Wings and wingy things

The OED tells us that ‘wingy’ entered English with Thomas Browne, who used ‘alary’ (from the Latin alarius)  and ‘wingy’ to describe both plants and divine mysteries. Winginess for Browne was both a visual, structural idea and a metaphorical one. Leonard Willan picked this up in his Astraea of 1651 in which he wrote about ‘wingy Times decay’ and his ‘wingie Passions’.  John Vicars’ 1632 translation of Virgil’s Aeneid featured ‘wingy oares’ and ‘wingy sails’ tended to by opportune winds. Jane Barker, in a poem printed in the late seventeenth century, described the soul’s wingy nature and Aphra Behn’s Love-letters between a noble-man and his sister (1684) featured a letter ‘to Sylvia’ in which the speaker described the coy kissing wind and the free birds with their wingy embraces of love as a way of lamenting humankind’s comparatively fireless caution.

The Samuel Garth version of Ovid’s Metamorpohoses (1717) casts Phaeton’s fatal chariot ride in wingy terms:

…the youth with active heat
And sprightly vigour vaults into the seat;
And joys to hold the reins, and fondly gives
Those thanks his father with remorse receives.
Mean-while the restless horses neigh’d aloud,
Breathing out fire, and pawing where they stood.
Tethys, not knowing what had past, gave way,
And all the waste of Heav’n before ‘em lay.
They spring together out, and swiftly bear
The flying youth thro’ clouds and yielding air;
With wingy speed outstrip the eastern wind,
And leave the breezes of the morn behind.
The youth was light, nor cou’d he fill the seat,
Or poise the chariot with its wonted weight:
But as at sea th’ unballass’d vessel rides,
Cast to and fro, the sport of winds and tides;
So in the bounding chariot toss’d on high,
The youth is hurry’d headlong through the sky.

Phaeton’s crash-and-burn winginess was different to science’s idea of wings. Robert Hooke described the wings of insects accurately and minutely, considering the muscle structure that would have been needed to fly and the variations in strength and structure between different insects. While Hooke (in Micrographia) created a limiting figurative parallel between wings and minds, writing that ‘the Intellect of man is like his body, destitute of wings, and cannot move from a lower to a higher and more sublime station of knowledg, otherwise then step by step’, he was fascinated by flight and investigated the possibility of human flying machines, as this extract (among others) from the Hooke Folio shows:

Feb: 11. Dr. Croon Read of the flying of Birds ^ /concluding flying for a man impossible/ herevpon RH suggested that what nature Did not supply art and Reason could. and that he knew a way to produce strength soe as to giue to one man the strength of 10 . 20 or more men and to contriue muscle for him of equiualent strength to those in Birds. the same hinted also that a contriuance might be made of something more proper for the feet of men to tread the air then for his armes to beat the air

Hooke sought to investigate real wingedness, others metaphysical winginess. As a technology of the passions or material motion, wings were understandably fascinating in the seventeenth century. Watch this space for more in the future on wings and flight in Paradise Lost.

Failed engineering on St. Peter’s Day

The gospel of Matthew explains how, after Jesus walked on the sea, St Peter also walked on water for a few moments before he became fearful and doubtful and fell in (Matthew 14: 28-31).

According to the publicity-pamphlet The Water-Walker well Wash’d, being A True Relation, of a Strange Perambulation of a Person in this Nation, upon a Watery Station, on such a fashion, as gave the Spectators small Delectation on Tuesday June 29. 1669, this very same feat – i.e. walking on water – was attempted by a man in Islington upon St. Peter’s Day who had used clever engineering rather than strong faith.

The pamphlet tells how the a large crowd assembled to see the water-walker, but:

…when he did out of his Cell appear,
Upon the Water like an Engineer:
And likely was to get Applause, when, see,
Just as he saluted, Down fell he.
Instead of walking then, alas! poor wretch!
He e’en sunk down, and fell upon his Breech.
He struggled to get up, but all in vain,
For as he strove to rise, he fell again.

