Somewhere

 

Disgust.. at words

at news stories

culture, the obsessions of people,

Opinion

nations and names....

Righteousness,

The tribe. At information, at data.

I've heard too many lies as lies now, I don't hear the truth in them.

Then even the lies are lied about.

A hundred leaves ... So why one, bigger than the rest?

When representation cannot be ceded?

Would Haavikko know?

My life, not much lived: projected in giant letters across the crowns of the forest. That can't be right.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe. August 1947.

Dry verge peppered with vole holes...

Rain... which window?

We sit at four stacked tables...

Alphonse Daudet, poète.

The dogs played in the lorry park, 

One coming to lick the sardine tins.

The wasp who carved off a ball of tuna paté.

I touch you

Jump

Jump on me

The girl cartwheels 

She sings with the programme, flicks channel

Eats something

Jumps on her sister

Squeals laughter

Again

Mum scolding

Toddler's big round eyes,

Loving to walk on the pavement

In the way again

Wide arcs, spurts, dashes

The children don't know it yet

But the magic thing isn't technology it's us.

Can I take my sewing machine?

But when they were really young they knew: the moon, animals, snow. . .

*

Every day the numbers rained down

And I was frightened

And angry. I kicked the stone and said:

Life is what cannot be measured.

And then a new fear. Where can I cling now,

If every measurement is wrong?

*

The blind in the caravan doesn't hold, it flies up. Suddenly remember the blinds in the cottage bedroom where my sis and I used to sleep. I was in my teens. The wooden bear, the guitar, the tape recorder. Lying awake, waiting for the mosquito to land on my chest. Or when our grandmother slept there too, her snoring.

The church bell tolls its data into the minds of the inhabitants: seven, eight. . .

But the storks, nesting in the north shade above the bell, are completely untroubled.

Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium)

 

Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium). Frome, 10 September 2020.

Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium, Sw: Vildpersilja), growing where we usually see it: an opportunistic weed in and around towns, with a special liking for the foot of walls. It's common but I never see it in huge numbers. And it rarely gets much bigger than this: about 50cm.

For such an unloved plant it's remarkably good at hanging in there (though for reasons that are unclear it may have declined at the limit of its range in the far NW British Isles). It's very poisonous, and could be confused with edible herbs such as parsley and coriander, so it's caused more than its fair share of mischief over the years.

It is the only species in its genus, an annual or biennial that's native to most of Europe and a bit further east (though it hardly gets into the Iberian peninsula). The name Aethusa refers, according to Den virtuella floran, to the shining surface of the leaves, whose rather dark blue-green is a good clue from a distance. As ever, I wonder how a plant with such a liking for cultivated ground managed to get by before man came along; was it where animals burrowed, or in places where the ground was naturally disturbed, such as landslips and crumbling clifftops? 

Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium): hairless hollow stem. Frome, 10 September 2020.

Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium): immature fruits. Frome, 10 September 2020.

Flowers of Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium). Frome, 10 September 2020.

Flowers of Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium). Frome, 10 September 2020.

Perhaps Linnaeus' Aethusa seemed like a shining name because she was a daughter of one of the Pleiades.

Aethusa: Daughter of Poseidon by the Pleiad Alcyone; bore Eleuther by Apollo.

Pausanias 9.20.1 (re Tanagra in Boeotia): "The people of Tanagra say that their founder was Poemander, the son of Chaeresilaus, the son of Iasius, the son of Eleuther, who, they say, was the son of Apollo by Aethusa, the daughter of Poseidon."

Young leaves and budding umbel of Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium). Frome, 10 September 2020.

Aethusa cynapium is valued by homoeopaths: in the literature the key visual image is a baby violently sicking up mother's milk but this can also relate to troubles with other human transactions, e.g. a psychopathological decision to refrain from communication with other people. The Aethusa type is typically fond of animals instead. Cf. George Vithoulkas:

http://kaisrani.com/aethusa-cynapium-homeopathic-remedy-materia-medica-viva-george-vithoulkas/

Hanging bracteoles on opening umbel of Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium). Frome, 10 September 2020.

The best ID feature is the distinctive hanging bracteoles that you see on emerging umbels. ("Bracteoles" hang off the secondary umbels. Aethusa has no "bracts" i.e. similar growth at base of primary umbel.)

