PILGRIMSPLAZA
Active Member
Pilgrimage is of all people, faiths, sferes and ages - for hunters, gatherers and true smorgasbordians:
--------------------------------
Present Georgiana's Gems:
- Georgiana's Gems #1 bees on miscellaneous-topics/topic4442.html
- Georgiana's Gems #2 Vézelay on miscellaneous-topics/topic4569.html
- Georgiana's Gems #3 the Magdalen - Mary Magdalen on miscellaneous-topics/topic4583.html
- Georgiana's Gems #4 Santiago's tau staff on pilgrim-books/topic4589.html
- Georgiana's Gems #5 Fisterra blues on pilgrim-books/topic4613.html
- Georgiana's Gems #6 Santiago as guide of dead souls on miscellaneous-topics/topic4662.html
- Georgiana's Gems #7 Lusitania (Portugal) and Lug on el-camino-portugues/topic4694.html
- Georgiana's Gems #8 more King books online on pilgrim-books/topic5466.html
- Georgiana's Gems #9 Iria Flavia on santiago-to-finisterre-and-muxia/topic5804.html
Future Georgiana's Gems may follow in http://pilgrimsplaza-georgianas-gems.blogspot.com on birds (doves), cypress, vista, faces, beards, Daniel, Ester, Judith, Sheba, Heavenly and Mortal Twins, axe and mallet, Paul, Nazarean, syncretism (111-294, 307, 308, 311, 313, 357, 367; law of, 307), heresy, Priscillian (I-59, III-334, 345; II-222, 237, III-237, 264, 316; III-624) and references to connected authors and books. Suggestions are welcome! Mind due: we're no experts in these fields so if you know better please enlighten us!
--------------------------------
Update 18-5-2011
Rudolf Steiner on bees: http://www.doyletics.com/arj/beesrvw.htm - GA#351
-------------------------------
Update 6-1-2011
On 4-1-2011 the announcing in our northern Saxon provinces of the death of their master to bees, horses and cattle has been confirmed from two different sources on http://www.oudommen.nl/?page_id=2123 and http://www.kasteel.nl/nieuws/42/de-uitv ... me-jonker/
For our Dutch readers:
Immen, immen, uw heer is dood
Verlaat mij niet in mijnen nood.
Ik wil u zijn wat hij u was,
haal dan voor mij honing en was.
Bees, bees, your lord is dead
Don't leave me in despair
I want to be what he was to you
so get me honey and wax.
---------------------------------
Reading The Way of Saint James by Ms Georgiana Goddard King (1920/2008) for the 3rd time makes a good opportunity to collect the gems she is giving us in such great numbers. The first time I read this classic I was fully overwhelmed by her poetic style and great authority; the second reading reveiled the details of the structure of this masterpiece and now I'm certainly very ready, most willing and hopefully able to feast on all the gems of epic writing in this book and share them with you. Any comments and suggestions are most welcome!
We're starting with what Ms King tells us about the folklore of bees and the spirits of little children they stand for. The professor has it that: "Therefore, in New England, within the memory of those now living, the bees must be told of any death in the family." That story rang a bell for in my early days I heard of read concerning our folklore that the death of a farmer was announced to his cows. If they were in their summer meadows they were for the occasion brought back into their usual winter stable where the eldest son in his best black suit, surrounded by all the family would say: "Cows, your master is dead." After that the cows were brought back and everybody went back to their businesses.
Overhere the announcing of death to bees has by now been confirmed by three sources. One old farmer in Twente still knew about it and the habit is mentioned in two books on folklore in Drenthe and Twente, both provinces on sandy soils in Saxon country in the north and east of the Netherlands. Details will follow.
One of my friends in Zwolle did not know about these old customs but he had another quite amazing story from his youth. One day the herd of cows they could see from their kitchen window in Dalfsen in Salland (between Drenthe and Twente) started mooing in a rather demonstrative way. Next day they understood why when they learned that the farmer had died. A similar story was printed in a local The Hague paper of July 26th 2008 about a cow named Antje in a children's farm in the city who mooed for hours over her lost friend Inez who had to be put to sleep.
Now here's what Ms King tells us about:
Volume I: BOOK ONE: THE PILGRIMAGE: chapters I – V: pp 1-134
Volume I: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters I – VIII: pp 135-463
[406] chapter VIII TWO ROAD-MENDERS
[431] Sieur des Sorties. (see Index below)
[437-438] It is recorded that when the monks in the year 1450 in the time of Bishop Alonso of Carthagena, Fray Gomez de Carrion7 being then prior, wished to translate the body of the Saint into the church [White bees], and to that intent, in the presence of many nobles and prelates, opened the tomb, there came out from it a multitude of white bees, with a sweet odour; they hummed about, they even stung the obstinate, and the tomb was closed again.
Here we are again in the richest vein of folklore: all over the world bees are souls, and it becomes apparent how under the form of bees he kept the hosts of unborn souls, ready for women who should come to beg for babies. There is a Tyrolese figure of Frau Holda who lived in a moun-[438]tain and kept the souls in a big chest, not half so pat as this. S. Rita of Cascia has also a swarm of these white bees [Frau Holda], but as she was beatified only in the seventeenth century and canonized in the twentieth it is not easy to discover from her legend as then drawn up and confirmed what she does with them. [S. Rita]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 02kinguoft Volume II (flip book for easy reading)
Volume II [175] Chapter XII PULCHRA LEONINA
[214] Doctor Egregius. (Isidore of Seville)
[229] The theory that legends derive at times from images, finds matter here. In 1170 the knightly Order of Santiago was [Indistinguishable from Santiago] founded, for which this banner would serve admirably; in 1255 the Confraternity of Santiago was flourishing in Leon, and buying houses.27 S. James was stronger than his competitor, and absorbed him.
