The Hag & All-Hallows' Eve Musings

The Hag is astride

This night for to ride

The Devil and she together

Through thick, and through thin,

Now out and then in,

Though ne’er so foul be the weather.

A Thorn or a Burr

She takes for a Spur;

With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,

Through Brakes and thorough Briars,

O’er Ditches and Mires,

She follows the Spirit that guides now.

No Beast, for his food,

Dares now range the wood;

But hushed in his lair he lies lurking;

While mischiefs, by these,

On land and on Seas,

At noon of Night are a working.

The storm will arise,

And trouble the skies;

This night, and more for the wonder

The ghost from the Tomb

Affrighted shall come,

Called out by the clap of Thunder.

                                                        Robert Herrick

Talking with my younger daughter yesterday, we laughed at the irony of our church's choice this year, of a Celtic-themed "Harvest Party." While I'm an unabashed Celtic enthusiast--although a full-flown Druid Samhain celebration, complete with burning human sacrifices in wicker baskets goes too far for me--this announcement surprised and amused me, remembering how Harry Potter got such condemnation at this same  church more than a decade ago.

The church’s high school had once officially reprimanded my (then) 15-year-old daughter for attempting to show the first Harry Potter video in an empty classroom during lunch, to a group of curious students who wanted to judge the so-called ‘witchcraft’ controversy for themselves. Now, being educated Presbyterians, the school and church deemed C.S. Lewis’ Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe, and Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, with its sorcerers and such, to be near-sacred works of Christian literature. My daughter felt that Harry Potter books were unfairly stigmatized, while fairy tales and folk tales, or even works such as The Wizard of Oz, with no Christian pretensions whatsoever, received no such proscription. Her forays into freedom of intellectual inquiry were frowned upon at Covenant High, however, so this year’s Celtic theme provoked much mirth and hilarity!

I had long fantasized about appearing at one of these Harvest Parties as one of Macbeth's witches to quote some favorite lines, cavort a bit naughtily, mumble curses and even, perhaps, foretell a bleak future to a self-righteous authority figure or two--but now my mind ran to Druid priestesses and wicker baskets. Surely, this was not the intent of the theme, but an unchained imagination with an eye to mischief could be expected to revel a bit in such fantastic possibilities!

I still wonder that Protestant churches, having long given up most of the church calendar and having lost sight of the historical connection of church holy days with pagan festivals, criticize syncretism in the Catholic Church, while remaining reticent to connect their own need to provide celebrations for their adherents that replace pre-Christian and modern cultural festivities with church observances. The liturgical calendar celebrates All-Hallows' Eve (first given official recognition by Benedictines in 998, and receiving Papal approval in 1006), with remembrances of the dead and masses for the following All Saints' Day. Since that time, irrepressible folk customs rooted in pre-Christian beliefs have persisted in our cultural celebrations, despite church efforts to subdue them.

All-Saints' Day was a full-blown celebration of the redeemed dead, and one of the most important days in the church calendar, as it followed and was meant to distract from and replace the ancient pagan festival of Samhain. It marked a redemptive light after the dark day of the dead--a kind of resurrection of the dead in Christ--and the full circle from Easter, as the dead in Christ rise as he is the first to rise in the Spring. Syncretism? Of course. We are creatures of earth and seasons. Some festivals of the Old Testament even provided similar seasonal cycles for the desert-dwelling Semitic tribes of Israel, notably, the feasts of First Fruits, Trumpets, and Tabernacles.

Nevertheless, I will refrain from posing as a hag to frighten the faithful at their Celtic harvest coven (a fine  Medieval Scots word originally used for any gathering!) But I will remember them with a smile while I pass out treats to the wandering goblins, princesses, and pirates who are my neighborhood children. While their trick-or-treating may not be nearly as darkly authentic as my lamb stew-eating and pumpkin-carving Presbyterian clan, who celebrate Harvest with themes of blood-drenched Reformation and pagan conquest--which as a Reformation historian I can thoroughly appreciate--I will enjoy the irony of their embrace of syncretism, however much they doth protest! I will even forgive them for fearing that my daughter might corrupt their children with her cherished Harry Potter film. To her great delight, Shakespeare nevertheless figured prominently in her high school literature classes, including class performances of Macbeth with enthusiastic witches, (albeit bowdlerized of most age-inappropriate sexual gyrations and lines). With all that Celtic influence, I suspect they will have a great harvest party to remember, and I will not remind them what fun a little paganism can provide!