The picture heading the pamphlet shows a man standing on little discs (one presumes based on lily-pads), holding a stick with a third lily-pad disc at its base for balancing on the water. The pamphlet, which seeks to stimulate interest in further water-walking performances, explicitly does not doubt the ingenuity of the invention, but rather attributes the failure of the show to the audacity of its scheduling on a holy day when a saint experienced a miracle:

For nor the weakness of the Engeneer,
Nor yet the strength of Wine, of Ale, or Beer
Did sink him, but I dare be bold to say,
It was the crossness of St. Peters day.
Doubtless he was presumptuous in excess,
That did thus dare, (although his Faith were less)
To be the Great St. Peters Emulator,
Thus on this day to walk upon the Water:
Though all his Engins were the sons of Art

The pamphlet is trying to conjure further interest in the water-walker as it ends by saying the pamphlet can be redeemed for another free view of the show next time he performs (‘This man has walkt on Water oft before, / And will again, or else be seen no more. / And this he’ll promise, that without a Boon,  / Another day he will dance there alone. / And for his slip amends that he may make, / He’ll for your entrance this same Ticket take’).

With regards to science that mimics miracles this pamphlet confirms that there is demand for a show of walking on water but also suggests that the phenomenon should not be too closely aligned with St. Peter or some ‘crossness’ of the day will intervene.

Cenotaphs

Reading John Weever’s book on Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631) I was struck by the way he writes about the correlation between the location of the dead in the afterlife and the physical realisation of their memory in monument form in the world. Chapter 7 is about cenotaphs, and Weever reminds his readers that ‘a Cenotaph is an emptie Funerall Monument or Tombe, erected for the honour of the dead, wherein neither the corps, nor reliques of any defunct, are deposited’.

Weever defers to ancient examples to discuss cenotaphs of two sorts: ‘they were made either to the memory of such as were buried in some other remote funerall monument; or to such which had no buriall at all’. This first type was fairly simple to explain: they were monuments erected for the purpose of memorialising someone in a different location to where there remains were already interred.

The second, religious type of cenotaphs were made:

to the memory of such whose carcases, or dispersed reliques, were in no wise to bee found, for example, of such as perished by shipwracke, or such as were slaine, cut, mangled, and hew’d apeeces in battell, or of such that died in forraine nations; whose burials were unknowne. For in ancient times it was thought, that the Ghost of the defunct could not rest in any place quietly, before the body had decent buriall, or the performance thereof, in as ample manner as could possibly be imagined.

Weever then gives the example of how Aeneas and the Sibyl encountered Palinarus, the shipmaster, who had fallen off the ship and then been killed. Palinarus wanders the ‘limbo lake’ as he cannot get his final resting place until he is properly buried, a procedure the Sibyl promises to have undertaken in what is now Cape Palinuro. Though Weever goes on to furnish more, different examples, it is the example of Palinarus that seems most poetic as, on a mission as cartographic as that of Aeneas, the spectre of an permanently untethered helmsman is particularly haunting.

Before long Weever returns to examples of the shipwrecked, perhaps by far the most regular genre of unfortunates requiring cenotaphs. He quotes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses 2.10:

Seas fright me with their tragicall aspect,
Of late I saw them on the shore eject
Their scattered wracks, and often I have read
Sad names on Sepulchres that want their dead.

The particularlity of the cenotaph is easier to see when you look at how Weever defines funeral monuments at the opening of the book. A funeral monument is characterised by its function of holding a body. It is ‘a receptacle or sepulchre, purposely made, erected, or built, to receive a dead corps, and to preserve the same from violation’.

Bookes are like bogs

Anthony Hodges’ translation of the ancient Greek romance The loves of Clitophon and Leucippe (1638) began with several poems acknowledging the skill and accomplishments of the translator, most of which described the process of translating and reading in interesting ways. One remarked on the resurrecting function of the translator:

That this dumbe Author, who hath tongue-tied bin
For many yeares, should now at last begin
To speake our language: and that he likewise,
Who had so long layne dead, should now arise.

