Word & Song By Anthony Esolen podcast

—

Time for a comedy for our Film of the Week , and one of my father’s favorites, too! The week’s touchstone, birthday , puts me in mind of the zaniness that families with little kids so often get used to, when if you’d told them beforehand that that’s what they’d have to deal with, they might have run away from the altar as fast as they could. Oh, I’m only teasing, of course. If the truth be known, a lot of parents look forward to the mischief and merriment they themselves will get to enjoy with the children — and even, sure, helping them to a bit of merriment now and then that they’d not have thought of on their own, as when I’d dance around the floor grabbing toddler Davey by both hands and swinging him for glee, as Luciano Pavarotti sang what was then Davey’s favorite, “Funiculi, Funicula!” But what do you do when you’ve got three very little boys and a dog, and they get into a lot of scrapes, and you’ve gone through a string of nannies who can’t last more than a week? In our film, the young lawyer Harry King (Robert Young, who will later have three other kids in the hugely underrated comedy show Father Knows Best ) puts an ad in the paper, and hires, unseen, a new nanny named Lynn Belvedere. But much to his surprise, and it’s no less of a surprise to his wife Tacey ( Maureen O'Hara ), Lynn Belvedere turns out to be a middle-aged man, who doesn’t even like children. Or so he says. To say that Mr. Belvedere is unusual is the understatement of the century. “May I ask what your profession is?” asks Mrs. King when she shows Mr. Belvedere his room. “Certainly,” he replies. “I am a genius.” Help Word & Song with an Upgrade to Paid Mr. Belvedere is played by Clifton Webb , the perfect fellow for the role: intelligent, fussy, witty, sometimes acidulous, but always with a sneaky humor about him. How can he possibly tame the boys and their dog? How can he get the toddler Roddy to stop flinging his oatmeal when he’s at table? But when you see Mr. Belvedere, the question is rather the reverse: how can he not do it, or rather how can the boys resist his brains and his determined and deadpan playfulness? And what’s he doing anyway in this little suburb with the absurd name, Hummingbird Hill? Why did he reply to the ad? He doesn’t need the money. He’s been all over the world. “Is there anything you haven’t been?” asks Mrs. King, breathless with amazement. “Yes,” says Mr. Belvedere, with that dry matter-of-fact hilarity. “I’ve never been an idler or a parasite.” Give the Gift of Word & Song Of course there’s got to be trouble, because what’s comedy without trouble? In this film, it’s provided by the human foibles of snoopiness, hasty judgment, and wanting to put on a good show in front of other people. The town’s snoop, and also the town’s biggest gossip, is the Kings’ neighbor, Mr. Appleton (Richard Haydn; you’ll remember him as the impresario “Uncle” Max in The Sound of Music ). Then there’s Harry’s boss at the law office, Horatio Hammond (Ed Begley, Sr.; see him as a good man whose day has passed, in Patterns ). Mr. Hammond gets nervous when the silly gossip goes around Hummingbird Hill that Mr. Belvedere is more than just a nanny for Mrs. King. Even Harry ends up suspicious for a while. That the suspicion is absurd doesn’t compromise the comedy, because the whole film dances merrily along the border of absurdity, without however making us doubt that a creature such as Mr. Belvedere could exist. In a lot of American humor — think of The Three Stooges — the joke is on the upper-class snobs, but here the snob is the source of all the humor, and the joke is on the rest of us silly people who now and then take ourselves too seriously. We’re like the awful bust of Nero that the Kings put in the room they’ve set up for the nanny they think they’re going to get, because, after all, it would be good to show the nanny that they’re people of culture, and maybe some of it will rub off on her. The bust of Nero is however the first thing Mr. Belvedere gets rid of. And that too is part of the genius of this film — we can go from the wild romp of physical comedy to a subtle wink of the eye at human folly, our own folly. My father thought Clifton Webb was first-rate, and he was right about that. Jay Ward and his fellow creators of that zany cartoon The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show thought so too, which is why they modeled the bespectacled talking dog, Mr. Peabody, the genius with advanced degrees in everything from everywhere, after Mr. Belvedere. If you enjoy this film, check him out also in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell. Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, join us as a subscriber. We thank you for reading Word and Song!…