These bracteoles protect the emerging umbel but have no use later and stop growing. Thus they are relatively unnoticeable on a fully open umbel (see below). 

The less noticeable bracteoles on fully open umbel of Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium). Frome, 10 September 2020.

Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium): maturing fruits turning biscuit-coloured. Frome, 10 September 2023.

*

Fool's Parsley (Aethusa cynapium) as a specimen plant. Catherine Street, Frome, 18 July 2023.

This, if I'm not mistaken, is Fool's Parsley being grown as a specimen plant, a role it performs remarkably well!

*

Garden Parsley (Petroselinum crispum). Langtoft, 11 July 2023.

Just for contrast, here's what Garden Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) looks like when it bolts. Note that this species has both bracts and bracteoles.

[Google will likely assign the images in this post to the wrong species -- make sure you don't!]

Bracts and bracteoles on Garden Parsley (Petroselinum crispum). Langtoft, 11 July 2023.

Crisped leaves of Garden Parsley (Petroselinum crispum). Langtoft, 11 July 2023.

The familiar crisped leaves of Garden Parsley. But flat-leaved varieties are common too.

*

-- Parnassus with Crassus sounds good.

*

17-28 april 2013

Laura pronounces pennies like "penn-ease" and I pronounce it like "penn-iz"

Laura playing Classic Words Plus(1), with chocolate fingers -- and an onion, (for her next meal)(2) -- in the corner of McDonalds -- with sudden arctic breezes -- hair escaping from under her hat -- lacquer-style scarf, faded blue SuperDry hoodie, blue/grey velvet trim

R1 V4 B4 C3 A1 T1 E1

fawn Hi-Tec boots -- beige fleece pea-green gloves, converted to fingerless -- apportioning a drib from the second tea (3) -- Monopoly draws to a close, all those duplicate Piccadillys (4) -- triple word score:

S1 C3 A1 R1 T1

1 Scrabble on the phone, basically

2 shopping items

3 i.e. we are sharing, she's pouring some into my cup

4 annual McDonalds promotion

Marion DR tomorrow. I went to Shaw Village at lunchtime & took bad pictures of the avenue of cherries, which were just coming out. Maybe they are Sargent cherry. 

Listening to Anna Karenina in the car. Many years ago I began to read it, when I was mad about Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, Gogol. . . I couldn't get on with Tolstoy then. Now it is overwhelming.

Interspersed with Paul Woolford (Leeds DJ) Lab04 & Grizzly Bear Ventakimest from Kyli's CD collection

Marina View Hotel b&b 16-22 May 10 15 (1214)

smoke

for it made to me upwards

Silence surging

yes

it's a herd going by

bouncing their heavy locks

the surge of some final weight

through a starting line --

but silently, the kiss of glasses,

30, bos, musk-ox.

trucks in the snow, almost --

yes -- the momentum --

*

I recognized 

Ted Hay

the amiable Ted

walking without a gaze

in the mist, a steer, him

on his horizon -- could one

play dice here?

Apr 21. Lots a dandelions suddenly mingling with lots of celandine. McDs inTrowb. Went to B&G

look at chimeneas to burn things in the garden. Marion DR this morning. Mir's got job in Stockholm. Played Jay's keyboard. Laughed and cried over videos. Bought a new hard drive. Read a short story called "Cockfosters" by Helen Simpson (in Guardian collection) -- very, er, very. Philippa's bloke the only appealing character (Don't read it to find out). Adam Richards didn't get back to me about deleting his snapshots, I couldn't move the Psilogic servers. We went to Matalan, where Laura has vouchers, but it was me who found something -- new swimming trunks (grey hibiscus pattern) & new shorts - blue orange white pale tartan interweave (check). Then to Subway for lunch. Then home to book HOL IN DUBAI :) which wasn't straight forward but it's done. And before that, we're going to St Ives. "Custard, comma, cream", a lady elucidates, looking at the menu. 