Still, S. Isidore had to have a legend; and that of the Cerratense,28 taken partly from Bishop Lucas but augmented by a good deal of his own, has a value for us as indicating what functions were expected of this doppelgänger of the Apostle. It belongs strictly to the Leonese cult and enumerates marvels and miracles, on any [Legend of Martin of Cerrat] other explanation surprising in irrelevance and incredibility, gathered up anywhere out of folk-lore:
I. The Saint as an infant was taken by his nurse into the garden and there left among the olives and forgotten: a few days after, his father was sitting in view of the garden grieving, and saw [230] and heard a swarming of bees, an immense murmuring, and on going thither found the babe lying there, and the bees going in and out of his mouth, and others on his face, others all about him.
[Bees] The father snatched up his baby with a cry and with tears, and the bees flew up and disappeared. This is uncommonly like the Cretan Zeus, whom the bees nourished with honey on the Idaean Mount.29 [see Volume II p 505]
[381] Chapter XVI BY SIL AND MIÑO [410] In Galicia.
[414] No memory of the pilgrims survives, not even in the dedication of a church, no trace of French skill or French Romance, not even a rough archaic carving of the Three Kings who came from far. The very road had forgotten whence it set out, and whither it was bound; it turned and forked, recrossed the stream, struck up through a village to some high-lying lonely grange: it halted where three ways met in a chestnut grove, before such a tall stone cross as the Three Kings take for rendez-vous in old manuscripts. In the heat the [THE WAY 415] quiet air smelt of hay making, the very bees were still.
Lastly a descent past ivy-mantled walls, the enclosure of a vast domain, dipped under an ivied gate and entered Samos. The Harbour of Refuge was the sentimental title to a Pre-Raphaelite picture, but it expresses what a monastery must have looked in the tenth century, what for a moment I saw as we emerged on the open valley-bottom, with river and garden and great four-square pile of building. True, this is a building of the eighteenth century looking big as the Escorial, but under the shoulder of the mountain fronting sun and breeze, the monks had always harboured, the villagers had squatted always about their skirts. With true religious indifference, they refused us refreshment or repose. Inn there is none.
[425] The Unknown Church.
[444] Puerto Marin lies away from any high road, out of the world and unknown, but [The hollow land] loved of God and the holy angels. The population came about me like bees and sprang up even as the fire among thorns, they more [Courtesy of Boston Museum - A Pilgrim in Jet - THE WAY 445] than half filled the church as I worked there with the landlord's discreet young daughter to take care of me, but they neither crowded nor mocked. Later, expressing amazement, I found it was a matter of course : the town took just pride in its treatment of strangers.
[431] Sieur des Orties.
[436] […] The chapel was rebuilt by Isabella, who had come in pilgrimage, seeking a child, in 1477: now the saint was himself an only [THE WAY 437] child, for twenty years desired, and he "was an especial mediator in this need," says the chronicler. He gave to Isabel her three tragic children; the prince D. John, cut off in his first flowering, who lies inurned at Avila; Joanna the Mad, and the most unhappy of English queens, called Catharine of Aragon. It is recorded that when the monks in the year 1450 in the time of Bishop Alonso of Carthagena, Fray Gómez de Carrión7 being then prior, wished to translate the body of the Saint into the church, and to that intent, in the presence of many nobles [White bees] and prelates, opened the tomb, there came out from it a multitude of white bees, with a sweet odour; they hummed about, they even stung the obstinate, and the tomb was closed again.
Here we are again in the richest vein of folklore: all over the world bees are souls, and it becomes apparent how under the form of bees he kept the hosts of unborn souls, ready for women who should come to beg for babies. There is a Tyrolese figure of Frau Holda who lived in a moun-[438] tain and kept the souls in a big chest, not half so pat as this. S. Rita of Cascia has [Frau Holda] also a swarm of these white bees, but as she was beatified only in the seventeenth century and canonized in the twentieth it is not easy to discover from her legend [S. Rita] as then drawn up and confirmed what she does with them.
[505] NOTES Doctor Egregius
29 Virgil, Georgics, iv, 11. 149-153; Diodorus, v, 70, 5-25. If, however, as seems probable, especially in the south, S. James is the successor of the native Bull-God and S. Isidore is here substituted for S. James, then this looks like a survival of the traditional genera-[506]tion of bees from a dead bull, for which cf. A. B. Cook, Zeus, p. 514. [see p 230]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 03kinguoft Volume III (flip book for easy reading)
Volume III Book THREE THE BOURNE Chapter I AÑO SANTO
[3] ONE night, I remember, as I travelled, the Camino de Santiago hung straight across the sky, frothy white as the surf on a night in August, and I knew that under it lay the grand church. The star-dust spun in puffs and whorls: Sagittarius drove full into it: Aquila hung poised on the green splendour [Stars] of Altair: Vega waited, calm and blue, for the long-attended coming of Boötes: stars that I did not know were there, stars that I had never seen, swarming like bees, various not in three or seven or ten but in fifty magnitudes, every one differing from another in glory. A shooting- star struck [4][Todos somos peregrines] down for token that another soul was released upon its far journey. The star-swarms reeled and danced, like fire-flies tangled in silver braid : I sped the wandering soul with the ancient blessing: "Dios te guia y la Magdalena." . . .
"Are all these people going to S. James?" [… Todos somos caminantes]
[221] Chapter VI THE PARADISE OF SOULS
[238-244][Bees]
Porphyry has said that souls come down from the moon to the earth under the form of bees, and a Gallegan proverb seems to sustain this :
O que mata un abellon
Ten cen anos de perdon,
O que mata un-ha abella
Ten cen anos de pena. 31
One curious Gallegan use connects the bees with the dead, when the mourners [THE BOURNE 239] circle around the bier with a humming noise, called el Abellon. When the dead are carried to the burial, in Vilancosta, 32 there must be none asleep in the house, lest the soul of the sleeper should escape and accompany the departed.