1
When Morning Gilds the Skies

5 days ago

—

Our Word of the Week , birthday , has me thinking about childhood again, and all the more since a lot of old birthday pictures have been showing up on our screen. There’s one of old friends of ours, from almost thirty years ago, when Davey was invited to a party for a little boy who was his age, in a family where there were eight kids at the time, four boys and four girls — I think the ninth child, a boy, broke the tie! They were about the most joyful family we ever hung around, fellow homeschoolers, too, and I’d like to think that they sang our Hymn of the Week in their church, as we sang it in ours. It’s a youthful and exuberant song, full of energy, well to be sung by children and by their parents and grandparents, a song of dawn no matter what time of the day it is. Upgrade to Support Word & Song Now, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the sun rise. We’ve become night owls at our house. But I have memories of the early morning — waiting for the high school bus at 7:15 AM, in the winter, before the sun was up, and seeing Venus in the eastern sky, against that deep beautiful blue that has no name. I guess the school bus wasn’t so fit for singing, but it does make me wonder what it’s like to be up before the sun, with your fellows, singing and praying. What would you sing about at that time? The fundamental thing: that God is God. Praise is the thing — pure praise — to cry out, “How excellent it is that you exist!” And then if you move from that to how God’s love has been made most gloriously manifest in the world and in your life, you will cry out the refrain of our hymn today, “May Jesus Christ be praised!” Praise is the most gracious response to grace : you are given a free gift, even the unsurpassable gifts of life and redemption, and you respond with a free gift of your own, the gift of praise. There’s no petition, no focus on yourself or your needs or your feelings, nothing but the simple and wholehearted gift. And that, as it seemed to the anonymous German poet who gave us this hymn back in 1828, is just as it ought to be. He wrote fourteen stanzas of six lines each, with the third and sixth lines of each stanza the same refrain, “Gelobt sei Jesu Christus!” I’ve found the book on line. It’s in an old German hymnal like many I’ve seen, in German and English: you get the words but not the music. That’s because people learned the melodies by heart, from singing so many songs all the time. Just get them started, Mr. Organist, and they’ll be fine! The poet says, in one stanza after another, that Jesus Christ ought to be praised, no matter what time of day it is, how old you are, whether you’re poor or rich, when you think about your blessings or you feel the weight of your sins; and all the nations of the world ought to do so too, joining the heavens and all their hosts of angels. There’s something attractively brave about that. “All is grace,” said Therese of Lisieux, her last words, words of love. You may have the hymn as translated by the great Edward Caswall; ours today is by Robert Bridges, the good friend of one of our favorite poets at Word and Song, Gerard Manley Hopkins , and a poet to reckon with in his own right. And I haven’t seen any English hymnal with all fourteen stanzas, so if there are differences from one version to another, it may just be that the editors chose certain stanzas rather than others. The version below is a translation of stanzas 1, 9, 12, 13, and 14. Better than read it — sing it! Please Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to restoring the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, about words themselves, hymns, poetry, classic film, folk music, and popular song. To see new posts please join us as a subscriber. Thank you for reading Word & Song . Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published When morning gilds he skies, My heart, awaking, cries, May Jesus Christ be praised! When evening shadows fall, This rings my curfew call, May Jesus Christ be praised! When mirth for music longs, This is my song of songs: May Jesus Christ be praised! God's holy house of prayer Hath none that can compare With: Jesus Christ be praised! No lovelier antiphon In all high heaven is known Than, Jesus Christ be praised! There to the eternal Word The eternal psalm is heard: May Jesus Christ be praised! Ye nations of mankind, In this your concord find: May Jesus Christ be praised! Let all the earth around Ring joyous with the sound: May Jesus Christ be praised! Sing, suns and stars of space, Sing, ye that see his face, Sing, Jesus Christ be praised! God's whole creation o'er, For aye and evermore Shall Jesus Christ be praised!…

1
"Melancholy Baby"

