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eggytranslations · 3 years

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Volume 1, Chapter 14-Matchmaker

Content warning: knife

After tonight’s first try of love making, if it were anyone else, they would be extremely tired and cover up with a blanket to sleep, dead to the world. However, Shen Qingxuan had never been a light hearted person, his thoughts had always been heavy. In the past, even if he drank a soothing concoction, his sleep would be troubled. Tonight, his body and mind were both exhausted, tired to the point that he could not even open his eyes, but he still slept shallowly. He only had weird dreams for the entire night—in his dreams, he was being chased and did not know what kinds of evil spirits were behind him, gripping their sharp and shiny knives, wanting to kill him. In his dreams, though, his movement was actually agile, madly running without pause. He was so crazy happy for his own lithe legs that he more or less did not care that there was someone who wanted to kill him. Just as he was feeling happy, the scene suddenly changed. He did not know how he returned to that ice cave from long before. All around him was bone chilling ice. Both of his hands were clinging to a piece of ice, his skin even stuck on it, relying only on that stuck layer of bloody flesh to support his entire body. He knew that as soon as he slipped into there, he would never be able to stand up again; he also dreamed about his mother who seemed to be in his bedroom, holding his newborn younger brother and calling him little darling. He wanted to go over there to pull her away, but the room was pitch black, nothing could be seen. There was only the faint smell of sandalwood coming from his mother and wrapping around them, not dispersing……The whole night was full of these kinds of bizarre and motley dreams. Shen Qingxuan had the night sweats, he could not tell if he was awake or sleeping until even the night sky outside the window had turned a faint white before he fell into a deep sleep as his mind drifted, finally free.

This slumber lasted late into the morning, the sun even moved to high noon, and he had not even woken.

He had never ever been one to overindulge in sleep. His personal maidservant had brought a water basin and toiletries bright and early outside his door. In the past, before the sound of her footsteps had a chance to near the door, the clear sound of the brass bell would ring out. Therefore, she could not help but feel suspicious and also worried about his health. It was really just that, as chronic invalid of many years, if he had anything happen to him, she would not be able to shoulder the responsibility. So she quietly pushed open the doors to his personal wing and entered.

The girl joined the Shen family when she was five years old, and originally attended to Mother Shen personally. At the time she joined, she was young and sweet-looking, and also possessed a clever but eloquent tongue. Mother Shen had never taken her for an average servant to order about. When she saw that her own son had become withdrawn after his incident, she sent her to Shen Qingxuan’s quarters, thinking that she could be a companion for him. If there was a child around him to keep him company, perhaps his temperament would improve somewhat. Gradually, the girl grew into her blooming maidenhood. Mother Shen concluded that she would understand the bigger picture, and as a person, she was humble and good-natured, so she got the idea to giver her as a concubine to Shen Qingxuan to have a son or half a daughter. Although they would be born by a slave girl, they would still have the Shen family blood.

This idea of Mother Shen’s was known by everyone in the manor, therefore, as a servant girl, being in this room was not the same as usual.

Shen Qingxuan was also quite aware of his mother’s ideas, however, he really had no impure thoughts towards this girl who had grown up with him. He had also thought of clearing this up before, but could not find a suitable time. Moreover, the girl had attended to him these dozens of years after all, and could be considered a person he was close with, so it would not be good to hurt her feelings. He knew that he was withdrawn, too. He only grew up together with her, as master and servant, and was a little bit more pleasant to her so it was even more impossible for him to hurt her feelings with a hardened heart. So he had always pretended to not know.

The servant girl had not realized Shen Qingxuan’s intention to decline, merely believing it to be Young Master Shen’s thin skin. Plus, as a girl, it was untoward for her to verbalize it, so this matter kept getting put off.

In recent years, Mother Shen would pull the girl for some secret chats, and during their conversations, this matter would be included in the agenda.

Although she would be a concubine, this would also be the first time that Shen Qingxuan’s room would have an additional person, which counted as a happy event. The date was then set for after the year, without any discussion with Shen Qingxuan. But the girl knew in her heart so her words and actions had some added shyness and reservation, which meant there was some more impropriety as well.

She pushed open the door. Inside the room, the air was serene, and in the ray of light, some dust floated. It was still, without the sound of people, there were only fragments that were ripped into snowflakes covering the floor, as if it was declaring that inside this room, there had once been a tempestuous ripple. Upon seeing the fragmented pages all over the floor, the servant girl’s heart skipped a beat. After all, Shen Qingxuan may be withdrawn, but he never showed his anger or joy. Something like ripping books would be even more out of the question, and had never happened before.

She gingerly stepped over the fragments towards the bedside. The bed curtains were down, the scene inside vague and not very distinct. One could faintly see that the shape on the bed had no abnormalities. The man on the bed breathed regularly, deep asleep. He was totally unaware of her arrival.

The serving girl steadied her mind, reached out her jade-like hands, and raised a corner of the bed curtain. She swept a look inside them out of the corner of her eye, and scarlet immediately surged onto her rosy, oval face like a delicate but dazzling peach blossom during the third month of the year.

That bed was a complete mess. Wrinkles spread out in all directions on the embroidered brocade quilt, marks which were quite obviously wrung up by hands. In the air within the bed curtains, there flowed a scent that was hard to express yet instinctively made one’s face red and heart pound. Even more, the light teal quilt cover had a white stain that was already dry. What happened here before was quite obvious.

The servant girl turned around, wanting to escape, yet she suddenly halted her feet, thinking about this bare and untamed mountain. Moreover, there was only Shen Qingxuan on the bed. How could something so debauched happen? Even if it was a secret affair, this villa did not have any serving girls with prettier appearances than her. After a moment's hesitation, she carefully uncovered the blankets on Shen Qingxuan to check.

Shen Qingxuan did not think that there would be someone who would run into this scene. However, he was careful by nature, and after finishing, he struggled to put on his clothes by himself before he laid back down. His energy was not sufficient and he rarely did this himself, so his clothes were disheveled, but still intact. The serving girl only thought that the young master’s inner robes were inappropriately messy, yet she did not discover any major flaws. Then, with a flushed face, she also pulled up the quilt a little bit around Shen Qingxuan’s legs and peaked out of the corner of her eye. She only saw that the clothing was all on before she immediately put it back down. She thought it was because Shen Qingxuan had become lonely during the night and it was a result of playing with himself. But at the bottom of it all, her heart still had some suspicions. After all, the marks on the bed could not be made easily by a paralytic like Shen Qingxuan.

She really had no way to guess, so she closed the door and withdrew.

Shen Qingxuan had no awareness of this. This was the first time in how many years that he had slept so deeply that he did not even feel someone nearing his bed. When he opened his eyes, it was already noon and he could only feel that his body was fatigued and sore. It was a weariness that he had not felt in a very long time. That was a weariness that only came after he went hunting in the wilderness for a whole day with his father when he was a child. It had already been many years since he had experienced this sluggishness in his body and he even felt two parts novelty, as if he had come alive again.

He lay for a moment before he raised his hand to ring the bell for the maidservant. He rested against the head of the bed, using the tea water to clean his eyes, and then dipped into some green salt to rinse his mouth with before he washed his face and ate something. He lay back down on the bed again and closed his eyes while he thoroughly combed through the previous events.

He thought that naughty snake was truly too naughty. He did not know if he was like that by nature or if he was only mischievous like that towards him. If it was his natural disposition then that was that, but if he was only mischievous toward him——Shen Qingxuan’s face flushed red, burrowing into the covers. He had not sent for someone to change the bedding from the previous night, so it was still covered in stains, as if the scent was still there, utterly tantalizing.

He worked himself into a frenzy until he remembered that pair of eyes he had last seen, as cold as an eternal iceberg, letting him simmer in anxiety while he stood lofty and motionless. Thus his mood became dejected and he lay down for a while longer, dazedly wanting to sleep again. May impetuousness be the only thing left in my dreams, and nothing else.

When he woke up again on the second day, he recovered most of his energy. He sat back on his wheelchair, bent over the table, reading and painting, his face a picture of calmness, not revealing a thing. The maidservant attentively waited upon him to the side, simply unable to find a trace of a clue.

She did not understand that the Shen family’s eldest son standing in front of her now was no longer the same master from before. Two consecutive days of his body feeling peculiar reminded him at every moment that there had once been a night of debauchery. So debauched it was like a pipe dream. In his dream, he was loose and without shame to the point that even Shen Qingxuan himself did not wish to remember.

However, after a night of restlessness, Shen Qingxuan’s mood clearly recovered. The anxiety and dejection from before disappeared altogether as if washed clean away by that night’s tide of passion like a furious storm. Of course, all his hopes and needs had once been satisfied to the greatest degree. Thus, there was nothing to weigh upon his heart, he could be free of any distracting thoughts again, and peacefully carry on with his mortal life.

When there was no one around him, Shen Qingxuan would also reflect on this earlier agitation and his current tranquility. He could not help but suspect, Could it be from being alone for too long, causing an imbalance of yin and yang that made me repressed to this point? How else could he explain why he received carnal satisfaction and that squirming wild beast in his heart went right back into hiding.

Shen Qingxuan was formally considering the matter of marriage.

There was not a man who enjoyed being pressed beneath another man. Shen Qingxuan knew that he was not born as a cut-sleeve. He thought about when he was a young boy and how he had even vaguely admired a distant elder paternal cousin. He did not remember her voice or appearance anymore, but he still remembered as a little six year old, when his papa had joked about setting up a childhood arranged marriage and his embarrassed yet eager feeling—an age of ignorance, young and tender, not knowing anything. Even if they were teased by the adults, it could not equal the immediate delight he felt when he saw her.

