London is like Baghdad tonight. Mortar shells have been lighting up the sky for hours, seemingly incessantly. A near constant cadence of explosions increasing from one night to the next for the past week, punctuated only by the brief hours of daylight. It can all only mean one thing, a British display of anti-Catholic fervor.
What else could unite the Brits with all their former colonial subject immigrants? I was in a Turkish convenience store last night and a Bangladeshi bloke in a crumpled linen suit and fedora (I wonder if he was interviewing for IU med school?) said to me:
"Hey boss, how bout you get me the big motherfucker out of the case."
blank stare (wonders.... people in England say "motherfucker"?)
"Oh, you don't work here? You look like them."
That's the last thing I want to hear. Though the store did sell Greek as well as Turkish Cypriot products...
I was mistaken in a previous post. Fireworks are not illegal here. It is quite odd that in an urban environment, people can buy rockets the size of a football and shoot them off anywhere. And people certainly do indulge. Every newstand has a glass case stuffed with 100 shot mortars, rockets, and roman candles, some of them costing upwards of 80 pounds! This isn't the most affluent part of town...so it's a bit suprising to see people spending such vast amounts of money on fireworks. I guess it must be the money they save on dentistry.
There has been quite a bit in the news here lately about the Gunpowder Plot. What if it had succeeded? Most revisionists claim it would have resulted in a fundamentalist and autocratic Protestant monarchy. They don't give the plot any chance of actually fomenting a revolution.
(For those who don't know: The plot was to blow up Parliament w/ the King in it and then kidnap his daughter and put her on the throne as a Catholic, while raising rebellion in the Midlands)
Some even compare Fawkes to Mohammed Atta and the plot to 9/11. I think the argument that King James I and the aristocracy were innocent civilians is a bit thin. After all, it had been the upper classes of England who had suppressed the Catholic Church and turned Catholics into second class citizens over the previous 60 years. The country had been forcibly converted at the whim of the King. One could just as easily argue that the comparison is more favorable to the American revolutionaries (remember that little terrorist incident in Boston?), or the Free French during WWII.
If we are going to compare them to al-Quaeda then we should also remember what happened to the plotters. Fawkes himself was taken to the Tower of London and tortured for 3 days on the rack (at the King's personal orders) then executed...the rest were hunted down by Protestant militias and executed. I guess things don't really change all that much.
I've read there is a pretty cool celebration in Lewes where they have bonfire societies. Each one dresses up in a particular costume (Tudor, Mongol, etc.) and makes a specific effigy. Most are topical (bin Laden seems to be a favorite) but one is always Guy Fawkes and one is always the pope. They are then burned in huge fires to a huge fireworks display.
I didn't get to see any effigy burning myself. I'm not even sure where it's done. I didn't go to any official fireworks displays (this is the main day of fireworks in the UK), but the show out my window wasn't too bad.
I'll leave with the FULL text of the rhyme:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!
What else could unite the Brits with all their former colonial subject immigrants? I was in a Turkish convenience store last night and a Bangladeshi bloke in a crumpled linen suit and fedora (I wonder if he was interviewing for IU med school?) said to me:
"Hey boss, how bout you get me the big motherfucker out of the case."
blank stare (wonders.... people in England say "motherfucker"?)
"Oh, you don't work here? You look like them."
That's the last thing I want to hear. Though the store did sell Greek as well as Turkish Cypriot products...
I was mistaken in a previous post. Fireworks are not illegal here. It is quite odd that in an urban environment, people can buy rockets the size of a football and shoot them off anywhere. And people certainly do indulge. Every newstand has a glass case stuffed with 100 shot mortars, rockets, and roman candles, some of them costing upwards of 80 pounds! This isn't the most affluent part of town...so it's a bit suprising to see people spending such vast amounts of money on fireworks. I guess it must be the money they save on dentistry.
There has been quite a bit in the news here lately about the Gunpowder Plot. What if it had succeeded? Most revisionists claim it would have resulted in a fundamentalist and autocratic Protestant monarchy. They don't give the plot any chance of actually fomenting a revolution.
(For those who don't know: The plot was to blow up Parliament w/ the King in it and then kidnap his daughter and put her on the throne as a Catholic, while raising rebellion in the Midlands)
Some even compare Fawkes to Mohammed Atta and the plot to 9/11. I think the argument that King James I and the aristocracy were innocent civilians is a bit thin. After all, it had been the upper classes of England who had suppressed the Catholic Church and turned Catholics into second class citizens over the previous 60 years. The country had been forcibly converted at the whim of the King. One could just as easily argue that the comparison is more favorable to the American revolutionaries (remember that little terrorist incident in Boston?), or the Free French during WWII.
If we are going to compare them to al-Quaeda then we should also remember what happened to the plotters. Fawkes himself was taken to the Tower of London and tortured for 3 days on the rack (at the King's personal orders) then executed...the rest were hunted down by Protestant militias and executed. I guess things don't really change all that much.
I've read there is a pretty cool celebration in Lewes where they have bonfire societies. Each one dresses up in a particular costume (Tudor, Mongol, etc.) and makes a specific effigy. Most are topical (bin Laden seems to be a favorite) but one is always Guy Fawkes and one is always the pope. They are then burned in huge fires to a huge fireworks display.
I didn't get to see any effigy burning myself. I'm not even sure where it's done. I didn't go to any official fireworks displays (this is the main day of fireworks in the UK), but the show out my window wasn't too bad.
I'll leave with the FULL text of the rhyme:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!
posted by akrites @ 7:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home