In Indian symbolism the bee is the soul, the hive is the body, the honey is sweet life. In Greek, the bees are associated with Zeus, and with fertility, much as when they are born from the buried ox in Virgil; but they are souls also, and when Hermes evokes a little dead figure from a burial jar, the soul hovers above in the form of a bee. Here, simply, the winged and fragile creatures [are souls] are the family souls in some other than earthly durance. Therefore, in New England, within the memory of those now living, the bees must be told of any death in the family. To the shrine of S. Juan de Ortega, as already said, went childless women, to pray not vainly, and the white bees that lived in the Saint's tomb were the souls waiting to be born that they carried home in their bosoms. This is a better way to manage the process than [239/240] that of drinking down the person who is to be reborn, like Cuchullain's race.
Dante knew something about these white bees, though, according to his practice, he made his own use of old lore, when he described, about the candida rosa, the swarm of bees, che volando vede e canta :
Le facce tutte avean di fiamma viva,
e Pali d'oro, e Paltro tanto bianco
che nulla neve a quel termine arriva. 33
A story which seems to belong here, as involving a bee, is that of a local saint. There is an early saint recorded by La Fuente, who, like a kind of northern and [The Orchard Saint] colder Dionysus, came from eastward and introduced his people to cider and taught them to plant orchards. 34 Once, when Christ went about in the world with S. Peter, he was thirsty and plucking and opening an apple to eat of it, out came S. Andrés de Teijido. It is possible that this astonishing adventure may be associated, on the other hand, with the fruits of Paradise, for while the apple was es-[THE BOURNE 241]pecially sacred among the Celtic peoples, 35 his shrine, in the extreme north near Cape Ortegal, is much sought in pilgrimage: a proverb says, "A S. Andres de Teijido o [Surrogate of S. James] que non vai de morto vai de vivo," and a pretty cancidn, one of many, is this:
Fun o Santo San Andres
a!6 n'o cabo d'o mundo,
[At the end of the world]
i solo por te ver meu santo
tres dias hai que non durmo! 36
The souls go likewise on pilgrimage to Santiago, in such multitudes that they lighten all the sky, for in Galicia the star dust of the Milky Way, that to Shelley was a swarm of golden bees, is held for the innumerable souls that have to make that journey. Sr. Aribau preserves a notion current in Asturias, that S. James was lonely in his grave, that lay in the far and out of the way, and God said to him : "Don't mind, for all men born have to come and visit you, and those who do not come while [The elder version] they are alive, will come after death."
In Castile, a shooting star is recognized [242] as a departed soul, bound on its long journey, and lest it go astray the poor wandering soul is sped with a prayer, "Dios te guia y la Magdalena."37
I have quoted already the Asturian romance of the Alma en pena. The soul, it will be remembered, crossed the running water on rays from such a consecrated taper as those that send their light [So hacheras are lighted] to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
It seems that the unbaptized babes, and those that died unborn, see light on Candlemas Day. The cigar-makers of Corunna, on that day, set their lights [and candles in February] on a sprig of rosemary --that's for remembrance-- and all the sacred day the little souls are not in darkness.
In Compostella those that should have been Godparents,38 strew the church with fragrant herbs and flowers: the lights avail only for the hours of Mass time, when, also, a dove is loosed above the altar, in allusion nominally to the Feast of the Purification, but with a further reference, in the dim backward and abysm of time, to the souls that live as singing birds in the tree of life. The Good Lady, Our Lady, is [THE BOURNE 243] one with Venus of the doves, the Mountain Mother, and she is the mother of the motherless in Limbo, as indeed of all living.
This is S. Bride, Christ's fostermother, [S. Bride] who passes through the Highland in February and shepherds hear the crying of lambs and no bleating of ewes.39 I have referred already to South-German and Austrian legends of Frau Holde, 40 and the baby souls she keeps, like S. Juan de Ortega, in a great chest, and that flutter before her and about her as she walks, like these little beings with angel faces and wings changing like pigeon's breasts, that flutter in a crowd around Mantegna's Mater Dei in the Milan versions. S. Ursula, who habitually shelters 11,000 little souls under her cloak, in Carpaccio's Glorification at Venice stands [S. Ursula] in the Tree of Life, and the little souls are clustered around at the springing of the leaves, like the fruit of the date palm.
In the end, however, the poor wee babies shall be delivered from their long night time, and coming back to this earth after the Day of Judgement, grow up to the age of thirty-three years, three months, and [244] five days. There, at the blessed age of Our Lord, they shall stay, content, forever, and the earth shall be like Paradise before Adam fell, 41 till at last, after a greater or a lesser expectation, they shall come to see the face of God. This is the end of a story that was told in Galicia by a very old man, about forty years ago.
It was in Spain that Sortorius heard of [The Western isles] that land which lay beyond, out in the strange Hesperian seas, beyond the straits of Hercules ojer the visionary sea:
... an ancient lawn
Far hidden down the solemn West:
A gracious pleasaunce of calm things. . .
And Captains of the older time,
Touched with mild light, or gently sleep,
Or in the orchard shadows keep
Old friendships of the golden prime . . ,42 [244]
[253] The Singing Souls.
From Tundall the full text has not yet been quoted:
Anon he came and saw a tree
That wonderlymickel was and high. . . .
With all kind fruit that savoured well,
Of divers kind and several hue, [254]
Some white, some red, some yellow, some blue,
And all manner herbs of virtue. . . .
Many fowls of diverse colours
Sat among the fruit and the flowers,
On the branches singing so merrily
And made divers melody,
Ilk of them in his best mannere
That song was joyful for to here.
Tundale listened fast and laughed
And thought that was joy enough.
He saw under that ilk tree,
Wonning in cells, great plenty
[Rather like bees] Of men and women shining bright
As gold, with all riches dight . . .
Each one had on his head a crown
Of gold that was of seemly fashion . . .
And sceptres in their hand they had,
With gold they were full richly clad
With bright clothes of rich hue,
As they were kings crowned new.
So richly as they were dight
Was never earthly man of might.
Then spake the angel. . . .
And said: This tree [signifies Holy Church].1
On the doorway the souls sit up among the leaves, the saints and prophets stand [THE BOURNE 255] below, against the jambs, and all is blazing with yellow, red and blue, green and gold. Nothing else gives quite so sharp a vision of what such work looked like when it was still new.
