Halloween~~~Robert Burns 1759 –1796

 

Halloween

  ·~~~~~ Robert Burns

By Robert Burns 1759 –1796

 

 

Upon that night, when fairies light

On Cassilis Downans dance,

Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,

On sprightly coursers prance;

Or for Colean the route is ta'en,

Beneath the moon's pale beams;

There, up the cove, to stray and rove,

Among the rocks and streams

To sport that night.

Among the bonny winding banks,

Where Doon rins, wimplin' clear,

Where Bruce ance ruled the martial ranks,

And shook his Carrick spear,

Some merry, friendly, country-folks,

Together did convene,

To burn their nits, and pou their stocks,

And haud their Halloween

Fu' blithe that night.

The lasses feat, and cleanly neat,

Mair braw than when they're fine;

Their faces blithe, fu' sweetly kythe,

Hearts leal, and warm, and kin';

The lads sae trig, wi' wooer-babs,

Weel knotted on their garten,

Some unco blate, and some wi' gabs,

Gar lasses' hearts gang startin'

Whiles fast at night.

Then, first and foremost, through the kail,

Their stocks maun a' be sought ance;

They steek their een, and graip and wale,

For muckle anes and straught anes.

Poor hav'rel Will fell aff the drift,

And wander'd through the bow-kail,

And pou't, for want o' better shift,

A runt was like a sow-tail,

Sae bow't that night.

Then, staught or crooked, yird or nane,

They roar and cry a' throu'ther;

The very wee things, todlin', rin,

Wi' stocks out owre their shouther;

And gif the custoc's sweet or sour.

Wi' joctelegs they taste them;

Syne cozily, aboon the door,

Wi cannie care, they've placed them

To lie that night.

The lasses staw frae 'mang them a'

To pou their stalks of corn:

But Rab slips out, and jinks about,

Behint the muckle thorn:

He grippet Nelly hard and fast;

Loud skirl'd a' the lasses;

But her tap-pickle maist was lost,

When kitlin' in the fause-house

Wi' him that night.

The auld guidwife's well-hoordit nits,

Are round and round divided,

And monie lads' and lasses' fates

Are there that night decided:

Some kindle coothie, side by side,

And burn thegither trimly;

Some start awa, wi' saucy pride,

And jump out-owre the chimlie

Fu' high that night.

Jean slips in twa wi' tentie ee;

Wha 'twas she wadna tell;

But this is Jock, and this is me,

She says in to hersel:

He bleezed owre her, and she owre him,

As they wad never mair part;

Till, fuff! he started up the lum,

And Jean had e'en a sair heart

To see't that night.

Poor Willie, wi' his bow-kail runt,

Was brunt wi' primsie Mallie;

And Mallie, nae doubt, took the drunt,

To be compared to Willie;

Mall's nit lap out wi' pridefu' fling,

And her ain fit it brunt it;

While Willie lap, and swore by jing,

'Twas just the way he wanted

To be that night.

Nell had the fause-house in her min',

She pits hersel and Rob in;

In loving bleeze they sweetly join,

Till white in ase they're sobbin';

Nell's heart was dancin' at the view,

She whisper'd Rob to leuk for't:

Rob, stowlins, prie'd her bonny mou',

Fu' cozie in the neuk for't,

Unseen that night.

But Merran sat behint their backs,

Her thoughts on Andrew Bell;

She lea'es them gashin' at their cracks,

And slips out by hersel:

She through the yard the nearest taks,

And to the kiln goes then,

And darklins graipit for the bauks,

And in the blue-clue throws then,

Right fear't that night.

And aye she win't, and aye she swat,

I wat she made nae jaukin',

Till something held within the pat,

Guid Lord! but she was quakin'!

But whether 'was the deil himsel,

Or whether 'twas a bauk-en',

Or whether it was Andrew Bell,

She didna wait on talkin'

To spier that night.

Wee Jennie to her grannie says,

"Will ye go wi' me, grannie?

I'll eat the apple at the glass

I gat frae Uncle Johnnie:"

She fuff't her pipe wi' sic a lunt,

In wrath she was sae vap'rin',

She notice't na, an aizle brunt

Her braw new worset apron

Out through that night.

