Category: Myths & Folklore

The Morningstar

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The Horsehead Nebula, as photographed by William Mccarthy

The Morningstar

It’s a little known fact, but so they tell,
That the Devil loves astronomy.
And when he steps away from Hell,
Away from the caves of his citadel,
With their ceilings of monotony –
Then the one thing that he wants to see
Are stars in infinity.
Is it a part some evil scheme ?,
Or simply that the Devil, as well, can dream ?

I wonder if he can visit them ?
Or can he only gaze from Earth ?
I’m sure he understands each gem,
As much as the Star of Bethlehem,
And over aeons watched their birth
To their glorious end, and brought him mirth
When friendships were in dearth.
Has he lusted for their gleam ?,
Or has he simply been condemned to dream ?

The Bible doesn’t mention much,
Except as signs, or points of light.
Or else, Creation Week and such,
But science there is out of touch –
Like Joshua, needing time to smite,
Commands the Sun to halt its flight –
He knows that that ain’t right !
So is it to score one for his team ?,
Or simply cast away that crutch, and dream ?

There is surprisingly little astronomy in the Bible – there is the basic flat-Earth cosmology which both their smarter neighbours the Persians and the Greeks had already debunked, but not much stargazing it seems.  There are numerous references to the Moon, but always in passing – none of them suggest anyone is actually looking at it.  Job has mention of Arcturus (or Leo, or Ursa Major), Orion, the Pleiades, and the Chambers of the South (possibly the zodiac, or Centaurus and Crux), but oddly no mention of the very prominent Sirius or Cassiopeia.  For a desert culture, you would think that those big skies would feature far more…

Cusp & Foil

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The Devil’s Parlour, an AI confection created using Leonardo

Cusp & Foil

Despite its very un-human appearance,
Brutalism is not of the Devil –
Hell is not open-plan nor split-level,
But rather refined in its elegance.

For Satan loves him a good bit of moulding,
And finds the Gothic suitably striking –
It’s churchiness is much to his liking,
With shadows and alcoves with secrets withholding.

He relishes how it is so un-chaste –
A messy farrago, where carvings cavort,
So clearly theatric, but not overwrought.
He’s rather old school in his decadent taste.

He champions all human endeavour,
He hungers for art, and lusts for pleasures,
Encouraging people to greater measures
Of genius accidentally clever.

Now God, he think, is a philistine,
And Jesus just sees a building as walls,
While Paul doesn’t care for the awe of St Paul’s –
They can’t see the passion within the divine.

The rage of the counter-Reformation
Is nothing but pigments on canvas, alas.
They hear no angelics within the Mass,
Nor thunder within a preacher’s oration.

But Satan knows humans are flesh and blood,
Like gargoyles hanging from rafters and nooks –
They may be grotesque, but we cherish their looks !
For Adam was formed from the dust and the mud.

But Heaven, he finds, is a Brutalist hell,
Raw and unfinished, with Puritan spartan
Enough to frown and hush and dishearten –
At least the Pit has some tales to tell.

The Pearly Gates are some steel-and-glass doors
In a weather-stained wall, not old, not new,
With nothing to say to those who pass through
To where ceilings hang low above beige-grey floors.

It makes good sense, though, that Hell with its fires
Has flames in its tracery, flickers of polychrome,
Bringing a warmth to Lucifer’s home –
For beauty is something that even the Devil requires.

Technically, both philistine and spartan are racist terms, but since the people who identified as such are no longer around as groups distinct from their neighbours, these are victimless crimes.

Brutalism on a Cold Dark Night

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Appropriately enough, this grim render was produced by AI.

Brutalism on a Cold Dark Night

Was there ever an architecture
Better suited to the psychopath ?
A soulless, sucking void of arrogance
From a concrete aftermath.
Revolted by the human touch,
They strip us down to a naked shell –
Forget the creepy Mansard roofs,
When this is the door to Hell.

Architecture that loves to unnerve us,
Streaked with grey and urban rot.
It stalks us down the side streets,
As its slabs are looming into shot.
Ashamed of beauty un-grotesque,
It’s where our inner demons dwell –
Forget the spooky moonlit tombs,
For this is the door to Hell.

But worse, is the way this architecture
Spreads its gloom across the globe –
All local style is crushed beneath the bulk
Of this alpha xenophobe.
Abhorring even a glimpse of nature,
Condemning us all to a prison cell –
Forget your wrought and iron gates,
For this is the door to Hell.

The Elephants of War

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War Elephant Head by Ruslan Bikmurzin

The Elephants of War

The jumbos joined the battlefield,
To put the steeds to fright.
For what use were mere horses
In the face of so much might ?
But the other side were not done yet,
This wouldn’t be a rout –
They launched their secret weapon
As they rode their mammoths out.

So the jumbos and the mammoths
Clashed upon the battlefield –
They flared their ears and trumpeted,
And neither side would yield.
They reared-up on their hind legs high,
They broadsided and barged,
And they shook the ground beneath them
As their ten-ton leaders charged.

But what with all their bellowing
To war and kingdom-come,
It soon become apparent
That these hunks were not so dumb –
They targetted the riders,
Pulled them off with probing trunks,
And skewered them upon their tusks,
And flayed them into chunks.

