#Biddy Martin

[saintbleeding]

yo not to be sincere but would like to say that involvement in tma fandom has been responsible for my active excitement every time i notice more grey hair on my head (i have a LOT but also it’s not just Oh Blorbo Canonically Has This Trait but it’s so. Casually present in so much art) and my acceptance of the fact that i can be the gender i am without Needing to adhere to any specific public-facing visual markers. that is very cool and im grateful

[lilacstro]

pac : what you need to know about this separation/no-contact

ok this was the second most chosen topic. here we go, sincerely hoping it resonates and brings some light. you can use this reading for anyone, just remove the romantic messages if any, though I have tried keeping it as clean as possible.

let me know if it resonated :) leave feedbacks/suggestions <33

decks used: biddy tarot, inquire within oracle, cupid says oracle

pile 1 pile 2 pile 3

support me on ko-fi :)

Pile 1

Ok as soon as i started shuffling your pile, my sister started singing "fated trouble" by enhyphen. The first thing I would like to say is, it seems this relationship majorly ended because of internal chaos more than anything else. A stagnant situation. Someone being hung up on something. Cancer, or number 8 might be significant for someone. With 8, I am also willing to say Leo. There is so much fast and constant fear pile 1. So much of it. Were you guys very excited and hopeful about the future? Maybe you thought of getting married, and loving each other forever. I can say even if it was for a brief while, your love was reciprocated. One of the things I am being called to say is, there is a chance this connection matures into something you want, or you will find someone like that. Either ways, its time to give this a stop, I am getting clear messages about this. Let it go, and move forward. I am wondering if some of you feel alone or could be your person feels alone, but I am guessing its you. I feel that someone had to make a decision, a hard one to stay together. Someone needed to take a leap and they did not. There is a lot of inner conflict. Someone might have been in the victim mentality. This person, or you, may receive a lot of messages in your dream. Some of you may even receive flashbacks/dreams about all the good times you have spent together. I see both of you miss/missed each other while in this separation. An advice for you would be, to listen to your intuition. To yourself. I feel you have somehow caged yourself. Remove the blindfolds, its time to move forward and ahead. If you are overwhelmed with your emotions, know that its okay to feel what you are feeling pile 1. Giving me vibes of the one that got away.

If you resonated with anything I said, one of the reasons you might not want to go back, is that, you arent a hard choice to make. If this was not a life ending situation, someone being wishy washy about you is not what you deserve, You dont need to know how it WAS, you need to see, how it IS. Its surprising because tho I only see things being caught up here, and no forms of deceit, I am still being told now is not the time, now is the time to let go. And if your love is reciprocated, it will get the happy ending it deserves and I can promise that. Your situation wont end up with both of you having love but parting ways. IF your love is reciprocated pile 1, it will come back. But let it go for now. Let this rest. The lyrics from shy martin's songs are coming up:

"Do you remember how tangled we got in our feelings? Caught up on the small things And I know I thought that pain's part of love But I think I broke you, though I didn't mean to

But are you happy looking back at us When you met me? Would you go back and tell yourself to leave it Knowing what we know? Or are you happy that we happened in our 20s? So you know what you want isn't with me Would you go back and tell yourself to leave it Knowing how it goes? Or are you happy that we happened? Ah" Infact this song could describe your situation. I am listing it here, you might wanna hear it.

One advice I am strongly getting for you, is to go near water, if you can go to lakes, swimming pools, ponds and dip your feet in water, swim if you can and release energy. If you dont have access to watery places, stand in shower and do some standing meditation there. Water your plants. Collect seashells on oceans if possible.

I am promise you, you will be fine. Its time to start fresh and clear pile 1. I promise you it gets better. You will be fine, you will thrive. Dont make a mental prison, dont reflect about this over and over and think about what-ifs. Get up pile 1, i know you love them, but love yourself more. You need to move forward, its just one life, And if this person is supposed to be in it, they will be back. Your life is yours, they are just a part of it.

Advice:

Its ok to feel feelings Listen quietly yes, you can I have support Release.

Pile 2

Dissatisfaction. This is what that comes to my mind. Unlike the previous pile, this is ummm, weird. Lets get into this, One of the things I am getting is, you might be dealing with someone older. Money seems involved too. Did you take a break with this person? and come back? or something like that? Despite of whatever it is, this person seems immature, while you are much emotionally mature. Did you lose some money with this person? Its also giving me that their family had some issues with you, one of them possibly could be financial status. Since this is a general reading, multiple things come up, and i like listing all of them, since I dont know who this is for.

It could very much be that things changed overnight with this person, and what seemed a stable ground suddenly shook and went down all together. It gives me this vibe, that this person wanted to chose. They were not satisfied with what they had. I even feel you are dissatisfied with the overall outcome of this situation. I see someone walking away, most likely in disdain and despair. Strange how i am getting a song in my head for each pile until now, I am getting the lyrics from the song "are you bored yet?" by clario "Will you tell the truth so I don't have to lie?"

this song might make sense to you, so I am listing it here

I was refraining from saying this but, gives me lowkey playboy vibes. Someone who just wants fun. Take it if it resonates. I am also getting its very much possible one of you was moving away, probably even overseas that could have caused some problems. Random but, did this person like being praised? seems so. This person seems so nonchalant and casual to me? Listen Pile 2, if you resonate with this so far, I am getting that this person will get their karma and they would see that the grass isn't greener on the other side, and then actually come back sooner or later. Giving me the lyrics "I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expires, and you'd be standing in my front porch light, I know you'd come back to me"

Cardigan by Taylor Swift might resonate. I swear this person could have tried to deceive you with sweet words in the past or will do that in the future. I cannot tell you what to do with this pile 2, you can chose, but I would suggest you refrain from entertaining this person.

As of the advice, I am getting going out into the nature, and connecting with your inner child. Did you like catching butterflies when you were young pile2? what i mean to say is, tap in with your inner child, make them happy and do things you love. Start enjoying small little things around you. Maybe do gardening, plant a little seed or maybe buy one small plant for your room. Water it daily and love and care for it like you would for yourself. Connect yourself to earth, maybe sit on the ground and meditate, hug trees, and walk barefoot on grass. Feel it under your feet. Go on cycling, laugh a lot. All is good. Although I usually say, that you will transform and change, I feel called to say, you are already beautiful and the lessons you learnt here dont seem to change much, you already are, everything pile 2. If this situation made you doubt your worth or compare yourself to others, just dont. You are wonderful and deserve the best love.