Playing on the frontispiece, which showed the two lovers’ boat jeopardised in a stormy sea, another praiser wrote:

A Pearle’s a Pearle, though in the shell ’tis coucht;
Yet ’tis more glorious, when ta’ne forth and oucht
In glittering gold. Then gemmes more briskly shine,
Not when they’re in the Sea, but when they’re mine.
Thy Lovers had without thy second Forme
Beene more obscur’d i’th Greeke, than in the storme.
And though they scap’t by Sea, yet had we found
Thy Amorous Paire still in the Language drown’d.

Another applauds Hodges for ‘turning drosse to gold’, writing:

So have I seene great Titans powerfull ray
With active streames of heat exhale from clay
And miry bogges a fume, which climbing high
Shines like a Starre in Heav’ns bright Canopy.

Here the bogs are an emblem of low altitude and un-’winginess’, but in another accolade the bog becomes the book itself:

Bookes are like bogs; heed with what foot we tread,
We may not sinke; so with what minde we reade.

A lovely way of describing a critical reading methodology, bringing the content of the book into league with its material production.

Birds and omens on the way to St. Kilda

In his A Late Voyage to St Kilda (1698), Martin Martin wrote about the experience of alighting on Boreray at night after a long and treacherous journey. He immediately noticed an ‘extraordinary high Rock’ to the north of the island which was ‘all covered with a prodigious Number of Solan Geese hatching in their nests’. The St. Kilda archipelago has been famously dominated by birds for centuries, with the native fowl structuring the lives of the inhabitants. The thematic power of the birds is such that as soon as Martin sets foot on the shore his narrative, environment and the hopes of the sailors who transported him there become dominated by birds also:

the Heavens were darkned by those flying above our heads; their Excrements were in such quantity, that they gave a Tincture to the Sea, and at the same time sullied our Boat and Cloaths; Two of them confirmed the Truth of what has been frequently reported of their stealing from one another Grass wherewith to make their Nests, by affording us the following and very agreeable diversion, and ’twas thus; One of them finding his Neighbour’s Nest without the Fowl, lays hold upon the opportunity, and steals of it as much Grass as he could conveniently carry, taking his flight towards the Ocean; from thence he returns after a short turn, as if he had made a foreign Purchase, but it does not pass for such, as Fate would have it; for the Owner discovered the fact, before this Thief got out of sight, and being too nimble for his cunning, waits his return, all arm’d with fury, engages him desperately; this bloody Battel was fought above our heads, and proved fatal to the Thief, who fell dead so near to our Boat, that our Men took him up, and presently Dress’d and Eat him; which they reckoned as an Omen and Prognostick of good Success in this Voyage. (pp.8-9)

Shut seas and shipwrecks

Marchamont Nedham’s 1652 translation of John Selden’s Mare Clausum began with a defense of the book’s title.

Some readers, the text explains, have objected to the title of Mare Clausum being applied to a treatise on the dominion of the seas, because clausum and apertum were labels used by the Ancients to signify the seasonal navigability of the waters:

Every man know’s, that from the third of the Ides of November until the sixt of the Ides of March, or betwixt som other beginning and ending of such a kinde of winter-season, the Sea was, and was so called, heretofore Clausum Shut; as the rest of the time, or in the Summer-season, it was called Apertum Open, that is to say, more apt and convenient for shipping. According to which sens it was said by Cicero, while hee was in exspectation of Letters from his brother Quinctus; Adhuc Clausum Mare scio fuisse, I know the Sea hath been shut until now.

Acknowledging this meaning, the text continues to carve out an alternative:

But truly there is another and far clearer meaning of the Title. The simple sens of its terms doth denote, that the Sea is so shut up or separated and secluded for private Dominion, no otherwise than the Land or a Port, by bounds, limits, and other Notes and circumstances of private Dominion, and that by all kinde of Law, that without the consent of the Owner and those special restrictions & qualifications of Law, which variously intervene, vanish, and return, all others are excluded from a use of the same. For, most certain it is, that Claudere, to shut doth not only denote the mere simple Act of shutting, as wee say de Januis oculisve clausis of gates or one’s eies beeing shut, clauso agmine, or as it is in that of Lucan,·