They stamped upon the humans,
And they kicked them from their path,
Till they were the last ones standing
In the bloody aftermath.
And they touched their heads together in a truce,
And sallied forth –
With the jumbos on to Africa,
And mammoths heading North.

Obviously AI, but it serves its purpose…

Gallybaggers

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Scarecrow by Carus

Gallybaggers

How do scarecrows scare crows ?
Who knows ?
They seem such feeble foes.
Do they even work, do you suppose ?
With their hessian nose and wooden toes,
These crucified guards in hand-me-down clothes
Must scare the birds that thieve he rows.
But corbs are smart, and their learning shows
As they crop the crops while their wardens doze…

Rhinos In Name Only

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Rhino in the Mud by Jono Dry

Rhinos In Name Only

Somewhere, in a parallel taiga,
There they are – they never died.
The woolly rhinos guard the Eiger,
Symbols of the Russian pride.
Standing ground against the polar bear,
And hauling Santa’s sleigh,
And touring with the country fair –
In brown and never grey –

But not this Earth, and not this tundra –
So it goes, and so they went –
The climate changed and they went under,
Leaving bones from Greece to Kent.
Their naked cousins still exist, I guess,
Though less divine –
We won’t find them near Inverness
Or swimming in the Rhine.

Orcish Woolly Rhino Riders by Alpine Creations

Uncharted

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Detail from Islandia by Abrahim Ortelius

Uncharted

The maps of old were full of monsters –
Terra incognita !
Back when the darkest continents
Were mysteries of consequence.
Wherever our landlocked pencil wanders
Faster than a cheetah,
Then here be dragons, rest assured,
And natives with the heads of birds.

The maps of old were full of empty,
Till we filled them in.
We went and saw, and came back sad,
That there were no beasts to be had.
We’d spare imagination plenty,
But behemoths were thin –
We’d no leviathans to spare,
Just boring humans, ev’rywhere…

Helios

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Kepler 16-b by Joby Harris

Helios

The Sun is a restless god,
Driving his chariot ever on.
The dawn won’t last for long,
Before it’s gone, to welcome the morning
Where the queen of night once trod.
Before we know, it’s midday,
And his heat is full upon us –
Then into his afternoon we rush,
And all too soon, the growing dusk,
As once again he slips away.

A 19th century shell cameo brooch, as sold by Roseberys

White Whiskers

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Spilt Milk by B Butler

White Whiskers

Cats love milk, everyone knows it,
Even the cats know it’s true –
All of common culture shows it,
Cats just love the moo !
Since Aesop told the ancient Greeks,
The white has dyed the wool –
As ever since, our folklore speaks of it
By the saucers-full.
Except…they can’t digest it,
No, not even when it’s creamed –
They’re done with being breast-fed
Since their kitten-selves were weaned.
And yet, the tales are prominent
Throughout the milky West –
I guess we lactose-tolerants
Think good-old breast is best !
But blame for this situation
Is not ours alone, at that –
For this dangerous temptation
Is such catnip to a cat.
For mogs won’t learn the lesson,
As they glut with ev’ry lap,
Never knowing how they’re messing
With a lit’ral booby trap.

The reference to Aesop is a bit of a cheat, since his fable The Litigious Cats centres on a dispute over a piece of cheese rather than milk – but cheese is just as unstable to felines, so I reckon it counts…

Swamm-Lore

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Photo by Ashish Raj on Pexels.com

Swamm-Lore

Humans have been farming fungus
Since the old days of the Tang –
The jellied-ear perhaps was first,
And up the mycoculture sprang !
Shiitake and enoki,
Grown on logs and straw and bran,
Until in damp Enlightened France,
The button mushroom crop began.

Strange, the Romans loved their fungus,
Yet they never learned the knack –
And the monks were so productive,
Yet they only gave the yeast a crack.
Although, it proved quite tricky
Unless sterilized for pathogens –
Far easier to forage in the woods
That mess around with pens.

Meanwhile, folklore had been busy,
Earthy names for ev’rything –
Observe the toadstool and the stinkhorn,
Bird’s-nest and the fairy ring.
But where were all the memory-rhymes
On which ones was it not worth risking ?
Or how to tell a puffball
From a death cap or a poison pigskin ?

Perhaps there are no generalities
To indicate the vicious –
One-by-one, we learn how white gills, say,
Are deadly, or delicious.
Ugly textures, noxious smells,
May sometimes show vitality –
Their looks do not align at all
With fairytale morality.

These days, though, the urban myths
Are more concerned with mould and spore,
And in hallucinations,
And the nuclear clouds of war.
The time of the destroying angel’s
Shrouded in mediaeval mist,
Or from genteel whodunnits,
Or a pith-helmet nat’ralist.

Humans have been farming fungus,
Fascinated with their fruits –
Not really understanding them,
Yet sniffing truffles out of roots.
These days, it’s all commercialised,
To keep safe ev’ry cassarole,
Without an unintended killer
In our toadstool-in-the-hole.

The Chinese appear to have been farming Auricularia heimuer (aka the Black Wood Ear Mushroom) since the Tang Period (10618 – 10907 HE). They local name for it is ‘heimuer’, subsequently used as the species epithet.  However, I have been unable to find any guide as to how this is pronounced.  I think it may be something like high-moo-er, but that sounds more like a cow who has been feeding on a rather different kind of fungus…