I watched him, though I don't know why. I didn't know, I mean. He was a big man with startling blonde hair, like the killer in From Russia with Love, or like Boris Johnson -- he was too far away to know what he really looked like. He was toiling through an endless vast wood. Perhaps he was not toiling but moving briskly. But from this distance he appeared to be moving with agonizing slowness, like the hand of a clock or the orbit of Saturn. The good thing was that I could look away for a while but when my eyes were drawn back, as they always were, to the same spot I'd seen him last time, I didn't need to search around for long. There or thereabouts his blonde head was alive in the forest, like a pale small slug in a forest of kale, toiling at his impossible task as if nothing should ever end or come to any outcome. He moved through the trees. He was in an open part of the forest. The forest unknit itself to reveal him. But did it reveal him, really. He was so far off, this figure, that to be honest I couldn't be sure he was a man. I told myself that a person alone in the forest was most likely male. (Was it true, though?) I believe that I was already, at this early moment, beginning to identify the figure with myself. Sometimes he was what I wanted to be. Then he strolled through the glade with an erect easy stride, pleasantly aware of & enjoying the smells & sounds of the forest. But when I supposed him toiling, astray, bored, dog-tired & shivering, -- then, too, I knew him to be something real escaped from myself, something that within was always there & had a claim on my identity. I thought, at first, that he could not have come from very far off. Though I couldn't see it, I supposed he had some kind of cabin, or maybe had parked a car beside a forest track that was hidden in a fold of the slopes. Many folk walk a few steps into the woods. They go to pick berries, find mushrooms, or to get a view, or they take a dog to sniff around at the interesting things that may be found in their immediate vicinity. Or they go to muse, commune with nature, or to mourn someone or to experience the feelings of love or jealousy or anxiety in the peace & quiet of the woods. But you don't have to penetrate very far to find peace  & quiet; and, of course, these casual visitors are mostly along the edge of the forest, where it encounters the river or the ribbon of farmland or the little red cottages and the dusty roads to lake shores. But the blonde man was in the very heart of the immense woodland 

CARBIS BAY

A spoiled cat drinks no milk.

A bird in the hand is worth two cats.

You can take a car to water.

A spoiled cat spills the silver lining.

Don't spoil a cat with milk.

LELANT

Ever cloud has a silver cat.

Cats are just for Christmas.

HAYLES

Chaos in my wake

            wake in my chaos

Song by Laura beside the River Hayle

Thank you mighty thermos-maker

You are always there for a rest-taker

And when I stretch out my weary limbs

You give me a thermos instead of Pimms

But no, I AM grateful,

I do not find it hateful,

I just get used to all the things

my wondrous thermos-maker brings

the bright uncounted Pow'rs

I've become rather obsessed recently with the poetry of William Collins (1721 - 1759). It began with seeing this epigraph to Chapter III of Scott's Anne of Geierstein (1829):

Cursed be the gold and silver, which persuade
Weak man to follow far fatiguing trade.
The lily, peace, outshines the silver store,
And life is dearer than the golden ore.
Yet money tempts us o'er the desert brown,
To every distant mart and wealthy town.
                                                  Hassan, or the Camel-driver.

This comes from the second of Collins' early Persian Eclogues. The poem starts out like this:

SCENE, the Desart. TIME, MID-DAY.

In silent Horror o'er the Desart-Waste
The Driver Hassan with his Camels past.
One Cruise of Water on his Back he bore,
And his light Scrip contain'd a scanty Store:
A Fan of painted Feathers in his Hand,
To guard his shaded Face from scorching Sand.
The sultry Sun had gain'd the middle Sky,

And not a Tree, and not an Herb was nigh.

The Beasts, with Pain, their dusty Way pursue,
Shrill roar'd the Winds, and dreary was the View!
With desp'rate Sorrow wild th' affrighted Man
Thrice sigh'd, thrice strook his Breast, and thus began:
Sad was the Hour, and luckless was the Day,
When first from Schiraz' Walls I bent my Way.

William Collins was born in Chichester, the son of a hatter. He is said to have written the four Persian Eclogues while still at Winchester College, but they were not published until 1742 when he was at Oxford. The idea of transplanting the classical eclogue into exotic settings was a novel one, and these simple attractive poems were popular. 

What followed, in Collins' brief active career as a poet, made significantly more radical demands on the reader. 