Brachia nec licuit vasto jactare Profundo;
Sed Clauso periere Mari.—

(which is spoken of the Seamen’s beeing cover’d with the keel of their ship turned upward) but also it very often signifie’s that which is consequent either to a denial of the free use of the thing shut, as also the proprietie and Dominion of him that shut’s it;

The text refers to Book 3 of Lucan’s Civil War, and the section that describes a particularly horrible death among breaking boats and sinking corpses (as translated by Susan H. Braund):

While one vessel’s throng, too aggressive,
leans over the tilting side and leaves unmanned the section
free from enemy, by their massed weight the ship
was overturned and covered sea and sailors with its hollow keel:
they could not strike the vast deep with their arms
but perished in their ocean prison.

That this image (along with several others) is employed at the start of this treatise reminds me that though ‘free seas’ and ‘closed seas’ have now become standard terms in international law, seventeenth century readers would have understood them as texturised by a deep stock of literary, historical and judicial images of closed and openness – including this striking example of shutness as the fatal inability to find enough purchase to swim, and death in the ocean prison of a capsized ship.

Passion and white peacocks

Readers of seventeenth-century texts will be familiar with the idea of the impact that a mother’s imagination could have on her child, but it is perhaps less well known that some people thought that the passions or imagination could affect animals in the same way.  Agrippa von Nettesheim’s chapter on the impact of the passions in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy (English translation, London, 1651) began with this common example:

So the longing of a woman with Child, doth act upon anothers body, when it Signs the infant in the womb with the mark of the thing longed for. So, many monstrous generations proceed from monstrous imaginations of women with Child (pp.145-6)

He then moved on to discuss other examples, including a recipe for making white peacocks:

So the imaginative powers of Pea-Cocks, and other Birds, whilest they be coupling, impress a colour upon their wings. Whence we produce white Pea-Cocks, by hanging round the places where they couple, with white Clothes. (p.146)

The peacocks see our white clothes and their imaginations imprint the notion of whiteness onto the offspring they conceive. This process is imagined to be like contagion:

For it is manifest that a body may most easily be affected with the vapour of anothers diseased body, which we plainly see in the Plague, and Leprosie. Again, in the vapours of the eyes there is so great a power, that they can bewitch and infect any that are near them, as the Cockatrice, or Basilisk, killing men with their looks. (p.146)

The text goes on to use the images of rays and smells, which are locale-specific, bringing the argument round to a moral point:

Therefore Philosophers advise, that the society of evill, and mischievous men be shunned, for their soul being full of noxious rayes, infects them that are near with a hurtfull Contagion. On the contrary, they advise that the society of good, and fortunate men be endeavoured after, because by their nearness they do us much good. For as the smell of Assa-fetida, or Musk, so of bad something of bad, of good something of good, is derived upon them that are nigh, and sometimes continues a long time. (p.146-7)

The ideas in this text raise a question about the spatial scope of imagination and the passions. How close would one have to be to the coupling peacocks to make them conceive white offspring? The rest of the examples, which tend to focus on visual transmission, suggest that the peacocks would have to see the white-clad experimenters. Thomas Browne also noted that the same point had been used to explain the presence of white animals in snowy regions: ‘many opinion that from aspection of the Snow which lyeth long in Northerne Regions, and high mountaines, Hawkes, Kites, Beares, and other creatures become white’ (Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646, p.327).

The travels of the body of Saint Cuthbert

John Davies of Kidwelly translated a manuscript which he described as THE ANCIENT RITES, and MONVMENTS OF THE Monastical, & Cathedral CHURCH OF DURHAM. Collected out of Ancient Manuscripts, about the time of the Suppression (1672).

As he explained in his dedication, this was a survey of the ruins of old Durham cathedral, and it contains one particularly interesting section about the death of St Cuthbert and the translation of his body to Durham. Cuthbert was born in approx. 625, and after entering the monastery of Melrose he eventually became prior of Lindisfarne in Northumberland. After some time, Cuthbert is known to have left to establish himelf as a hermit on a little rocky promontory on the coast nearby.

