#33: V. Bede, “Sermon on All Saints’ Day”

Contrary to what you’ve heard, All Saint’s Day was not created to co-opt Celtic Samhain festivities for Christianity. (Though it worked that way in some Celtic countries.) The day was invented to commemmorate all the martyrs, especially when said martyrdoms didn’t happen nearby; and then spread to cover all the saints in general, especially those [...]

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#32: Special Halloween edition!

Three Scottish Hallowe’en ballads for you! First of all, we slip into the Border between Middle Earth and Elfland with Janet and Tam Lin. (Remember, “The night is Hallow’een, my love, The morn is Hallow’s Day.”) Then we attend a party and learn a little about the old Scottish year’s end divination customs in Robert [...]

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#31: “The Pot of Tulips” by Fitz-James O’Brien

This ghost story is pretty fun. Lost treasure! A wronged heiress! Communication from beyond the grave!
Obviously, though, it leans quite a bit on the conventions of spiritualism. That’s interesting in itself, of course. We think of spiritualism as a post-Civil War or post-WWI phenomenon, but this story was written in 1855. (But the Fox sisters, [...]

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#30: The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, Part 5 (LAST PART!)

Yes, yet another early posting, since I’ll be busy this weekend. The fifth part of the book consists of the translator’s Introduction (in three parts), and the appendix, a letter between close associates of Catherine which describes her saintly death.
I shy away from reading introductions and forewords before the rest of the book. They have [...]

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#29: “The Nightmare” by G.K. Chesterton

This essay is from Alarms and Discursions, a 1910 collection of short pieces written for London’s Daily News. The essay winds around a bit, and talks of many things. In the end, I think it’s a brilliant defense of horror, dark fantasy, and the like. More than that, though, it’s fun and beautiful writing, from [...]

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#28: The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman, Part 4

The story strides on towards court, as Thorndyke gets another little present from his ingenious friend and Jervis learns some startling information. We also learn about Thorndyke’s rather disturbing hobby. Further, Freeman does his best to harrow every mystery fan’s soul with his blunt description of the Old Bailey at his time of writing. You [...]

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#27: “The First Apologia” by St. Justin Martyr

Apologia means ‘explanation’. In this case, a philosopher-turned-Christian tells Roman emperor all about Christianity. Breaking the secrecy that was common, thanks to persecution, he does his best to dispel urban rumors by openness about the true nature of Christian beliefs and rituals. He argues that individual Christians should be judged by what they do, not [...]

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#26: “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” by Robert Browning

I admit that this poem is not an obvious Halloween choice. But I felt like reading it. There’s not that many great Victorian poems based on Scottish fairy tales about lopping off elves’ heads. But it inspired Stephen King, and that’s Halloweeny, right? Also, the theme of invading the King of Elfland’s place to rescue [...]

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#25: “The Man Without a Shadow: A New Version” by Fitz-James O’Brien

A humorous short-short about a strange and alien sort of creature which apparently could be found visiting New York back in 1852 — and which probably can still be met with today!
Sorry about the extreme shortness. I picked a story I thought I’d be able to put up on Thursday or Friday, but Murphy and [...]

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Playing Catch-Up

If you’ll go down below, you’ll see that Book 4 of The Dialogue is now up. So’s the weekly O’Brien story and the Tuesday poetry, which you’ll see above. Admittedly, I should have started putting up my Wednesday stuff yesterday, but I forgot; so it’s going up on archive.org today and should be available tomorrow. [...]

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Monday Blog Report

I think I have finally discovered all that needed doing at archive.org in order to make my audiobook of Book 4 of The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena available to all of you. Unfortunately, I didn’t figure this out until today.I also didn’t put up my Monday story before I left, because I figured that [...]

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State of the Blog Address

This blog is now one month old. Vivat! We are only a little more than a week away from Halloween and All Hallows Day, so the spooky stuff continues.
Since I’ll be out of touch this weekend, you’ll notice below that I loaded up my Friday and Saturday audiobooks early. By Saturday, the file problem with [...]

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#24: The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, Book 4: A Treatise on Obedience

With this book, the main meat of the Dialogue is concluded. Obedience isn’t a popular virtue these days, and it wasn’t popular in Catalina Benincasa’s day, either. But in this short treatise, I found the advantages of this virtue were argued pretty persuasively. Most of all, it’s hard to argue that if Adam sinned through [...]

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#23: “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley

This is one of those poems, by one of those poets, which have gone from ubiquitous to unheard in a couple of decades. Hmph. Well, it’s Halloween, and Indiana is practically next door, and I feel like reading “Little Orphant Annie”. So there.
If you don’t like the way I read, you can hear a very [...]

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#22: The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman, Part 3

The mystery continues, as Thorndyke continues to be mysteeeerious about his take on the defense. Somebody keeps trying to remove him from the defense team permanently. And poor Jervis struggles to remain professional in the face of all sorts of temptation.
After this, there are only five chapters left; but the chapters set at the trial [...]

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