At that time, he thought a wife as beautiful as a flower, senior officialdom and nobility would be his life. No matter what happened, his feet would most definitely be on a correct and grand path.

But now the more he walked this path, the more strange it became. Shen Qingxuan could not help but scoff as he thought about how very odd it was. So he had dealings with a yaoguai, alright, and he even touched upon the delight of Longyang, moreover, it was extremely enjoyable.

He was truly happy. Although it was his first time, jarring and out of sorts, it could not compare against his willingness. Even seeing Yi Mo’s face could cause an unlimited happiness and joy.

But it was not like he was foolish, he could not even pretend to be dumb. He could see Yi Mo’s reluctance with just one look. He did not untie his belt. As soon as he sent him to his peak, he withdrew and left, his attitude high above and aloof. Rather than calling it love making, it was much closer to charity.

What’s more, one was human and one was yao, one had intentions and one had none. The distance between their worlds was large enough for him to willingly admit defeat. He was well aware that he did not have the power to bridge this immense chasm. There were some things that even yao were powerless to do, much less humans.

Ever since that night, it had been many days since Yi Mo visited again. Shen Qingxuan’s appearance contained a smile, looking with ease through the window at a bright and blooming thicket of flowers and plants in the courtyard while he counted the days in his heart. His birth date was nearly here, and he was about to leave the mountains within the next two days. Every year around this time he had to return to the manor to reunite with his family. Then he will simply return. In the days to come, he will marry a wife and have sons, be his Shen family Eldest Young Master, be a very ordinary, insignificant mortal. And not admire that snake yao he could only see, but never catch up to.

It was also odd that when he thought of this he did not really feel much sadness. There were only some feelings of loss, as if there was an empty place in his heart. Yet he was not sad and not happy, it was like he had resigned to his fate.

Five days later, Shen Qingxuan sat in the horse carriage while the servant boys followed behind, picking some wild foods. His personal maidservant accompanied him, sitting inside the carriage, and the carriage man drove the purplish red horse, shouting. The party of people mightily set off down the mountain. On the way, Shen Qingxuan lifted the door curtain and turned back to look. He only saw that mountain top that towered into the sky get further and further away, further and further away. At last, he only saw the verdant mountain peak, one half of it immersed in the heavens, one half was blocked by the nearby scenery. Shen Qingxuan looked for a very long time before he decisively and resolutely let go of the fabric curtain, sitting properly again, his body following the rolling of the wheels, lightly rocking. The depths of his eyes were as placid as water, still not wavering at all from beginning to end.

The Shen family residence had just been renovated last year. The curling eaves, new tiles, and eight zhang tall fire wall were still snow white, although a year had passed. There was not even enough time for the weeds to grow in between the walls, roof, mortar, tiles, and eaves. A picture of cleanliness and splendor. The horse carriage followed the road eastward along the firewall, and then advanced for a moment more before turning to the southern side door with a moon-shaped door arch. A newly painted pair of vermillion doors opened inwards. They were currently wide open, with two lines of neat and well-dressed servant boys and servant girl’s standing next to the doors. At the head, stood the old steward who had come to greet him dressed in a green shirt and robe.

The horse carriage stopped and the maidservant lifted the carriage curtain. Shen Qingxuan sat inside while he cracked a smile at the old steward. Then he extended his hand, resting it on the old man’s shoulder while also calling over two manservants to support him as he got out of the horse carriage and sat on the rattan sedan chair.

There was naturally someone to lead away the carriage horse to feed on fodder. Four servants carried the bamboo sedan with Shen Qingxuan on it, passing who knows how many courtyards, halls, verandas, and passages. They only lowered the bamboo sedan once they arrived at the courtyard entrance of the main hall, and switched to a wheelchair, which was pushed by another servant. The wood wheels rolled over the sleek and cleanly polished pebble-paved path and passed another two courtyards before they finally entered the main hall.

Master Shen as well as the madams and relatives were all waiting in the hall. Only when a corner of Shen Qingxuan’s crescent white robe peeked out from behind the trunk, did they put down their tea cups and go up to greet him.

Shen Qingxuan resided in the southern courtyard, and after eating dinner, he passed through the garden before reaching his little building. All the candles had already been lit inside the small, nan wood building and the interior furniture and decor had been completely changed, not dirtied by a speck of dust, twinkling with a clean shine. It was no longer the simple small room of the mountain villa. Instead, it was designed as a multilevel building, and even the bedroom had three doors. The innermost room was, of course, Shen Qingxuan’s, the middle room was where the personal maidservants slept, and the outermost room was for the nighttime maidservant when they needed to boil water to refill the tea.

Shen Qingxuan had become used to a simple lifestyle, and at first, returning home to over-elaborate etiquette was still a little hard to adjust to. He was annoyed internally, however, he did not express it externally. He called for someone to wait on him as he washed up as early as he could, and rested right after he finished.

He woke early the next morning and said his morning greetings to his father and mother. When Shen Qingxuan arrived at Mother Shen’s room, he stayed afterwards and discussed marriage matters with her.

Mother Shen knew early on that he had no desire to take a wife, so she had originally abandoned this idea, thinking that she would just find a maidservant for him and that would be it. Who knew that this time, Shen Qingxuan himself would mention it. In her happiness, she first went in front of the Buddha to burn three sticks of incense, and also kowtowed, saying “Buddha’s blessings” all the while. Then she summoned someone to call for Shen Qingxuan’s second mother, to discuss together the important matter of Shen Qingxuan’s marriage. Which family’s daughter was of a suitable age, which family’s daughter had a suitable temperament, and so on.

Shen Qingxuan only smiled and wrote on the paper, All these decisions are up to you, mother.

The pair of sisters discussed for a moment before Second Yiniang suddenly said, “Xuan’er, that maidservant in your room, have you thought about how you want to deal with her?”

Shen Qingxuan blanked then he immediately knew she was mentioning his own personal maidservant. After thinking for a brief moment, he agreed, writing,

That’s fine, too.

Three days later, the matter was finalized. The other party was the young lady of the Wang family in the same city. Her childhood nickname was called Hui Niang. She was just 16 years of age and their families were well-matched in social status.

The Wang family used to be a large and influential family, and although they were already in decline now, at the end of the day, a lean camel is larger than a horse. On top of that, the Wang family principles have always been proper. Young Lady Hui was also a respectable girl from a notable family and they had previously seen her appearance, although it was not one that could sink fish and fell geese, it was still gentle and amiable. Mother Shen then invited a matchmaker to act as an intermediate and immediately sent over betrothal gifts and money. The wedding day was set for next year after mid autumn. As for that maidservant, it would be better to marry her over and add her to the family sooner rather than later, after all, she had been by his side since childhood and long ago accompanied him by his pillow side. Just in case the young lady of the Wang family was someone who could not tolerate others, she could at least have some higher ground and not be bullied.

As for the day to take in the concubine, Mother Shen decided, “Since there will be the festivities of a birthdate, why not add to the happiness.”

The marriage date was then set for the day of Shen Qingxuan’s birth. Use a small sedan to carry that maidservant in through the side door and it would be counted as giving her a minor title.

These words were passed onto Shen Qingxuan, and he remained smiling, still replying with the same sentence, It is all up to mother to decide.