I hope the moon is full and the night dark with mere wisps of clouds. Robert Herrick, poet of hymn-writing fame, combined pagan themes of Samhain with Christian themes of death and resurrection in "The Hag." I will look at the night sky on this All-Hallows' Eve, and hope to catch a flash of broomstick across the moon.

Winter Reflections

Perhaps because it is a rainy day, or maybe the reminder that I turn sixty this year. Maybe it is a return from a long stay with a daughter and a newborn granddaughter. But today has been filled with dreams and an imagined life not lived.

I spent the day pouring over cookbooks online--not just any cookbooks--but those that brought French cooking and the French people and countryside into my little house on a hill in small-town America. I could almost taste the truffles and butter! I made a list of those that sounded best--I love shopping on Amazon!

I poured a glass of lovely red wine--I have no idea what it is, actually, but it is Sicilian, with a deep red color, and a lovely label that reminds me of faraway places I would love to visit. I cooked some breakfast sausage on the gas range and have been savoring its delicious scent all afternoon. Not a bad way to spend a rainy day.

As I sip my lovely red wine, I am transported beyond this small world to the vast world beyond. I watched the news from France--again, thanks to the Internet--and felt gratitude for technology that can enfuse dreams with images, sounds, and information, making my world so much larger than my own little kitchen.

The Prestige, 2006 Film: Important Historic Themes of Illusion and Morality

The Prestige is one of my truly favorite films, with a fantastic cast, including Michael Caine, Christopher Bale and Hugh Jackman. Based on Christopher Priest's 1995 book, the film's importance lies in an underlying concept that an audience always believes that somewhere, beneath the tricks, behind the prestige, something more exists--some true magic that fascinates and allures both magician and audience.

Two rival magicians, Borden, played by Christopher Bale, and Angiers, portrayed by Hugh Jackman, engage in a vicious rivalry with terrible cost. The envious Angiers pursues and exploits the chimera of the perfect trick, in order to overshadow the succes of his bitter rival. The complete moral bankruptcy of Jackman’s character, and the complicity of the audience through their suspended rationality, fueled by a willingness to believe in magic, reveals a horrifying result.

Simply put, the audience cooperates in oblivious moral ignorance while enjoying being hoodwinked. Never realizing or considering the quantity of unseen dead pigeons jettisoned from the magician's collapsed cages after each performance, the audience believes in the trick, and equally believes that the magician holds some secret magic power that makes the impossible possible. For the audience, possibility of the existence of magic somehow makes their individual lives more hopeful and meaningful, and thus more bearable.

Rival magicians know better, and try to discern the trick, while knowing that any magician's popularity rests in the perfection of the illusion, the prestige that makes an audience gasp with wonder. Night after night, Jackman’s character performs a trick that is unthinkably immoral and callous, and thus completely puzzling to audiences and fellow-magicians. His quest to defy natural laws, to exceed knowable limits, to harness scientific discovery in search of the perfect trick, leads him to commit deplorable crimes for the sake of entertainment and personal ambition.

It is an old theme, worth repeating, that pursuit of illusory success always comes at some cost. We rarely ask ourselves how complicit we may by our passive enjoyment of those who bemuse and bedazzle us, while they may be tempted to exceed moral limits in their pursuit of ever greater illusions. The search for magic, for the secrets that defy rationality, lead us to delight in strange phenomena, to trust in those who challenge and distort our perceptions of reality and lead us to believe in strange powers that "lie beneath" revealed truths. A cameo by David Bowie as the mad genius Tesla underlines the complex relationship between technological wonders and moral consequences.