These singing souls appear elsewhere twice and may here be dealt with: one is in the fifteenth- century rendering ot S. Peter Damian's Ad Perennis Vitae Fontem, [S. Peter Damian and S.Perpetua] but the Elizabethan is responsible for their manifestation. The hymn begins "Hierusalem, my happy home " and is signed F. B. D., and the passage is this:
Quite through the streets with silver sound
The flood of life doth flow,
Upon whose banks on every side
The wood of life doth grow.
Those trees forevermore bear fruit
And evermore do spring;
There evermore the angels sit,
And evermore do sing.2
[More on souls and birds later -gb]
[558] APPENDIX IX FRAU HOLDA
HOLDA and Bertha, or Perchta as she is [The Good Lady] called in Southern Germany, are identical with Freyja; and in Aargau another, but nameless, representative of the same supreme goddess is known as a kind and bounteous lady with golden hair, who has her dwelling in the interior of the Schlossberg. A vaulted passage, through whose roof the stars are seen leads into a hall of apparently boundless extent, glittering with thousands of lights where many old men sit fast asleep before an iron trough. Before an oaken trough, in another vault well lighted with candles, sit thousands of sleeping youths and maidens.
And in a third hall, filled with a milky, palpable light, there is an oaken trough containing a countless multitude of sleeping children. These are the unborn. The white lady of the mansion feeds them with anemones and snowdrops, flowers of wondrous [APPENDIX 559] virtue, the stalks of which placed in the mouth, supply for many a day the place of every other kind of food. If there are parents [So, S.Juan de Ortega. Vol. I., page 408] that want a child, the white lady opens the trough with a golden key, takes out a babe and gives it to the midwife. Should it die unbaptized, it comes back to the mountain and is replaced in the same trough. But if several weeks elapse before its death, or if the white lady takes it back because mankind have not been worthy of it, then it is placed in another trough nearer the heart of the mountain, and fed there with honey, which [Bees] the bees of the village deposit every time they swarm in the oaks of the Schlossberg.
From Walker K. Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-Lore, pp. 128-129.
[668] INDEX 358 Bees, 1-437-8, 11-230, III-238-9,240,281
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 01kinguoft Volume I
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 02kinguoft Volume II
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 03kinguoft Volume III
The Way of Saint James contains FOUR BOOKS in 3 Volumes:
Volume I: BOOK ONE: THE PILGRIMAGE: chapters I – V: pp 1-134
Volume I: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters I – VIII: 135-463
Volume II: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters IX – XVI: 1-514
Volume III: BOOK THREE: THE BOURNE: chapters I – VII: 1-370
Volume III: BOOK FOUR: HOMEWARD: chapters I – III: 371-710
NB: It may be (in my case very!) confusing that BOOK TWO: THE WAY is divided over Volume I (chapters I – VIII) and Volume II (chapters IX – XVI). So pp 135-463 occur twice in this 2nd BOOK!
Volume I: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters I – VIII: 135-463
I. SETTING OUT 137
II. HEART OF ARAGON 152
Jaca: The Cathedral 157
S. Juan de la Peña 165
Alfonso el Batallador 192
III. THE BATHS OF TIERMAS 202
Leyre 210
Sangüesa 230
IV. PAMPELUNA 253
V. SAINT SEPULCHRE 286
Puente La Reyna 294
El Sepulchro 309
VI. TOWN CHURCHES 324
Irache 357
VII. THE LOGROÑO ROAD 366
The Spires of Logroño 370
Along the Battlefield 381
S. Mary the Royal 394
VIII. TWO ROAD-MENDERS 406
Sieurs des Orties 431
NOTES 441
See http://pilgrimsplaza-king-index.blogspot.com (second part) for the full text Index in each flip book and Ms King's Forword and http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4462.html for a new exclusive interview with Gary White, the publisher of the 2008 reprint of The Way of Saint James.
Present Georgiana's Gems:
- Georgiana's Gems #1 bees on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4442.html
- Georgiana's Gems #2 Vézelay on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4569.html
- Georgiana's Gems #3 the Magdalen - Mary Magdalen on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4583.html
- Georgiana's Gems #4 Santiago's tau staff on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4589.html
- Georgiana's Gems #5 Fisterra blues on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4613.html
- Georgiana's Gems #6 Santiago as guide of dead souls on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4662.html
- Georgiana's Gems #7 Lusitania (Portugal) and Lug on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4694.html
Future Georgiana's Gems may follow on birds, cypress, vista, faces, beards, Daniel, Ester, Judith, Sheba, Heavenly and Mortal Twins, axe and mallet, Paul, Nazarean, syncretism (III-294, 307, 308, 311, 313, 357, 367; law of, 307), heresy, Priscillian (I-59, II-222, III-237, 264, 316, 334, 345, 624) and references to connected authors and books. Suggestions are welcome! Mind due: we're no experts in these fields so if you know better please enlighten us! [highlighting -gb]
In The Way of Saint James Ms King does not mention: Beda, Holy Company, lizard, Lug, Lugh, Luso, Queimada.
Enjoy!
PS 19-12-08 more on bees: http://www.andrewgough.co.uk/bee2_1.html
PPS 18-2-10 See a picture of the Fontana delle Api, 'The Bee Fountain': Piazza Barberini, Rome. 1644. From the book mentioned here:
Anyone who is interested in what is so fascinating about 'The Shell' should read Shell, A word's pedigree, available at http://www.antiqbook.com/boox/alt/43009.shtml by COX, IAN (ED.): The scallop. Studies of a shell and its influences on humankind, by eight authors. London, Shell, 1957, in-4to, 135 p., + 1 ll., richly illustrated in colour, orig. clothbound, fully ill. with gilt ornaments of scallops. The scallop in art, as heraldic forms, as food.. Contents: Shell, A word's pedigree, Le living scallop, A symbol in ancient times, the badge of St. James, * The cradle of Venus, Escallops in Armory, An excursion into the Americas, The scallop at the table.