The matter of taking a wife and concubine was thus settled. From beginning to end, Shen Qingxuan did not at all let himself think about that elegant and unmatched person on the mountain again.

~~~~~

……don't look at me TAT, going to stop apologizing about lateness bc i don't want to associate more negative feelings with translation, but just know i feel sad and sorry when i miss deadlines……anyways, please enjoy this (rawdogged-unedited-by-another-pair-of-eyes) chapter. next chapter in three weeks on August 1 (fingers crossed) bc it's super long too………………………

#a snake encounter #Yu she #su hen #danmei #tl #eggytranslations

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black-paraphernalia · 3 years

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How This Little Girl Became The Richest Black Girl In America

Born as the daughter of freedmen in 1902, Sarah Rector rose from humble beginnings to reportedly become the wealthiest African American girl in the nation at the age of 11.

Rector and her family where African American members of the Muscogee Creek Nation who lived in a modest cabin in the predominantly African American town of Taft, Oklahoma, which, at the time, was considered Indian Territory. Following the Civil War, Rector’s parents, who were formerly enslaved by Creek Tribe members, were entitled to land allotments under the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887.

As a result, hundreds of African American children, or “Creek Freedmen minors,” were each granted 160 acres of land as Indian Territory integrated with Oklahoma Territory to form the State of Oklahoma in 1907. While lands granted to former slaves were usually rocky and infertile, Rector’s allotment from the Creek Indian Nation was located in the middle of the Glenn Pool oil field and was initially valued at $556.50.

Strapped for cash, Rector’s father leased his daughter’s parcel to a major oil company in February 1911 to help him pay the $30 annual property tax. Two years later, Rector’s fortune took a major turn when independent oil driller B.B. Jones produced a “gusher” on her land that brought in 2,500 barrels or 105,000 gallons per day. According to Tonya Bolden, author of Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest African American Girl in America (Harry N. Abrams; $21.95), Rector began earning more than $300 a day in 1913. That equates to $7,000 – $8,000 today. She even generated $11,567 in October 1913.

Rector’s notoriety ballooned just as quickly as her wealth. In September 1913, The Kansas City Star local newspaper published the headline, “Millions to a Negro Girl – Sarah Rector, 10-Year Old, Has Income of $300 A Day From Oil,” reports Face 2 Face Africa. By the time she turned 18, Rector was worth an estimated $1 million, or about $11 million today. She also owned stocks and bonds, a boarding house, a bakery and restaurant in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and 2,000 acres of land.

She eventually left Tuskegee with her family and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where she bought a grand home that still stands today. “There, the Rectors eventually moved into a home that was a far cry from that weather-whipped two-room cabin in which Sarah began life. This home-place was a stately stone house. It became known as the Rector Mansion,” Bolden told the New York Amsterdam News.

In 1922, she married Kenneth Campbell, the second African American to own an auto dealership. The couple had three sons and were recognized as local royalty, driving expensive cars and entertaining elites like Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie at their home. They divorced in 1930 and Rector remarried in 1934. Rector’s lost most of her wealth during the Great Depression. When she died at age 65 on July 22, 1967, she only had some working oil wells and real estate holdings.

Source: Zebnow.com This Article Originally Published at blackenterprise

Black Paraphernalia Disclaimer - images from Google images

In January 1914, the newspaper wrote, “Oil Made Pickaninny Rich – Oklahoma Girl With $15,000 A Month gets Many Proposals – Four White Men in Germany Want to Marry the Negro Child That They Might Share Her Fortune.” Meanwhile, the Savannah Tribune wrote, “Oil Well Produces Neat Income – Negro Girl’s $112,000 A Year”. Another newspaper dubbed her “the richest negro in the world.” Her fame became widespread and she received numerous requests for loans, money gifts, and four marriage proposals.

At the time, a law required Native Americans, African American adults, and children who were citizens of the Indian Territory with significant property and money were to be assigned “well-respected” white guardians. As a result, Rector’s guardianship switched from her parents to a white man named T.J. Porter. Concerned with her wellbeing and her white financial guardian, early NAACP leaders fought to protect her and her fortune. According to a report from

Rector and her siblings went to school in Taft, an all-African American town closer than Twine, they lived in a modern five-room cottage, and they owned an automobile. That same year, Rector enrolled in the Children’s House, a boarding school for teenagers at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

#black paraphernalia #black little rich girl #Sarah Rector #did you know

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lifeofresulullah · 3 years

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The Life of The Prophet Muhammad(pbuh): Before His Birth, His Birth and His Childhood

The Prophet is Taken to his Mother

The Sun of Happiness (Muhammad) was now four years old. He had become quite robust and had flourished considerably.

The peculiarities that were seen on him, particularly the slit on his chest, caused Hazrat Halima to think through and through and to worry deeply. In fact, she was now anxious because she was afraid that some ill fate would come upon to our Master (PBUH), who she loved as one of her own children.

This thought, anxiety, and fear forced Halima and her husband to make the following decision:

“We must return this child to his mother before anything happens”.

Halima was burning sizzlingly inside, but what could she do?

After all, The Radiant Child was given to her for temporary custody and she was not going to seize what had been entrusted to her.

The Sun of Happiness, who had emitted radiance in Sa’ds’ homeland for four years, was now being brought to Mecca by his foster mother so that he could emit light to the world with a completely different kind of majesty and magnificence.

Halima and her husband arrived in Mecca at night. At one point, our Beloved Master (PBUH) disappeared. Halima and her husband began to panic. They went to inform his grandfather, Abdulmuttalib.

The compassionate grandfather immediately became overwhelmed with concern as soon as he heard that his lovely grandson was missing. He rushed to look for him in sadness. However, our Master (PBUH) was nowhere to be seen. Abdulmuttalib was desperate. He opened his hands and begged, “My Lord, please return my Muhammad to me”.

In the meantime, two individuals were seen with a child alongside of them. They were Waraqa bin Nawfal, a friend of Waraqa, and our Holy Prophet (PBUH). Abdulmuttalib pressed his Sun of Happiness whom he had been yearning for against his chest, embraced him to his heart’s content, and then mounted him upon his neck. They went straight towards the Kaa’ba and circumambulated it together. Afterwards, he took our Beloved Holy Prophet (PBUH) to his mother.

At a later time, Abdulmuttalib had some animals sacrificed and threw a special banquet for the Meccans to celebrate the happy and blissful occasion of having been reunited with his grandson.

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) was now in his saintly mother’s warm lap, in between her compassionate arms, and in his happy and humble home.

His foster mother, Halima, left her Sun of Happiness in Mecca and returned to her homeland. However, neither she nor our Master (PBUH) forgot one another throughout their entire lives. He never lost deference and respect for the arms that embraced him for four years. Whenever he saw her, he would call her, “mother dearest”, would address her with respect and deference, and would always honor and be kind to her. He would consistently ask if she needed anything, and if he she did, he would rush to fulfill her needs.

A long period of time would pass and yet another drought and famine would beset Sa’ds’ homeland. Halima was unable to bare the dread of this famine and drought, so she went to Mecca hopes of seeing the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

When she saw the Master of the Universe (PBUH), she complained to him about the drought and famine in her homeland. Our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) pure hearted wife, Hazrat Khadija, who was wealthy as well as appreciative and benevolent, immediately gave Halima forty sheep and a camel to carry both her and her luggage.

Here is another example of fidelity and benefaction: Shayma was one of our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) foster siblings. He spent many sweet and lovely days with her in Sa’ds’ homeland.

Many years later during the Hunain War, Shayma was among the slaves taken captive from the Muslims’ side. When Shayma introduced herself, the Holy Prophet (PBUH) showed her the utmost of affection that a little sister could ever receive.

From time to time, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) would reminisce about the days from his childhood that he spent with his foster mother, Halima, to his companions (Sahaba) and would say:

“I am the most pure Arab among you, because I am a Qurayshi. At the same time, I was nourished near Bani Sa’d bin Bakr and that is why my dialect is the same as theirs”.

The Prophet is with his Mother

During the year 575 in the month Gregorian Calendar, our Venerable Master of the Universe (PBUH) was five years old when his wet nurse Halima returned him to his mother.

The pain of having been separated from her husband, Abdullah, who passed away during the first months of their marriage, sat in Halima’s heart like a punch having resulted from torture. Even if the degree of alleviation was small, her only son, Muhammad (PBUH), was her only consolation to this pain.

Hazrat Amina tried her best to hug her son with the utmost affection and compassion so that he would not feel the pain of being orphaned.

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) was the rose, light, blessing, peace, and happiness of his modest Meccan home. Even at a young age, he never refrained from helping his mother. In fact, his saintly mother was amazed by his diligence in cleanliness.

He was not only helpful and considerate towards his mother, but towards everyone he knew. He would take pleasure in helping his friends. For this reason, his friends loved and respected him, and would yearn to spend time with him.

Yes, God Almighty was raising the one whom He was going to appoint as His messenger and who would uphold the highest and holiest duties of Prophethood in the best way possible and was disciplining him in the most excellent manner.

The Visit to His Father’s Grave

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) was six years old when the desire to visit Medina had emerged within Hazrat Amina.

Her purpose was both to see the sons of Adiyy bin Najjar, who were her maternal uncles through Abdumuttalib’s mother, and to visit the grave of her fortunate husband who had been buried there.

Preparations were made with this intention in mind. When the day came, she set off from Medina with her only son and his nanny, Umm Ayman. Although Hazrat Amina’s world was supposed to be filled with cheer and joy, it was covered with grief, instead. She kept turning her head to look back at Mecca as if she was never going to return to the sacred city and the holy home where this Sun of Happiness was born.

They arrived in Medina after completing their tiresome journey that occurred during the hottest days of the season. They visited the home of Nabigha, who was the son of our Holy Prophet’s paternal uncle.

Hazrat Amina collapsed by her husband’s grave that was in the courtyard of this home in the midst of tears. Her teardrops abundantly watered the soil of Abdullah’s grave.

At the sight of this scene, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) felt the pain of orphanhood within his soul for the first time. He, too, sprinkled his holy tears upon his honorable father’s grave.

It was as if these tears were being presented to Hazrat Abdullah in place of a bouquet of roses.