"Ye little skelpie-limmer's face!

I daur you try sic sportin',

As seek the foul thief ony place,

For him to spae your fortune.

Nae doubt but ye may get a sight!

Great cause ye hae to fear it;

For mony a ane has gotten a fright,

And lived and died deleeret

On sic a night.

"Ae hairst afore the Sherramoor, —

I mind't as weel's yestreen,

I was a gilpey then, I'm sure

I wasna past fifteen;

The simmer had been cauld and wat,

And stuff was unco green;

And aye a rantin' kirn we gat,

And just on Halloween

It fell that night.

"Our stibble-rig was Rab M'Graen,

A clever sturdy fallow:

His son gat Eppie Sim wi' wean,

That lived in Achmacalla:

He gat hemp-seed, I mind it weel,

And he made unco light o't;

But mony a day was by himsel,

He was sae sairly frighted

That very night."

Then up gat fechtin' Jamie Fleck,

And he swore by his conscience,

That he could saw hemp-seed a peck;

For it was a' but nonsense.

The auld guidman raught down the pock,

And out a hanfu' gied him;

Syne bade him slip frae 'mang the folk,

Some time when nae ane see'd him,

And try't that night.

He marches through amang the stacks,

Though he was something sturtin;

The graip he for a harrow taks.

And haurls it at his curpin;

And every now and then he says,

"Hemp-seed, I saw thee,

And her that is to be my lass,

Come after me, and draw thee

As fast this night."

He whistled up Lord Lennox' march

To keep his courage cheery;

Although his hair began to arch,

He was say fley'd and eerie:

Till presently he hears a squeak,

And then a grane and gruntle;

He by his shouther gae a keek,

And tumbled wi' a wintle

Out-owre that night.

He roar'd a horrid murder-shout,

In dreadfu' desperation!

And young and auld came runnin' out

To hear the sad narration;

He swore 'twas hilchin Jean M'Craw,

Or crouchie Merran Humphie,

Till, stop! she trotted through them

And wha was it but grumphie

Asteer that night!

Meg fain wad to the barn hae gaen,

To win three wechts o' naething;

But for to meet the deil her lane,

She pat but little faith in:

She gies the herd a pickle nits,

And two red-cheekit apples,

To watch, while for the barn she sets,

In hopes to see Tam Kipples

That very nicht.

She turns the key wi cannie thraw,

And owre the threshold ventures;

But first on Sawnie gies a ca'

Syne bauldly in she enters:

A ratton rattled up the wa',

And she cried, Lord, preserve her!

And ran through midden-hole and a',

And pray'd wi' zeal and fervour,

Fu' fast that night;

They hoy't out Will wi' sair advice;

They hecht him some fine braw ane;

It chanced the stack he faddom'd thrice

Was timmer-propt for thrawin';

He taks a swirlie, auld moss-oak,

For some black grousome carlin;

And loot a winze, and drew a stroke,

Till skin in blypes cam haurlin'

Aff's nieves that night.

A wanton widow Leezie was,

As canty as a kittlin;

But, och! that night amang the shaws,

She got a fearfu' settlin'!

She through the whins, and by the cairn,

And owre the hill gaed scrievin,

Whare three lairds' lands met at a burn

To dip her left sark-sleeve in,

Was bent that night.

Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,

As through the glen it wimpl't;

Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays;

Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't;

Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays,

Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle;

Whyles cookit underneath the braes,

Below the spreading hazel,

Unseen that night.

Among the brackens, on the brae,

Between her and the moon,

The deil, or else an outler quey,

Gat up and gae a croon:

Poor Leezie's heart maist lap the hool!

Near lav'rock-height she jumpit;

but mist a fit, and in the pool

Out-owre the lugs she plumpit,

Wi' a plunge that night.

In order, on the clean hearth-stane,

The luggies three are ranged,

And every time great care is ta'en',

To see them duly changed:

Auld Uncle John, wha wedlock joys

Sin' Mar's year did desire,

Because he gat the toom dish thrice,

He heaved them on the fire

In wrath that night.

