As the legend goes, Alcyone carries her dead mate to his burial, then builds a nest and launches it out to sea. There, she lays her eggs and hatches her chicks, brooding over her sea-borne nest for seven placid days before the Winter Solstice and seven becalmed days after. While she is brooding, the sea is held unusually calm, for to protect Alcyone and his grandchildren, According to Ovid, "the passage of the deep is free from storms, throughout those seven full days; and Aeolus restraining harmful winds, within their cave, for his descendants' sake gives halcyon seas." Back in the depths of history, there was a myth that there were times when the sea was so calm that Kingfishers could nest on it ... and as the Kingfisher is named " Halcyon " , periods of calm weather were called "halcyon days." That feeble picture up there is the only one I could find illustrating this ancient myth. You couldn't make it up. So, I made this up .... In times gone by, they used to think that on Halcyon days, the sea sat calmly and so beautifully flat, that nothing would sink so Kingfishers , being be so gormless and barmy would try to build their nests on the sea and lay their eggs, oh, that's very likely and then chicks would hatch , oh joy, oh glee ! but here's the problem, here's the thingy where did the Kingfishers get their sticks ? and suppose the nest's squashed by a passing canoe ? or engulfed by those numerous oil slicks ? or snapped up by a wandering Manitou ? then there's gulls and auks and the deadly gannet and Fairy Petrels and giant squids so the chance of predation was something chronic not to mention the threat of stick-eating pids ! Yes, pids are the problem, and as you know, there's hundreds of them to the cubic metre they can chew up a nest in an hour or so they're famous for being the fastest nest-eater That's why the kingfisher nests in a tunnel well out of the way of those eaters-of-sticks otherwise, even a single one'll smash their eggs, and feast on the chicks So, what is the moral of this ancient myth ? Is there nothing at all we can learn from it ? No, it's all a stream of rancid pyth And all of those myths are a load of shyt ! I'm sorry to be so scatalogical But in the past they hadn't a clue Their ideas were depressingly dodgical And amount to no more than a heap of pue. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, dear readers, you will have to make up your own mind about the theories of our forbears ... I've tried to give you a balanced view there, looking at things fairly from all sides, and coming to a balanced and, I might say, nuanced, verdict. And now, your own, your very own "von Brücken" and " Gold gegen Blei " it's got the words too .... and they're presented very interestingly ... I reckon, if I wrote enough of those stupid "poems", I could collect them all into one heap of, er, crap, and try to get them published !! Can you imagine the impact such a collection might have on the waiting world ? The thing is .... it's very important this, so pay attention ..... What would be a suitable title ? I'm throwing this one to you out there.... can you come up with one ? You'd get a free copy of the book if your title was chosen. Ideas to [email protected] Or .... as a comment. I've only had 1 comment so far. I'm feeling lonely. Or is it, loonely ? Goonly ? Buffoonly ? My immediate idea was the abrupt, pithy "SHITLE." Ted Hughes, he would approve. He's written a whole poetry book called CROW. But it's crap. And boring. And he knows nowt about crows. ...... mind you, he is "craggy".... ..and somebody else isn't impressed either ... ...that's bathos at its best that is !
Pid, by the way, is a familiar name for the Piddock, a boring mollusc ...not boring in the sense of being boring, but meaning " it bores into things."
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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