Advice: Look into the nature for healing You already, are Celebrate little things Plant a seed and wait Have curiosity, maybe start learning something new/always wanted to Be patient, love always wins :)

Pile 3

Ok, so I feel this person could be very confused pile 3, could be in the past a lot. It could be that you have experienced multiple cycles with this person. A woman was coming through, maybe the person you are asking about is a woman, or maybe some woman was involved. I am also getting you could have had multiple fresh starts with this person, You could have met them in school, colleges, or through your mother. Number 4 might be significant to someone. I am also feeling some of you made this decision to walk away gracefully, probably on advice of your closed loved ones. summer feels important.

This seems to have been built on a shaky foundation pile 3. I keep on accidentally typing pile 2, you may wanna check pile 2 out. Anyways, was this person someone who you knew from a while? maybe childhood? I feel there has been arguments with this person, This person could have ran away as well, and how it happens everytime smh, they think about this a lot and just think, hmmm what should i do now? what should I do next. They could very well be stalking your social media if you have one. Looking at old pics or wanting to see you somehow. It CLEARLY appears to me, this person was very questionable, you dont seem the first priority to them. They were/are obsessed with something, either past or money. Could even be they were hiding something from you. This person looks lonely in some ways, maybe they lost you over this obsession for something else. And whats worse is, they still seem to be thinking, to be able to make a choice, so much immature energy pile 3. This person seems so much in their head over what they even want. So much thinking, you are an easy choice pile 3, you dont deserve this much contemplation just to be chosen and loved. They want to bring "justice" and the right solution to the situation. I wonder how long this will take since this person is definitely in their feels, and looking over the past and what went down.

They seem to just, sit and think endlessly and proceed to do nothing. My advice, just don't wait for someone like this. I am getting this feeling this person has confused themselves about you to a point where it seems like false love. It seems some weird guilt tripped thing rather than wanting to make things right out of genuine love. Regardless, this person is very restless and doesn't seem to have any satisfaction with what they have.

My advice for you, is to get out of your head about this situation. Also, if you saw this person as a competition, don't. If you see/ hear them doing well, dont trust everything you hear. Infact, if you hear anything about this person that should not concern you anymore, dont pay attention. Move at your pace, people who start running wayy before the marathon, exhaust themselves midway. I have learnt and seen this in my life. What i mean is, be at your own pace and you will win pile 3. If you have lost faith, so be it, but emerge out of this situation. I understand you could have connected to this person, but dont take this seriously anymore. Get out of your own way pile 3. I am also getting a message of creating to-do lists for your day. Consider praying or writing in your journal if you wish to manifest something. You dont deserve deceit pile 3.

Advice: Its not a competition Emerge, dont lose faith Dont take it all too seriously Get out of your own way Ask and ye shall receive dont trust everything you hear

[poemaseletras]

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[campgender]

from “The Suit Suits Whom? Lesbian Gender, Female Masculinity, and Women-in-Suits” by Lori Rifkin

published in Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go (2002)

The extension of female masculinity to non-lesbian women who may not identify closely with the specific historical discrimination and oppression of lesbians seems to risk making “butchness” less powerful and subversive—less valid as an identity. Thus, the “mainstreaming” of butch is feared as a mechanism that will dilute and trivialize butch identity: “Butch women on the covers of popular magazines are thus absorbed into the general culture to be cast aside as yesterday’s icon, or ‘mainstreamed’—stripped of sexuality and meaning, as if we were adherents to a quirky style, no more than a fashion statement” (Burana et al. 1994, 10). In contrast, securing female masculinity within lesbianism is thought to protect its disruptive and empowering potential: “Female masculinity within queer discourse allows for the disruption of even flows between gender and anatomy, sexuality and identity, sexual practice and performativity” (Halberstam 1998b, 139). Although these observations explain the reluctance of most queer theorists to admit non-lesbian women into the ranks of female masculinity, they do not justify a continued exclusion, especially one at least partially based in a lesbian fundamentalism seeking to designate who is “really” masculine, hence “really” lesbian.

In this regard, the restriction of butch and female masculinity to lesbians occludes a process that maintains the subjugation of feminine to masculine and preserves heteronormative connections between gender and sex. Butch-as-lesbian-gender does this first through its repeated conceptualization within the butch-femme partnership. Butch and femme are jointly referenced in lesbian gender and theoretical considerations of it. Sue-Ellen Case (1993), for example, suggests that “butch and femme as a dynamic duo, offer precisely the strong subject position” required for actualizing female subjectivity (295, emphasis added). As Biddy Martin (1994) persuasively argues, this practice of considering butch and femme as butch-femme erroneously reduces the femme’s transgressiveness to dependency on the butch because butchness is often presented as “lend[ing] visibility to the femme.” Halberstam points out that theorizing butch subjectivity within butch-femme as positive or transgressive does not, in theory, render femme subjectivity passive or conservative (1998b, 59). But in practice—in the context of theory that limits butch to lesbians—theorizing butch as powerful because of the butch’s visible transgressions implicitly depreciates the femme’s subversiveness. The result of theorizing lesbian gender in this dependent dyad—the butch-in-a-suit making the femme-in-a-dress visible as subversive—is that femme agency is often left out of theorizing about lesbian and feminist subjectivity.

From a feminist standpoint striving to conceptualize independent female agency, positing butch and femme as interdependent lesbian genders seems undesirable; if it is to imply agency, an individual’s subjectivity should not rely upon her sexual partner. Furthermore, the coupling of butch-femme as subject makes it appear as though gender is the only force at work in the relation of desire between two women in a butch-femme context. Yet, “Butch, like any other gender identity, also relies heavily upon racial and class constructions [and these] may intervene in the primacy of the butch-femme dyad” (Halberstam 1998a, 60). Although these shortcomings of butch-femme as a coupled position may seem reminiscent of the 1970s-80s lesbian-feminist critiques of butch-femme as undesirable, I want to distinguish my critique of butch-femme from the lesbian-feminist rejection of it. I am not arguing against the existence of butch-femme nor against butch and femme identities […]

[p5x-theories]

Since Claude Duval was name dropped during a test, was there any other figures named (besides the current story thieves) that could suggestion an potential Persona for future story members?

Sort of yes and no?

Claude Duval is the only one I've seen who's 1) an actual thief/criminal character and 2) seemed almost non sequitur to bring up after the question (as if the devs just wanted to make sure to name-drop him at some point, and squeezed it in somewhere).

