The story:
Scores of Viking warriors descended on the shores of Lough Neagh last weekend, where they engaged in battle and bade farewell to one of their own on a blazing funeral pyre, watched by hundreds of people, young and old.
The full story:
It was a re-enactment.
Good fun, though — great spectacle.
Posted by Richard Rawlinson
David Twiston Davies, formerly chief obituary writer at the Daily Telegraph, gave a brilliant talk about his onetime trade at the Joy of Death Festival 2012. Here’s a snippet
Whatever the truth, everybody wants to know why somebody has died. Unfortunately the reasons given immediately after a death are often proved to be wrong. Max Hastings used to harry the Telegraph obits about this until a particular incident occurred. I was away that day, but there was a jazz trumpeter, whose name I have forgotten. Hastings had just sent a memo demanding we obey his instruction. So Hugh Massingberd, the obits editor, obediently wrote about the unfortunate fellow who, in those pre-Viagra days, had been operated on to restore the strength between his legs, only for the stitches to come apart in an explosion. We didn’t hear so much about giving reasons after that.
Read the whole of his talk here.
From the Indian Express
Contrary to the usual norm of life, one gypsy tribe from Rajasthan actually rejoice and revel in deaths in their family counting them as one of the happiest events in their lives while treating births as occasions of great grief … what distinguishes the Satiyaa community from the other tribes is after a death in the community, the funeral and cremation of the deceased becomes an event of celebration.
“We wear fresh garments, buy sweets, dry fruits and local liquor on the occasion,” says Jhankya Satiyaa, a Satiyaa. The dead body is taken to crematorium in a procession of dancing and twisting groups of near and dears on the tune of drums. After the funeral pyre is lit, members from the tribe arrange a feast, consume locally brewed liquor and dance with vigour until the body is completely reduced to ashes.
“Death is a great occasion for us as it liberates the soul from the physical prison,” says another member from the community who points out “birth and living life is a great punishment by God to sinful souls”.
Arun Kumar Saxena, a senior journalist who has researched the tribe says Satiyaas consider life to be a curse from God.
“However, the girl child is given more attention and care in the community as she becomes a source of earning for the family through prostitution,” he says.
When someone is born in the Satiyaa community, it becomes an event of mourning and grief with the new born receiving curses from everybody and the family of the baby does not even cook their daily meals at home.
Even though they reside alongside the “hustle and bustle” of cities, the tribe is extremely withdrawn and mistrust outsiders.
The Satiyaa community comprising about 24 odd gypsy families scattered across the state live in temporary shelters along roadsides and in empty spaces rely solely on disposing off the dead bodies of cattle from the roads.
Mostly illiterate, these tribes are notorious for their addiction to liquor. With their deep brown complexion and athletic physique, women of the tribe have been known to indulge in prostitution.
Kota Anwar Ahemad a social activist points out that despite providing members of the Satiyaa tribe houses under the Indira Residential Scheme (Indira Awas Yojana)around a decade ago, the members allegedly sold them off. Also, he says children in the Satiyaa tribal community are also not sent to schools and grow up illiterate.
From Benjamin Black’s latest novel of suspense, Vengeance. The scene is a funeral:
“The vicar droned, his eyes fixed dreamily on a corner of the sky above the trees, a hymn was raggedly sung, someone let fall a sob that sounded like a fox’s bark.”
Posted by Richard Rawlinson
Not Richard III this time but the remains of the woman believed to have inspired Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Lisa Gherardini.
A dig at the now-derelict Convent of St Orsola in Florence is said to be getting close to discovering the buried remains of the noblewoman with the enigmatic smile. But why? To reconstruct her face in order to see if her features match that of the painting at the Louvre, according to Silvano Vinceti, grandly titled the president of the National Committee for the Promotion of Historic and Cultural Heritage.
So much for Rest In Peace. More here
I was at a funeral for a much loved gentleman last week – he wasn’t into opera at all, but had heard Mozart on The Shawshank Redemption and loved it. He was a great believer in daring to dream. The whole room was surprised when we played an excerpt from the Marriage of Figaro as the curtains closed. ( Sull’aria, Che soave zeffiretto – find Renee Flemming on YouTube for a pure version)
We listened to the aria, then I read these words from the film script (Red narrating after the song in Shawshank Redemption)
“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singin’ about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singin’ about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.”
