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William Murdoch and Samuel Clegg brought warmth and light into the country’s streets, factories and homes, but the public didn’t make it easy.
Before natural gas there was coal gas, which warmed living rooms and lit streets all over the United Kingdom until the 1960s. Coal gas does not occur naturally, and Archibald Cochrane (1748-1831), 9th Earl of Dundonald, discovered it only by chance, while making coal tar near Culross Abbey in the 1780s. It fell to another Scotsman to make coal gas commercially viable.
Picture: © Stephen McKay, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted December 16 2021
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The Tilers and Thatchers of fourteenth-century York tell how Joseph and Mary fared after they were turned away by the innkeepers of Bethlehem.
From at least the 1370s, a series of pageants was put on in the city of York for Corpus Christi, a summertime Church festival dedicated to the Eucharist. Dramatising the life of Jesus Christ, the plays were performed by members of the Guilds of skilled trades or ‘mysteries’ (hence ‘mystery plays’). The Nativity fell to the Tilers and Thatchers, who began with Joseph and Mary trying to settle into a tumbledown Bethlehem stable.
Picture: By Robert Campin (1375/1379-1444), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted December 14 2021
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While Joseph is away trying to find light for the darksome stable, Mary brings into the world the Light of everlasting Day.
The Tilers and Thatchers of fourteenth-century York continue their Nativity play, with Mary alone in the ramshackle Bethlehem stable — Joseph her betrothed guardian has gone out into the cold night air to find some light. She is praising God, and awaiting the birth of the miraculous child foretold to her by the archangel Gabriel nine months ago in Nazareth.
Picture: © Motacilla, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted December 13 2021
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The chill of the night is relieved by the warmth of the beasts in their stalls, prompting Mary and Joseph to reflect on the promises of Scripture.
The Tilers and Thatchers of fourteenth-century York bring their Nativity play to a close, back in the Bethlehem stable where Mary and her guardian Joseph have been forced to find shelter. Mary has given birth to a son and laid him in a manger, while her guardian Joseph was out looking for candles. Now he has returned, to find that his candles are superfluous for another Light is shining in the darkness.
Picture: By an anonymous Italian artist (15th century), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted December 10 2021
341
The Old English epic ‘Beowulf’ tells how Scyld, beloved King of the Danes, was committed to the ocean at his death — just as he had been at his birth.
The poem Beowulf opens with the death of Scyld, King of the Danes. Scyld had not been born to the crown: the Danes had found him lying in a boat, a helpless infant bedded upon wheat-sheaves. Yet he had risen to govern the people like a beloved father, and when he died in great age his mourning subjects, knowing his mind, with reverence cast Scyld adrift once more upon the retreating tide.
Picture: By Laurits Andersen Ring (1854–1933), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted December 6 2021
342
The exasperated women of Athens challenge the men of the City to decide whether women are a blessing or a curse.
In the Spring of 410 BC, The Women at the Thesmophoria by Aristophanes was produced in Athens at the literary festival named the City Dionysia. The play imagined how Aristophanes’s notoriously misogynist fellow-playwright Euripides might get on at the autumn Thesmophoria, a religious celebration exclusively for women — and the Chorus of Women certainly found his attitude towards them baffling.
Picture: © Mary Harrsch, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted December 3 2021