* See attachment in miscellaneous-topics/topic4199.html
--------------------------------
Present Georgiana's Gems:
- Georgiana's Gems #1 bees on miscellaneous-topics/topic4442.html
- Georgiana's Gems #2 Vézelay on miscellaneous-topics/topic4569.html
- Georgiana's Gems #3 the Magdalen - Mary Magdalen on miscellaneous-topics/topic4583.html
- Georgiana's Gems #4 Santiago's tau staff on pilgrim-books/topic4589.html
- Georgiana's Gems #5 Fisterra blues on pilgrim-books/topic4613.html
- Georgiana's Gems #6 Santiago as guide of dead souls on miscellaneous-topics/topic4662.html
- Georgiana's Gems #7 Lusitania (Portugal) and Lug on el-camino-portugues/topic4694.html
- Georgiana's Gems #8 more King books online on pilgrim-books/topic5466.html
- Georgiana's Gems #9 Iria Flavia on santiago-to-finisterre-and-muxia/topic5804.html
Future Georgiana's Gems may follow in http://pilgrimsplaza-georgianas-gems.blogspot.com on birds (doves), cypress, vista, faces, beards, Daniel, Ester, Judith, Sheba, Heavenly and Mortal Twins, axe and mallet, Paul, Nazarean, syncretism (111-294, 307, 308, 311, 313, 357, 367; law of, 307), heresy, Priscillian (I-59, III-334, 345; II-222, 237, III-237, 264, 316; III-624) and references to connected authors and books. Suggestions are welcome! Mind due: we're no experts in these fields so if you know better please enlighten us!
--------------------------------
Update 18-5-2011
Rudolf Steiner on bees: http://www.doyletics.com/arj/beesrvw.htm - GA#351
-------------------------------
Update 6-1-2011
On 4-1-2011 the announcing in our northern Saxon provinces of the death of their master to bees, horses and cattle has been confirmed from two different sources on http://www.oudommen.nl/?page_id=2123 and http://www.kasteel.nl/nieuws/42/de-uitv ... me-jonker/
For our Dutch readers:
Immen, immen, uw heer is dood
Verlaat mij niet in mijnen nood.
Ik wil u zijn wat hij u was,
haal dan voor mij honing en was.
Bees, bees, your lord is dead
Don't leave me in despair
I want to be what he was to you
so get me honey and wax.
---------------------------------
Reading The Way of Saint James by Ms Georgiana Goddard King (1920/2008) for the 3rd time makes a good opportunity to collect the gems she is giving us in such great numbers. The first time I read this classic I was fully overwhelmed by her poetic style and great authority; the second reading reveiled the details of the structure of this masterpiece and now I'm certainly very ready, most willing and hopefully able to feast on all the gems of epic writing in this book and share them with you. Any comments and suggestions are most welcome!
We're starting with what Ms King tells us about the folklore of bees and the spirits of little children they stand for. The professor has it that: "Therefore, in New England, within the memory of those now living, the bees must be told of any death in the family." That story rang a bell for in my early days I heard of read concerning our folklore that the death of a farmer was announced to his cows. If they were in their summer meadows they were for the occasion brought back into their usual winter stable where the eldest son in his best black suit, surrounded by all the family would say: "Cows, your master is dead." After that the cows were brought back and everybody went back to their businesses.
Overhere the announcing of death to bees has by now been confirmed by three sources. One old farmer in Twente still knew about it and the habit is mentioned in two books on folklore in Drenthe and Twente, both provinces on sandy soils in Saxon country in the north and east of the Netherlands. Details will follow.
One of my friends in Zwolle did not know about these old customs but he had another quite amazing story from his youth. One day the herd of cows they could see from their kitchen window in Dalfsen in Salland (between Drenthe and Twente) started mooing in a rather demonstrative way. Next day they understood why when they learned that the farmer had died. A similar story was printed in a local The Hague paper of July 26th 2008 about a cow named Antje in a children's farm in the city who mooed for hours over her lost friend Inez who had to be put to sleep.
Now here's what Ms King tells us about:
http://openlibrary.org/details/wayofsai ... 01kinguoft Volume I (flip book for easy reading)Bees
Volume I: BOOK ONE: THE PILGRIMAGE: chapters I – V: pp 1-134
Volume I: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters I – VIII: pp 135-463
[406] chapter VIII TWO ROAD-MENDERS
[431] Sieur des Sorties. (see Index below)
[437-438] It is recorded that when the monks in the year 1450 in the time of Bishop Alonso of Carthagena, Fray Gomez de Carrion7 being then prior, wished to translate the body of the Saint into the church [White bees], and to that intent, in the presence of many nobles and prelates, opened the tomb, there came out from it a multitude of white bees, with a sweet odour; they hummed about, they even stung the obstinate, and the tomb was closed again.
Here we are again in the richest vein of folklore: all over the world bees are souls, and it becomes apparent how under the form of bees he kept the hosts of unborn souls, ready for women who should come to beg for babies. There is a Tyrolese figure of Frau Holda who lived in a moun-[438]tain and kept the souls in a big chest, not half so pat as this. S. Rita of Cascia has also a swarm of these white bees [Frau Holda], but as she was beatified only in the seventeenth century and canonized in the twentieth it is not easy to discover from her legend as then drawn up and confirmed what she does with them. [S. Rita]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 02kinguoft Volume II (flip book for easy reading)
Volume II [175] Chapter XII PULCHRA LEONINA
[214] Doctor Egregius. (Isidore of Seville)
[229] The theory that legends derive at times from images, finds matter here. In 1170 the knightly Order of Santiago was [Indistinguishable from Santiago] founded, for which this banner would serve admirably; in 1255 the Confraternity of Santiago was flourishing in Leon, and buying houses.27 S. James was stronger than his competitor, and absorbed him.