8 days ago

—

I have to admit that I asked Tony to choose “melancholy” for our Word of the Week because while we were watching an old film noir called “ Johnny Eager” recently, I heard a very old tune in the soundtrack, a much-loved and oft-performed song called “My Melancholy Baby.” The melody has been haunting me all week, and haunting is the right word, because it is quite a melancholy tune. In fact, “Melancholy” was the name that a vaudeville composer, Ernie Burnett, first gave his song. Make no mistake: Burnett’s song was a fully realized composition, not just a simple melody in need of an arranger to flesh it out. He had been classically trained on the piano from childhood, and it showed. In 1884, Ernesto Mario Bernadetti was born to Italian immigrant parents in Cincinnati, Ohio. Aware that his son had musical talent and hoping that he would become a concert pianist, Ernest’s father sent his teenage son to a music conservatory in Austria and later in Italy. But when his father died in 1901, Ernest had to give up his studies and return home. He needed to earn an income and immediately found work — as a pianist and entertainer in vaudeville. 1n 1909, at age 25, while “on the tour” and snowed in at a train station in Denver, he composed the song which would be his biggest hit, though its popularity came about so gradually and under such odd circumstances as to rob him of the glory of that early accomplishment. Ernie’s wife, Maybelle, wrote the lyrics for “Melancholy,” and the two applied for copyright late in 1911. Having tried unsuccessfully for some time to find a publisher for their song — and these were the days, as I mentioned last week, when sheet music sales still reigned supreme in the popular music world; composers had to literally take their work to publishers in person and demonstrate the music, as well — the two finally found a house to bring out sheet music for their song in 1912. But the deal came with strings attached: the publisher insisted that a lyricist from his own company rewrite the lyrics. And so to get their song published, Ernie and Maybelle had to agree to “transfer” rights to the lyrics to the publisher. In lieu of royalties, Maybelle received a “dedication” on the sheet music. And by this time the couple had divorced, as well. All that would make me rather melancholy. How about you? The official credit for the lyrics went to George Norton, staff writer for the publisher Theron Bennett. But how much Norton himself received in royalties for this song is not clear; likely only his regular salary, with the lyricist’s share going to the publisher. Maybelle Watson brought a suit against the Theron Bennett in 1941 — after 30 years — and was awarded 50% royalties for all sales of the song. What a business! Upgrade to Support Word & Song I said that the popularity of “My Melancholy Baby” happened over time. Well, there is a truly amazing story attached to the song. When the United States entered the first world war, Ernest Burnett was called up. Like other men of his age, he was sent “over there.” But while serving in France, his unit was gassed, in the “new” kind of chemical warfare. While he survived, he developed (I know, it sounds far-fetched) amnesia, and he would suffer the remainder of his life with respiratory disease. He had lost his dog tags, and no one knew who he was, including Ernie himself. He languished in the hospital until one day an entertainer came through to perform for the soldiers. “My Melancholy Baby” had become a world-wide hit while the war escalated, and the visitor sang it. Upon hearing the song, Ernest sat up in his bed and shouted, “That’s my song! I wrote it!” After that he made a full recovery of his memory, including all of his musical knowledge. And when he returned home to the US, he continued writing music and performing in vaudeville. In time he started his own orchestra and founded his own music publishing business. I’ve included a charming little clip from The Ed Sullivan Show in 1959, where Ed introduces Ernie Burnett as someone “everyone knows,” and he plays his most famous song on the piano, with plenty of flourishes. This was likely his last public appearance, because he died later that year. What a fitting tribute to a composer and performer at the end of a long career. Give a Gift Subscription I’ve said before that I struggle to find just the right musical recordings for Sometimes a Song , and this time is no different. Popular music of the early 1900’s was a mix of old-style parlor music, Vaudeville, Ragtime and Jazz. And the recordings of “My Melancholy Baby” made over the years ran the gamut of musical genres. The song was recorded by absolutely everybody. One thing is certain: the song had staying power, and it was in the air on radio, on television, in films, and it was sung by entertainers during the entire century, and continues to have appeal at least to certain sorts of American song enthusiasts even now. In addition to being the unofficial theme song of “Johnny Eager,” which I mentioned above, the song was featured by Judy Garland in “A Star is Born,” and then it showed up in “Birth of the Blues,” “Scarlet Street,” and a handful of other movies, and finally the tune was the theme song for Marilyn Monroe’s character in “Some Like It Hot.” I’ll end with this: William Frawley, who DID have a major hit in his Vaudeville days with the song “Carolina in the Morning” (which I wrote about here ) claimed also to have been the first to perform “Melancholy" (as it was then known) at a Vaudeville club in Denver, Colorado in 1912. We have no reason to disbelieve this claim, especially because Frawley was a famous Vaudeville performer in those days; but the very publisher who did so poorly by the three people who actually wrote “My Melancholy Baby” likewise claimed that he had premiered the song, at that same club, in 1912. Who are you going to believe? I looked in vain to find what I know exists: a much later video of Frawley singing the song on a 1957 episode of the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, but that is not available. So for today I settled on FOUR versions of the song — and many of you may have other favorites. First, I present the silky voice of Bing Crosby, whose 1938 recording of “My Melancholy Baby” reached number 14 on the charts. He sings it as a jazzy ballad. After that I’ve attached a swing version of the song, recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1941, featuring Glenn’s fabulous saxophone/singer, Tex Beneke. After that, I’ve added the sweet and nostalgic appearance of Ernie Burnett on the Ed Sullivan Show. And finally, I’ve included a link to a piano-only performance by Liberace from a 1956 LP called “Liberace at Home.” The recording quality of that clip is not ideal, and unlike the music Liberace performed in his massively popular television show from the 1950’s, this recording has no orchestral accompaniment at all. It’s just piano, just Liberace, and just wonderful. I hope you all enjoy this sweetly melancholy old American song! Please do share this post! Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . To support this project, please join us as a subscriber. Thank you for reading Word and Song!…