The text tells how Cuthbert was buried at Lindisfarne and, when his casket was opened eleven years later for the purpose of moving him to a better burial place, the body was miraculously preserved:

Being thus buried in St. Peter’s Church in Holy Island, and having lain there for the space of eleven years, he was taken out of the ground the 20. of the Calends of March, in the same Calends he had dyed in, entire; lying like a man asleep, being found safe, uncorrupted, flexible, and leath-wake, and all his Mass-cloaths safe, and fresh, as they were the first hour they were put on him; at which time they enshrined him in a new Sepulchre, or Feretory, a little above the pavement of the Church, and there he stood many a day. (p.105)

With the invsion of William the Conqueror, Cuthbert’s body continued its travels. In the text that John Davies translated, the movement of the body is used as a way of explaining migration:

Bishop Eardulf, and Abbot Edred did take, and carry away the Body of St. Cuthbert from Holy Island Southward, and fled seven years from Town to Town, by reason of the great Persecution, and slaughter of the Painims, and Danes. And when the Inhabitants of the Island saw that St. Cuthbert’s Body was gone, they left their Lands, and Goods, and followed after him. Whereupon, the Bishop, the Abbot, and the rest, being wearied with Travelling, thought to have stollen away, and carried St. Cuthbert’s Body into Ireland for its better safety. (pp.107-8)

Davies’ text tells of how whilst the party were in a boat travelling to Ireland, there was a terrible storm during which the book of the Holy Evangelists fell into the sea. St Cuthbert appeared as a vision which told the men where to look for the book on the coast, and when they came ashore and found it ‘much more beautiful than before, both in Letters, and Leaves; and excelling in the outer beautifulness of the cover, being nothing blemished by the salt water, but polished rather by some Heavenly hand; which did not a little increase their joy.’ Cuthbert’s body was carried through the country until his soul appeared in a vision and told his bearers to take him to Durham, which was at that point uninhabited. First

they first built a little Church of Wands and Branches, wherein they did lay his Body (whence the said Church was afterwards called Bough-Church) till they had built a more sumptuous Church, wherein they might inshrine him, which they assayed to do with all their power; Uthred, Earl of Northumberland aiding them, and causing all the Countrey people to cut down all the wood, and thorn-bushes which did molest them, and so made all the place where the City now stands habitable, and fit to erect Buildings upon; which gave great encouragement to Aldwinus the Bishop, to hasten the finishing of the Church. Which accordingly being done, he translated the Body of St. Cuthbert from the wanded, or Bough-Church, to the White-Chappel (for so it was called) which he had newly built, which was a part of the great Church, not yet finished, where it lay four years. But after the great Church was finished, and consecrated, upon the 20. of September, he translated his Body out of the White-Chappel into the great Church, which he made a Cathedral. (p.111-112)

The idea that the start of a city was remembered in sync with the journey of this saint’s death and burial is interesting because of the civilisation-forming power it attributes to the translation of the corpse. What did people think about this in the seventeenth century? Cuthbert’s shrine had been desecrated by Henry VIII’s commissioners in 1542, but it is alleged that three monks had hidden his body in a safe place. In the 1800s there was a debate over whether the remains alledgedly Cuthbert’s in Durham were really his, or were the remains of another body that had been substituted in. A medical examination ensued in 1899 and the skeleton was tested. This examination found that the remains could really have been preserved for those initial eleven years, by enbalming or perhaps a miracle.

The machinations of the creation of places is interesting.

An interesting description of the story is Gerald Bonner, David Rollason and Claire Stancliffe’s St Cuthbert, his cult and his community to AD 1200.

The Growth of Metal

In 1674 Robert Boyle published his Hidden Qualities of the Air in which he demonstrated the existence of said hidden qualities  with the example of metals which had been extracted from mines and exposed to the air, and which had grown, or multiplied. Boyle does not argue the point adroitly, but instead prefers to include several testimonials (what he calls observations) from people who have seen metals multiplying in the air. The first is this:

Observations about the growth of tin

AN ancient Owner of Mines, being asked by me, Whether he could, otherwise than upon the Conjectures of vulgar Tradition, prove, that Minerals grow even after the Veins have been dug? Answer’d affirmatively; and being desired to let me know his proofs, he gave me these that follow.