The other person that kind of comes to mind, though, is Biddy Early, who is the actual subject of one of the school questions. While not a criminal, she was kind of a rebel in the sense that the church didn't like her medicine and cures very much, but the common people supported her. The actual question related to her points out that she was accused of witchcraft, but she was released for lack of evidence, as the people accusing her backed out. She doesn't feel as suspicious (to me) for a future possible Persona as Claude Duval, but she feels within the realm of reason. She'd probably be for Polter, if anyone.

Guessing Personas based on school questions isn't really an exact science, though, haha. They've also brought up Confucius, Martin Luther King Jr. + his wife, and Marie Curie, as some other examples off the top of my head, so I'm mostly singling out Claude Duval because he felt the most suspicious, and Biddy Early is, I suppose, the second most suspicious?

[kwebtv]

Great Expectations - The Disney Channel - July 9 - 11, 1989

Drama (3 Episodes) (6 Episodes in the UK)

Running Time: 120 minutes (60 minutes in UK)

Stars:

Anthony Hopkins as Magwitch

Jean Simmons as Miss Havisham

John Rhys-Davies as Joe Gargery

Ray McAnally as Mr Jaggers

Anthony Calf as Pip

Kim Thomson as Estella

Adam Blackwood as Herbert

Martin Harvey as Young Pip

Susan Franklyn as Biddy

Rosemary McHale as Mrs Gargery

Niven Boyd as Orlick

Sean Arnold as Compeyson

Frank Middlemass as Uncle Pumplechook

John Quentin as Mr Wopsle

Preston Lockwood as Mr Hubble

Eve Pearce as Mrs Hubble

Simon Warwick as Startop

[woman-loving]

In our discussions of queer theory and politics, questions of loyalty, especially to the family, are bound to be fraught. Betrayal and unavailability operate as positive resistances to subjection in the form of obedience. How then do we think about what binds and enables social relations and responsibilities to others, other than kinship in the strictest sense? And can we fold betrayal and resistance back into the desires and needs that give "family" its power, without merely saying yes to our subjection? These kinds of questions have been posed and answered in a variety of ways, nowhere as urgently as in the writing and thinking about AIDS. Why must our social and psychic deaths be required to keep them alive, to the point where the literal deaths of homosexuals can be conceived in pockets of this culture as that which keeps "family values" alive?

“Femininity Played Straight: The Significance of Being Lesbian,” Biddy Martin, 1996.

[rayfolarin]

“Do you see my pain?

Do I seem like prey?

Empathy be the reason you're still standing

We are not the same

I've lived more lives than you, I have less pride than you

I'm extraterrestrial, I was created different

I've been here many times before and I've never been defeated, and still

I will never be defeated”

[sharpened--edges]

Biddy Martin and Chandra Mohanty have made keen observations about Minnie Bruce Pratt’s critical construction of home that also apply to [Toni Morrison’s] Beloved and Paradise: ‘The tension between the desire for home, for synchrony, for sameness, and the realization of the repressions and violence that make home, harmony, sameness imaginable, and that enforce it, is made clear in the movement of the narrative by very effective reversals which do not erase the positive desire for unity, for Oneness, but destabilize and undercut it’. This domesticated violence is the type of brutality that Morrison spoke about in an interview with Claudia Tate: ‘There’s a special kind of domestic perception that has its own violence in writings by black women—not bloody violence, but violence nonetheless’. This is a violence infused in everyday life; this is the violence of conventional, oppositional constructions of home.

Kristin J. Jacobson, Neodomestic American Fiction (Ohio State University Press, 2010), pp. 79–80.

[smallhorizons]

for the WIP game, I'm curious about "the tenderness of spring" and "iddy biddy tiddie commiddee" if you're willing to talk about them!

Thanks for sending me WIPs!!

So, I am an idiot, and forgot that the tenderness of spring and iddy biddy tiddie commiddee are actually the same fic, lol, it's just that the tenderness of spring was the name of the doc for the second draft. In any case, the gist of it is simple: Post-canon, Somewhere Else, nonbinary trans fem Jon has started HRT and is anxiously waiting for their breasts to start growing.

The fic is really just a celebration of gender and transition, and all the complicated feelings that transitioning can bring about. Also: He/She/They Jon, my beloved.

Here's an excerpt:

Jon turns to their left, then to their right. Turns back to face her reflection directly, narrows his eyes. Bounces, just a little, on the tips of her toes, ignoring the heat prickling in their cheeks. Says, Hmmm, skeptical, but wondering. Bounces again. Maybe . . . ?

She turns back to her left. Looks over his shoulder and slowly rotates their torso, following the line of his chest in the mirror. Is that a faint swelling, there where before he has always been sharp and nearly concave? She rises up onto her heels, bounces. Hesitates a moment before reaching up and cupping his--his pec, with one hand, trying to imagine--is there perhaps a weight there that hasn’t been before? A curve rising to meet his palm? She pushes her palm up, a little higher, cupping the line of their chest, trying to decide if the artificial swell is larger than it was yesterday, or the week before, or the month before.

“Jon,” Martin calls through the closed door, “you’ve been in there for half an hour. Can I at least come in to brush my teeth before bed?”

Jon huffs and lets her hand drop from her chest. “Fine,” he says, voice curt though he doesn’t mean to be. “Door’s unlocked.”

[thehauntologicalsociety]

