Who Killed the Fairies?

 From Simon's British Mythology:

In the last five hundred years there have been periods of enthusiasm for fairies among writers and, more usually, generations of indifference and disdain (the ‘deserts’ of the title). Looking back at the years since the Reformation, a juicy half millennium of British history, I can identify three periods when fairies were important in national British culture. The first might be called ‘Elizabethan plus’ and stretches from about 1570 to the English Civil War: in this period playwrights and poets could not shut up about fairies. Indeed, no twee rhyme was complete/ without a fairy feat (see what I did there?) The second stretches through most of the nineteenth century. British folklore collectors tried their best, at this time, to scribble down everything they could about the ‘hill folk’ and their deeds. This peaked perhaps in the 1880s or 1890s. By the Great War it was most certainly over. Then the third period of enthusiasm started about thirty years ago… I am writing in the middle of it. It too, of course, will end.

Fairylore did not alter very much in the first four hundred years. Compare Elizabethan fairylore (and we have two extraordinary books) with nineteenth-century fairylore (where we don’t have any great books).1 If you do so you will see that fairylore remained essentially the same out in the British countryside. Fairies had not vanished there. They were part of the old order: the grim grind of surviving in a landscape which dated back to the Neolithic. The fairy enthusiasms and the periods of disdain (which turned on and off like a faulty bulb) were the inconsequential fashion choices of a relatively small literate class. The Elizabethan and Caroline scribblers particularly seem to have had no influence on rural fairylore. As a historian I find this counter-intuitive. I expect things to mutate: I probably also have the prejudice deep inside me that intellectual elite matter outside intellectual elites. But what has impressed me in a decade and a half in supernatural studies is that rural folklore is extraordinarily conservative and extraordinarily resilient. The reason that these periods of fashion matter is that when the light bulb comes on we see the fairies in our sources. (Read more.)

 

The Isles of the Blessed. From The Library of Lewis and Tolkien:

One of the most stirring elements of Tolkien’s mythology glimpsed in The Lord of the Rings is the recurring allusions to a distant and enchanted island — an island of the elves — that lies far out in the Western seas. The tantalizing knowledge of this mysterious realm frames the narrative itself: we hear of this remote region early on, in the second chapter of the book, when the narrator mentions (almost in passing) that “past the old towers beyond the western borders of the Shire” lie “the Grey Havens, from which at times elven-ships set sail, never to return.” And at (nearly) the end of the book, Frodo, wounded, bereaved, and restless, journeys there to be healed, and with Frodo we glimpse it at last, the “white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

In between, allusions to the lands across the western sea recur all throughout the book. The elves hold it in memory, they sing of it, here and there they speak of going back one day; and the shadow of what the elves’ return to this land — their eventual departure from Middle-earth — forebodes hangs over the whole narrative: we know that something irreplaceably good and beautiful will have gone out of the world.

Meanwhile, the world of The Chronicles of Narnia also features a mysterious and enchanted land that lies far, far out beyond the sea, that lies indeed at the world’s very end: “Aslan’s country,” the homeland of the Great Lion himself. Our first indication that Aslan comes to Narnia — like Tolkien’s Elves to Middle-earth — from beyond the sea comes from one of Aslan’s epithets when we first meet him in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: he is “the son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.”

And as with the end of The Lord of the Rings, in the final chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we catch a glimpse of Aslan’s country: a vast mountain range lying beyond the world, “warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you looked.” (But in Lewis’ world the enchanted land beyond the waves lies not in the West, but in the East, the direction of the sunrise.)

It is striking that both Narnia and Middle-earth contain stories of remote and enchanted lands situated across the sea, lands of great beauty and goodness that lie across the waves and beyond the mortal world. This image — and the ache of longing evoked by it — was clearly one that both authors felt deeply. (A shared sensibility that they no doubt discussed with one another as well.) Where does the image of such a land come from, and why did both men respond so powerfully to it? (Read more.)

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The Christening of Marie-Antoinette

Gareth Russell describes Marie-Antoinette's baptism and early childhood, as follows:

As with most of the Hapsburg girls for the last two centuries, the baby's first name was given in honour of the Virgin Mary, whom the Austrian imperial family was especially devoted to; subsequent names were then added in honour of Saint Anthony, her Portuguese godfather and Saint John the Evangelist. Thus, the new baby formally presented at the Church of the Augustine Friars for baptism into the Christian Faith on the following day was Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Maria-Antonia-Josefa-Johanna von Hapsburg of Austria, Alsace and Lorraine.