We concluded: ‘When you are in a grey place, when the colour leaves your world as you lose someone so precious and you feel trapped in your grief, wondering how this pain of your aching hearts can possibly ease…. hold on to the fact that you now carry them permanently inside your hearts, memories and dreams. Talk about those dreams, remember those happy memories and for the briefest of moments – every now and then you will be free.’
As a young man he had dreamed of having his own little boat. When he finally got his boat he named it ‘Happy Talk’ and that’s the song he chose to have playing as we all left.
“You’ve got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream… how you gonna make a dream come true?”
Posted by Evelyn
Posted by Richard the Rawlinson
The fully articulated skeleton of what might be Richard III is now being rigorously examined in a laboratory. Leicester University archeologists and DNA scientists are undoubtedly handling these human remains with great care due to their historic value, but perhaps also because of our tradition that the dead, exhumed or otherwise, be treated with respect and dignity. Those with spiritual leanings might also be having such airborne musings as whether or not the late medieval monarch has any consciousness of his current brush with the 21st century, or even whether he’s in a place sometimes referred to as Heaven or Hell.
The possible discovery of the body of Richard III poses questions beyond how to re-inter such a historic figure—if tests reveal the skeleton (with battle wound to the skull and spinal curvature entombed in the Choir of Grey Friars Church in Leicester near the ground of the Battle of Bosworth) is indeed the 15th century King of England. State/CofE burial, Catholic ceremony etc?
It also illustrates wider comment about how we dignify the dead, regardless of good reputation. If we visit the tomb of a controversial figure—say, Lenin in Moscow’s Red Square—we pass by with hushed reverence, we don’t spit on his grave. Would this even be the case if we knew of the resting place of a Hitler or Jack the Ripper? It’s certainly not a case of ‘all is forgiven and forgotten’ but death is undoubtedly an equaliser of sorts.
We, therefore, want to do the right thing for Richard III, whether or not we believe the full Tudor/Thomas More/Shakespeare package that he had several of his relatives murdered, including his young nephews, the Princes in the Tower.
Historians who reassess the King’s reputation in a more positive light are not cover-up merchants, like Holocaust deniers, but merely academics who favour factual analysis over spin and acquiescence, who point out there is insufficient evidence to find him guilty of all accusations, and also ignored evidence of some positive achievements and character witness. ‘Great is Truth and it shall prevail’.
Today’s historians are also thankfully putting subjects into the context of a society riven by feuding over land and influence, without projecting modern moral sensibility. ‘No man is an island’.
Any identification of Richard III is perhaps made more rivetting by the Whodunnit mystery surrounding his life. Just as writers have made a killing out of death-related conspiracies (Jack the Ripper, JF Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Lord Lucan, Da Vinci Code), expect more literary and celluloid attention for Richard III that’s both reputation-destroying and revisionist. (As an aside, the movie, The Madness of King George, was originally going to be named ‘King George III, but this title was avoided lest Americans mistook it for a sequel).
TV police dramas often avoid the risk of confusing viewers by making the prime suspect the guilty party. Agatha Christie, on the other hand, preferred to make guilty the Least Likely Person. But ‘guilty or not guilty’ is often too simplistic in real life. ‘A sinner also sinned against’ is perhaps the fairest thing to say about any of us mortals. How we receive the hunchback of history is of interest: my hunch is that we’ll welcome him into the fold with forgiving love.
Tory MP Chris Skidmore has tabled an early day motion in the House of Commons. It moves:
‘That this House notes the discovery of a skeleton beneath a car park in Leicester believed to be that of Richard III; praises the work of the archaeologists and historians responsible for the find; hopes that DNA evidence will prove the remains to be those of the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty; and calls upon the government to arrange a full state funeral for the deceased monarch, and for his remains to be interred appropriately.’
Text message sent to the Oldie magazine:
Racism is rightly condemned but comics still feel free to make jokes about dentures.
Another:
Thanks to the good lady on Stockport station who told me my shoelaces were undone. I was quite well aware of that, but appreciate her concern.