Penda’s Fen by David Rudkin — A Davis-Poynter TV Script of a BBC Pebble Mill Production (excerpts) Young Stephen, in the last summer of his boyhood, has somehow awakened a buried force in the landscape around him. It is trying to communicate some warning, a peril he is in; some secret knowledge; some choice he must make, some mission for which he is marked down. First published in 1975 by Davis Poynter Limited. Copyright © 1973 by David Rudkin. All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance or reading should be made before rehearsal to Margaret Ramsay Limited, 14a Goodwin’s Court, St. Martins Lane, London WC2, England. No performance may he given unless a licence has been obtained. ISBN 0 7067 0187 9 Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Limited Guildford Surrey. AUTHOR’S NOTE This represents the finalized shooting-script from which PENDA’S FEN was made. I say ‘represents’ because my very elaborate technical instructions (for camerawork, lighting, soundtrack, etc.) I have removed; instead, I have sought to convey the resultant effects expressively to the reader’s inner eye and ear. I cannot pay tribute enough to the unsparing self-commitment or the crew and actors to what proved an exhausting and at times quite frightening task: the film itself is their best testament. But I must, without being invidious, single out for particular gratitude the producer, David Rose, who, far from being daunted by my first synopsis, virtually insisted PENDA into existence, and quietly removed every administrative and financial barrier that might have fallen in it’s way. I must try to thank also the director, Alan Clarke, for his deep stillness and moral integrity in its realization - a director gifted with that rarest and most significant director’s gift of all, the gift of standing out of his own light. D R STEPHEN Spencer Banks, MRS FRANKLIN Georgine Anderson, THE REVEREND J FRANKLIN John Atkinson, JOEL Ron Smerczak, HEADMASTER John Richmond, ARNE Ian Hogg, MRS ARNE Jennie Heslewood, SIR NICHOLAS POLE John Scott, BROTT Roy Preston, HARRY Ian Gemmell, MRS GISBOURNE Joyce Grundy, COOKE Ivor Roberts, SIXTH FORMER Moray Black, HONEYBONE Christopher Douglas, COUNCIL WORKMAN Frank Veasey, NURSE Elizabeth Reville, JOEL’S GIRL Pat Bowker, SIR EDWARD Graham Leaman, MRS KINGS Helena McCarthy, THE LADY Joan Scott, THE MAN Ray Gatenby, KING PENDA Geoffrey Staines, DEMON Geoffrey Pennells & ANGEL Martin Reynolds. Film Camerman: Michael Williams, Operator: Ken Morgan, Sound Recordist: John Gilbert, Sound Mixer: David Baumber, Film Editor: Henry Fowler, Costume: Joyce Hawkins, Make Up: Jan Nethercott, Special Effects: Clifford Gulley, Animation: Bernard Lodge, Radiophonic Sound: Paddy Kingsland, Design: Michael Edwards, Script Editor: Tara Prem, Producer: David Rose, Director: Alan Clarke. First transmitted on Thursday, 21st March 1974 (as ‘Play for Today’) by BBC Television. A loud crunching chord: strings break out, an ambling soaring open-country tune*. High summer. As though liberated, by his little victory, from the spell of COOKE, STEPHEN now, in shirt and jeans, pedals his old bicycle through the coloured landscapes of the Elgar country. The purple wrinkled hills of Malvern are now somewhat nearer, larger, more physically present than before. Slowly, slowly, as he pedals, handfree, whistling the glorious tune itself, the hills seem to turn towards him as, picture by picture, he crosses the landscape. Now the music breaks up into rapid movement, gathering in excitement towards a climax. STEPHEN’s shadow races along the surface of the lane. He freewheels down a steep tree-lined bank; hurtles wildly round a corner in a village, scuffing the dry road with his feet for a brake. The high hedges, flowered banks, arching treetops, streak past him in lines. The blind-hedged twisting and curving lane leaps towards the jumping racing handlebars. At the peak of the music, the violins leap up to a piercing high note like a shriek of lightning; up from the lane-surface, like an ascending diver from the floor of a pool, swoops the DEMON of STEPHEN’s dream, his eyes, jaw, smile and mouth - The music vanishes; STEPHEN falls; his bicycle clatters riderless to the ground against a steep ditch; STEPHEN rolls onto the grass bank-edge, still, stunned. The bicycle lies, its wheel spinning: we hear its whirr and click. STEPHEN lies, unconscious. * Again, from Elgar 'Introduction and Allegro’: the reprise of the main 'second subject’ theme, towards the principal climax of the piece. Unnatural silence. Unnatural stillness. The light and colours are dry, a little too bright to be real. The bicycle: but it lies in a different posture and position; and not by the steep grass bank, but before a wooden five-bar gate - and on the surface of a road, its rear wheel still, silent. Far from it, and in the 'wrong’ direction - where he could not possibly have landed - lies STEPHEN, stunned, unconscious: again, not by the bank, but on flat grass shoulder of a level road. A soft muttering: voice of JOFFER indistinctly grumbling to himself. STEPHEN is awake. He is raising his head. We are at the junction with the Pinvin road across the fen. There seems to be nothing surprising to STEPHEN in this. Now he sees where the grumbling sound is coming from: the trestles, diversion board blocking the road. JOFFER, his back to us, is with dark deliberate action peeling away the pasted V from PINVIN. STEPHEN glances back over his left shoulder to the signpost. On signpost, no sack: its black letters spell PINFIN. STEPHEN looks toward diversion board again. JOFFER is moving away; board reads PINFIN, just as he had painted it. STEPHEN looks up toward signpost again. Is puzzled by what he sees. Signpost’s white is unnaturally luminously bright. Black letters spell (plain English script) PENDEFEN. STEPHEN has turned toward road again. Trestles, diversion board have gone. Road leads away, unbarred, onto fen landscape, across which strange light-and-shadow plays. Now STEPHEN stands. And suddenly we are that unseen presence again, rising behind him, taller than he; following him onto the open fen. Then we see STEPHEN coming forward, as drawn. His breathing becomes sexually deep, we hear it. Then a new sound: a muted chopping. It is coming from behind him. He turns. Before him now, stone terraced steps lead up between ornamental lawns towards the black-and-white facade of a half-timbered manor house. STEPHEN is going up the steps. The house itself is like an extended version of the smaller half-timbered house before which JOEL’s milkfloat killed the sparrow. STEPHEN finds himself in a wonderland of billiard-table lawns, topiary bushes and dark-green hedges of yew that seem cut velvet-smooth. Everywhere, lyrical gardenbird-song. The chopping sound seems to come from beyond one of these hedges. STEPHEN comes round the hedge. A party of people, fine and healthy, as near to Eden innocence as is consonant with setting, children with them, are grouped in various relaxed poses upon the ancestral lawn, waiting their turn, happy, noisy-looking (yet no human sound), eyes bright as on brink of some redemption. STEPHEN looks where their fond expectant gazes are. In middle of lawn, a large tree stump, sawn table-flat. An impeccably dressed man in middle age, in build and sartorial immaculacy rather like Hitchcock, is waiting for the next person to come to the stump. The stump drips with blood. He has a butcher’s axe. No blood has spattered the AXEMAN at all. A MOTHER with a LITTLE GIRL come to him. AXEMAN gestures, with courtesy, a gentle little patient smile, 'Little girl first, please’. LITTLE GIRL obediently places hands on stump. MOTHER looks at her, proud, privileged. AXEMAN wields axe. STEPHEN watches. He shows no emotion. Chop. Chop. Muted sound of little girl laughing. He watches, expressionless, the figure of the LITTLE GIRL run gaily off in her party frock, waving her stumps. AXEMAN takes little severed hands, throws them down behind stump. He has a methodical unhurried address to his task: to him it is a sort of necessary