The christening itself took place in the church's latest addition, a beautiful ante-camera, which can still be seen today, with two of the baby's elder siblings - Josef and Maria-Anna - standing in for the Portuguese king and queen who, naturally, could not be expected to travel all the way from Lisbon for the ceremony. Although they were amongst the eldest of the Emperor and Empress's children, it's my hunch that Josef and Maria-Anna were picked to stand proxy because they conveniently also had the same Christian names as the King and Queen of Portugal. With the exception of the Empress, who was still in seclusion, the Imperial Family sat on a pew near the font, where Maria-Antonia was christened by the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal von Trautson. Where possible, the Empress preferred to have the children baptised by the Papal Nuncio, however the new nuncio, Cardinal Visconti, had not yet been formally presented at Court and was therefore ineligible to perform the ceremony.

Sitting in the pew, before the eyes of the Court, Church and military, little Maria-Antonia's bevy of brothers and sisters made an impressive show of imperial fecundity.They were living proof that all was well within the House of Hapsburg and that the common criticism that the family was debilitatingly inbred did not apply to the Austrian branch of this formidable clan. Several of Maria-Antonia's siblings had predeceased her and, at the time of her christening, eleven of the children remained alive. Apart from 14 year-old Josef, the crown prince, and 17 year-old Maria-Anna, an intelligent girl with a crooked back who had already decided on a vocation as a nun in Prague,  the imperial siblings congregated in the Augustinian Church on that chilly November afternoon included Maria-Antonia's six other sisters - their mother's favourite, Maria-Christina, the family beauty, Maria-Elisabeth, the impetuous Maria-Amalia, 5 year-old Maria-Johanna, 4 year-old Maria-Josefa and the toddler, Maria-Caroline, destined to be Marie-Antoinette's favourite sister and childhood playmate . They were joined by their three brothers, all junior to Josef in the line of succession; 10 year-old Karl, 8 year-old Leopold and the baby, Ferdinand. (Read more.)

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Communism Never Cared about Your Factory

 From The Elegant Ruin:

In textbooks, and in the minds of the credentialed semi-literates who populate our universities, the difference between capitalism and communism comes down to a mode of production, that is, to who owns the means of production, private hands on one side and the state on the other. This schoolroom definition is so comfortable that even the enemies of communism repeat it without noticing that they are reciting the adversary's catechism, which is precisely what Gramsci would have called, with the smile of a man who won without firing a shot, hegemony.

The trouble is that total state ownership of the economy has never existed and never will, because it is an economic impossibility pure and simple. Ludwig von Mises demonstrated as much back in 1920, and the communists, after a few feeble kicks, never managed to refute him. That is exactly why, in every communist regime in history, a considerable slice of the economy remained in private hands. At first it lived in a clandestinity tolerated by governments that knew everything would collapse without it, and later it came out into the open under the name of perestroika or whatever euphemism the moment required.

Now, if real communism lives so comfortably alongside private capital, then the much-advertised collective ownership of the means of production was never more than a carrot dangling before the donkey, a hypnotic pretext for marching the faithful toward a paradise postponed unto the ages of ages. Broadly speaking, what these regimes always did was give up on the economy, which is untamable by nature, and concentrate on whatever could be controlled with little effort, namely parties, the press, schools, religion and cultural institutions. Master half a dozen channels and you master the whole of society without ever having to fix the price of bread. (Read more.)

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The Lack of What Ought To Be Is Calling to You

 From Matriarch Goals:

The holiday season, or the Mom Olympics as I call it, is the primary means of drafting and converting ourselves, our children, and our friends to the culture of life. It is the most effective tool for evangelization. Not “the discourse,” not door-to-door harassment of non-believers, not college, not even k-12 education. What we do in our homes on Holy Days or holidays is the primary means of giving the faith to our children, building the culture, and establishing our folkways. It’s similar to the habit of sitting down to family dinner, which is the primary means of raising children into a family culture that they will be hard-pressed to abandon or reject.

If you have never looked at the social science surrounding family dinners, please take a moment to acquaint yourself. This one practice is so important, so vastly superior to all other customs of childrearing and family culture formation, that your pediatrician likely asked your mom if the family ever sat down to dinner together in order to assess your general health and well-being when you were a kid. There is no other thing that even comes close to the numerous benefits that family dinner delivers to the human soul, character, and even intellectual formation. (Read more.)

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The Beauty That Makes Men Build

 

From To the Ends of the Earth:

Only much later did I realize that what captivated me wasn’t simply feminine beauty. It was feminine beauty illuminated by virtue. And that realization eventually led me to a lovesick Florentine poet named Dante Alighieri, a young woman named Beatrice, and perhaps the greatest lesson ever written about why beauty has the extraordinary power to awaken the human heart.