In the Victorian era, Freud posed ideas of the unconscious mind--a world that lay beneath perception--while new inventions, such as radiation and electricity, defied known reality. Many writers and thinkers of that era questioned and examined the uneasy borders between magic and science, good and evil, progress of mankind and the callous use of others to serve greed and pride.

These great historical themes concerning the moral cost of man's imaginative ambition deserve consideration, especially, in light of today's globalized seduction of willing consumers/audiences through use of a dazzling array of technological advances, often with little regard for moral consequences. The unchanging human heart continues to be complicit in being hoodwinked by its fascination and underlying belief in magic—arrayed as science, progress, security, or simple entertainment— that may hide a moral abyss of unthinkable secrets.

Daytrip to Tournai, Belgium

During a terribly rainy, cold week in Paris this April, I decided to take the train from the Gare de Nord in Paris, to Tournai, Belgium in search of tapestries. When I arrived, I learned that the immense Notre Dame Cathedral was under reconstruction, and most of it is inaccessible at present. The famous tapestries that illustrate the history of St. Eleutherius and Piat are either covered or hidden away (I couldn't quite ascertain which), but are not available for viewing. The treasury is closed and most of the building is shut down for repairs.

Tournai is really a very interesting city, and the people were very friendly and helpful. The lady at the cathedral was so kind that I completely forgot my disappointment over the closure of the major exhibits. Some saint--I don't know who--was discovered to be buried behind the altar,and they have been excavating underneath the cathedral to disinter the bones. The place is immense--and there is just no way to explain why I should have enjoyed myself in this place that is covered with scaffolding, dust, and has a huge hole in the middle of it--but I did!

Perhaps it is just that I had decided to enjoy myself or because I had been really well-fed at a lovely, small restaurant called L'Orchidee, where they served a delicious, well-prepared 3-course formule, with generous portions for under 12 euros, and a great glass of the vin ordinaire--house red--for 2.5 euros! Each table was decorated with live orchids, and the clientele represented a cross-section of well-heeled tourists and cheerful local regulars. The whole town shuts down for dinner from 12 - 2 p.m. each day, so the forced relaxation changed my entire disposition while I avoided a drenching rainstorm during lunch.

I guess my disappointment dissipated in the general relaxed, friendly atmosphere of the town. The cathedral is ancient, immense, and full of interesting history. A stop by the Office of Tourism on the way to the Cathedral and Tower provided lots of historical information, while the Tapestry museum with its collection of early tapestries and more modern ones, also offered a chance to observe working restorers patiently mending the fragile treasures in their upstairs workshops.

Sometimes traveling is just a matter of relaxing and enjoying whatever we find, and not feeling disappointed that our agenda must change with new information. Besides, Belgium in the rain was perfect--and long, leisurely dinners in the afternoon seem to make very agreeable hosts--and tourists.

France in the Middle Ages 987-1460: From Hugh Capet to Joan of Arc by Georges Duby; translated by Juliet Vale.(Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.) 1991.

This volume by Georges Duby (1919-1996), distinguished professor emeritus of the Collège de France, was written about ten years before his death. It is an excellent resource and a good introduction to French medieval history for the serious student of French history. His argument is especially strong in connecting the evolving French political, economic, and intellectual movements to counter-developments in historic events and thought. It is part of a larger series on French history that was commissioned to celebrate the Millennium, and his section, despite its title, is a short introduction that introduces his real expertise in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, with a short wrap-up of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The choice of Joan of Arc to represent the single even of the fifteenth century is mean to connect to the next volume (written by Leroy Ladurie) and to demonstrate the continuing romantic influence of the symbolism of the Middle Ages—especially through adaptation of sacred symbols to modern and secular movements and national allegiance.