1
The Browning Version (1951)

10 days ago

—

This week, as I’ve been considering melancholy , I’ve defended it as that sweet feeling of twilight, with the moon shining on the waters, and perhaps a loneliness that is not unpleasant, because you know that it is a temporary thing. Your loved ones are in the house on the hill, and the lights are shining. But there is another melancholy that in fact is steeped in loneliness, a tragic solitude. I can’t find the feeling described in all of the many-sided and gloriously colored literature of the high Middle Ages. Hard to be lonely in that time, when everything that people did, they did in groups, in families, schools, monasteries, guilds, armies, pilgrimages, manors, and towns, and nobody but a perfect madman would go walking out on the moors just for the feeling. With the modern age it enters, and in our time, when the family itself is fraying, it stalks the soul of the unfortunate, or of the failed. And that’s the case with the chief personage in our Film of the Week , The Browning Version (1951). Please note well: there was a remake in the 90’s. You don’t want the remake. You want the original. Help Word & Song with an Upgrade to Paid One of the things I’ve noticed about black and white movies is that the very limitation requires the actors and the director to do some important things to seize the audience’s attention. Namely, they must focus on the most expressive things we know of, the most beautiful, the homeliest, the gentlest, the cruelest, the most innocent, the most deeply plunged into guilt: the human face, and the human hands. No cheap effects are possible. When you combine that requirement with a script that makes every word count, and you have actors who know what they are about, especially in the 1950’s, when excellent playwrights also wrote for the big screen and brought with them their spare and intensely concentrated sense of human drama, you can get real greatness, in stories that can never be dated, because they are not about this or that political condition or this or that new social movement, but about man himself, his glory and his shame. That’s what we have in The Browning Version (1951). Terence Rattigan wrote the story as a play for the stage, and then he punched up his script for the cinema, with the excellent Anthony Asquith directing. Here’s the story. A teacher at a boys’ school in England, one Andrew Crocker-Harris (Michael Redgrave), is nearing the end of his career. He is in poor health. He has married badly, and his wife (Jean Kent), who has long been bored and irritated with him, is having an affair with another of the teachers (Nigel Patrick), a generally decent fellow but engaged in a very bad thing. The headmaster (Wilfrid Hyde-White) is an unctuous and malevolent man who wants Crocker-Harris out of the way. The boys that Mr. Crocker-Harris tries to teach Greek to are dispirited and uninterested in what he does. But there is one boy, Taplow, who does not simply despise him. Under Crocker-Harris’ direction, he has been taking extra lessons in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, to help boost his grade in the class. In the Agamemnon, we should know, that Greek general returning triumphant from the Trojan War is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, as an act of vengeance, because Agamemnon had been maneuvered into sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia, to get fair winds for Troy. And Clytemnestra has a lover too, Aegisthus, who has his own family reasons for wanting Agamemnon dead. Give the Gift of Word & Song The plot of the Agamemnon, you might think, could strike Mr. Crocker-Harris a bit too close to home, but he’s long taught Greek literature in a hopeless way, having given up on expecting any of the boys to love what he once loved, and what he still loves, somewhere, deep in his soul. Then something slight, some little spark of a real human interchange, comes to life between the lonely, off-putting, hopeless old fellow, and the boy Taplow, who does seem to understand a little bit about both the play they are reading and his mostly ineffectual teacher. The film is called The Browning Version for the gift that Taplow finds in a used book shop, a copy of a translation of the Agamemnon, made by the poet Robert Browning. For Crocker-Harris himself had tried his hand at translating it, long ago – but like everything else in his life, it has come to nothing. It’s a movie about the bare possibility that a dead soul may come to life again. The drama is riveting and relentless. I will not give out any spoilers. Hear the words, and watch the faces. Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, join us as a subscriber. We thank you for reading Word and Song!…