Dante and I actually have a lot in common.

We’re both hopeless romantics.

The only difference is that he was a fourteenth-century Italian poet who gave the world one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and I’m a project coordinator from Georgia writing about my celebrity crushes on Substack. So he’s got me there.

If you’ve never read Dante, you’ve probably at least heard the name. Most people know him because of The Divine Comedy—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. They think it’s a story about Hell.

It isn’t.

It’s a story about love.

Or maybe more accurately, it’s a story about where love ultimately leads.

Long before Dante wrote about descending into Hell or climbing the mountain of Purgatory, there was a woman named Beatrice. According to tradition, Dante first saw her when they were both about nine years old. He encountered her only a handful of times throughout his life. They never courted. They never married. There was no grand romance worthy of Hollywood. If you pitched their story to a movie producer today, they’d probably reject it for “not enough chemistry.”

And yet, she became the great love of his life.

Not because she belonged to him, but because she changed him.

In La Vita Nuova (The New Life), Dante describes seeing Beatrice for the first time with words that almost sound excessive—until you’ve encountered someone who changes your life simply by existing. He writes, “At that instant, I say truly that the spirit of life, which dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that even the least pulses of my body shook.” (Read more.)

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Why Christians Must Vote

 From Tierney's Real News:

Your church is a “political” group. Your city, state, and nation are. Refusing to participate does not keep your hands clean. It hands the pen to those who will write rules that make it harder for the next generation to live quiet, Godly lives.

As the saying goes: “You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.”

If that isn’t enough to convince you to get off the couch and vote in this mid-term election, here’s another argument that is even more compelling.

US Senate seats are 6 year terms so your vote on Tuesday will not only help Trump codify his America First agenda for the next two years but influence the NEXT President in his first term in office. Elon is right and I never thought about it this way before. Vote MAGA Republican to keep the borders closed and the atheist Communists and Jihadis out of America for at least the next 6 years. That’s not hyperbole, just fact. (Read more.)

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The Death and Hope of Fall

 From El Antiguo:

Michaelmas felt like a door to autumn; the golden fatness of pecans starting to turn, the heat-baked smells of hay, harvest in the heat and the coolness of lemonade in the shade. Now I watch the first blue norther come in from my porch, smell the petrichor and hear the murmuring trees creak their branches. Now—as we enter the Hallowtide Triduum—something more final has breathed across the land.

It is Death.

On the coming of Fall, it is fitting to meditate upon death. The ancient pagans knew that this was a time of thinness, where the veil between life and death was gauze-scant. And they feared the dead. The Church, which baptizes all things good and true and beautiful, and re-orients them to God, took this awareness and the traditions that surrounded it and married them to Allhallowtide. The Natural, Agricultural, Psychological, and Cultural were married to and perfected in the Liturgical, which above all, turned the fear of death and demons, veils torn and veils thin, into a triumphant Hope. Death and Haunts aren’t what they used to be; in Christ (Firstborn of the Dead, not a Ghost but Flesh) Death is a door and Spirits are souls.

It is fitting indeed. We meditate upon death, and how it is no longer the End. We pray for the souls of the Church Penitent, undergoing the sanctification in Purgatory. We pray with the Church Triumphant, worshipping and interceding for us before the very throne of the Father. And we pray as the Church Militant, who fights here on Earth, armed to the teeth against the powers of darkness.

There’s a dignity and a triumph in Hallowtide, despite the quiet presence of Death… or rather, because of the presence of Death. (Read more.)

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Pugin’s Illustrations of Newman’s Lives of the English Saints

 From NINS:

Two major pieces of literature on Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–1852), the renowned Gothic Revivalist and Catholic convert who designed Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, six cathedrals, and more, state, in summary fashion, that Pugin illustrated St John Henry Newman’s Live of the English Saints.[1] The late Professor Margaret Belcher, however, provided a great deal of detail on this subject in the second volume of her The Collected Letters of A.W.N. Pugin, published in 2003.[2] This essay republishes, for the first time since 1914, all eleven of Pugin’s illustrations[3] and does so for the first time ever in a single document.[4]

The period in question is mid 1842 through the end of 1844.[5] During this time, Pugin was, among other things, doing his typical traveling (Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent),[6] worked on his home in Ramsgate,[7] and on several churches, including three cathedrals.[8] He also published An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843) and Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume (1844).[9] For his part during this time, Newman (1801–1890) was in the throes of converting to Catholicism and had relocated from Oxford to Littlemore, a few miles away, in February 1842.[10] Among other things, he was busy drafting An Essay on The Development of Christine Doctrine (1845).