While he is primarily interested in social history, especially as it pertains to tracing the development of feudalism, he appeals to younger historians to write feminist history, gently offering questions and direction for further study. He is sensitive to the plight of women, as comments in his book, The Knight, The Priest, and The Lady, based on very popular public lectures he delivered in the 1980’s at the College de France had demonstrated. In later years, Duby limited the focus of his writing (he also continued to direct a center for medieval studies in Provence) to the narrative history he had pioneered with Leroy Ladurie and others, preferring to offer his own views and interpretations, based upon a long and successful career.

French scholarship applauds his writing--he was, after all, a member of the College de France. But some English-language peer reviews, while acknowledging his legendary historical reputation, criticized his decision to decline construction of a feminine narrative, citing a lack of documentary evidence for the tenth through thirteenth centuries in France, and admitting the lethargy of the French academy’s attention to feminist history. He noted that he felt unqualified to speak for these hypothetical women, as neither his training nor his gender qualified him to do so. I found his reluctance charming, and consistent with the polite manner of a gentleman of his generation. One female historian, no doubt aggrieved over the impossibility of finding substantive support in Duby’s scholarship for feminist history projects, wrote that she was “angry” that he had died before replying to her review of his work! Some English-speaking historians seem to have declared that every work must explore every issue from every possible viewpoint in order to meet peer approval standards, a demand that has led to a great deal of sameness and dreary redundancy in current academic work.

In this volume, Duby produced a brief summary of the study and conclusions he reached in a lifetime of careful research, presented with a soupcon of the distinctive and compelling narrative style of the Annales historical method, which he helped to pioneer. Duby’s style will not please modernists, who offer deliberately bland, disinterested voices that confer objective authority, while asking us, like the Wizard of Oz, to ignore the actual men and women behind their disembodied voices. By contrast, Duby's historical narrative voice is lively, engaging, intelligent, humble, and authoritative. I like his voice, so I enjoyed the book. Overall, the book is one which would stimulate discussion and cause serious students to want to inquire further, while providing excellent insights from an important French historian.

Occasionally, an historical work fuels popular imagination. Natalie Zemon Davis' 16th Century case of The Return of Martin Guerre gave a glimpse of history that inspired many young historians to further research, as well as an internationally successful film and at least one Hollywood spin-off of the plot of this stranger-than-fiction-tale from this distant time past.

In 1983, this eminent Princeton professor reexamined the memoires of two judges in this exceptional case, including their carefully notated examination of witnesses, published only a few years after the actual events. Their work represents a remarkable documentary of 16th century thought and attitudes of the parlements, public officials in the lower tiers of the nobility whose offices were generally purchased and could be inherited, generally with additional payment of fees, or conferred for service to the Crown.

The attitudes of the judges in the case of the false Martin Guerre caused one of them, Jean de Coras, to call the story "tragic," despite the fact that the people involved were of low estate. His interest in understanding the motivation, moral choices, and underlying character of the accused represents a remarkable bridging of class lines for the early modern era. Could these humble, uneducated people be so thoughtful and creative as to be capable of shaping and creating their own identities? Of forming a marriage based upon personal choice and natural affection? Of deceptively and steadfastly protecting their choices, until their concern for each other and their children forced them to change course? These questions fascinated Davis and the sixteenth century judges who later wrote detailed accounts of the case. They fascinate us today as we attempt to comprehend the minds of people in an age so far removed from our own.


The Guerre family was not by any means among the very poor of the early modern era--they had dowries, property, land-holding relatives, a thriving business in brick-making, as well as managing many other properties which they rented out to others. They were the upper echelon of common peasantry, not perhaps literate, but they were ambitious, hard-working, and intelligent. In Davis' book, their lack of reliance for their own moral certainty upon the teachings of the Catholic church and the strength of their marriage bond, among other evidence in the familial and regional records, leads the author to suppose they may have had some sympathetic Huguenot connection with the Jansenist judge in the case.


The real Martin Guerre--who left his wife and later returned--was hardened by his natural disposition and by his sojourn in Spain as guest of a strict monastic order and the Spanish Inquisition. His total lack of sympathy and or responsibility for having abandoned his wife and family accorded with orthodox Catholic teaching that marriage was indissoluble and remarriage unthinkable, even on grounds of desertion. In contrast, the imposter, Arnaud du Tilh, had been a loving husband to the deserted wife, Bertrande and king father to their children.