social editing. MOTHER lays her own hands on stump, panting in anticipation. STEPHEN stands paralyzed against the hedge. Emerging from the group, coming towards him, are the MAN and LADY of the newspaper-photograph he showed us during his speech at the school debate: the 'father and mother of England’, who had succeeded in having the television 'Jesus’ programme banned. They are coming for STEPHEN, their faces transfigured, their arms raised as in that photo, reaching in welcome to bring him to the stump. - STEPHEN is shaking his head, his lips trying to fashion the words No No! But no sound comes, and he cannot move. Then the real, Worcestershire voice of JOEL is speaking: JOEL (VOICE): You all right, squire? You all right? (His features unclear in a blinding dazzle of sunlight, JOEL is looking anxiously down at us, his face questioning. STEPHEN is coming to. JOEL’s face is clearer now. We see that STEPHEN lies where he originally fell: by the steep grass bank. Now STEPHEN sees this. Nearby, rear wheel of bicycle still spins: wheel whirr. He sees, too, JOEL’s milkfloat: it has braked sharply, skidding at an angle in mid-road. JOEL puts arms round STEPHEN’s shoulder to help him up:) JOEL: Come chargin’ down that hill right into me. (It suddenly dawns on STEPHEN whose arm this is. The old tension, guilt-panic awakens in him; he pulls to be desperately free. JOEL misunderstands, grips more tightly, personally:) JOEL: Hey . . Hey . . (He will not let STEPHEN go. STEPHEN becomes aware of his own hands touching JOEL’s shoulder or arms. He leaves them there, using them to brace him as they stand. He commits himself to the contact, drawing his hands down a little, frankly toward his waist. JOEL now understands what STEPHEN’s attitude is, has always been. It all makes sense. Hard, but not brutal, and not over-compassionate either, he removes STEPHEN’s hands; yet does not thrust them from him.) JOEL: Sorry. Just help you up, that’s all. (He looks STEPHEN straight in eye. STEPHEN, after hesitation, finds honesty in himself to do the same. It is not easy. It is done.) JOEL: (Quite hard.) That’s all. (Their hands separate: a frank withdrawal. A GIRL sits in passenger seat in float. Now she calls out:) JOEL’S GIRL: Joel? JOEL: (To her) He’m all right, dove. We 'a'n’t killed him. STEPHEN: (Rather strenuously, to her.) I’m all right: JOEL: He’ll get over it. (He looks at STEPHEN: a mere brutal acceptance; no yielding. He goes back to float. STEPHEN watches. Engine sound. Float straightens, passes him. JOEL makes a quite objective formal gesture at him. STEPHEN waves back, his gesture incomplete. He feels a new acceptedness.) Inside the church. It is plain, neither rich nor pretty. Sun-light through high windows. The West Door heavily of)cos towards us. STEPHEN conies quietly in; in shirt, jews. lie quietly shuts door behind him. He comes along aisle. He has a book with him. We hear his footfalls, the occasional creak here or there of beam or pew. He goes to the organ. He stands there before it a moment. He switches on the organ i light; and we see there, also, an organist’s mirror - into which the player can glance while playing, to see what is happening in the service behind him in the church. Now STEPHEN swings his legs over the organist’s bench, careful not to depress the long pedal-arms beneath. He switches the organ on: a deep, faint, almost inaudible droning hum. He rests the book before him on the music-rest. He has the look of someone about to try a long-pondered spell. He opens the book, presses the first two or three turned leaves flat against the music-rest, to lie there still and not to close again. Before us now, the heading on the recto page: THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS, Edward Elgar. It is the 'vocal’ score, with the orchestral parts arranged for keyboard. Above first staves of music the word 'Prelude’. Above first bars, pencilled capitals: 'Motif of Judgment’. The first few bars themselves have single minims and crotchets spaced along the lower stave, bound beneath one long curving slur. STEPHEN considers these. He is working out in his head what colouring this opening music needs. He pulls a stop, another. Then slowly he begins to play. It is a solemn and lonely-sounding phrase, this 'motif of Judgment’: deep-hued, veiled and plaintive tones that fall from a note, fall from it again, slowly rise up to it, then a step, another step above; then rest back onto that note again where they began. STEPHEN plays on; the music begins to arouse itself - but after two notes, he pauses; stops. Somewhere in the church, a creak. And always, that deep faint organ hum. Out of habit he glances into the mirror, but of course the church is empty. We see what STEPHEN does not see. We look along the flat gravestones of the aisle, between the towering pew ends, toward the West Door. STEPHEN turns the page, looking for the next passage he wants to play. He finds it. Large wide-spaced chords to be sustained, with shorter crotchet-phrases to he interjected during then: above these, the pencilled words 'His Cry’. Already STEPHEN is playing: the chords high, solemn and pleading, over their deep roots in the bass, and an off-beat heavy treading, figure stark within them. They soon roach a climax, and collapse in syncopated fragments downwards, into silence*. Organ hum. Along the aisle toward the West Door, the light is darkening. STEPHEN continues, In the score, the pleading chords of the 'Cry’ are now repeated, but in a higher key, giving them more urgency. And, as his hands take the chords and treading-figure, and his feet on the pedals the deep roots in the bass, out of the organ suddenly conies a grand and powerful glorious tone: the boy’s music resoundingly transfigured, to move us to tears and chill our spine. And STEPHEN too is moved. Again the climax, the disintegrating collapse, the echoing silence. But for the organ hum. In the aisle threatening to run the length of it to the far West Door, the beginning of a jagged veinlike crack has appeared. STEPHEN pauses. He turns several pages, many. Then, far into the book, finds page lie seeks. Pencilled capitals 'Angel’s Triumph’. Words, notes of vocal line: ’ . . soul! For it is safe, consumed yet quickened by the Glance of God!’ We hear from afar, as STEPHEN, smiling in recognition, hears in his head: the soaring and swooping Angel-song with which the play began. She comes to her great Alleluia, and our eyes are drawn in along the notes themselves, and in, in, in towards the printed symbol of the crowned towering top A itself. But here the voice and music fade, Organ hum. The crack along the aisle has visibly widened; it 'runs’ before our eyes to the far West Door, and veinlike 'tributaries’ appear. Now STEPHEN, unaware of the unnatural darkening in the church around him, prepares to play the crescendo passage that builds toward the climax of the work. His foot takes a low A on the pedal, holds it down; the deep root- sound sustains. Quietly, his hands take the first chords: often clashing with that unchanging bass, these upper harmonies sound unnerving, intense. We hear in them a harsh evolution from that quiet. lonely phrase, the Motif of Judgment, with which STEPHEN began.’ And as, louder and tauter, STEPHEN plays now, this evolution continues: the phrases mount and grow; the key changes, the deep pedalpoint falls; the chords pile up, massive and anguished; the key and pedalnote shift again. In the mirror is total blackness; the fissure in the aisle has widened to a chasm; STEPHEN has come to the music’s peak. The moment of terrible silence. His hands rise, fingers stretch, forming to take the keys that will make up the 'fearful dissonance’. The aisle yawns, a torn-edged black engulfing void . . With all the power he can produce from the instrument, he sounds the dissonance. But it is not enough. It is not enough. Suddenly STEPHEN has broken through even this: with hands and feet he adds every other note to the dissonance that he can reach. And holds them down. A piercing discord of unbelievable obscenity. STEPHEN suddenly sees hellish inky blackness in organ-mirror. His hands quit keyboard in horror. The dissonance vanishes; only the lowest pedalnote remains, a deep C sharp, keeping all its clashing overtones alive in our heads, while through the actual silence a Voice speaks: VOICE: Stephen … … … VOICE: (STEPHEN bows head, he dare not turn.) VOICE: Stephen Franklin (STEPHEN slowly raises eyes to organ-mirror. Inky darkness there. Dimlit, like detail from Grünwald Crucifixion, the leprous Feet pierced with one ugly cruel nail. The Living Blood drips down.) VOICE: Unbury me … . Free me from this tree … . (STEPHEN transfixed. Suddenly pedal C sharp cuts off. Silence. The moment has passed. The aisle is as it was. The church is normal, the sunlight as before. There STEPHEN sits, on the organ-bench, his head bowed from us, arms loosely hanging, self and body drained.) *This passage is found at rehearsal figure 9 in the score. FINALE The Malvern Hills themselves. Their slopes, ridges, lonely, primordial, in summer sunset from the further West. Soft thud and shock of evening wind. A high ridge-top. Here STEPHEN sits, stone-still, gazing toward setting sun. It is as though he has been summoned here. He waits. His dark motionless form there, seated on the ridge-top, against the sunset sky. Two forms slowly slowly ascend into view up the Western slope before him. The MAN and LADY. They walk, yet seem not to rise on the balls of their feet. Now they stand before him on the ridge-top, tall against the Western sky, the MAN to one side of him, LADY to he other. LADY: (Shy, needful) Are you an English boy? MAN: (Gentle, on brink of ecstasy.) Such a light in his eyes. LADY: True English boy? MAN: It is He. It is He. He has the Light. (STEPHEN, as though under some influence, dumbly can merely look from one to other, daring hardly raise his eyes. MAN, LADY we now see some-what more clearly: the 'father and mother of us all’ of Stephen’s newspaper photo. They are transfigured with deep still irradiating joy.) LADY: We knew the Child would come. He has been promised us so long. But that we should find him! It is too lovely to be true! (MAN reaches out a loving hand to STEPHEN - ) LADY: (Tabu horror) No If we touch Him, He will vanish! (Turns to STEPHEN) It is written. (STEPHEN terrified: every urge in him resists, compels to flight. He cannot move. He gazes up at MAN, LADY, animal-like in his dumb helplessness.) MAN: The Child is innocent. He does not know His inheritance. Nor does He know the courage He will need, to exercise His Right in this dark world. Not that they put us to the fire any more. Oh Stephen, Stephen: think of that torment … (MAN leans close to STEPHEN, consumed with a desperate love: he is like a sonless father, begging his unborn son who refuses to be born, 'Be born!’) MAN: … to be burned. Shackled to the mockery of a tree, and burned. Living, burned away … . LADY: What torment is that? Through the flames we see Our Lord. He reaches out His Hand to bring us from the shadow of this world. We that were burned, we cried in joy. The Crosstians think we scream: we cry in joy! When we are burned, why, we are turned to Light! (STEPHEN slowly shaking his head, trying to say No, to move. He cannot. MAN kneels before him, pointing west.) Look. Your Inheritance. MAN: Look. Your inheritance. (STEPHEN tries to dredge up the words of denial from within himself: he can only writhe his neck and head.) MAN: The Kings of the earth, you can govern. MAN: (Cont) They walk in their sleep. Yours is the Right, to inherit the Power: to will their will. (LADY kneels close to STEPHEN, who now can merely writhe his head between them.) MAN: Power, Stephen, to turn the rock of the world to wealth. Power: to fall, and not to die. Like Joan the Maid, to fall, and not to die. (STEPHEN pauses: this rings some bell in him. It is beginning to steal through him in what mortal danger his soul now is. He still struggles to tear a sound or gesture of denial from himself. He can-not. MAN, LADY become more and more consumed with a desperation to bring him away with them: a passion with no erotic, but a terrifying parental-loving, element.) LADY: You have to come with us. You are our Child of Light. You have to be born ill us. Then you become Pure Light. (STEPHEN suddenly finds denial:) STEPHEN: No! No! I am nothing pure! (LADY cries out: refusal would he than she could bear, In a moment the will be weeping - ) STEPHEN: Nothing pure … My race is mixed, my sex is mixed, I am woman and man, and light with darkness, mixed, mixed! I am nothing special, nothing pure. I am mud and flame! (“Εγνωκεν αύτόν he has 'discovered himself’. No more now, can myth of being pure anything afflict him or cause him to afflict mankind. It is moment of his rupture, salvation from his false 'father and mother of us all’. And he finds the feet to stand, break from them, run away - ) LADY: (Desperate, afraid) If we cannot have him darkness must not. (Suddenly vicious) Run if you like! (STEPHEN’S terrible organ-dissonance breaks shatteringly out; STEPHEN is running down the Eastern slope. LADY leaps to her feet, bringing up an instant-develop camera in her hand. She snaps fleeing figure of STEPHEN, one, two times, three. STEPHEN runs stumbling down the slope away from them, not daring look back. LADY rips instant-develop print of STEPHEN out from back of camera. She, MAN are racked with weeping now: knowing they must destroy their Angel rather than let him go to their Enemy. This knowledge breaks their hearts. Their viciousness, sick cruelty, evil shake with gleaming jewel-like tears as MAN brings cigarette-lighter to a lower corner of print; flicks flame; flame takes. The fearful dissonance grinds on. From STEPHEN’s stumbling legs on the hillside smoke appears, threatening to burst into flame. The print of him in the LADY’S hand begins to blister. STEPHEN falls, writhing in the thickening smoke that comes from his own body now: he cries out, the sound lost in the dissonance, 'Help me! Help me!’ The flame eats across the print, to STEPHEN’s left side. STEPHEN himself, his left leg, arm, left side of head scorching, screams in pain. And suddenly, through the dissonance, we can see that his mouth is forming a cry to 'Penda . . ! Penda . . !’ A flash, a double scream: the MAN and LADY vanish in an explosion of flame; and in that same incandescence, amid their falling severed burning limbs, the ancient throned form of PENDA himself appears. And there is silence.) KING PENDA: There you have seen your true dark enemies of England. Sick Father and Mother, who would have us children for ever. (STEPHEN frowns, puzzled. He is totally unharmed, his clothes and body whole as before.) STEPHEN: King Penda . . ? KING PENDA: Stephen. Our land must live. This land we love must live. Her deep dark flame must never die. (STEPHEN is nearer.) KING PENDA: Night is falling. Your land and mine goes down into a darkness now; and I, and all the other guardians of her flame, are driven from our homes, up out into the wolf’s jaw. But the flame still flickers in the fen. You are marked down to cherish that. Cherish the flame, till we can safely wake again. (STEPHEN raises head to ask a question. STEHEN stands: alone, on all the hill. And now he looks back, across the land in shadow: that outer landscape of the earth, and inner landscape of the head, across which this, his journey has been made. It is the very physical reverse to that image of England with which we began: for now we look eastwards, from those hills themselves, And night is coming. No soft choir music on the soundtrack now, but the actual sounds of evening on the earth: a lapwing, a distant train, the pulse of a factory below. Onto that landscape now STEPHEN is walking slowly thoughtfully away from us down. He is fortunate. Early, and at the right time, he has been vouchsafed a meaning for that old question he once glibly asked himself: what is to happen to his soul? Which shall prevail? The Angel, or the Pandemonium; the sickness of power and obedience to power, or the sacred demon of ungovernableness.)