With respect to Newman’s Lives of the English Saints, the first thing to notice is that any and all illustrations were by Pugin, no one else, and they were not attributed to anyone at the time of original publication. Second, Newman himself may not have written any of the Lives.[11] He edited the first two numbers: St Stephen Harding and St Richard.[12] The introduction to the 1900 edition, the first comprehensive edition, stated that the work is described as Newman’s because he initiated the effort.[13]

Here is how the work came about: Newman’s thoughts on the subject started at least as early as 4 April 1841, when he wrote to his friend, J.W. Bowden, about English saints, the “National Church,” and the desirability of someone writing a biography of St Anselm (1033/34–1109).[14] In the summer of 1842, Newman had a conversation with publisher James Toovey about “publishing the Lives of the [English] Saints … thinking it would be useful, as employing the minds of persons who were in danger of running wild, and bringing them from doctrine to history, from speculation to fact; again, as giving them an interest in the English soil and English church, and keeping them from seeking sympathy in Rome as she is”.[15] On 3 April 1843, almost precisely two years since Newman had first written Bowden on the subject, he wrote Bowden again, stating that he intended the work “to be historical and devotional, but not controversial.”[16]

As of 18 May 1843, “Many men are setting to work [researching and writing biographies].”[17] There were 30 such men. A few months later, in early fall of 1843, Newman published a prospectus describing the anticipated Lives.[18] He envisioned a monthly publication written by various authors, each writing independently of the others.[19] He identified 300 saints![20]

At some point in 1843, Newman asked J. R. Bloxam, previously a curate to Newman, to find out from Pugin what he wanted to do about illustrations for Saints Stephen and Richard.[21] Pugin initially declined the work.[22]

In late 1843, Anglican Father and Oxford Professor E. B. Pusey saw some pre-publication proofs of the first Life, that of St Stephen Harding, by J. D. Dalgairns who lived in community with Newman at Littlemore. Pusey’s objections to these proofs caused Newman great anxiety. Newman had wanted the Lives to present facts with total detachment but realized that “miracles, or monkery [monasticism], or popery”[23] would unavoidably seep in. Newman consulted James Hope, a young barrister and William Gladstone, then a Member of Parliament (and future Prime Minister), both of whom shared Pusey’s concerns.[24]

By December, Newman decided to withdraw from the project but desired that individual biographies, many of them in process, would be published one at a time and that enough of them would eventually constitute a series.[25] As soon as the first, on St Stephen, came into print, it was clear that the project of publishing lives of English saints was incompatible with Anglicanism.[26] After the second biography (of St Richard[27]) was published, Newman gave public notice in January 1844 that he was withdrawing as editor.[28] He declared that only those biographies completed or nearly completed would be subsequently published.[29]

There was a flurry of correspondence—28 letters identified and summarized by Belcher—between Pugin, Newman, Toovey, and the new editor Frederick Oakeley (then minister at Margaret Chapel, the predecessor of All Saints, Margaret Street, and the author of the draft life of St Augustine of Canterbury) from the last half of January through November 1844, some of which may have crossed in the mail. The subjects included employing Pugin to illustrate individual lives as well as the design of a “Wrapper,” or frontispiece, that is, a title-page illustration that would be used for every number in the series, Pugin’s fees, the colors of the illustrations, the status of the work of the engraver, Orlando Jewitt, and comments on Pugin’s illustrations. For example, Toovey wrote Newman on February 9 that Pugin had supplied a “beautiful” design for St Augustine.[30] (Read more.)

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The Triad of Power

 From Tierney's Real News:

Once you put the numbers side by side, you immediately understand why so many mainstream commentators, corporate institutions, and online influencers default to the European Union’s framing or soft-pedal Communist China. The European Union (EU) offers a comforting vocabulary of “rules,” “values,” and managed decline. It flatters an entire class of credentialed professionals who prefer process over outcomes.

Communist China (CCP) offers massive scale, deep pockets, and the quiet promise that American primacy is fading anyway—so the smart play is to hedge, compromise, and accommodate.

Both of these narratives let people sound incredibly sophisticated while ignoring the exact same set of undeniable facts: the United States still holds the largest nominal economy, the highest individual productivity, and the only military capable of projecting devastating power at a distance. The other two blocs know this. They are actively trying to close those gaps on their own terms.

The deeper conflict isn’t just about territory; it is about what the world should actually look like. (Read more.)

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