Still, S. Isidore had to have a legend; and that of the Cerratense,28 taken partly from Bishop Lucas but augmented by a good deal of his own, has a value for us as indicating what functions were expected of this doppelgänger of the Apostle. It belongs strictly to the Leonese cult and enumerates marvels and miracles, on any [Legend of Martin of Cerrat] other explanation surprising in irrelevance and incredibility, gathered up anywhere out of folk-lore:
I. The Saint as an infant was taken by his nurse into the garden and there left among the olives and forgotten: a few days after, his father was sitting in view of the garden grieving, and saw [230] and heard a swarming of bees, an immense murmuring, and on going thither found the babe lying there, and the bees going in and out of his mouth, and others on his face, others all about him.
[Bees] The father snatched up his baby with a cry and with tears, and the bees flew up and disappeared. This is uncommonly like the Cretan Zeus, whom the bees nourished with honey on the Idaean Mount.29 [see Volume II p 505]
[381] Chapter XVI BY SIL AND MIÑO [410] In Galicia.
[414] No memory of the pilgrims survives, not even in the dedication of a church, no trace of French skill or French Romance, not even a rough archaic carving of the Three Kings who came from far. The very road had forgotten whence it set out, and whither it was bound; it turned and forked, recrossed the stream, struck up through a village to some high-lying lonely grange: it halted where three ways met in a chestnut grove, before such a tall stone cross as the Three Kings take for rendez-vous in old manuscripts. In the heat the [THE WAY 415] quiet air smelt of hay making, the very bees were still.
Lastly a descent past ivy-mantled walls, the enclosure of a vast domain, dipped under an ivied gate and entered Samos. The Harbour of Refuge was the sentimental title to a Pre-Raphaelite picture, but it expresses what a monastery must have looked in the tenth century, what for a moment I saw as we emerged on the open valley-bottom, with river and garden and great four-square pile of building. True, this is a building of the eighteenth century looking big as the Escorial, but under the shoulder of the mountain fronting sun and breeze, the monks had always harboured, the villagers had squatted always about their skirts. With true religious indifference, they refused us refreshment or repose. Inn there is none.
[425] The Unknown Church.
[444] Puerto Marin lies away from any high road, out of the world and unknown, but [The hollow land] loved of God and the holy angels. The population came about me like bees and sprang up even as the fire among thorns, they more [Courtesy of Boston Museum - A Pilgrim in Jet - THE WAY 445] than half filled the church as I worked there with the landlord's discreet young daughter to take care of me, but they neither crowded nor mocked. Later, expressing amazement, I found it was a matter of course : the town took just pride in its treatment of strangers.
[431] Sieur des Orties.
[436] […] The chapel was rebuilt by Isabella, who had come in pilgrimage, seeking a child, in 1477: now the saint was himself an only [THE WAY 437] child, for twenty years desired, and he "was an especial mediator in this need," says the chronicler. He gave to Isabel her three tragic children; the prince D. John, cut off in his first flowering, who lies inurned at Avila; Joanna the Mad, and the most unhappy of English queens, called Catharine of Aragon. It is recorded that when the monks in the year 1450 in the time of Bishop Alonso of Carthagena, Fray Gómez de Carrión7 being then prior, wished to translate the body of the Saint into the church, and to that intent, in the presence of many nobles [White bees] and prelates, opened the tomb, there came out from it a multitude of white bees, with a sweet odour; they hummed about, they even stung the obstinate, and the tomb was closed again.
Here we are again in the richest vein of folklore: all over the world bees are souls, and it becomes apparent how under the form of bees he kept the hosts of unborn souls, ready for women who should come to beg for babies. There is a Tyrolese figure of Frau Holda who lived in a moun-[438] tain and kept the souls in a big chest, not half so pat as this. S. Rita of Cascia has [Frau Holda] also a swarm of these white bees, but as she was beatified only in the seventeenth century and canonized in the twentieth it is not easy to discover from her legend [S. Rita] as then drawn up and confirmed what she does with them.
[505] NOTES Doctor Egregius
29 Virgil, Georgics, iv, 11. 149-153; Diodorus, v, 70, 5-25. If, however, as seems probable, especially in the south, S. James is the successor of the native Bull-God and S. Isidore is here substituted for S. James, then this looks like a survival of the traditional genera-[506]tion of bees from a dead bull, for which cf. A. B. Cook, Zeus, p. 514. [see p 230]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 03kinguoft Volume III (flip book for easy reading)
Volume III Book THREE THE BOURNE Chapter I AÑO SANTO
[3] ONE night, I remember, as I travelled, the Camino de Santiago hung straight across the sky, frothy white as the surf on a night in August, and I knew that under it lay the grand church. The star-dust spun in puffs and whorls: Sagittarius drove full into it: Aquila hung poised on the green splendour [Stars] of Altair: Vega waited, calm and blue, for the long-attended coming of Boötes: stars that I did not know were there, stars that I had never seen, swarming like bees, various not in three or seven or ten but in fifty magnitudes, every one differing from another in glory. A shooting- star struck [4][Todos somos peregrines] down for token that another soul was released upon its far journey. The star-swarms reeled and danced, like fire-flies tangled in silver braid : I sped the wandering soul with the ancient blessing: "Dios te guia y la Magdalena." . . .
"Are all these people going to S. James?" [… Todos somos caminantes]
[221] Chapter VI THE PARADISE OF SOULS
[238-244][Bees]
Porphyry has said that souls come down from the moon to the earth under the form of bees, and a Gallegan proverb seems to sustain this :
O que mata un abellon
Ten cen anos de perdon,
O que mata un-ha abella
Ten cen anos de pena. 31
One curious Gallegan use connects the bees with the dead, when the mourners [THE BOURNE 239] circle around the bier with a humming noise, called el Abellon. When the dead are carried to the burial, in Vilancosta, 32 there must be none asleep in the house, lest the soul of the sleeper should escape and accompany the departed.
In Indian symbolism the bee is the soul, the hive is the body, the honey is sweet life. In Greek, the bees are associated with Zeus, and with fertility, much as when they are born from the buried ox in Virgil; but they are souls also, and when Hermes evokes a little dead figure from a burial jar, the soul hovers above in the form of a bee. Here, simply, the winged and fragile creatures [are souls] are the family souls in some other than earthly durance. Therefore, in New England, within the memory of those now living, the bees must be told of any death in the family. To the shrine of S. Juan de Ortega, as already said, went childless women, to pray not vainly, and the white bees that lived in the Saint's tomb were the souls waiting to be born that they carried home in their bosoms. This is a better way to manage the process than [239/240] that of drinking down the person who is to be reborn, like Cuchullain's race.
