THANKS  FOR GIVING

Who ever said that if you don't study history, you are condemned to repeat it knew what they were talking about. We, only, have to look at the british colonial philosophy to see the application of this saying.

The british read their history in forming this philosophy because their thoughts were inspired by the territorial occupations by the Roman Empire. All of this goes back as far as that.

The Roman Empire was built upon total control. Control of commerce; control  of government; control of learning; and  control of religious worship.

The first historical evidence of this thinking, in britain, took place in the eleventh century during the reign of William I. It was his belief that all the lands under the control of the monarch belonged to the crown. William was a Norman who rewarded supporters by giving them titles which allowed the landholders to tax their tenants in order to line their own pockets as well as to support the crown. William gained all of this power after his victory at Hastings in 1066. He was the monarch who created the "doomsday book" which was a complete census listing that noted the size, ownership, and resources of everything in the kingdom and it was to be used in creating the tax base.

The first real change in this power base occurred in the seventeenth century during the time of Oliver Cromwell.

Cromwell was an extremist Puritan leader who participated in and was a leader of a civil war against the king, Charles I. His main arguing points were the corruption of the government, the sympathetic stances of the crown toward Catholics, and sympathy for the plight of the Irish people. A ten-year period of hostilities (1640-1650) ended with the execution of Charles.

For approximately, the next two hundred years, the british government continued in the same vein.

The english harvests of 1837-1842 failed and the british government was hard pressed to maintain the standard of living within the kingdom. It was at this time that many of the Irish crops were brought to england to ease the british needs. The corn laws which addressed the duty problems regarding the import of grain and grain products were suspended and men like Thomas Lipton were able to improve their financial positions by providing Irish food stuffs. To this day, I still will not have a box of Lipton tea in the house because it has the Commodore's picture on it. Lipton started out as the proprietor of a small grocery store but by buying Irish foods at low prices set by regulation, and exporting them across the Irish Sea at higher prices, he was able to amass his huge fortune created by the labors of his Irish countrymen.

This was one of the actual causes of the Irish famine. Some people ask why Irish people went hungry when there was such a great deal of seafood available. Well, it wasn't available. This market was, also, controlled and it was ruled that all the fish in the sea belonged to the crown. As such, the netted fish were salted and then exported to england. If all of the grain and other crops grown in Ireland as well as the salted fish had stayed in Ireland and was used by its citizens to combat the potato blight, there wouldn't have been any famine.

Irish society was, largely, an agrarian one where many of its citizens were illiterate because of the english ban upon local education as well as the need for all available family members to work on the farms to keep families fed as best they could.

Again, the british colonial philosophy did not allow schooling for local residents to be taught by Irish educators, speaking in native languages, or dancing with arms raised. This kind of dancing was thought to be subversive and would lead to violent demonstrations by, both, male and female celebrants. Taxation by landlords caused much of the Irish property to be sold, at low or non-existent prices, in foreclosure.

These were some of the reasons used by the uninformed to create unique answers to their unanswerable questions. Banshees, Pookahs, The Little People, Faerie Folk with faerie trees, and The Good People were, all, created to satisfy the desire for answers. There were no other diversions available for many years other than the time spent, by families, with "storytellers"

"Storytellers" shortened the nights, Sunday afternoons, as well as the long treks between home and markets. Histories were unable to be written by anyone but the residents of monasteries. The spoken words of a tale or of an allegorical song imparted educational lessons that were wanted by so many during these times.

To this day many of our older relations will spend time talking about the way things were when they were young. They will be very detailed in their explanations so that the listeners will understand the traditions of their heritage. When we were very young, we thought that the faerie tales given so much time at a Sunday post-dinner family gathering, over tea and cake, were only entertaining diversions. As we grew into adulthood, we understood that these stories meant so much more and we understood that we were being instructed in the ways of "our people."

Many things happened, in everyday lives, that were unexplainable by the people of that time. Childhood illnesses that we would consider to be minor, could prove, in some circumstances, to be fatal.   

Measles were, often, thought to be the work of some malevolent person who wished harm upon a neighbor. Milk cows that stopped giving milk because of a lack of nourishment often were said to have had their milk stolen by a spirit who was avenging some slight.

There were people who were said to have "the second sight" and be able to understand why things were happening and would be able to offer a solution.

I remember hearing a story about a couple with a set of twins in the household. Twins were considered to be a double blessing from God and as such extra care had to be taken to prevent them from being stolen and raised by the goblins. In this case the mother kept a constant watch on the twins to prevent such a thing from happening. One day, as she was hanging the wash to dry in the back of the house and the twins were taking a nap, someone called her from the front. At first she didn't want to answer the call but when she looked around nothing seemed to out of the ordinary, she decided to take a moment to see who was calling. She was only gone for a minute and when she returned the twins were still sleeping in the same positions as when she went around front. However, on her way back she was frightened to see some old elves of the blue petticoat crossing her path though it was only midday.

After a while the couple began to think something was wrong as the twins weren't growing at all.   

The man said, "They're not ours."

The woman said, "Who else's would they be."

There was such a lot of clamor attached to this that the neighbors began to call the house where the family lived "The Goblin House." This saddened the woman to such an extent that she decided to see the Wise Man in the next village.

He listened to the story of the twins and said that, as it was almost harvest time for the rye and the oats, the woman should take a hollowed out hen's egg and boil some "strong water" in it. The woman was instructed to take the egg to the door of the house as though she were going to give it to the reapers and listen to hear if the twins should talk about things of which they shouldn't have any knowledge. If the woman heard such things, she should take the two twins and throw them into the lake.

So when the day of the reap came and the woman followed all of the instructions. While she stood at the door holding the egg she heard one twin say to the other:

Acorn before oak I knew,

An egg before a hen,

But I never heard of an eggshell brew

A dinner for harvest men

Hearing this, the woman went to the house and seized the two and threw them into the lake. The goblins in their blue trousers came and saved their dwarfs and the woman had her children back, ending the strife.

I'm sure that there weren't any infants thrown in any lake and I'm sure that if there were a set of twins, they experienced a growth spurt to ease the worries of a parent It's easy to say that now, in this age of modern medicine.