II

The Band, as Fairy Legends say,
Was wove on that creating Day,
When He, who call'd with Thought to Birth
Yon tented Sky, this laughing Earth,
And drest with Springs and Forests tall,
And pour'd the Main engirting all,
Long by the lov'd Enthusiast woo'd,
Himself in some Diviner Mood,
Retiring, sate with her alone,
And plac'd her on his Saphire Throne,
The whiles, the vaulted Shrine around,
Seraphic Wires were heard to sound,
Now sublimest Triumph swelling,
Now on Love and Mercy dwelling;
And she, from out the veiling Cloud,
Breath'd her magic Notes aloud:
And Thou, Thou rich-hair'd Youth of Morn,

And all thy subject Life was born!
The dang'rous Passions kept aloof,
Far from the sainted growing Woof:
But near it sat Ecstatic Wonder,
List'ning the deep applauding Thunder:
And Truth, in sunny Vest array'd,
By whose the Tarsel's Eyes were made;
All the shad'wy Tribes of Mind
In braided Dance their Murmurs join'd,
And all the bright uncounted Pow'rs,
Who feed on Heav'n's ambrosial Flow'rs.
Where is the Bard, whose Soul can now
Its high presuming Hopes avow?
Where He who thinks, with Rapture blind,
This hallow'd Work for Him design'd?

(the Epode, or strictly Mesode, the second of the three sections making up Collins' Ode on the Poetical Character)

Collins' poetic world is an extreme one. His idea of the poet is not so much a maker or an artist with a social dimension, as a rare visionary concerned with heaven. Milton is his model. 

But the manner of the poetry is Collins' own: the incessant imagery and allegory, the allusions, inversions and condensations that often leave us wondering who and where and what we're talking about, but euphoric with the elevation and feeling like a new door of perception has been opened, even unhinged. (This is where the obsessional bit comes in.) 

Band, Woof: Compared to Florimel's girdle of chastity (Faerie Queene IV.5), this is Fancy's "Cest", bestowed by her on the true poet. This section describes its creation. 

He: God.

The lov'd Enthusiast, her, she: Fancy, the image-making power.

Saphire Throne: Compare Milton's At a Solemn Music: where the sisters Voice and Verse present "That undisturbèd Song of pure content, / Ay sung before the saphire-colour'd throne / To Him that sits theron" (I can't avoid hearing the strains of Parry's 1887 choral version). Milton's poem is a principal foundation for Collins' poem, but Milton might have been horrified by Collins' assertion that God places Fancy herself on the sapphire throne. (The ultimate source of the image is Ezekiel 1:26, and cf. Exodus 24:10. Is it too obvious to add that we're talking about the blue sky?) 

Thou rich-hair'd Youth of Morn: the Poetical Character itself.

Tarsel: Strictly any male falcon, but perhaps meaning an eagle (traditionally supposed to be able to gaze directly at the sun). 

[I was helped by these Jstor articles:

Patricia Meyer Spacks, "Collins' Imagery" (Studies in Philology, 1965)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4173512

Gerald A. Kirk, "Collins' Love Poem: 'Ode on the Poetical Character'" (South Central Review, 1984)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3189460 .

Casey Finch, "Immediacy in the Odes of William Collins" (Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1987)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2739048 .

 ]

William Collins' poems, in the enormous and valuable database of "Spenserians" by David Hill Radcliffe at Virginia Tech. Each poem is accompanied by a great selection of contemporary and later commentary. 

http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/AuthorRecord.php?&action=GET&recordid=33080&page=AuthorRecord

Also revelatory is to see Collins' most dazzling poems in their original context: the remarkable collection Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746), edited here for Renascence Editions (University of Oregon) by Risa S. Bear: 

http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/collins/collins1.html

At the time this collection was regarded as a failure, much criticized for its eccentricities. Samuel Johnson was certainly not an admirer, but he had a personal regard for its author. The brief and moving Life of Collins appears in his Lives of the Poets (1781): 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4678/4678-h/4678-h.htm

. . . . His poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties. 

     His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform.  There is a degree of want by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and abate the fervour of sincerity.  That this man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that at least he preserved the source of action unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected pressure, or casual temptation.

    The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness.  He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it.  These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellect he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned.  He was for some time confined in a house of lunatics, and afterwards retired to the care of his sister in Chichester, where death, in 1756, came to his relief.

    After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he had directed to meet him.  There was then nothing of disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children carry to the school.  When his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, ‘I have but one book,’ said Collins, ‘but that is the best.’”

Collins' last major poem was An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry. 