1
Bryn Calfaria (Calvary Hill)

12 days ago

—

When I go through my many old hymnals from all kinds of places and traditions, I am struck by the sheer variety in the best of them, the range of human feelings, the meditation on not only what is light and pleasant, but on the sorrows of this life — a fitting thing for our Word of the Week , melancholy . So you may have supposed I would come up with a song fit for such sorrow. If you do want such, I know none more directly honest than one we featured when we first started this project, "My Spirit Longs for Thee" . And yet there are other moods fit for a minor key melody, and one of them, paradoxically enough, is that of awe before the majesty of God. Milton put it very well when he said that sometimes the Father shades the full blaze of his beams, “as with a cloud / Drawn round about Thee like a radiant shrine,” but even then the seraphim must shade their eyes, as the Father appears “dark with excess of bright.” Upgrade to Support Word & Song Our Hymn of the Week looks with awe not on the Father but on the Son, in his triumph on the Bryn Calfaria, the name for the melody of this mighty song: it’s Welsh for Calvary Hill (that f is pronounced as an English v ). Its author is William Williams, whom we’ve featured here and here . He’s considered a giant in Welsh literature, known to the Welsh affectionately by the place where he was born, Pantycelyn , “Holly Vale.” Pantycelyn was a part of the Methodist revival in Wales, occurring at about the same time as in England and the United States. Most of his many books of poetry and his prose works are in Welsh, and are on the Christian faith and life, or on themes from Scripture. The hymn itself consists of five stanzas, three of which you’ll hear sung below, in Welsh (I’ll give the Welsh and then a literal English translation below). In the first stanza, Pantycelyn prays that he may feel always the breeze coming from the bryn Calfaria, because only the blood of the Cross (Welsh, gwaed y Groes, pronounced gweid uh Groiss ) can transform a weakling into a conqueror. In the second, the third in the original, he begs the Lord to take him as he is and to remake him, because even though his will is to keep far away, the Lord’s power alone can bring him near. In the final line, with stunning brevity and surprise, he says, “In your wounds” — and those words are repeated three times in the melody, before we ever get to the subject and the verb of the sentence — “alone will I be made whole ,” Welsh iach, healthy , the final word of the stanza. Then in the last stanza, he says that this is the greatest work the Lord has ever done. He is still considering the hill of Calvary, but now as a mount of triumph. “You put death, you put hell, you put Satan under your feet ,” Welsh dan dy droed (pronounced dahn duh droyd ), he says, and concludes by affirming that this work will never leave his memory. Give a gift subscription I’ve got two more things to say, and they both have to do with the singing you’ll hear. First, we’ve got a blue-ribbon Welsh male choir — Wales has long been famous for male choirs. The music for them is scored with two tenor parts, baritone, and bass. The effect is not of sweetness but of power, and that well fits this song. You can imagine the sound shaking the very walls of a church. We could use, I think, to hear such voices more often. The second is that Pantycelyn’s stanzas, common in Welsh, call for a special kind of scoring by those who compose the melodies. The first four lines are in a meter common in English: eight syllables, iambic, rhyming on lines two and four. So you expect that lines five and six will either rhyme with each other, or that the last line will repeat the rhyme you already have. Nothing of it. The fifth line has only four syllables, with reversed rhythm, DUM-da DUM-da, and the sixth line has seven syllables, DUM-da DUM-da DUM-da DUM, and it does not rhyme! We have nothing like that in English lyric poetry. Thus the final two lines are a departure from the first four, interpreting them, setting them in a surprising context, or soaring beyond them. But in order to make them really musical, the composers took to repeating them, like this: 5-5-5-6-6, with some of the choir moving on to the next line before the rest have finished it, and everyone coming together at the end. The result, I think you’ll agree, is tremendous in the old sense of that word: it makes you tremble. Please Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to restoring the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, about words themselves, hymns, poetry, classic film, folk music, and popular song. To see new posts please join us as a subscriber. Thank you for reading Word & Song . Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Gwaed dy Groes sy'n codi i fyny, 'R eiddil yn goncwerwr mawr: Gwaed dy Groes sydd yn darostwng, cewri cedyrn fyrdd i lawr. Gad im deimlo awel o Galfaria fryn. It is the blood of thy cross which lifts me up, makes the feeble into a great conqueror: The blood of thy cross brings down a thousand mighty giants. Let me feel the breeze from the hill of Calvary. Cymer, Iesu, fi fel 'rydwyf, fyth ni allaf fod yn well; D'allu di a'm gwna yn agos, f'wyllys i yw mynd ymhell: Yn dy glwyfau bydda' i'n unig fyth yn iach. Take me, Jesus, as I am, never can I be better; You alone can bring me near, though my will is to go far away. In thy wounds alone will I ever be whole. Ymddiriedaf yn dy allu, mawr yw'r gwaith a wn'est erioed; Ti ge'st angeu, Ti ge'st uffern, Ti ge'st Satan dan dy droed. Pen Calfaria nac aed hwnnw byth o'm côf. I will trust in thy might; in the greatest work thou hast ever done; You put death, you put hell, you put Satan under your feet. Head of Calvary, never will this leave my memory.…