The human interest of the story is of course compelling. In addition, the book explores many themes and attitudes, including identity, gender roles, agency, community, marriage and family, development of law, the charivari, and literacy. It is little wonder that it was made into an excellent French film, as well as at least one Hollywood spin-off. It is a great tale.

But its most compelling aspect for me is the humanity of the judge Jean de Coras, his compassion for Bertrande and the imposter, Arnaud du Tilh, and his distaste for the real Martin Guerre. He makes the story come to life, and we see the defendants through his eyes. I'm always amazed by the immediacy of original sources; truth is so much more amazing than fiction. And this is a tale loaded with intrigue, lies, villains and unlikely heroes--and heroines. Above all, the book explores the attitudes of 16th Century people in the south of France. We witness their dignity, cruelty, ignorance, intelligence, pride, affection, and bravery. They seem profoundly like ourselves, inhabiting a world that is much more difficult and harsh than life in Europe and America today.

If we dismiss these people as less human than ourselves in any way, other than their lack of modern education, opportunity, and privilege, we will undoubtedly view contemporary victims of isolation, poverty, illiteracy, and violence with similar disdain.

Be sure to see the French-language film versionwith Gerard Depardieu in his glorious youth!

Plus que Jamais--a favorite perfume from Guerlain of Paris, a gift from my daughter and souvenir of our marvelous summer vacation together in Paris.

It means longer than never--forever--much longer, in fact, than the very old French history I study. The name describes much of who I am and why I love history.

History is like a perfume, in many ways, with hints and scents of long ago times and far away places. It lingers in the memory, tantalizing the senses and imagination, like the aroma of cedar in old trunks, the mustiness of old books, the oaken scent of library shelves and tables, or a faint spiciness of old cupboards.

As a child of the twentieth century, who lived (the French would use the verb demeurer--our now, alas, "archaic" word in English--dwelt) most of her childhood in the nineteenth century Romantic revival of the Medieval era, immersed in the art and literature of Howard Pyle, Alexander Dumas, Sir Walter Scott, and others, I developed a determined taste for pre-Raphaelite painting and Romantic poets.

Like Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables renown, I love the "scope for the imagination," which the study of history affords me. My friends love their literature studies, and probably share much more common ground with my old lights of the Victorian Romantic era, but I love history's cranky old modernists, its Annales factoids, with their tendency to produce woolly narrative histories in their dotage. They are my Victorian fantasy of the the tweedy old professor with suede elbow patches, smelling faintly of pipe tobacco, tea, and whisky, enveloped by book-lined library walls, ensconced in a worn leather armchair. I've loved this gentleman since my youth, although I have never actually met him! History has a lingering masculine quality about it that gender historians sometimes deplore, while I am drawn by it.

French History? Well, you'd have to attend Evergreen to understand. The best liberal arts program for my interests combines study of French history, culture, and language. But, knowledge is power--or if I'd had the privilege of Latin grammar school--scientia est potentia-- so it must be good for something. My history professor is young, knowledgeable and challenging, while the literature/art history/philosophy professor is a woman "of a certain age," like myself, with an approach that is uniquely her own, and rather European. Both these amazing women have their own structured approach to teaching and life, as well as being wonderful women who inspire their students and teach their beloved subjects with love and formidable intelligence.


Now I'm reading early modern history--lots of mud, plague, and Huguenots--looking for that twist of interest that will grab my imagination and take it in the direction of a good question. I loved writing about Catholic women's reaction to the dechristianization program of post-Revolutionary France. Next I enjoyed looking at the rise of the department store and its effect on women's lives, as well as the role of fashion as an indirect area of expression and influence that reflected women's broadening roles and attitudes in the modern era, providing an ambiguous, yet public, force in the marketplace long before Frenchwomen actually achieved the right to vote.