Wi' merry sangs, and friendly cracks,

I wat they didna weary;

And unco tales, and funny jokes,

Their sports were cheap and cheery;

Till butter'd so'ns, wi' fragrant lunt,

Set a' their gabs a-steerin';

Syne, wi' a social glass o' strunt,

They parted aff careerin'

Fu' blythe that night.

This poem is in the public domain

 

Full Hunter's Moon will be Thursday morning, Oct. 17, 2024, at 7:26 a.m. EDT

the kitchen is warm 

steping out into the night

listen!bucks snorting 

 

I remember watching the moon rise above the trees, as I washed the dishes.  Stepping out on into the night to snap a few pictures of the moon.  A new mom, first meal in our new home, night in our new home,  here on the edge of the woods, watching the first few snowflakes of winter.  I was freezing in the chill night air, no wonder after being in a warm kitchen.  It wasn't a full moon, as you can see. In a few days it would be the Full Hunter's Moon.

It all seemed magical until the deer began  to snort.

 

guesr blogger Sheeka Sanahori , Surprise! You Own a Long-Lost Cemetery

I read this with great interest because I know a family who bought a rambling old farmhouse and discovered that there was a small cemetery on their property.  

atlasobscura.com

Surprise! You Own a Long-Lost Cemetery

by Sheeka Sanahori February 28, 2024

8–10 minutes

---

It was a regular December day in Los Osos, California when Levi Henry received a meeting invitation from community volunteers in Tennessee. They wanted to talk to him about a cemetery in Chattanooga. Having grown up in Los Angeles, Henry had never been to the Southern city before, but knew it was where his father was from. He decided to attend the meeting.

It turned out to be quite the overwhelming Zoom call for Henry. The volunteers gave details he’d never heard regarding his ancestors. Then they explained he is a co-owner of Pleasant Garden Cemetery in Chattanooga, inherited from his great-grandfather.

“I was never looking for anything like this, never expecting it,” Henry says. He found out he’s part co-owner along with his siblings, cousins, and some relatives he’d never met. “Then the word liability started coming up. It’s a cemetery that’s run down, and you guys own it, and it’s a liability.”

Pleasant Garden Cemetery lies on the slope of a ridge on the outskirts of Chattanooga. Spread across 17.5 acres, the overgrown tombstones are both elegant and a little spooky. Leaves blanket the hills, 100-year-old trees have toppled some headstones, and many hillsides have sunken pits, where deserted graves have caved in.

Removing dead trees, repaving the cemetery’s paths, fixing broken headstones, restoring sunken plots, and recentering the founder’s obelisk would require an estimated $1.25 million and permission from the new owners. Sheeka Sanahor

“It is possibly one of the worst conditions of a cemetery that I’ve seen in several years,” says Stefanie Haire, public history phD student at MTSU. Despite growing up in Chattanooga, Haire had never heard of Pleasant Garden Cemetery. She first visited in order to research her dissertation, in search of the city’s first Black photographer, Horace Brazelton. “There’s extensive damage, but even in spite of all of that damage and disarray, there is such an electrifying feeling by simply walking through the paths that are there… I was kind of hooked on the cemetery at that point.”

Now Haire works to restore the cemetery with the African American Cemetery Preservation Fund. Haire trains volunteers to clean headstones with a nontoxic solution that eats organic material like mold out of the porous stone. The cleaning solution leaves behind a brighter headstone with markings that are easier to read.

Haire is also planning a five-year documentation project, where she’ll use lidar and GIS applications to plot every grave and figure out who each headstone belongs to. She’s hoping to produce a digitized map of the land.

“Once we get this interactive map built with all of the transcriptions entered in from the headstones, that’s going to open up a world of possibilities in terms of descendants being able to visit their ancestors’ burial ground,” she says. “Also in terms of finding more of these uncovered stories that I know are there, but we just have to put names to some of these people in order to find them first.”

Stefanie Haire scrubs headstones and, with volunteers, places tiny blue flags next to the freshly cleaned ones. Courtesy Stefanie Haire

Some of Pleasant Garden’s most well-known inhabitants were victims of racialized violence during the Jim Crow era. Chattanooga’s last lynching victim, Ed Johnson, is likely the most visited gravesite in the cemetery. Leroy Wright, one of the Scottsboro boys, is also among the documented buried.