Dante knew something about these white bees, though, according to his practice, he made his own use of old lore, when he described, about the candida rosa, the swarm of bees, che volando vede e canta :
Le facce tutte avean di fiamma viva,
e Pali d'oro, e Paltro tanto bianco
che nulla neve a quel termine arriva. 33
A story which seems to belong here, as involving a bee, is that of a local saint. There is an early saint recorded by La Fuente, who, like a kind of northern and [The Orchard Saint] colder Dionysus, came from eastward and introduced his people to cider and taught them to plant orchards. 34 Once, when Christ went about in the world with S. Peter, he was thirsty and plucking and opening an apple to eat of it, out came S. Andrés de Teijido. It is possible that this astonishing adventure may be associated, on the other hand, with the fruits of Paradise, for while the apple was es-[THE BOURNE 241]pecially sacred among the Celtic peoples, 35 his shrine, in the extreme north near Cape Ortegal, is much sought in pilgrimage: a proverb says, "A S. Andres de Teijido o [Surrogate of S. James] que non vai de morto vai de vivo," and a pretty cancidn, one of many, is this:
Fun o Santo San Andres
a!6 n'o cabo d'o mundo,
[At the end of the world]
i solo por te ver meu santo
tres dias hai que non durmo! 36
The souls go likewise on pilgrimage to Santiago, in such multitudes that they lighten all the sky, for in Galicia the star dust of the Milky Way, that to Shelley was a swarm of golden bees, is held for the innumerable souls that have to make that journey. Sr. Aribau preserves a notion current in Asturias, that S. James was lonely in his grave, that lay in the far and out of the way, and God said to him : "Don't mind, for all men born have to come and visit you, and those who do not come while [The elder version] they are alive, will come after death."
In Castile, a shooting star is recognized [242] as a departed soul, bound on its long journey, and lest it go astray the poor wandering soul is sped with a prayer, "Dios te guia y la Magdalena."37
I have quoted already the Asturian romance of the Alma en pena. The soul, it will be remembered, crossed the running water on rays from such a consecrated taper as those that send their light [So hacheras are lighted] to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
It seems that the unbaptized babes, and those that died unborn, see light on Candlemas Day. The cigar-makers of Corunna, on that day, set their lights [and candles in February] on a sprig of rosemary --that's for remembrance-- and all the sacred day the little souls are not in darkness.
In Compostella those that should have been Godparents,38 strew the church with fragrant herbs and flowers: the lights avail only for the hours of Mass time, when, also, a dove is loosed above the altar, in allusion nominally to the Feast of the Purification, but with a further reference, in the dim backward and abysm of time, to the souls that live as singing birds in the tree of life. The Good Lady, Our Lady, is [THE BOURNE 243] one with Venus of the doves, the Mountain Mother, and she is the mother of the motherless in Limbo, as indeed of all living.
This is S. Bride, Christ's fostermother, [S. Bride] who passes through the Highland in February and shepherds hear the crying of lambs and no bleating of ewes.39 I have referred already to South-German and Austrian legends of Frau Holde, 40 and the baby souls she keeps, like S. Juan de Ortega, in a great chest, and that flutter before her and about her as she walks, like these little beings with angel faces and wings changing like pigeon's breasts, that flutter in a crowd around Mantegna's Mater Dei in the Milan versions. S. Ursula, who habitually shelters 11,000 little souls under her cloak, in Carpaccio's Glorification at Venice stands [S. Ursula] in the Tree of Life, and the little souls are clustered around at the springing of the leaves, like the fruit of the date palm.
In the end, however, the poor wee babies shall be delivered from their long night time, and coming back to this earth after the Day of Judgement, grow up to the age of thirty-three years, three months, and [244] five days. There, at the blessed age of Our Lord, they shall stay, content, forever, and the earth shall be like Paradise before Adam fell, 41 till at last, after a greater or a lesser expectation, they shall come to see the face of God. This is the end of a story that was told in Galicia by a very old man, about forty years ago.
It was in Spain that Sortorius heard of [The Western isles] that land which lay beyond, out in the strange Hesperian seas, beyond the straits of Hercules ojer the visionary sea:
... an ancient lawn
Far hidden down the solemn West:
A gracious pleasaunce of calm things. . .
And Captains of the older time,
Touched with mild light, or gently sleep,
Or in the orchard shadows keep
Old friendships of the golden prime . . ,42 [244]
[253] The Singing Souls.
From Tundall the full text has not yet been quoted:
Anon he came and saw a tree
That wonderlymickel was and high. . . .
With all kind fruit that savoured well,
Of divers kind and several hue, [254]
Some white, some red, some yellow, some blue,
And all manner herbs of virtue. . . .
Many fowls of diverse colours
Sat among the fruit and the flowers,
On the branches singing so merrily
And made divers melody,
Ilk of them in his best mannere
That song was joyful for to here.
Tundale listened fast and laughed
And thought that was joy enough.
He saw under that ilk tree,
Wonning in cells, great plenty
[Rather like bees] Of men and women shining bright
As gold, with all riches dight . . .
Each one had on his head a crown
Of gold that was of seemly fashion . . .
And sceptres in their hand they had,
With gold they were full richly clad
With bright clothes of rich hue,
As they were kings crowned new.
So richly as they were dight
Was never earthly man of might.
Then spake the angel. . . .
And said: This tree [signifies Holy Church].1
On the doorway the souls sit up among the leaves, the saints and prophets stand [THE BOURNE 255] below, against the jambs, and all is blazing with yellow, red and blue, green and gold. Nothing else gives quite so sharp a vision of what such work looked like when it was still new.
