such sarcasm.

In December 1768, in his seventeenth year, he wrote to Dodsley, the London publisher, offering to procure for him “copies of several ancient poems, and an interlude, perhaps the oldest dramatic piece extant, wrote by one Rowley, a priest in Bristol, who lived in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.” To this letter he appended the initials of his favourite pseudonym, Dunelmus Bristoliensis, but directed the answer to be sent to the care of Thomas Chatterton, Redcliffe Hill, Bristol. To this, as well as to another letter enclosing an extract from the tragedy of “Ælla,” no answer appears to have been returned. Chatterton, conceiving the idea of finding sympathy and aid at the hand of some modern Canynge, bethought him of Horace Walpole, who not only indulged in a medieval renaissance of his own, but was the reputed author of a spurious antique in the Castle of Otranto. He wrote to him offering him a document entitled “The Ryse of Peyncteyne yn Englande, wroten by T. Rowleie, 1469, for Mastre Canynge,” accompanied by notes which included specimens of Rowley’s poetry. To this Walpole replied with courteous acknowledgments. He characterized the verses as “wonderful for their harmony and spirit,” and added, “Give me leave to ask you where Rowley’s poems are to be had? I should not be sorry to print them; or at least a specimen of them, if they have never been printed.” Chatterton replied, enclosing additional specimens of antique verse, and telling Walpole that he was the son of a poor widow, and clerk to an attorney, but had a taste for more refined studies; and he hinted a wish that he might help him to some more congenial occupation. Walpole’s manner underwent an abrupt change. The specimens of verse had been submitted to his friends Gray and Mason, the poets, and pronounced modern. They did not thereby forfeit the wonderful harmony and spirit which Walpole had already professed to recognize in them. But he now coldly advised the boy to stick to the attorney’s office; and “when he should have made a fortune,” he might betake himself to more favourite

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text: Index:Note of a meeting held on 29 July 1980.pdf