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) Captured the Attention of Jewish Scholars

On one of the lovely days during his visit to Medina, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) was sitting in front of the door of the home that they were visiting with his nanny, Umm Ayman. Two Jews clothed in religious garments were passing by and immediately focused their attention on him. Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) went inside as if he were bothered by these stares.

The Jews did not walk on. Instead, they approached Umm Ayman and asked, “What is this child’s name?”

Umm Ayman did not know them; therefore, she considered the possibility that they might have malevolent intentions and so, she said, “Why do you ask?”

The men replied in an assurance and confidence giving evoking manner, “We asked because he looks like a child we know. Could you please tell us his name?”

Umm Ayman then answered “His name is Ahmad’.

The two looked and smiled at one another as if they had found what they were looking for. Then one of them pleaded, “Could you please call him here?”

Umm Ayman was hesitant once more. Why did they want to see and speak with him so badly? However, the man helped to remove her doubt with this answer:

“We do not think or want anything but goodness. We do not and will not harm anyone. We love him for the sake of Allah. Could you please call him here?”

Umm Ayman did not reject their plea. She went inside. A little while later, she came outside with our Holy Prophet (PBUH).

As soon as they saw him, the two Jews bowed all the way to the ground. Afterwards, they approached our Master (PBUH) in a manner that was mixed with both love and reverence. They eyed him from head to toe. Afterwards, they pulled up his clothing to see his back to look.

Excitement and astonishment were seen in their eyes. Umm Ayman heard one of them telling the other:

“This child is the Prophet of this community. He will migrate to this city. Many bloody wars, emigrations, and huge events are going to take place here”.

After uttering these words, both men walked away.

According to another narration, the Holy Prophet (PBUH) learned how to swim in a body of water called, “The Well of Bani Najjar” during this visit.

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corkcitylibraries · 3 years

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Frederick Douglass Series | Part 2

Frederick Douglass escaped slavery as a young adult in 1838 and became an influential leader in the struggle for abolition and women’s suffrage. His dedication to and passion for the protection of human rights brought about transformations in the US constitution.

This year marks the 175th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ visit to Ireland.

Douglass Week, which runs from 8-14 February 2021, coinciding with Frederick Douglass’ assumed birthday, commemorates this revolutionary man’s visit to Cork.

Cork City Libraries will publish a four-part series, during Douglass Week. This series will chronicle Frederick Douglass’ childhood, his experience as a slave and escape from slavery, his time in Ireland and, in particular, Cork, his two wives, his meeting with Daniel O’Connell and his achievements as an abolitionist, orator and suffragist.

Frederick Douglass in Ireland

by Mary Horgan

Frederick Douglass, 1845 – a whole-plate daguerreotype, which he had taken shortly before his visit to Ireland (from Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American)

In 1845, shortly after the publication of Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written By Himself, the American Anti-Slavery Society sent the 27-year-old, as a lecturing agent, on a very successful two-year tour of Great Britain and Ireland to forge stronger links with their anti-slavery movements and to attract new supporters to the abolition cause. Also, he was advised to leave America for his own safety. As Douglass was still considered a fugitive slave under the Constitution of the United States, he lived in the constant knowledge that he could be returned to bondage at any time. Anti-slavery societies in various parts of Great Britain and Ireland were working to enlighten the public mind on the subject of slavery as well as raising funds to aid fugitive slaves as they tried to make good their escape north on the Underground Railroad – a network of secret routes and safe houses - to free states and to Canada.

Soon after his arrival in Dublin on 31 August 1845, Douglass wrote to friends in America: “I am safe in old Ireland, in the beautiful city of Dublin.” He began his four-month visit to Ireland at the home of James Webb and his family, near Trinity College. James’ brother, the Quaker anti-slavery activist, Richard Davis Webb was a friend of American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and an important link between British, Irish and American anti-slavery activists. Webb was a founding member of the Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society in 1837 and had founded a printing company in Dublin, in 1828, publishing works from various philanthropic, social and political organisations. In late September 1845, Webb published the first Irish edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass with a print run of 2000, which would be sold at Douglass’ various speaking engagements throughout the country. It contained the following notice of recommendation for Douglass from the Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society.

A notice of recommendation for Douglass from the Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society, Richard D. Webb, Secretary (from Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself. Dublin: Webb and Chapman, 1845, Special Collections, UCC Library).

After a month in Dublin where he gave a number of lectures and met Daniel O’Connell, whom he greatly admired, Douglass travelled onto Wexford and Waterford before arriving in Cork. Though Cork’s 18th/early 19th century economy had benefited through trade links from the existence of slavery in the West Indies, Cork also had a committed Anti-Slavery Society (CASS). It was formed on 6 January 1826, by the Quaker, Joshua Beale, at the Assembly Rooms in George’s Street (now Oliver Plunkett Street). CASS was ecumenical in its membership; as well as Quakers and other protestant dissenters including Unitarian Presbyterians and Methodists, it also attracted members of the Established Church of Ireland as well as Roman Catholics. After the abolition of slavery in the West Indies in 1833, CASS turned its attention to working for the abolition of slavery in the American South. Its auxiliary branch, the Cork Ladies Anti-Slavery Society (CLASS) collected contributions for Bazaars organised by the American Anti-Slavery Society. The following is an appeal from Cork Ladies Anti-Slavery Society for contributions for the Twelfth Annual Bazaar in 1845.

Appeal from Cork Ladies Anti-Slavery Society

A visit by Douglass to Cork was organized by the Cork Anti-Slavery Society (CASS) and its auxiliary branch, the Cork Ladies Anti-Slavery Society (CLASS). On arrival in Cork on 10 October 1845, Douglass went to stay with Thomas and Ann Jennings and their eight children at 9 Brown Street, where he enjoyed the lively family atmosphere and stimulating discussions which helped to make his time in Cork such a personal highlight of his two year tour of Great Britain and Ireland. Thomas owned the Jennings Soda-Water Factory at 11/12 Brown Street. Brown Street is no longer in existence but at the time of Frederick’s visit, it ran through what is now the Paul Street Shopping Centre down towards the River Lee. One of the daughters of the family, 32-year-old Isabel, was Secretary of the Cork Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and her sisters Charlotte and Hannah also attended its weekly meetings. Isabel arranged Douglass’ speaking engagements, so she was soon able to report to Maria Weston Chapman of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that his lectures in Cork had been such a success that:

“There never was a person who made a greater sensation in Cork amongst all religious bodies . . . He feels like a friend whom we had long known, and I think before he goes we will quite understand one another”.

Her sister Jane was equally impressed writing to Mrs Chapman:

“We are a large family, my mother, three brothers and five sisters, generally considered not easily pleased – but Frederick won the affection of every one of us.”

(Letters from the Jennings family to Maria Weston Chapman held at Boston Public Library)

During Douglass’ time in Cork, nearly 250 copies of the Narrative of Frederick Douglass were sold in the city, which were on sale in bookshops such as Purcell & Co and Bradford & Co on Patrick Street. So successful was the first Irish edition that a second was published in early 1846. Douglass’ busy schedule in Cork involved at least thirteen lectures with people turning out in droves to hear him. In a series of lectures at the Wesleyan Chapel, the Court House, the Temperance Institute, Lloyd’s Hotel, the Imperial Hotel and the Independent Chapel, Douglass’ powerful oratorical skills drew a wide cross-section of Cork society. He spoke at temperance meetings as well as abolitionist meetings, where he would leave his audiences in no uncertainty about the evils of slavery. On Tuesday 14 October, he gave a breakfast speech at Lloyd’s Hotel, George’s Street, (now Casey’s, Oliver Plunkett Street) where he reminded his audience:

“You will remember that I was a slave . . . that I am still a slave according to the law of the State from which I ran, and according to the General Government of the States of North America”.

(from Cork Examiner, 15 October, 1845).

One of his Cork speeches was reprinted in an American abolitionist newspaper with the following warning:

“Southern slaveholders read the following proceeding, if you wish to know what are the feelings of the People of Ireland, in reference to your nefarious slave system.”

(from The Liberator newspaper).

During Douglass’ time in Cork, he became friendly with the then Mayor of Cork, 51-year-old Richard Dowden, a Unitarian, philanthropist and member of the Cork Anti-Slavery Society. Dowden later ran the Jennings Soda-Water Factory after the death of Thomas Jennings.

Richard Dowden, Mayor of Cork, 1845 (JCHAS, 1992)

Douglass attended the Unitarian Church, Princes Street with Richard Dowden. This church is listed as the oldest place of continuous worship in the city since it was opened in 1717. Dowden was closely associated with Father Theobald Mathew, often fundraising for the ’Apostle of Temperance’ and it was in this church that Father Mathew signed the Temperance Agreement in 1839. Fr Mathew attained national and international prominence for his temperance crusade of the 1830s and 1840s and Douglass was already a great admirer of Fr Mathew when he came to Ireland. Soon after his arrival in Cork, he attended a Temperance soirée with music, dancing and fireworks at the Cork Temperance Institute, Academy Street, to mark Fr Mathew’s fifty-fifth birthday.

Opening of the Cork Temperance Institute, London Illustrated News, 1845 www.corkpastandpresent.ie

Shortly after this, Fr Mathew invited him to breakfast at his home at 7 Cove Street, which Douglass described as being of “all of a very plain order . . . too plain, for so great a man”. Though Douglass had been teetotal for eight years, he was moved to renew his pledge to abstain from alcohol from Fr Mathew, writing:

“So entirely charmed by the goodness of this truly good man was I, that I besought him to administer the pledge to me . . . “

On 20 October, Douglass spoke at Cork Temperance Institute, on ‘Intemperance and Slavery’. Only a few years later, Douglass would be greatly disappointed in Fr Mathew. Though he was a supporter of the anti-slavery cause, Fr Mathew refused to attend anti-slavery rallies or to speak out against slavery when on tour of the United States in 1849. In Douglass’ newspaper, The North Star, he wrote: “We had fondly hoped, from an acquaintance with Fr Mathew . . . that he would not change his morality by changing his location . . . We are however grieved, humbled and mortified to know that HE too, has fallen”. Fr Mathew felt he had to prioritize his temperance crusade and that to condemn slave owners during his visit to the United States would lose his campaign much support.

Cork Examiner, 13 October 1845