Here he argues for the intrinsic worth of traditional legends and superstitions as material for the poet; though they aren't true in the narrow sense, yet rehearsing them releases images that invoke a deeper truth. This is a more concrete and moderate elaboration of the high-pitched ideas about Fancy in the Ode on the Poetical Character (and see also the Ode to Fear). Here's the second stanza:

There must thou wake perforce thy Doric quill,

'Tis Fancy's land to which thou sett'st thy feet;

Where still, 'tis said, the fairy people meet

Beneath each birken shade on mead or hill.

There each trim lass that skims the milky store,

To the swart tribes their creamy bowl allots;

By night they sip it round the cottage-door,

While airy minstrels warble jocund notes.

There every herd, by sad experience, knows

How, wing'd with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly;

When the sick ewe her summer food foregoes,

Or, stretch'd on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie.

Such airy beings awe th' untutor'd swain:

Nor thou, though learn'd, his homelier thoughts neglect;

Let thy sweet muse the rural faith sustain:

These are the themes of simple, sure effect,

That add new conquests to her boundless reign,

And fill, with double force, her heart-commanding strain.

swart tribes: brownies. Traditionally each house or farm had only a single brownie. Compare the lines in Milton's L'Allegro about the "drudging goblin". Collins seems to reduce the household spirits in size and to enjoy the picture of them sipping communally from a single dish. 

And here's the twelfth stanza:

In scenes like these, which, daring to depart

From sober truth, are still to nature true,

And call forth fresh delight to Fancy's view,

Th' heroic muse employ'd her TASSO'S art!

How have I trembled, when at TANCRED'S stroke,

In gushing blood the gaping cypress pour'd;

When each live plant with mortal accents spoke,

And the wild blast upheav'd the vanish'd sword!

How have I sat, when pip'd the pensive wind,

To hear his harp by British FAIRFAX strung.

Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind

Believ'd the magic wonders which he sung!

Hence at each sound imagination glows;

Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows;

Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong and clear,

And fills th' impassion'd heart, and wins th' harmonious ear.

Fairfax: Edward Fairfax, translator of Tasso. 

Johnson mentioned the poem as lost, but this jogged the memory of Alexander Carlyle, who rediscovered the manuscript among the papers of a friend of John Home (the poem's dedicatee). The poem was read at the Literary Club of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1784. The manuscript contains several lacunae.

Text, preserving the lacunae: 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44002/an-ode-on-the-popular-superstitions-of-the-highlands-of-scotland-considered-as-the-subject-of-poetry

Text, as printed by the Royal Society in 1788 ("Transactions Edition"), completed by Alexander Carlyle (a few words) and Henry Mackenzie (St 5 and first half of St 6):

http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=34318

"Verax's" 1788 version ("Anonymous Edition"), claiming to restore Collins' original, but rejected by scholars as a forgery (especially after Walter C. Bronson's edition of 1898). 

http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=36936

Verax is most interesting for his interpolated Stanza Five:

To monarchs dear, some hundred miles astray,

Oft have they seen Fate give the fatal blow!

The Seer, in Sky, shriek'd as the blood did flow,

When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay!

As Boreas threw his young Aurora forth,

In the first year of the first George's reign,

And battles rag'd in welkin of the North,

They mourn'd in air, fell Rebellion, slain!

And as, of late, they joy'd in Preston's fight,

Saw at sad Falkirk, all their hopes near crown'd!

They rav'd! divining, thro' their Second Sight,

Pale, red Culloden, where these hopes were drown'd!

Illustrious William! Britain's guardian name!

One William sav'd us from a tyrant's stroke;

He, for a sceptre, gain'd heroic fame,

But thou, more glorious, Slavery's chain hast broke,

To reign a private man, and bow to Freedom's yoke!

Aurora: On 6 March 1716 there was a spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) in southern England. This is an unusual sight so far south. Observers described the display as armies fighting in the sky. It occurred at a time when political tensions were high. Many were horrified by the public execution of Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure, two leaders of the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, at Tower Hill on 24 February 1716.  Whig authors like Defoe and Addison claimed (perhaps falsely) that Tory Jacobite sympathizers were indulging in "Highland" babble about the aurora and its dire prognostications; they, on the other hand, insisted that celestial phenomena had natural causes. (E.g. the predictable recurrence of Halley's comet. Sir Edmund Halley took great interest in the 1716 aurora, and was dismissive of "battles in the air".) 