But architect Farida Abu-Bakare says it can be challenging to track historical information for Jim-Crow-era cemeteries. Written records put the figure of people buried at Pleasant Garden between 10,000 and 12,000. Preliminary survey results of the grounds estimate the actual number is double.

“Records from that period may be incomplete, lost, or never formally recorded, especially for marginalized groups like African Americans,” says Abu-Bakare, who’s the director of Global Practice for WXY Architecture and Urban Design. “The task often requires extensive research, including the use of historical documents, oral histories, and archaeological methods to identify unmarked graves.”

Research into the records is just beginning, but a handful of people are already learning about ancestors that are buried in Pleasant Garden. Horace Brazelton’s descendants now know where he’s buried in the cemetery. Beverly Foster, the founder of Walker County, Georgia’s African American Museum, found her aunt’s grave. She’s still looking for the headstone of her great-grandmother who’s buried there, according to her death certificate.

Donivan Brown is another who discovered a lost relative in the cemetery. He helps coordinate quarterly cleanup days with the African American Cemetery Preservation Fund, and he found out he had a cousin who was born and died on the same day in 1965.

“It was almost as if I was watching the story unfold on television,” Brown says. “The grounds on which I’ve walked upon, organized work days, and worked myself told the stories of the cemetery. Along the way, a soul within my family was, in essence, there with me the entire time. It was moving, stirring, confirming that even on a more complex level, a familiar level, it’s a worthwhile effort to pursue the restoration of the cemetery.”

Levi and Maggie Young (posing with their children) were active community members who bought the cemetery in 1937. Horace Brazelton, Courtesy Candace Henry

The fact that the cemetery is Black-owned is also significant. Historians have uncovered that a postman named Richard L. Cleage bought 11 acres of land in 1890 to start Pleasant Garden Cemetery as a burial ground for Black Americans. The following year, Cleage organized a board of directors, comprised of Chattanooga lawyers, watchmakers, and business owners. The board erected a stone obelisk etched with their names and placed it at the apex of the cemetery. Land was added and ownership changed a couple times until Henry’s great-grandparents, Levi A. and Maggie L. Young bought it at a sheriff’s sale in 1937.

It’s unusual for a Black family to have maintained ownership of such a historic property, according to Anne Bailey, a historian at Binghamton University and author of The Weeping Time.

“What’s much more common is the loss of land and disconnection to where they owned it,” Bailey explains. “If this project is pulling the family together and pulling those threads together, I want to commend that.”

Historians at the Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Historic Preservation are drafting an application to get the cemetery listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Admission is a lengthy process, but if accepted, it would be among just 2% of historic places that preserve Black American spaces, according to Bailey.

Levi Henry found the grave of his ancestor, Levi A. Young. Courtesy Levi Henry

In October 2023, Henry decided he needed to visit the cemetery. Before meeting with staff members, he took a melancholic walk through the grounds, distressed by the condition of the graveyard. His disposition changed when he saw Levi A. Young’s headstone, whose first name he shares. In that moment, he knew he’d been called to be a steward and continue the work his great-grandfather started.

“It’s beyond historical. It’s sacred,” Henry says. “We’re dealing with the final resting place, in terms of their physical bodies, of all these people, many of whom have quite a story behind them. It goes beyond the understanding of earthly things.”

Due to its cultural and historical significance, the city of Chattanooga is interested in restoring it too. Blythe Bailey, Director of Design for Chattanooga’s Parks and Outdoors, says city officials are ready to assist once they hear from the owners.

Despite being spread across the country, the descendants of Levi A. Young are meeting periodically on video calls to figure out their next move. Henry says they’re building trust with each other as they decide the fate of the historic property.

why are there coins on some graves!?!

Graveyards,where many find it disturbing to walk, are very quiet places, good place to walk around and think. Our Victorian ancestors would enjoy picnicking there on a Sunday afternoon. History buffs like me, look at the names and dates on stones,and the beautiful stones themselves.  One might call that historical or genealogical research,could be a bit of soul searching as well. I for one do not believe that the spirits of the dead hang out at their grave site. Graves are a tribute, a memorial. 