This is an advertisement for a lecture titled, ‘I am Here to Spread Light on American Slavery’ at the Court House, Great George’s Street, (now Washington Street), on the following afternoon. The Cork Examiner, 15 October 1845, reported that “The Grand Jury Gallery was thronged with ladies, who seemed to take the liveliest interest in the proceedings” and went on to praise the two-hour lecture as being “one of the most eloquent and impressive discourses we ever heard”.

On Friday 17 October, Douglass delivered a two-hour lecture at the Wesleyan Chapel, St Patrick’s Street, titled ‘Slavery Corrupts American Society and Religion’ in which he was critical of different Protestant groups in America for their lack of support for the anti-slavery cause. In Ireland, he drew people from diverse backgrounds to hear him, cutting across social, religious and political divides. As well as those from the more affluent sections of Cork society, “the suffering poor”, as they were referred to by the Cork Examiner, also came in great numbers. Douglass was adept at being able to tailor his speeches to the different audiences. For instance, when speaking at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, he refrained from mentioning Daniel O’Connell at all, but at the Court House, where many in the audience were from the Roman Catholic working class, he extolled the man they called ‘The Liberator’, saying that they felt “more sympathy with the slave than did the other sects”.

(Cork Examiner, 15 October 1845).

Cork Constitution, 21 October 1845

Douglass’ final public appearance in Cork was at the Independent Chapel, George’s Street (now Oliver Plunkett Street) on 3 November 1845. This chapel which was built between 1826 and 1831, on the site of the old Assembly Rooms, was the chapel of the Congregationalists, who were also known as Independents because they believed in liberty of conscience and the independence of each congregation.

The remains of the Independent Chapel today behind Euro Giant , Oliver Plunkett St., www.corkpastandpresent.ie

A number of placards including one which read Céad Míle Fáilte decorated the room. Ralph Varian, the secretary of the Cork Anti-Slavery Society read an Address to Frederick Douglass:

“ . . . In the happy hours of social intercourse which we have enjoyed in your society, a further opportunity has been afforded us of becoming acquainted with the details of that abominable system of savage law, and degraded public sentiment by which three millions of human beings are held in bodily and menial bondage yoked to the oar of American Freedom. Never were we so impressed with the horrors of the system, as while listening to one, who was himself born subject to the lash and fetter . . . yet who is so gifted, as he to whom we dedicate this Address, with high [ ], intellectual, and spiritual power, together with so much refinement of mind and manners.

Allow us to say that in estimating the pleasures and advantages which your visit has conferred upon us – we value highly those derivable from your excellent Anti-Slavery work – the unpretending memoir of your escape from chattled bondage to the liberty and light of a moral and intellectual being. While perusing it, we have been charmed to the end by the power of simple truth, and warm and genuine feeling . . . “

Extract from an ‘Address to Frederick Douglass from the Anti-Slavery Society of Cork’

Cork Examiner, 7 November 1845

A verse, ‘Céad Míle Fáilte to the Stranger’ was composed for the occasion by local poet, Daniel Casey, and sung by those in attendance:

“Stranger from a distant nation

We welcome thee with acclamation

And, as a brother warmly greet thee –

Rejoiced in Erin’s Isle to meet thee

Then Cead Mille Failthe to the stranger,

Free from bondage, chains and danger.

Who could have heard thy hapless story,

Of tyrants – canting, base and gory;

Whose heart throbbed not with deep

pulsation

Oh! Why should different hue or feature

Prevent the sacred laws of Nature,

And every tie of feeling sever? –

The voice of Nature thunders ‘Never!’

Then borne o’er the Atlantic waters

The cry of Erin’s sons and daughters

For freedom shall henceforth be blended

Till Slavery’s hellish reign be ended.”

(by Daniel Casey)

In return, Douglass was moved to sing an old abolition song. In his reply to the Address, he thanked the Cork press for reporting his words, saying:

“I did not expect the high position that I enjoy during my stay in the City of Cork . . . I want the Americans to know that in the good city of Cork, I ridiculed their nation - I attempted to excite the utter contempt of the people here upon them”.

(Cork Examiner, 7 November 1845)

Mayor Richard Dowden gave Douglass a signet ring, on behalf of the city, to symbolize the relationship between Frederick and people of Cork. On the next leg of his Irish tour, Douglass sent a letter of heartfelt thanks to Dowden on 11 November 1845.

Letter from Frederick Douglass to Richard Dowden (part) (Courtesy of Cork City and County Archives)

The following is a transcription of part of the letter which is now held at Cork City and County Archives.

“I speak just what I feel – and what all who are acquainted with the facts will confess to be true, when I say that to yours and the deep interest which the Miss Jennings took in me and my mission, I am almost entirely indebted for the success which attended my humble efforts while in the good City of Cork. I shall ever remember my visit with pleasure, and never shall I think of Cork without remembering that yourself and the kind friends just named constituted the source from whence flowed much of the light, life and warmth of humanity which I found in that good City . . .

. . . I received the token of your esteem which you sent, I have it on the little finger of my right hand, I never wore one- or had the disposition to do so before, I shall wear this, and prize it as the representative of the holy feelings with which you espoused and advocated my humble cause”.

Douglass wrote of his time in Ireland as being transformative. As he was about to leave Ireland, he wrote from Belfast the following to William Lloyd Garrison:

“I have been here a little more than four months . . . I can truly say, I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone a transformation, I live a new life”.

(Letter of 1 January 1846, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass).

Douglass continued his anti-slavery lectures in England and Wales throughout the rest of 1846 and early 1847. On his return to the U.S in April 1847, he published newspapers and further autobiographies. He provided aid for fugitive slaves. During the Civil War, he campaigned for the rights of African Americans to enlist in the Union Army. He was consulted by President Lincoln and later presidents, from whom he received several political appointments. Throughout his life, Douglass was also a great supporter of equal rights for women.

In 1887, Douglass made a short return trip to Dublin to “once more look into the faces and hear the voices of the few remaining friends who gave me sympathy and support during my visit 41 years ago”. He visited the family of Richard Webb, the abolitionist and publisher, who had died in 1872.

Frederick Douglass in Killiney, Co. Dublin, 1887, when he visited the Webb family. (from Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American)

On return to Washington D.C., Douglass spoke in favour of Irish Home Rule.

Frederick Douglass died of a heart attack near Washington D.C. on 20 February 1895 after attending a meeting of the Women’s National Council.

Bibliography:

Douglass, F., Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, Webb & Chapman, Dublin, 1845. (Special Collections, UCC)

Douglass, F., Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, Norton & Co., New York, 1997.

Fenton, L., Frederick Douglass in Ireland: ‘The Black O’Connell’. Ulverscroft, Leicester, 2015.

Foner, P. ed), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglas, International Publishers, New York, 1987.

Kinealy, C., Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words, Vol. 1, Routledge, New York, 2018.

Stauffer, J., Trodd, Z., Bernier, C., Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American, Norton & Co., New York, 2018.

Ferreira, Patricia J., ‘Frederick Douglass in Ireland: The Dublin Edition of His “Narrative”’, New Hibernia Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring, 2001.

Harrison, Richard S., ‘The Cork Anti-Slavery Society, its Antecedents and Quaker Background 1755-1859’, JCHAS, 1992.

Jenkins, Lee, ‘Beyond the Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork’, The Irish Review, No. 24, Autumn, 1999.

Quinn, John F., “Safe in Old Ireland”: Frederick Douglass’s Tour, 1845-1846’, The Historian, Vol. 64, Spring/Summer, 2002.

Cork Constitution

Cork Examiner

The North Star

www.corkpastandpresent.ie

#corkcitylibraries #frederickdouglass

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raja-myna · 4 years

Text

yesterday is long since lost

FINALLY got this thing done!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25070434

Anakin – and he is Anakin, even if that name feels a little bit like putting on a shirt he had thought he had outgrown – knows that he’s messing up. When he first realized what had happened, that he really had come back, he had been grateful that his body had collapsed under the weight of his future memories, leaving his subconscious mind to slowly make the connections and let him wake up again. He had thought he was prepared for it, when he shook off the last of the sleepy haze. The phrase ‘rude awakening’ turned out to fit almost too well.

The two weeks that it had taken for his body and mind to acclimatize to each other proves itself to be so far from enough. He’s jittery, uncomfortable in his own body (and it’s his body again, more flesh than metal, inescapable marks of betrayal (but whose was it really? Not Obi-Wan’s, he knows now, and that thought cuts impossibly deeper than ever) erased) with its lack of aches and pains, and reflexes that no longer match flesh limbs.

Rex knows something is up, but military discipline keeps him from asking, at least for now. Ahsoka knows something’s up, but she’s still too relieved that he’s okay (and hah, if only she knew) to push.

He thanks the Force that Obi-Wan isn’t here, because even though they’d made some sort of peace at Anakin’s funeral pyre and after that, he doesn’t know how he would react to seeing his former Master with them both alive again. Obi-Wan also likely wouldn’t hesitate to call him out on his poodoo. Oh, he’d be diplomatic, and he likely wouldn’t push if Anakin reacted badly, but Anakin still isn’t sure he could take that.

When they had been dead there hadn’t been much to do but make peace. Now, alive and with the Clone Wars barely halfway through, Anakin is realizing that a lot of their peace had come from the fact that nothing they could have done would have affected anything in the end. That calm understanding that had come with being one with the Force is gone as well, and Anakin’s love for and rage at his old Master are dueling for prominence. His guilt wants to land on the side of his love, but his anger has always run hot. He fears seeing Obi-Wan, for he truly cannot tell whether he’ll be angry, snappish and rude, or if he’ll want to fall to his knees and cry.

There’s enough of Anakin wanting to cry as it is.

It had been hard, seeing Ahsoka, seeing Rex when he first woke up and truly getting hit with how he had failed them. But they had been the lucky ones, in that awful future. They had gotten away.

Seeing Coric in the medbay, seeing Kix… that had been worse. Kix had been gone before Anakin Fell and Order 66 was executed, they hadn’t even found a body. Coric had died two years later, two years of living not unlike a battle droid covered in flesh, with only the barest glimpses of the man he really was underneath the weight of orders and grief he wasn’t allowed to understand.

Grief that none of the clones were allowed to understand.

(Vader had seen Bly. He had seen Shocker. He had seen Cody.)

(He had seen all those who had eaten their blasters as the chips died, never actually intended to survive past usage – just like the clones themselves.)

Vader hadn’t cared, or at least tried to tell himself that he didn’t. Anakin does care. And Force, but it hurts.

The first day Anakin just avoids everyone, using Kix’s orders of rest as an excuse. Facing everyone is… something no amount of preparation could help him with, a punch to the gut and a knock to the head that leaves him reeling. The effort it takes to not simply flee for his quarters actually leaves him winded when he finally reaches the corridor, enters the room, closes the door behind himself and locks himself in.