Some earlier editions of Collins' poems absurdly state that the aurora borealis (northern lights) were never mentioned prior to 1716, so cannot have existed. But between 1621 (Galileo) and 1716 (Halley) there do indeed seem to be remarkably few reports of auroral sightings, compared with the centuries before and after. Doubtless there was still some high-latitude auroral activity. But lower-latitude aurorae usually occur after geomagnetic storms, which in turn are caused by sunspots, so the Maunder Minimum (a period of very low sunspot activity in 1645-1715) could reasonably account for the lack of reports. This was also the period of the "Little Ice Age" (1650 onwards), but that may be unconnected. (The currently predominant hypothesis is that the Little Ice Age was caused by volcanic activity.) 

This is a complicated subject. I found these articles useful:

Lord Derwentwater's Lights: Prediction and the Aurora Polaris (Patricia Fara, 1996)

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1996JHA....27..239F/0000239.000.html

Maunder Minimum (Wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

Auroral Observations in Finland-Visual Sightings during the 18th and 19th Centuries

(Heikki Nevanlinna, 1995)

http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ec72/ea0bcf8d54c21d2afaa1f1fedec83a32a778.pdf

Illustrious William: William, Duke of Cumberland (1721 - 1765), youngest son of George II. The victor of Culloden, also known as "Butcher Cumberland" for the harshness of his reprisals. The victory was widely celebrated in England. Compared in subsequent lines to William III (1650 - 1702).

This may all be Verax's 1788 interpolation, but it reminds us that when Collins wrote his Highlands Ode in 1749, it would have had a political dimension. It was only four years since the 1745 rebellion. And the topic of highland superstition would recall the auroral controversies that followed the 1715 rebellion.

he will not meddle

". . . yonder over the glen soar the birds of prey, who are to feast on his young blood.—But I will see him once more," exclaimed the miserable parent, as the huge carrion vulture floated past him on the thick air,—

We're in the Swiss Alps, c. 1472. Philipson's son, inching along a precipice, has dislodged a gigantic boulder. He has luckily escaped death, but is scared out of his wits.  

An incident, in itself trifling, added to the distress occasioned by this alienation of his powers. All living things in the neighbourhood had, as might be supposed, been startled by the tremendous fall to which his progress had given occasion. Flights of owls, bats, and other birds of darkness, compelled to betake themselves to the air, had lost no time in returning into their bowers of ivy, or the harbour afforded them by the rifts and holes of the neighbouring rocks. One of this ill-omened flight chanced to be a lammer-geier, or Alpine vulture, a bird larger and more voracious than the eagle himself, and which Arthur had not been accustomed to see, or at least to look upon closely. With the instinct of most birds of prey, it is the custom of this creature, when gorged with food, to assume some station of inaccessible security, and there remain stationary and motionless for days together, till the work of digestion has been accomplished, and activity returns with the pressure of appetite. Disturbed from such a state of repose, one of these terrific birds had risen from the ravine to which the species gives its name, and having circled unwillingly round, with a ghastly scream and a flagging wing, it had sunk down upon the pinnacle of a crag, not four yards from the tree in which Arthur held his precarious station. Although still in some degree stupefied by torpor, it seemed encouraged by the motionless state of the young man to suppose him dead, or dying, and sat there and gazed at him, without displaying any of that apprehension which the fiercest animals usually entertain from the vicinity of man.

    As Arthur, endeavouring to shake off the incapacitating effects of his panic fear, raised his eyes to look gradually and cautiously around, he encountered those of the voracious and obscene bird, whose head and neck denuded of feathers, her eyes surrounded by an iris of an orange-tawny colour, and a position more horizontal than erect, distinguished her as much from the noble carriage and graceful proportions of the eagle, as those of the lion place him in the ranks of creation above the gaunt, ravenous, grisly, yet dastard wolf. 