 

So where am I going with all of this?  Several times I have noticed a few coins on a headstone and for a very long time I thought this must be an extension of the coins left on the body to pay Charon, the ferryman who transported the dead from the land of the living across the river Styx, safely to, Hades, the land of the dead.  

OK, I was wrong!!!!  the next time I see cons on a grave, I will add a few more.  

 

S.P.I.R.I.T Paranormal  on Facebook

  ·

Leaving a penny at the grave means simply that you visited. A nickel indicates that you & the deceased trained at boot camp together,while a dime means you served with him in some capacity. By leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the solider when he was killed. According to tradition, the money left at graves in national cemeteries & state veterans cemeteries is eventually collected, & the funds are put toward maintaining the cemeteries

 

Sesame Street, controversial??? Really?????? guest blogger Jake Rossen

Where would we be if this effort had succeeded?  I dunno.

I remember this, I had no children at the time,but do remember it because I worked for a very small school district in a very poor area. 

 

 

When Mississippi Once Banned “Sesame Street”

Jake Rossen

7–9 minutes

---

Credit: Children's Television Workshop / Courtesy of Getty Images.

Since it began airing in the fall of 1969, Sesame Street has become an indelible part of millions of children's formative years. Using a cast of colorful characters like Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and Oscar the Grouch, along with a curriculum vetted by Sesame Workshop's child psychologists and other experts, the series is able to impart life lessons and illustrate educational tools that a viewer can use throughout their adolescence. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone—even Oscar—who would take issue with the show’s approach or its mission statement.

Yet that’s exactly what happened in early 1970, when a board of educational consultants in Mississippi gathered, polled one another, and decided that Sesame Street was too controversial for television.

The series had only been on the air for a few months when the newly formed Mississippi Authority for Educational Television (also known as the State Commission for Educational Television) held a regularly scheduled meeting in January 1970. The board had been created by the state legislature with appointees named by Governor John Bell Williams to evaluate shows that were set to air on the state’s Educational Television, or ETV, station. The five-member panel consisted of educators and private citizens, including a teacher and a principal, and was headed up by James McKay, a banker in Jackson, Mississippi.

McKay’s presence was notable for the fact that his father-in-law, Allen Thompson, had just retired after spending 20 years as mayor of Jackson. Highly resistant to integration in the city during his tenure in office, Thompson was also the founder of Freedom of Choice in the United States, or FOCUS, an activist group that promoted what they dubbed “freedom of choice” in public schools—a thinly veiled reference to segregation. Mississippi, long the most incendiary state in the nation when it came to civil rights, was still struggling with the racial tension of the 1960s. Systemic racism was an issue.

Entering this climate was Sesame Street, the show pioneered by Joan Ganz Cooney, a former journalist and television producer who became the executive director of the Children’s Television Workshop. On the series, the human cast was integrated, with black performers Matt Robinson and Loretta Long as Gordon and Susan, respectively, appearing alongside white actors Jada Rowland and Bob McGrath. The children of Sesame Street were also ethnically diverse.

Credit: Astrid Stawiarz, Getty Images.

This appeared to be too much for the Authority, which discussed how lawmakers with control over ETV’s budget—which had just been set at $5,367,441—might find the mixed-race assembly offensive. The panel's participants were all white.

The board pushed the discussion aside until April 17, 1970, when they took an informal poll and decided, by a margin of three votes against two, to prohibit ETV from airing Sesame Street—a show that came free of charge to all public television stations. (The decision affected mainly viewers in and around Jackson, as the station had not yet expanded across the state and was not expected to do so until the fall of 1970.)

The members who were outvoted were plainly unhappy with the outcome and leaked the decision to The New York Times, which published a notice of the prohibition days later along with a quote from one of the board members.

“Some of the members of the commission were very much opposed to showing the series because it uses a highly integrated cast of children,” the person, who did not wish to be named, said. “Mainly the commission members felt that Mississippi was not yet ready for it.”