There’s something wrong with him. Anakin is not reacting the way he should – the way he ought to, having seen so many ghosts in so short a time. His mind is a mess.

Meditation does not come easy.

He forces himself into it, in an attempt to reconcile the different parts of himself. He is Anakin, jedi general, student, teacher, husband, lover, twenty years old and so arrogant. He is Vader, sith apprentice, failure, world-weary, beaten down, a monster shackled to a madman… a father, in the end.

He is Ani, slave boy, who cares so much and loves so deeply but doesn’t know how to handle it, never learned how to grow it, only hoard.

(If you love something, let it go.)

(He let Luke go, in the end. Let his son choose his own path and…)

I am a jedi, like my father before me.

Sleep doesn’t come at all.

Vader has spent literal decades hating his past, weak self, disgusted with the man who couldn’t even save the single most important person left in his life, who had lost everyone else along the line. Past-(present-?)Anakin is horrified by what he became, by what his future self allowed himself to be twisted into. Ani doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand how it could have even happened.

It’s a good thing self-hatred is nothing new to him, he thinks, because that is the common point that finally allows him to reconcile the different facets of himself.

That’s kind of sad.

It’s also awfully appropriate, in a twisted sense.

The second day he tries to play at normalcy and heads to the bridge. Ahsoka tracks him down when he’s alone during a quiet moment and hugs him until he stops trying to make her let go. Her relief broadcasts in the Force and their bond alike. Anakin… lets himself hold her, and heal, just a bit. Then Kix finds them and sends him back to bed. It’s enough to make Ahsoka laugh and think everything’s back to normal. Anakin lets her believe it.

He heads back to his bunk, and since Kix is a suspicious one, wise to the ways of his jedi, Anakin has company the entire way.

“Forty-eight hours of rest,” says Kix dryly, “and a visit to medical. Neither of these has been completed, and you’re still obviously tired. Get some more sleep, sir, or I can’t clear you.”

“How about just the visit to medical?” Anakin tries to bargain.

“Sir, I know disasters tend to strike like clockwork around here, but please. Nothing will happen if you just get some more rest.”

And despite Kix all but punching fate in the face and yelling ‘come get me’, nothing does happen. Anakin meditates some more and actually manages to grab a nap as well.

When he wakes up it’s shipboard afternoon. He heads down to the hangar, and instead of attempting to work on the Twilight like he planned to, he finds himself drawn into a discussion with three of the troopers (Lyn died on Umbara, Bell was lost on Mandalore, while Flipper had marched on the temple and not died until after more than five years of atrocities in the name of the Empire).

He failed them. The thought hovers in his mind even as he gets more involved in the debate. He failed them like he failed all his men, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan. Like he failed his mother. Like he failed Padmé. Like he almost failed Luke, like he did fail him several times.

The storm of emotions is like a vibroblade to the gut and Anakin claws desperately at it, keeping it from showing either on his face or in the Force. He almost pulls away again, until Bell’s words cut through him like shards of glass.

“-but not this time!”

Bell punctuates his words by punching the air. They’re talking about marksmanship contests now, but Anakin cannot fully restrain how deeply it hits him. His expression must twitch, because Bell turns to him, eyes wide with feigned upset.

“You think I can’t, General?”

Flipper nudges him. “The General simply knows better than to put his credits up on the word of such an… unreliable source.” The grin is contagious, and Anakin finds himself smiling as well, grounding himself in their gentle teasing and free-flowing affection.

His failures feel further away and, desperate to keep that feeling, he does what he always did best – jump without looking. “Well, maybe I can help make it less unreliable.”

“Sir?”

Anakin’s mouth really ran away with him this time, but something tells him that this is good. A comfortable warmth that sits in his gut, the Force whispering in his ear, Bell’s disbelieving – but growing – excitement. “You’re off duty. I have some spare time. There are several training halls available.”

Not this time. He failed them all then, but not this time.

It is with a strange sort of budding contentment that he puts Bell and several other clones through their paces in a training hall. He’s doing something, changing something, and it’s such a tiny difference but it’s a difference. Anakin can’t do a lot from here, not yet, but this – being with the men, helping them – is something he can do.

For the first time since he woke up, Anakin feels like he’s doing something right.

Nearly an hour after they began, Anakin catches sight of Rex by the door. The expression on his face is one part amusement, one part ‘I know what you’re doing’ and about five parts exasperation. It’s familiar despite the years, comforting, and Anakin laughs before he can even register the urge to.

The next moment he freezes because – how long has it been? He catches himself almost immediately and excuses himself from the practice session. They can continue without him anyway.

By the door, Rex’s amusement sharpens into instant hyper-awareness. Anakin starts running through the excuses he’d hoped wouldn’t be necessary.

Rex’s care for his jedi is something Anakin has been in turns awed, perplexed and humbled by. Now, his worry is just as humbling, but it is also troublesome. In the end, Anakin finds himself released to medbay only because Rex too is still shaky after his coma. None of them are fully back to normal, so Anakin’s issues are easier to hide.

They won’t always be, but Anakin will get better at hiding, too.

He runs into Ahsoka again in the hallway and she immediately attaches herself to his side. The last time he had seen her in that other time flashes in his mind – tall, strong, grieving – and he rests his hand on her montrals, his tiny, beloved padawan who the galaxy has barely even started to break yet.

She’s here.

She is here and he hasn’t lost her, not to his own madness nor her iron-clad conviction that he’s gone forever.

The poisonous thinking that came with the Dark Side is still haunting him, and for a moment he wants to drag her even closer, make sure she could never leave – and then the thought leaves him sick, his hand drops down to squeeze her shoulder and then he lets go.

She follows him to the medbay, where Kix clears Anakin. The clone is clearly reluctant, going by the grumbling, but Anakin is free to return to duty. As such, he is free to check out exactly when it is he has returned to.

The answer… staggers him. It’s the early days of the war, that much had already been obvious in the many presences that had been long gone, but… so many of the bad things haven’t happened yet, so many things he can change, disasters he can undo, lives he can save –

Sidious.

And even though he knows he can’t just rush in, the scene plays out in Anakin’s mind. Since he’d learned about Luke, Vader had ever entertained the thought of killing his Master. And even before that, before Padmé and Obi-Wan and Mustafar, Sidious’ survival had never counted in Anakin’s plans. More than once he had tortured himself with what-ifs… and now he has the chance to make them come true.

Still, striding up to the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and attempting to cut him down, for all that it would be satisfying, would more likely end with Anakin fleeing from the Coruscant Security Forces with his task still not accomplished more than anything else.

It’s nothing but wishful thinking and Anakin waves it away.

A quick talk with Yularen confirms that they’re heading back to Coruscant. They’re still six days out, at current velocity, something Yularen relays with an apologetic look, since Anakin tends to be eager to get planetside. In this case though, it means there’s only six days to prepare for seeing the temple again, seeing Padmé, seeing – Force, seeing the younglings.

“Master?”

Ahsoka’s voice pulls him out of those dark musings.

“Yeah, Snips?” The nickname rolls off his tongue with reflexive ease, and it is not until it already lingers in the air that he realizes how much it grounds him.

“Is everything all right?”

He could lie. She would see through it, and either let it be or keep digging until she thought she had found out every little detail.

“No.” Ahsoka stops dead and he turns to look back at her, her big eyes even wider than usual at his uncharacteristic honesty concerning his own state. “But it’s getting better.” How can it not?

“…If you say so.”

“I do.”

“Good.”

The ringing silence that follows is belied by Ahsoka’s slow reach for him through their bond, and Anakin’s hesitant reach back, to meet her halfway. Ahsoka smiles at the contact and runs ahead. They’ve ended up by the mess hall and, though it’s still relatively early, there’s more than enough people moving around, grabbing an early meal.

“Glad to see you’re doing well, General!”

Anakin looks up to see Echo. The young ARC trooper has raised a hand to wave a greeting, precariously balancing his rations tray with only one hand. Smile tugging at his lips, Anakin raises his own hand in response. Another fate he would hopefully be able to change. Echo didn’t deserve what had happened to him.

Realization comes a second too late.

Echo slides down on the bench by Anakin and Ahsoka, and Fives sneaks up only half a step behind him. Ahsoka immediately vaults over the table and seats herself opposite Echo.

“Going to join us, General?” asks Fives. Anakin almost chokes. For an instant, Fives has all Anakin’s attention, but just as quick, Anakin turns away.

“Sorry.” he says choppily. “Sorry, I- I have something- I need to- I’m sorry. Later?”

He whirls around and practically flees the hall.

Fives. Oh, Force, Fives.

Anakin hears a hesitant “Is… something wrong?” from Echo, but escapes before he can hear Ahsoka’s response. Yes, something’s wrong. Something he’d managed to avoid thinking of entirely, but that he now can’t escape.

You died for the knowledge that might have saved everything and I didn’t believe you.

Fives had been – is – one of his men and that alone would be enough guilt to drown in but… that isn’t all.

Anakin firmly blocks the thoughts from his mind, refusing to wander down that old path of what-if. He had entertained enough of them, after Fives’… death. Even more after Echo had been found. So much more, in stolen moments with Padmé and occasionally Sabé or Rabé as well, staying up late nights with more alcohol than was probably advisable.

Force.

Three hallways down, Anakin finally stops, leans against the wall, and covers his face with his hands. He slowly sinks down, ending up sitting and pulling his knees close so he can hide in them instead of in his palms.

Smooth, Anakin. The internal reprimand takes on Obi-Wan’s voice, which is almost a step too far. Anakin’s eyes sting.

Eventually Anakin manages to gather himself enough that he can paste the mask back on. He can’t quite push the thoughts back into the box where he hadn’t even known that he’d stored them, however, and from that point on he can’t decide whether to run from Fives out of shame or never let him out of sight again. Over the coming days the result of the impulses leaves Anakin looking like a shy adolescent from a holo-drama, constantly keeping track of Fives, but ducking around corners, hiding behind bulkheads, and on one occasion, making a Force-assisted leap up a staircase (accidentally sparking a game of tag with Ahsoka, but he managed to make it look deliberate, so he counts it as a win) to avoid the clone.

Whatever explanation Ahsoka had given the two ARC troopers must have been unsatisfying however, because suddenly it seems like Fives is everywhere. Anakin tries to distract himself, mingling with the troops, burying himself in the Twilight, catching upon the present, but whenever he senses Fives just a little too close, he’s running again.

Anakin fears he will keep running for a long time.

#fanfiction #my writing #star wars #the clone wars #anakin skywalker #fives #ahsoka tano #rex #kix #bell #lyn #flipper #ani5 #anidala #several implied ships

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therebelwrites · 5 years

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Born as the daughter of freedmen in 1902, Sarah Rector rose from humble beginnings to reportedly become the wealthiest black girl in the nation at the age of 11.