Ankle-deep merde of the early moderns, I can't hear much rustling silk or sharp wit among the common folk, although I believe France was once famous for its silks and the Lyon silk merchants became quite wealthy. (I remember that France was the ribbon capital of Europe--can't remember where they made them--Amiens, perhaps?)

An immense distance separated the wealthy courtiers of Louis XIV, or even the XIII, and the common cloth of French peasantry--their poverty, illiteracy, disease, and superstitions. In their own time, the wealthy barely thought of the poor as human beings, perhaps much like our own homeless, whose ragged, wretched appearance, and lack of direction may cause more fortunate members of society to view their lives as meaningless. At the same time, society's religious views deemed that charity toward the poor was a virtue, thus many acts of individual and institutional benevolence provided a some relief. Then, as now, its palliative effect was hopelessly inadequate to the enormity of the problem, and could never significantly alter the great gulf between rich and poor. Thus, we know very little about them.

It seems to me that most historians begin their discussion of early modern history by remarking that we cannot hope to think we could understand the people of earlier centuries and are mistaken if we think they are like us. So far, nearly every historian I have read has begun with a statement that reflects a sort of metanarrative that the people of a few hundred years ago are so different from us that we cannot expect them to be comprehensible to us. My question for all these authors is: If we cannot understand or expect these people to think and behave with comprehensible human feeling, thought, motives, and beliefs, then would not that assumption affect all our subsequent analysis of their history? To begin by saying we cannot understand people who are clearly of the same species as ourselves is to begin with a seriously flawed historical outlook.

Perhaps this perspective has its origins in the progressive view of history that supposes that mankind is becoming more civilized with the passage of time and thus far removed from its primitive origins. Obvious objections to such a view as a privileged and erroneous view of history begin with its clear implication of civilization as a primarily Western venture, with all other cultures relegated to some measure of primitive evolutionary substrata. Additionally, even in our own Western culture, it could be readily admitted that our great geniuses of history appear to have been much more productive and creative in shorter lifetimes, with far fewer tools to support their work, than our far more numerous modern minds, equipped with computers, long lives of leisure, and knowledge of the ages at our fingertips. Furthermore, one can scarcely judge the vileness of earlier criminal classes or the brutality of distant ages to be effectively worse than our own, simply by their closer proximity to everyday danger and violence. Our prisons, military, police, and institutions shield many of us from individual participation in executions, war, torture, and other unpleasant violent realities. Our distance from the processes of birth and death, and our greater privacy does not support the conclusion that we are more civilized. Cruelty, ignorance, vice, corruption, envy, malice, greed, lust for power, and murder continue to destroy humanity, along with the problems of war, plague, and poverty.

Of course, most historians, despite their underlying belief in the alien character of the non-modern mind, proceed to attempt to understand them. Perhaps most historians only dismiss the mass of humanity, not its geniuses and nobility and leaders, with whom they presumably share a common understanding, for they often speak quite confidently about the thoughts, habits, behavior, and motives of elite historical individuals. The device of claiming that earlier centuries did not understand the world in the same way as modern people is perhaps to excuse our lack of information about them, but it is primarily rooted in the natural distaste of the comfortable, rational, and well-fed for the desperately poor, struggling, superstitious, and starving mass of humanity. Foucault would say that unreason is always in retreat from reason, but I am sure that the reverse is also true. Orderly educated minds shrink from the mass of disordered humanity.

I would like to remind myself to begin any examination of history with the certainty that humanity is and has always been humankind. Thus, historical people must be seen as sentient beings, like ourselves, but with the problems and perspectives of their own time and circumstances. To do otherwise is to render any study of history an arcane pursuit of facts and events which we cannot hope to comprehend or relate to our knowledge of human nature. Particularly, in the early modern period it is necessary, from my own belief in the constancy of human nature, to embrace the humanity of the wretched creatures who comprise a world where often ninety percent of the people are hungry and only ten percent are adequately fed. It is a fundamental principle that would serve well for approaching both our past and our present time.