Memes for a Monday

I don’t quite understand why All Hallow’s Eve memes started appearing at 0001 October 1st but the Interweb has been awash with them for the past 25 days. And who am I to buck the trend – though I have shown some restraint in waiting until a reasonable time before the actual Feast Day itself. So inspired by my reminiscences of that long ago performance of Macbeth that I mentioned in my last post here’s three weird sisters plus a coven of others.

For some reason this brought back memories of trying to arrange shift changes back in my working days.

I’ve always thought that there had to be a more comfortable way of travelling – I mean sidesaddle on a horse is hard enough just imagine on a broomstick!

They tell us it’s the way forward for all of us, so why not airborne traffic?

Well I answered that question pretty quick didn’t I?

Even witches have to move with the times.

Old sayings can come back to haunt you! (See what I did there? Haunt… witch… never mind!)

An All Hallow’s equivalent of the start of an old vaudeville routine?

I don’t know but this really have quite the same effect as the original.

We started with the question “when shall we three meet again?” so let’s end with it.

The word for October 25^th is:
Witch /wiCH/: [^1. noun ^2. verb]
^1.1 A woman thought to have magic powers, especially evil ones, popularly depicted as wearing a black cloak and pointed hat and flying on a broomstick.
^1.2 An ugly or unpleasant woman.
^1.3 A woman who is bewitchingly attractive.
^1.4 An edible North Atlantic flatfish that is of some commercial value.
^2. To cast an evil spell on.
Old English wicca (masculine), wicce (feminine), wiccian (verb); current senses of the verb are probably a shortening of bewitch.
Definitions ^1.2 and ^1.3 are examples of context being important.

Within the Octave*

Okay, I know that All Hallows Eve isn’t an official prayer book feast nor does it qualify as an “Octave” celebration but, you knew there was a but, I still have a few Halloween-type things kicking around. So for the next few days things will continue to have a ghastly or ghostly theme.

Back in 1899 the American educator and writer William Hughes Mearns created a little poem for a play he was writing. The poem was said to be inspired by a sighting of a ghost in a house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia – hence the name.

*In several of the Christian religions a major feast day (Easter, Pentecost, Epiphany) is celebrated for the eight days following its official observance. The liturgy for those eight days includes all the prayers, invocations, and commemorations of the day itself.

The word for November 3^rd is:
Haunt /hônt,hänt/: [^1. noun ^2. verb]
^1. A place frequented by a specified person or group of people.
^{2. 1} Of a ghost: manifest itself at regularly – often at the same place
^2.2 Of a person or animal: to frequent a place.
^2.3 To be persistently in the mind of someone.
^2.4 To be persistently and disturbingly present in something.
Middle English (in the sense ‘frequent (a place’)): from Old French hanter, of Germanic origin; distantly related to home.
A few haunts that I’ve haunted have been haunted.

Halloween Howlers

Earlier today an old friend from grade and high school days sent me a link to a Reader’s Digest (yes it still exists!) page of jokes for the Feast of Hallowstide. After having read them I decided that if I was going to suffer then everyone was going to suffer. So I put together this little compilation of the best – no honestly they were the best – of the groaners and howlers for the season of things that go bump in the night.

The word for October 30^th is:
Groan /ɡrōn/: [^1. noun ^2. verb]
^1.1 A deep inarticulate sound made in pain or despair.
^1.2 A low creaking or moaning sound made by an object or device under pressure.
^2.1 To make a deep inarticulate sound in response to pain or despair.
^2.2 To make a low creaking or moaning sound when pressure or weight is applied.
Old English grānian, of Germanic origin; related to German greinen ‘grizzle, whine’, grinsen ‘grin’, also probably to grin.
Well actually I be satisfied with the odd grin as a response rather than a groan. Come on folks they aren’t that bad! Are they?

Lunedi Lunacy

Between 1934 and 1968 showman Leonard Sillman produced a series of Broadway revues called New Faces of (insert year here) and introduced talented young performers that often went on to bigger and better things:  Henry Fonda, Imogene Coca, Nancy Hamilton, Alice Pearce, Irwin Corey, Eartha Kitt, Ronny Graham, Alice Ghostly, Carol Lawrence, Robert Clary, Paul Lynde, Maggie Smith (yes the Maggie Smith), John Reardon, Jane Connell, Inge Swenson, Marion Mercer, Robert Klein and Madeleine Kahn.  They all appeared singing, dancing, and honing their comedic (and sometimes dramatic) chops in a Sillman revue.  The shows were so popular that several were filmed for the cinema and versions appeared on radio and televisions

And here just in time for Halloween is the distinctive voice – which he claimed was influenced by his New Faces and Bewitched co-star Alice Ghostly – and manner of Paul Lynde in a little scene from New Faces of 1962:

 

Happy Halloween!

On this day in 1917:  World War I: Battle of Beersheba: The “last successful cavalry charge in history”.