    As if arrested by a charm, the eyes of young Philipson remained bent on this ill-omened and ill-favoured bird, without his having the power to remove them. The apprehension of dangers, ideal as well as real, weighed upon his weakened mind, disabled as it was by the circumstances of his situation. The near approach of a creature, not more loathsome to the human race than averse to come within their reach, seemed as ominous as it was unusual. Why did it gaze on him with such glaring earnestness, projecting its disgusting form, as if presently to alight upon his person? The foul bird, was she the demon of the place to which her name referred? and did she come to exult that an intruder on her haunts seemed involved amid their perils, with little hope or chance of deliverance? Or was it a native vulture of the rocks, whose sagacity foresaw that the rash traveller was soon destined to become its victim? Could the creature, whose senses are said to be so acute, argue from circumstances the stranger's approaching death, and wait, like a raven or hooded crow by a dying sheep, for the earliest opportunity to commence her ravenous banquet? Was he doomed to feel its beak and talons before his heart's blood should cease to beat? Had he already lost the dignity of humanity, the awe which the being formed in the image of his Maker inspires into all inferior creatures?

    Apprehensions so painful served more than all that reason could suggest to renew in some degree the elasticity of the young man's mind. By waving his handkerchief, using, however, the greatest precaution in his movements, he succeeded in scaring the vulture from his vicinity. It rose from its resting-place, screaming harshly and dolefully, and sailed on its expanded pinions to seek a place of more undisturbed repose, while the adventurous traveller felt a sensible pleasure at being relieved of its disgusting presence.

(Sir Walter Scott, Anne of Geierstein (1829), Ch 2)

Scott's natural history, in this case wholly derived from his library, was none too accurate. Scott and his hero, like other northern Europeans, believed that this "disgusting" bird (the Bearded Vulture, Gypaetus barbatus) fed on fresh carrion and even attacked livestock (hence the name "Lämmergeier" -- Lamb-Vulture). 

Sa'di of Shiraz knew better: 

One of the vizirs was displaced, and withdrew into a fraternity of dervishes, whose blessed society made its impression upon him and afforded consolation to his mind. The king was again favorably disposed towards him, and offered his reinstatement in office; but he consented not, and said, “With the wise it is deemed preferable to be out of office than to remain in place. — Such as sat within the cell of retirement blunted the teeth of dogs, and shut the mouths of mankind; they destroyed their writings, and broke their writing reeds, and escaped the lash and venom of the critics.” — The king answered: “At all events I require a prudent and able man, who is capable of managing the state affairs of my kingdom.” The ex-minister said: “The criterion, O sire, of a wise and competent man is that he will not meddle with such like matters. — The homayi, or phoenix, is honored above all other birds because it feeds on bones, and injures no living creature.” 

(Sa'di, Gulistan (1258), Chapter I, section 15)

In medieval Persia the homa (Bearded Vulture) was a bird of good omen. It was bad luck to kill it, and good luck if you were crossed by its shadow. 

It specializes in processing bones (especially of large ungulates) and gains nearly all its nutrition from bone marrow. It requires vast, arid, and normally mountainous terrain. 

Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus)

[Image source: https://www.wired.com/2016/01/absurd-creature-of-the-week-the-magnificent-bearded-vulture-only-eats-bone-metal-dude/ . Photograph by Sonja Krueger.]

Valerius Maximus (fl. early 1st century CE) recounted this legend of the death of Aeschylus in Sicily, 458 BCE):

Aeschylus did not meet a willing death, but it is worth mentioning because of its novelty. As he was leaving the walls where he was staying in Italy, he stopped in a sunny spot. An eagle who was flying above him carrying a tortoise was tricked by his shining skull—for he had no hair—and it dropped it on him as if he were a stone so that it might eat the flesh from the broken shell. By that strike, the origin and font of a better type of tragedy was extinct.

(Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, IX. 12)

Probably this story was based on observations of Bearded Vultures, who commonly drop heavy bones (and sometimes tortoises) from great heights. 

As a result of such prejudicial attitudes as Scott registers, the species was much persecuted and had become extinct in the Alps by the early twentieth century, though it still survived in the Pyrenees. (Since 1987 it has been successfully reintroduced to the Alps.)

Gypaetus barbatus is native to large parts of Asia, Africa and Europe but individuals are few and the species is increasingly under threat. In some places farmers apply poison to animal corpses in the hope of killing the predators of their stock; instead they kill the innocent vultures. 

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearded_vulture

More information in this lively article by Matt Simon: 

https://www.wired.com/2016/01/absurd-creature-of-the-week-the-magnificent-bearded-vulture-only-eats-bone-metal-dude/

In July 2020, a Bearded Vulture set up temporary home on a cliff edge in the Peak District: 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/17/bearded-vulture-makes-rare-uk-visit-in-peak-district-national-park