1
Saint Valentine's Day

16 days ago

—

Our Friday podcast is open to everyone in this week, in honor of Saint Valentine’s Day. Click on the image below for a special gift discount today. .When did young lads and lasses begin to give each other presents on February 14? All the way back in the French courts in the high Middle Ages, it seems – and those French courts included the ones in England! For you must remember that the descendants of the Vikings who came to England in 1066 to claim the royal throne spoke French – the French of Normandy, where the North-men, the Normans, had settled down. Those Normans, by the way, really got around: they ruled Sicily for a while, and they’re likely responsible for a lot of blond hair and green eyes in southern Italy. Anyway, the tradition had it that birds started to pair off on Saint Valentine’s Day, February 14, and if that sounds rather early to you, you should keep in mind that Europe was warmer in those years than it is now. The same nice weather that made it possible for other Vikings to grow barley on the coasts of Greenland made the woods in England ring out with birds choosing mates in February. And then, even after the weather got colder after 1300, the tradition was well-established. It’s the day when Chaucer sets his whimsical poem, The Parliament of Birds (1381) – they’re chattering about love, of course, and what kind of love is best, with the noble eagles bickering against the lusty sparrows and the dimwit cuckoo, all in front of the goddess Nature, and she ends it by giving every bird its mate, while the best singers sing a sweet song in honor of Saint Valentine, and love, and the coming summer with its gentle sun. “The Parliament of Birds,” Karl Wilhelm de Hamilton. Public Domain. In 1477, we have a charming letter from Lady Elizabeth Brews, encouraging a young cousin of hers, John Paston, to come by and press his suit for her daughter Margery’s hand in marriage. “And, cousin,” she says, “upon Monday is Saint Valentine’s Day and every bird chooses a mate, and if you would like to come on Thursday night, and see to it that you stay till then, I trust to God that you shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion. For, cousin, ‘It is but a simple oak / That is cut down at the first stroke.’” And young Margery herself wrote to John and called him her Valentine, and they did end up getting married. If you were in England back in the 1700’s, you might have celebrated Saint Valentine’s Day by a custom that I think we really ought to revive. The boys put their names in one hat, and the girls put their names in another, and then they each picked out a name from the other hat. The boys were supposed to give presents to the girls they had picked. I like the custom, because it relieves everybody of a lot of pressure, and it makes sure that everybody will have somebody to flirt with. These days, a boy hardly knows how to approach a girl, because nobody knows what the moral rules are; the guard-rails are down, there’s no speed limit, no lane marker, no signs; more like a demolition derby than anything. So how about it, our readers who believe in courtship and marriage? The Valentine, of course, is named after Saint Valentine, though there’s some doubt as to who he was or which man he was, since there were two or three men by that name who died as martyrs for the faith at around the same time, in the middle of the third century. The name VALENTINUS is a diminutive for the name VALENS , just as CONSTANTINUS is diminutive for CONSTANS , and MARTINUS is diminutive for MARS . Now, VALENS comes from an ancient Indo-European root meaning strong, mighty, and this root has offspring all over the place, in all the great branches of the family, especially in names for boys. It really does put the HOT in HOTTENTOT! It gives us the VLAD in Russian VLADIMIR, and the WALT in German WALTHER, and the -ALD in Scottish DUFENALD, which becomes English DONALD. In fact, if your name is DONALD, RONALD, ARNOLD, GERALD, HAROLD, and quite a few others, you’re in this good company. So go and get yourself a VALENTINE, if you haven’t already done so! What are you waiting for, a talking eagle? Share This Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six days a week, on words, traditional hymns, poetry, classic film, and popular song. To support this work, join us as a subscriber.…

1
Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts

19 days ago