These singing souls appear elsewhere twice and may here be dealt with: one is in the fifteenth- century rendering ot S. Peter Damian's Ad Perennis Vitae Fontem, [S. Peter Damian and S.Perpetua] but the Elizabethan is responsible for their manifestation. The hymn begins "Hierusalem, my happy home " and is signed F. B. D., and the passage is this:
Quite through the streets with silver sound
The flood of life doth flow,
Upon whose banks on every side
The wood of life doth grow.
Those trees forevermore bear fruit
And evermore do spring;
There evermore the angels sit,
And evermore do sing.2
[More on souls and birds later -gb]
[558] APPENDIX IX FRAU HOLDA
HOLDA and Bertha, or Perchta as she is [The Good Lady] called in Southern Germany, are identical with Freyja; and in Aargau another, but nameless, representative of the same supreme goddess is known as a kind and bounteous lady with golden hair, who has her dwelling in the interior of the Schlossberg. A vaulted passage, through whose roof the stars are seen leads into a hall of apparently boundless extent, glittering with thousands of lights where many old men sit fast asleep before an iron trough. Before an oaken trough, in another vault well lighted with candles, sit thousands of sleeping youths and maidens.
And in a third hall, filled with a milky, palpable light, there is an oaken trough containing a countless multitude of sleeping children. These are the unborn. The white lady of the mansion feeds them with anemones and snowdrops, flowers of wondrous [APPENDIX 559] virtue, the stalks of which placed in the mouth, supply for many a day the place of every other kind of food. If there are parents [So, S.Juan de Ortega. Vol. I., page 408] that want a child, the white lady opens the trough with a golden key, takes out a babe and gives it to the midwife. Should it die unbaptized, it comes back to the mountain and is replaced in the same trough. But if several weeks elapse before its death, or if the white lady takes it back because mankind have not been worthy of it, then it is placed in another trough nearer the heart of the mountain, and fed there with honey, which [Bees] the bees of the village deposit every time they swarm in the oaks of the Schlossberg.
From Walker K. Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-Lore, pp. 128-129.
[668] INDEX 358 Bees, 1-437-8, 11-230, III-238-9,240,281
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 01kinguoft Volume I
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 02kinguoft Volume II
http://www.openlibrary.org/details/wayo ... 03kinguoft Volume III
The Way of Saint James contains FOUR BOOKS in 3 Volumes:
Volume I: BOOK ONE: THE PILGRIMAGE: chapters I – V: pp 1-134
Volume I: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters I – VIII: 135-463
Volume II: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters IX – XVI: 1-514
Volume III: BOOK THREE: THE BOURNE: chapters I – VII: 1-370
Volume III: BOOK FOUR: HOMEWARD: chapters I – III: 371-710
NB: It may be (in my case very!) confusing that BOOK TWO: THE WAY is divided over Volume I (chapters I – VIII) and Volume II (chapters IX – XVI). So pp 135-463 occur twice in this 2nd BOOK!
Volume I: BOOK TWO: THE WAY: chapters I – VIII: 135-463
I. SETTING OUT 137
II. HEART OF ARAGON 152
Jaca: The Cathedral 157
S. Juan de la Peña 165
Alfonso el Batallador 192
III. THE BATHS OF TIERMAS 202
Leyre 210
Sangüesa 230
IV. PAMPELUNA 253
V. SAINT SEPULCHRE 286
Puente La Reyna 294
El Sepulchro 309
VI. TOWN CHURCHES 324
Irache 357
VII. THE LOGROÑO ROAD 366
The Spires of Logroño 370
Along the Battlefield 381
S. Mary the Royal 394
VIII. TWO ROAD-MENDERS 406
Sieurs des Orties 431
NOTES 441
See http://pilgrimsplaza-king-index.blogspot.com (second part) for the full text Index in each flip book and Ms King's Forword and http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4462.html for a new exclusive interview with Gary White, the publisher of the 2008 reprint of The Way of Saint James.
Present Georgiana's Gems:
- Georgiana's Gems #1 bees on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4442.html
- Georgiana's Gems #2 Vézelay on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4569.html
- Georgiana's Gems #3 the Magdalen - Mary Magdalen on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4583.html
- Georgiana's Gems #4 Santiago's tau staff on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4589.html
- Georgiana's Gems #5 Fisterra blues on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4613.html
- Georgiana's Gems #6 Santiago as guide of dead souls on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4662.html
- Georgiana's Gems #7 Lusitania (Portugal) and Lug on http://www.pilgrimage-to-santiago.com/b ... c4694.html
Future Georgiana's Gems may follow on birds, cypress, vista, faces, beards, Daniel, Ester, Judith, Sheba, Heavenly and Mortal Twins, axe and mallet, Paul, Nazarean, syncretism (III-294, 307, 308, 311, 313, 357, 367; law of, 307), heresy, Priscillian (I-59, II-222, III-237, 264, 316, 334, 345, 624) and references to connected authors and books. Suggestions are welcome! Mind due: we're no experts in these fields so if you know better please enlighten us! [highlighting -gb]
In The Way of Saint James Ms King does not mention: Beda, Holy Company, lizard, Lug, Lugh, Luso, Queimada.
Enjoy!
PS 19-12-08 more on bees: http://www.andrewgough.co.uk/bee2_1.html
PPS 18-2-10 See a picture of the Fontana delle Api, 'The Bee Fountain': Piazza Barberini, Rome. 1644. From the book mentioned here:
Anyone who is interested in what is so fascinating about 'The Shell' should read Shell, A word's pedigree, available at http://www.antiqbook.com/boox/alt/43009.shtml by COX, IAN (ED.): The scallop. Studies of a shell and its influences on humankind, by eight authors. London, Shell, 1957, in-4to, 135 p., + 1 ll., richly illustrated in colour, orig. clothbound, fully ill. with gilt ornaments of scallops. The scallop in art, as heraldic forms, as food.. Contents: Shell, A word's pedigree, Le living scallop, A symbol in ancient times, the badge of St. James, * The cradle of Venus, Escallops in Armory, An excursion into the Americas, The scallop at the table.
* See attachment in miscellaneous-topics/topic4199.html