Rector and her family where African American members of the Muscogee Creek Nation who lived in a modest cabin in the predominantly black town of Taft, Oklahoma, which, at the time, was considered Indian Territory. Following the Civil War, Rector’s parents, who were formerly enslaved by Creek Tribe members, were entitled to land allotments under the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887. As a result, hundreds of black children, or “Creek Freedmen minors,” were each granted 160 acres of land as Indian Territory integrated with Oklahoma Territory to form the State of Oklahoma in 1907.

While lands granted to former slaves were usually rocky and infertile, Rector’s allotment from the Creek Indian Nation was located in the middle of the Glenn Pool oil field and was initially valued at $556.50. Strapped for cash, Rector’s father leased his daughter’s parcel to a major oil company in February 1911 to help him pay the $30 annual property tax. Two years later, Rector’s fortune took a major turn when independent oil driller B.B. Jones produced a “gusher” on her land that brought in 2,500 barrels or 105,000 gallons per day. According to Tonya Bolden, author of Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America (Harry N. Abrams; $21.95), Rector began earning more than $300 a day in 1913. That equates to $7,000 – $8,000 today. She even generated $11,567 in October 1913.

“Oil Made Pickaninny Rich – Oklahoma Girl With $15,000 A Month gets Many Proposals – Four White Men in Germany Want to Marry the Negro Child That They Might Share Her Fortune.”

Meanwhile, the Savannah Tribune wrote, “Oil Well Produces Neat Income – Negro Girl’s $112,000 A Year”. Another newspaper dubbed her “the richest negro in the world.” Her fame became widespread and she received numerous requests for loans, money gifts, and four marriage proposals.

At the time, a law required Native Americans, black adults, and children who were citizens of Indian Territory with significant property and money were to be assigned “well-respected” white guardians. As a result, Rector’s guardianship switched from her parents to a white man named T.J. Porter. Concerned with her wellbeing and her white financial guardian, early NAACP leaders fought to protect her and her fortune. According to a report from BlackPast.org:

In 1914 The Chicago Defender published an article claiming that her estate was being mismanaged by grafters and her “ignorant” parents, and that she was uneducated, dressed in rags, and lived in an unsanitary shanty. National African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois became concerned about her welfare. None of the allegations were true. Rector and her siblings went to school in Taft, an all-black town closer than Twine, they lived in a modern five-room cottage, and they owned an automobile. That same year, Rector enrolled in the Children’s House, a boarding school for teenagers at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

By the time she turned 18, Rector was worth an estimated $1 million, or about $11 million today. She also owned stocks and bonds, a boarding house, a bakery and restaurant in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and 2,000 acres of land. She eventually left Tuskegee with her family and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where she bought a grand home that still stands today. “There, the Rectors eventually moved into a home that was a far cry from that weather-whipped two-room cabin in which Sarah began life. This home-place was a stately stone house. It became known as the Rector Mansion,” Bolden told the New York Amsterdam News.

Rector’s lost most of her wealth during The Great Depression. When she died at age 65 on July 22, 1967, she only had some working oil wells and real estate holdings.

#Sarah Rector #Dawes Act #Black history #Black wealth #White folks NEVER stopped stealing--NEVER #Black Girl Magic #U.S. history #white guardians

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sqewed0722 · 5 years

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In the 2011 Korean drama “Dong Yi”, the story was told of a simple slave girl named Choi Dong Yi with whom King Sukjong fell in love. She became his confidante and his friend and eventually became his most beloved consort. She bore him several children, and despite her humble origins, one of her sons became king. This son’s name was Prince Yeoning, Lee Geum, who eventually became King Yeongjo.

The new drama “Haechi” that’s currently airing on SBS chronicles Yeoning’s life before he became King Yeongjo. The story begins about a year before King Sukjong’s death, when Prince Yeoning is about twenty-five years old. With the impending death of the current monarch, political factions within the government are starting to align themselves behind their chosen candidates. Despite the fact that there is already a designated successor, Crown Prince Yi Yun, King Sukjong’s eldest son, the ministers and other high-ranking nobles are still pushing for their chosen candidates to become king. This is because Yi Yun has been proven to be sterile, which is a very big no-no when it comes to a future monarch, as one of his main duties is to provide continuity and stability in the kingdom by begetting an heir.

The nobles are choosing between Prince Yeon Ryeong, Lee Hwon, the King’s third son, and his cousin Prince Milpoong, Lee Tan. The Noron faction, currently the majority party, is planning to support Milpoong, despite rumors of his violent temper and apparent madness. On the other hand, the Sorons, the minority, are throwing their support behind Yeon Ryeong. Amidst all the power struggle, there is Prince Yeoning, Lee Geum, the second son, whom nobody considers as an option at all. That is, except for King Sukjong himself, who sees in his second son all the qualities that a wise and good king of Joseon should have. However, to his dismay, Yeoning himself doesn’t seem to realize this.

Despite being born a prodigy and the second prince, Yeoning is an outcast, both in the circles of royalty and nobility, and with the common folk. This is because Yeoning is considered a lowborn prince (an oxymoron, if one thinks about it) his mother having been an ordinary water maid in the palace who was made a royal consort because she had won King Sukjong’s heart. To the royals and the nobles, his blood is tainted, while to the common folk, he’s too high-ranking even though his mother was one of them. Yeoning is neither here nor there, and this feeling of not belonging anywhere leads him into a life of decadence and apathy.

However, when his father the King speaks to him one night and openly tells him that he is dying and he sees in Yeoning the qualities that would make him a great king, his attitude starts to change. And when Prince Yeon Ryeong, his half-brother whom he apparently cares for very much, is assasinated by Milpoong, and Sukjong dies shortly thereafter, Yeoning decides that he will now be part of the game for the throne. (Yes, it is a pun intended, because this is exactly what the story of “Haechi” is all about).

Yeoning decides that he will make his way to the top by fighting the injustice that he sees in Joseon society. Along the way, he encounters a group of ordinary people: Inspector Han Jeong-Suk of the Saheonbu (which is like the Office of the Inspector General), a morally upright man who inspires him into action, Inspector Han’s friend Park Mun Su, a nobleman (possibly not very high-ranking) who’s been trying for eleven years to pass the civil service exam to no avail, Mun Su’s friends Ah Bong and Jang Dal, Han’s subordinates in the Saheonbu, and Yeo Ji, a female inspector who’s an expert in languages and martial arts. He also meets Dal Moon, a mysterious man who’s an expert in martial arts and swordfighting and knows a lot of information about everything that goes on in the capital. Through them and with them, Yeoning discovers the reality of the lives of the people he will one day rule.

The ending of this story is already determined, since in history Yeoning became King Yeongjo and ruled Joseon for 52 years, the longest reigning monarch of the country. But what’s interesting about the drama is that it will show the road that Yeoning had to travel to get to the throne: all the odds he had to defy, the battles he had to fight and win, the heartbreaking losses he had to endure and the sacrifices he had to make.

Prince Yeoning is played by Jung Il Woo. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him in a drama, though he seems to be very well-known and his acting quite well-commended. He does turn in a very sincere and genuine performance as the underdog prince and future king. And he does have the look and gravitas for it. The other actors are not very familiar to me, although some of them I do recall having seen in other dramas. The only other actor that I know who’s also in the drama is Go Ara, who plays Yeo Ji. I’ve only ever seen her in “Hwarang” (and I didn’t really like how they developed her character in that one) but I like her in “Haechi”. Interestingly enough, Yeo Ji wins Yeoning’s heart in the drama. I’m not sure if Yeo Ji’s character is based on a real figure in Joseon history, though.

In any case, I’m going to sit back and look forward to this drama. I don’t really care that others don’t seem to appreciate it (ratings are not very high though not so low either). I just hope the story arcs are developed well and the characters continue to become interesting and three-dimensional.

#haechi #jung il woo #go ara #kwon yool #lee geum #kdrama

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230east · 5 years

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack feel to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners -- two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest -- a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground -- a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators -- a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good -- a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift -- all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each new stroke with impatience and -- he knew not why -- apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

Peyton Fahrquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in the aid of the South, no adventure to perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Fahrquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Fahrquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."

"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Fahrquhar asked.

"About thirty miles."

"Is there no force on this side of the creek?"

"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."

"Suppose a man -- a civilian and student of hanging -- should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Fahrquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"

The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tinder."

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III

As Peyton Fahrquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened -- ages later, it seemed to him -- by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness -- of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river! -- the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface -- knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort! -- what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf -- he saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat -- all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Fahrquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly -- with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquility in the men -- with what accurately measured interval fell those cruel words:

"Company! . . . Attention! . . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!"

Fahrquhar dived -- dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther downstream -- nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning:

"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"

An appalling splash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, DIMINUENDO, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken an hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me -- the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round -- spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color -- that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream -- the southern bank -- and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect his escape -- he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which -- once, twice, and again -- he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue -- he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene -- perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon -- then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Fahrquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