[cinderelliee]

Great Expectations Wonderings

Okay so a couple posts by @lydias-library (I didn’t even realize I commented on two of your posts lol) got me thinking about Charles Dickens influence on TID and TLH. I’m sure this has been talked about extensively, but I just wanted to work through my interpretation of it.

SPOILERS AHEAD IN THE FORM OF EMBARRASSINGLY AWFUL SUMMARIES OF TALE OF TWO CITIES AND GREAT EXPECTATIONS

So in A Tale of Two Cities *Spoilers* Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay both fall in love with Lucie Manette. Sydney is jealous of Charles because he believes himself to be worthless and his life to be meaningless, and Charles represents all the good he has given up or could’ve had. Lucie ends up marrying Charles and blah blah blah Charles then ends up in France on the verge of execution. Sydney takes Charles’ place and is killed instead finally ‘giving his life meaning’. This is a very loose summary...

What I like about TID is that Cassie took the idea that BOTH Charles AND Sydney deserved to have a happy life *and Lucie ofc*, and she was able to find a way for that to happen, although not without other sacrifices. Tessa got to have a life with both of her loves, even though Will and Jem only get six years together, Jem has to wait a century, and Tessa eventually has to live without either of them (why am I sobbing in the club rn??). Jem and Will were both worthy of Tessa’s love and Tessa’s heart was big enough for all of them. They got their happy ending.

So looking at Great Expectations *spoilers* Pip falls in love with Estella at a very young age and really becomes obsessed with her. For years he does everything he can to become the Gentleman he believes she deserves. Along the way, because of the force of his ambitions, he pushes away all the people who genuinely care about him. Years later when he realizes Mrs. Havisham was just using Estella to hurt him (and all men LOL icon) and he realizes how badly he has acted for these past years. He reconciles with his old friend Joe and wants to marry Biddy who had always been kind, warm, and attentive to him, whereas Estella had always treated him awfully. But he’s too late because when he comes to this conclusion Biddy and Joe have already married.

If Cassie does the same thing in TLH as she did in TID, then we can expect sort of a different version of this story, even a better version for the characters because Cassie’s endings are always very happy. I think the most likely answer is that James *Pip* ends up with Cordelia *Biddy*, while Grace escapes Mrs. Havisham’s clutches before it’s too late (along with a resurrected Jesse most likely). And Matthew hopefully just makes it out alive since everyone seems to believe he’s doomed (which I don’t believe btw Cassie isn’t George RR Martin people! Chill!). That’s what I believe is going to happen, I can’t think of any other alternative happy ending. But because of this I also think James is going to have a very rough go of it in this book because this is the ‘pushing everyone away’ part of the story. Which is another reason I believe Cordelia and Matthew will get very close in this book, because James will be difficult and therefore push them even closer together.

Does anyone have anything to add to this??? Any other Dickens fans? Hit me up...

SIDENOTE: y’all Grace haters need to read Great Expectations. Estella isn’t the villain, she’s the victim forced to make bad choices because those are the only choices she was given. She’s not my personal favorite character by any means, but this hatred I see towards her is really misplaced, in my opinion. She isn’t the one who wants to enchant James, she doesn’t want to break his heart, or Cordelia’s heart, or Matthews. She’s just trying to survive and escape the life she has found herself in, plus save her brother who is probably the only person who loved her for her. And the more I talk about her the more I like her wow.

[dancemachinetrait]

 St Simprian’s, Little Windenburg, September 1907

‘O happy dagger, this is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die!’ A gruesome pantomime followed, where Honour drove an invisible dagger into her sternum, sank to her knees and collapsed on the ruins of the wall, which were playing the role of Juliet’s funeral bier. 

Her death throes were interrupted by some un-corpse-like sniffs from the direction of Romeo’s corpse. 

‘Clem, you goose, I can hear you sniffling.’

‘Well, you oughtn’t to be so beastly good, then’, said Clem, sitting up and furiously wiping her eyes. ‘Hon, I’ve been thinking.’

‘Always cause for alarm.’