The reaction to such a transparent concession to racism was swift and predictably negative, both in and out of Mississippi. Board members who spoke with press, usually anonymously, claimed the decision was a simple “postponing” of the show, not an outright ban. The fear, they said, was that legislators who viewed ETV as having progressive values might shut down the project before it had a chance to get off the ground. It was still possible for opponents to suffocate it before it became part of the fabric of the state’s television offerings.

The concern was not entirely without merit. State representative Tullius Brady of Brookhaven said that ETV exerted “a subtle influence” on the minds of children and that the Ford Foundation, which funded educational programming, could use its influence for “evil purposes.” Other lawmakers had previously argued against shows that promoted integration.

Credit: Slaven Vlasic, Getty Images.

Regardless of how the decision was justified, many took issue with it. In an anonymous editorial for the Delta Democrat-Times, a critic wrote:

“But Mississippi’s ETV commission won’t be showing it for the time being because of one fatal defect, as measured by Mississippi’s political leadership. Sesame Street is integrated. Some of its leading cast members are black, including the man who does much of the overt ‘teaching.’ The neighborhood of the ‘street’ is a mixed one. And all that, of course, goes against the Mississippi grain.”

Joan Ganz Cooney called the decision a “tragedy” for young people.

Fortunately, it was a tragedy with a short shelf life. The following month, the board reconvened and reversed its own informal poll result, approving of Sesame Street and agreeing that ETV could air it as soon as they received tapes of the program. Thanks to feeds from Memphis, New Orleans, and Alabama, Sesame Street could already be seen in parts of Mississippi. And thanks to the deluge of negative responses, it seemed pointless to try to placate politicians who still favored segregation.

In the fall of 1970, the Sesame Street cast appeared in person in Jackson and was met by representatives from the board, which helped to sponsor the live performance, though it’s not clear any apology was forthcoming.

Sesame Street would go on to win numerous awards and accolades over the proceeding 50 years, though it would not be the only children’s show to experience censorship on public television. In May 2019, ETV networks in Alabama and Arkansas refused to air an episode of the PBS animated series Arthur in which a rat and aardvark are depicted as a same-sex couple getting married.

Jake Rossen is a senior staff writer for Mental Floss.

 

a telestich about a house, but who's house

A poem with a secrets hidden in it.

It will tell you  the name of it magical owner.

listen to me girls and boys

to tell a tail of long ago

a story you can hardy believe

close you eyes, and attend

the ages are speaking to you

I think you will agree

the answer is so brief

it' worth saying again

This strange house, built in the 18th century,is one of the oldest is Hattfielldal municipality, Norway.

 

 The purpose of this strikingly different house, with it tree trunk legs was/is overwinter storage of food and perhaps other items.

learn something new every day

I am not joking when I say I learn something new every day. 
My guess is  alot of us do that in the course of our day. 

Today I learned that you can't always trust the advice you get from a certain cooking show especially when it concerns making cake frosting from marshmallows and white chocolate chips. 

But I digress....ALOT!

A couple day ago I learned about telsetich,  this is the first one I ever wrote, and it is about the equilux { On September 22, 2024, at precisely 6:13 PM IST.}  OK, it's not one of my best efforts, but I am still proud of it.  As yet it has no title, might never have a title, eeeweee I just noticed how much and how bad the rhyming is in it!  Oh I do promise to do better the next time.  Also I have added information that may help should you want to compose a few telestich yourself.

 

 

each star that shines
looks down thru time
must be aware
on this night so rare
I sing the old songs
no longer heard
your wisdom I invite
this solemn night
this sacred eve

telestich
/təˈlɛstɪk/

Definition: A type of poem or poetic structure in which the last letters of each line, when read vertically, spell out a word or message.

Origin: Derived from the Greek word "telos," meaning "end," and "stichos," meaning "line" or "verse."

Example: The poet crafted a telestich that revealed the word "LOVE" when the last letters of each line were read together.

---

A telestich is a creative form of poetry where the last letters of each line combine to form a specific word or message. This unique structure adds an element of surprise and depth, inviting readers to engage more closely with the text. It challenges poets to think carefully about their line endings while also conveying meaning through their choice of words. The result is a layered experience, as the reader not only enjoys the poem's thematic content but also discovers the hidden word, enriching their understanding and appreciation of the work.