#ambrose bierce #us movie

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thehauntologicalsociety · 6 years

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce.

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as “support”, that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at “parade rest”, the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing”, then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by— it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each new stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands”, he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance”.

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

Peyton Farquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in the aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

“The Yanks are repairing the railroads”, said the man, “and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order”.

“How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?” Farquhar asked.

“About thirty miles”.

“Is there no force on this side of the creek?”

“Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge”.

“Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel,” said Farquhar, smiling, “what could he accomplish?”

The soldier reflected. “I was there a month ago,” he replied. “I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tinder”.

III

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness—of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. “To be hanged and drowned”, he thought, “that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair”.

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. “Put it back, put it back!” He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—he saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies’ wings, the strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquility in the men—with what accurately measured interval fell those cruel words:

“Company!… Attention!… Shoulder arms!… Ready!… Aim!… Fire!”

Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther downstream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning:

“The officer”, he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”

“They will not do that again”, he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun”.

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect his escape—he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!

#Ambrose Bierce #An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge #In the Midst of Life #1892 #A Dead Man's Dream #The San Francisco Examiner #Tales of Soldiers and Civilians #Civil War

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italianartsociety · 7 years

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By Jean Marie Carey

The Roman god Saturn's feast began being celebrated in Rome on 17 December 497 BCE. The seven-day celebration in December called the Saturnalia has come to be associated with any revel-based celebration marked by licentiousness and the temporarily allowed breaking of taboos.

Roman festivals (feriae) were both holy days and holidays. At public feasts the specified magistrates and priests performed religious rites in honor of the gods. These might include sacrifices, prayers, banquets, and games. Individual citizens were free to attend the rituals at temples, the processions through the streets, and the spectacles in the theater and the circus, and on occasion citizens may have been able to receive a part of the sacrificial meat, but they were under no obligation to participate in the public festivities.

The Romans spoke of three classifications of public feast days. Most common were fixed festivals (stativae), those celebrated on the same day each year — the Terminalia (for Terminus, god of boundaries) on 23 February, Liberalia (for Liber) on 17 March, Vinalia (festival of wine) on 23 April and 19 August, Fontinalia (in honor of Fons, deity of springs) on 13 October, and so forth. Those of greatest antiquity were marked in capital letters on the calendars set up in public places, but as a matter of practice each month on the nones (the fifth or seventh day, according to the month) a state priest called the rex sacrorum formally established by proclamation that month's sacral agenda. Such feasts usually occurred on odd-numbered days and had names ending in -ia in the neuter plural form.

The Romans saw the history of their city embedded in their festivals, even if a historical explanation does not always reflect actual origins. The habit of thought can be seen in the differing ancient interpretations of the Poplifugia (flight of the people) on 5 July — supposedly recalling either the frightful popular reaction to Romulus’ mysterious apotheosis or the citizens’ attempt to escape centuries later when neighboring Latins threatened Rome after the disastrous defeat by the Gauls. The priestly brotherhood called Luperci who celebrated the Lupercalia was traced back to young Romulus and Remus. The Regifugium (flight of the king) on 24 February was taken to memorialize the expulsion of King Tarquin the Proud (Tarquinus Superbus) and the consequent inauguration of the Roman Republic.

Saturnalia was one of the most popular Roman festivals, initially taking place only on 17 December but then extending for seven days in the late Republic, trimmed to five or three under the Empire. Here coincide the annual worship of an ancient deity and the general merrymaking found in many cultures at the time of the winter solstice — compare the similar celebratory confluence at the same time of year in Christmas. Public events consisted of sacrifice to Saturn at his temple in the Forum and a senatorial banquet. Throughout the city people exchanged gifts and exuberantly reveled in a carnivalesque manner that pointedly inverted societal norms—public gambling was allowed, masters waited upon their slaves at meals, parties continued day and night. The spirit of release thus merrily expressed among the population found its counterpart in the rituals at the divinity's national shrine: the woolen bonds normally wrapped around the feet of Saturn's cult statue were removed during the Saturnalia.

Reference: David Leeming. "Saturnalia." In The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press, 2005. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195156690.001.0001/acref-9780195156690-e-1398.

Scene VII from the Frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, First Century. Women flogged each other during the Dionysiac festival, and at the Roman Lupercalia women were lashed by the celebrants so as to expel from them the demon of sterility.

Statue of a Woman Dressed for Saturnalia, c. 50. The woman wears a thin elegant dress, thong sandals, and a crown of Dionysiac ivy leaves. The birds and basket of fruit she carries are festival offerings. Her garment has slipped off her shoulder, a detail often seen in representations of old women that hints at the liberation of the elderly from the restrictions imposed on women of childbearing years. The figure seems to have been deliberately damaged, probably in the late antiquity, when such a pagan image would have provoked hostility. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nr. 09.39.

Cybele, with mural crown on head, c. 200 BCE, Sardinia. Cybele is a goddess of fertility, but also cures (and sends) disease, gives oracles, and, as her mural crown indicates, protects the Anatolians in war. Cybele is also mistress of wild nature, symbolized by her attendant lions. Ecstatic states inducing prophetic rapture and insensibility to pain were characteristic of her worship. When Cybele became associated with the Roman Ceres, the excesses of her festival worship were removed. Considering that worship of Cybele in Anatolia went back to the earliest times, this was an outstanding example of Roman ability to absorb and reshape other religions. By 204 BCE Cybele was installed in Rome in a temple on the Palatine. For the remainder of the Republican Period save for the public games, the Megalesia and processions, she was limited to her temple and served only by priests. Romans were not to join the priesthood. Finally under Claudius (50-54) the cult was accepted, and Romans flocked to join. Photo: The Archive for Research on Archetypal Symbolism, Nr. 23378.

Attributed to Titian and his apprentices. Allegory of Prudence, c. 1565. The human heads represent Prudence, in the terms of scholastic moral theology, composed of three faculties - Memoria, Intelligencia and Praevidentia - with the respective functions of conserving the past, knowing the present and foreseeing the future, presented in opposition to the Saturnalian statue of Serapis. The National Gallery, London, Nr. 5Gb.080.

Head of the Diadoumenos, c. 150, Roman copy of an original attributed to Polykleitos. The original statue commemorated an athlete's victory in the games, expressed by tying a ribbon (diadem) around his head. The calm introspection of the victor at the otherwise decadent festival games implies his humble though self-confident awareness of the divine. Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Nr. 1991.003.

Further Reading: J. Rasmus Brandt and Jon W. Iddeng. Greek and Roman Festivals Content, Meaning, and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Michael Lipka. Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach. Boston: BRILL, 2009.

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lifeofresulullah · 4 years

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The Life of The Prophet Muhammad: Before His Birth, His Birth and His Childhood

The Prophet is Taken to his Mother

The Sun of Happiness (Muhammad) was now four years old. He had become quite robust and had flourished considerably.

This thought, anxiety, and fear forced Halima and her husband to make the following decision:

“We must return this child to his mother before anything happens”.

Halima was burning sizzlingly inside, but what could she do?

After all, The Radiant Child was given to her for temporary custody and she was not going to seize what had been entrusted to her.

Halima and her husband arrived in Mecca at night. At one point, our Beloved Master (PBUH) disappeared. Halima and her husband began to panic. They went to inform his grandfather, Abdulmuttalib.

In the meantime, two individuals were seen with a child alongside them. They were Waraqa bin Nawfal, a friend of Waraqa, and our Holy Prophet (PBUH). Abdulmuttalib pressed his Sun of Happiness whom he had been yearning for against his chest, embraced him to his heart’s content, and then mounted him upon his neck. They went straight towards the Kaa’ba and circumambulated it together. Afterward, he took our Beloved Holy Prophet (PBUH) to his mother.

At a later time, Abdulmuttalib had some animals sacrificed and threw a special banquet for the Meccans to celebrate the happy and blissful occasion of having been reunited with his grandson.

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) was now in his saintly mother’s warm lap, in between her compassionate arms, and in his happy and humble home.

A long period of time would pass and yet another drought and famine would beset Sa’ds’ homeland. Halima was unable to bear the dread of this famine and drought, so she went to Mecca hopes of seeing the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

When she saw the Master of the Universe (PBUH), she complained to him about the drought and famine in her homeland. Our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) pure-hearted wife, Hazrat Khadija, who was wealthy as well as appreciative and benevolent, immediately gave Halima forty sheep and a camel to carry both her and her luggage.

Here is another example of fidelity and benefaction: Shayma was one of our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) foster siblings. He spent many sweet and lovely days with her in Sa’ds’ homeland.

From time to time, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) would reminisce about the days from his childhood that he spent with his foster mother, Halima, to his companions (Sahaba) and would say:

“I am the purest Arab among you because I am a Qurayshi. At the same time, I was nourished near Bani Sa’d bin Bakr and that is why my dialect is the same as theirs”.