‘Go to Bath and get your head shaved. No, but listen. You’re too good an actress to be wasted on me and’ - she squinted at the name on the nearest tombstone - ‘old Martin Archibald, late of this parish. I think we ought to start a dramatic society.’ 

She picked herself up, dusting dirt off her clothes, and sat next to Honour on the ruined wall. ‘Lady Elaine told me about one she goes to. It’s full of suffragists, and all sorts of bohemian people. They put on suffrage plays and revues and talk about literature. Doesn’t it sound like heaven?’

‘And where are we going to find a lot of bohemians and suffragists in Little Windenburg?’

Clem waved her off. ‘A minor concern.’

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Neither the membership nor the venue of the Little Windenburg Literary and Dramatic Society proved quite as glamorous as what Lady Elaine had described. The former comprised Clem, Honour, Daisy, and Eli, with the sporadic participation of Jem. Biddy, aged three, was briefly considered for membership but rejected on the grounds that she could not be trusted to sit through a performance without pulling her frock over her head or trying to chew on her own toes. The latter question was resolved when Eli generously offered the use of the barn loft where he slept.

They made a stage out of crates. Clem insisted on erecting a ‘curtain’- some wooden poles with a length of fabric tacked onto them.

‘What’s the point of a curtain if it doesn’t open or close?’ asked Eli, a little tetchy after their fourth attempt at getting it to stay up. 

‘It’s the effect that’s important’, Clem retorted. ‘You’ve got to have a curtain. Otherwise it’s just a couple of orange crates.’

‘It is just a couple of orange crates.’

‘Not if we’ve got a curtain!’

Further difficulties were had in recruiting the cast. Daisy was happy to be an audience member, but extremely reluctant to perform. 

‘Be a sport, Dizzy’, Clem pleaded. ‘It can’t just be me and Honour performing.’

‘I don’t see why not’, Daisy said, her jaw set in a way that boded ill. ‘You two are the real actresses. I can’t do anything except play the piano, and you’re not getting that into the loft.’

‘Fibber! You sing like an angel.’

‘Not anything like an angel. Honestly, Clem, I can’t.’

‘Tell you what, Daisy’, Eli interjected. ‘You sing, and I’ll accompany you on my fiddle. That way you won’t be up there alone. How’s that?’

Blushing scarlet, Daisy nodded. 

previous | next | beginning

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Two fun little tidbits: 

‘Go to Bath and get your head shaved’ is an absolutely real Victorian slang phrase, meaning approximately ‘shut up’

I went through the entire list of townies from all four games on the Sims wiki for the name on the tombstone looking for one that sounded vaguely historical, because I liked the idea that someone from an earlier Sims game is an ancestor of the current residents of Little Windenburg.

[cuttoothed]

Also Petermartin, at a party

So it literally just occurred to me that the “family thing” Peter leaves for in 134 has to be a funeral, since he says that’s the only time he sees his relatives. And since Martin refers to it as a “party” in 138, this fluff is what came to mind! :D

*

The first thing Martin notices is the silence, brittle and absolute.

The second is the fact that everyone in the room is wearing black. He is not wearing black. He is wearing teal colored trousers and a pale blue shirt and a narrow, dark blue tie, because Peter told him they were going to a party.

Well, in point if fact he hadn’t specifically said party, he’d said a family thing, and it had been Martin’s foolish assumption that he meant some sort of party. Peter hadn’t said anything about Martin’s outfit when he got into the car, either, just raked gray eyes over him in a way that sent a thrill up Martin’s spine. Honestly, he could have said something.

The third thing Martin notices is the coffin. Of course. Foolish assumption that Peter wouldn’t take him to a funeral, and that he wouldn’t let Martin embarrass himself, because it genuinely doesn’t occur to Peter to care about social norms. Peter is wearing a suit, but it’s cream colored and tightly tailored, decidedly not mourning attire.

“What the hell, Peter?” Martin hisses. Peter looks at him with mild surprise.

“What’s wrong?”

Martin’s not quite sure whether he’s more disconcerted that Peter brought him to a Lukas family funeral, or annoyed that he didn’t warn him about it. Both, he decides, are pertinent.

“Why didn’t you tell me we were going to a funeral? Oh and also, why did you bring me to a funeral?”

Peter shrugs.

“I thought you might not want to come, if I told you. And I wanted you to come.”

Martin’s mouth snaps shut, flabbergasted. I wanted you to come is about as close as Peter could possibly get to saying I didn’t want to come without you. Not a momentous statement for most, perhaps, but for a servant of The One Alone it’s quite a declaration.

He opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it again. People are turning to look at them now, a crowd of dour, disapproving faces. Peter’s family. Who Peter knew would be here when he asked Martin to come. Who Peter wanted Martin standing with him in front of, at this private family affair.

Martin sighs.

“All right, you might as well introduce me, since everyone’s staring. Who, uh, passed away?”

“Great Aunt Ruth,” says Peter, and wraps an arm around his shoulder. “Awful old biddy.”

He kisses Martin’s cheek, and Martin feels his annoyance melt away. He’s used to Peter being extravagant, lavish gifts and expensive, last-minute getaways, but it’s the simple gestures of affection that are rarest from him, and that mean the most.

Still, Martin doesn’t want Peter thinking that this sort of behavior is okay. He puts on his sternest voice and says:

“Next time you want me to come to a family thing, you’ll tell me what it is, okay?”

“Cross my heart,” Peter agrees cheerfully. “It’s always a funeral, though.”

“Of course it is,” Martin sighs, as they sweep towards the grim congregation of Lukases. “In that case, you can buy me a decent suit as well.”

[cancelrealbras]

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Thanks

[k-frankie]

No Funeral At All -- Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi, Shahzad Ismaily Haven -- Joan Shelley March of the One-Legged Dog -- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh Irene -- Rodrigo Amarante 3036 -- Rachele Eve Alaskans -- Volcano Choir Delia -- Elizabeth Cotten Winter's Night -- Doc Watson Wooh Dang -- Daniel Norgren Brennan's Reel -- Martin Hayes Quartet The Frost is All Over -- The Chieftains Sailor's Bonnett -- Arlo Guthrie Biddy From Sligo / Punch for the Ladies -- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh Yellow Tinker / Ríl Mhór Bhaile An Chalaidh -- Cormac Begley The Broad Majestic Shannon -- The Pogues Sugar Baby -- Sam Amidon The Day That's Just Begun -- Daniel Norgren Give Me Cornbread When I'm Hungry -- John Fahey