He told me, that not far from his House there was a Tin-Mine, which the old Diggers affirm’d to have been left off, some said eighty, some an hundred & twenty years ago, because they had by their washing and vanning separated all the Ore from the rest of the Earth, and yet of late years they found it so richly impregnated with Metalline Particles, that it was wrought over again with very good profit, and preferr’d to some other Mines that were actually wrought, and had never been so robb’d. And when I objected, that probably this might proceed from the laziness and unskilfulness of Workmen in those times, who left in the Earth the Tin that was lately separated, and might then have been so; I was answer’d, that ’twas a known thing in the Country, that in those times the Mine-men were more careful and laborious to separate the Metalline part from the rest of the Ore, than now they are.

He also affirmed to me, that in his own time some Tenants and Neighbours of his (imploy’d by him) having got all the Ore they could out of a great quantity of stuff, dug out of a Tin-Mine, they laid the remains in great heaps expos’d to the Air, and within twenty and thirty years after, found them so richly impregnated, that they wrought them over again with good benefit.

And lastly he assured me, that, in a Work of his own, wherein he had exercis’d his skill and experience, (which is said to be very great) to separate all the particles of the Tin from the Terrestrial substances, that were dug up with it out of the Vein, he caus’d Dams to be made to stop the Earthy Substance, which the Stream washed away from the Ore, giving passage to the water after it had let fall this Substance, which lying in heaps expos’d to the Air, within ten or twelve years, and sometimes much less, he examin’d this or that heap, and found it to contain such store of Metalline particles, as invited him to work it again and do it with profit. And yet this Gentleman was so dexterous at separating the Metalline from the other parts of Tin-Ore, that I could (not without wonder) see what small Corpuscles he would, to satisfie my Curiosity, sever from vast quantities (in proportion) of Earthy and other Mineral stuff.

Relations agreeable to these, I received from another very ingenious Gentleman that was conversant with Tin-Mines, and lived not far from more than one of them. (pp.3-6)

Boyle continues through lead, iron, silver and gold, mixing testimony from unnamed ingenious gentlemen conversant with metal mining with books and travel reports. There is an article discussing Boyle’s sources online here

Shadows in the Torrid Zone

The torrid zone was a term used to refer to the region between the tropics, as explained here by David Abercromby in his Academia scientiarum (1687):

There are five Zones, one Torrid, two Temperate, and two Cold ones. The torrid Zone is comprehended between the two Tropicks; its breadth is 47 degrees, if we reckon according to the common Calcul 23 ½ on each side of the Equator; the two temperate Zones are contain’d between the Tropicks and the Polar Circles, whereof one is South, and the other North; the breadth of both is 43 degrees. The cold Zones are contain’d within the Polar Circles, distant from the Poles of the World 23 degrees ½. (p.50)

In his A short account, of the nature and use of maps as also some short discourses of the properties of the earth (1698), William Alingham described the people inhabiting the various realms of the earth in terms of the shadows they cast:

The Inhabitants of this Zone are called Amphiscians, because they have their shadows both ways at Noon, that is, one part of the Year it is toward the North, the other part toward the South.

The Temperate Zones are those spaces of Earth, included betwixt the Tropicks and Polar Circles, the North temperate Zone being that portion of Earth contained betwixt the Tropick of Cancer and Artick Circle; the South Temperate Zone, is that part or portion of Earth, bounded by the Tropick of Capricorn and Antarctick Circle; each of these Zones are in breadth 43 Degrees, that is, 3010 Miles; in the Northern Temperate Zone, lies almost all Europe and the North part of Africa, as also a considerable part of Asia and America; the Southern Temperate Zone is not so well known to us, it being far distant from our Habitation. These Zones are termed Temperate, because the Sun-beams being cast Obliquely, cannot create that excessive heat, as they do where they fall Perpendicular. They in some measure pertake of the Extremities of Heat and Cold, proceeding from the Torrid and Frigid Zones; those that inhabit in these Zones are called Heteroscians, because their shadows is but one way. (pp.35-7)