HISTORY 135E

Department of History
University of California, Irvine
 Instructor:    Dr. Barbara J. Becker
 

Week 7.  Riddley Guide

 
Chapter 15

World history is a cemetery of broken hopes, of utopias which had no foundation in reality.

Is there a right to hope for mankind as a whole?  [M]an has received the power to control nature almost without limits and there is daily progress in science and in technical production.

But the question is:  Does this progress justify the hope for a stage of fulfillment?

--"The Right to Hope" (1965), by Paul Tillich (1886-1965)
_____________

Listen, are we helpless?  Are we doomed to do it again and again and again?  Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall?  Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk.  Ground to dust and plowed with salt.  Spain, France, Britain, America--burned into the oblivion of the centuries.  And again and again and again?

--Abbot Dom Zerchi
    in A Canticle for Liebowitz(1959), by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1923-1996)
Is progress a positive force which gives us a "right to hope" for our future?  Or is it a "Fools Circel" goose chase?
 

Map showing Lissener's and Riddley's treks to Cambry.  Lissener's path from Fork Stoan is marked in blue.  Riddley's path from Widders Dump is marked in red.

Page 150.  "the aulders"

Olantigh

Page 154.  "It wer stil early morning a dul day with the sun low behynt the grey and the way the lite come acrost the feal you cud see some kynd of old pattren unner neath of the new furrows.  Strait lines and circles from time back way back."

Aerial view of ancient barrows near plowed fields in Winterbourne Stoke, Wiltshire.
___________

Burial mounds at Sutton Hoo, East Anglia

Page 159.  "The out line of that shape ben dug out of the broakin stoan and rubbl it wer the line of a old old wall in that woman dolly shape it wer that same and very 1 what has her woom in Cambry."
 

The "woom" in Cambry

Ground plan of the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral

"You know what they got 1st knowing of.  She has diffrent ways she shows her self.  Shes that same 1 shows her moon self or she jus shows her old old nite and no moon.  Shes that same 1 every thing and all of us come out of.  Shes what she is.  Shes a woman when shes Nite and shes a woman when shes Death.  The nite bearths the day.  Every day has the shape of the nite what it come out of.  The man as knows that shape can go in to the nite in the nite and the nite in the day time.  The woman as knows that shape can be the nite and take the day in her and bearth the new day."
--Lorna Elswint, "Why the Dog Wont Show Its Eyes" (see Riddley, p. 18)

Page 161.  "That place unner the groun where I wer it wer a wood of stoan it wer stoan trees growing unner the groun."

The Crypt in Canterbury Cathedral

St. Augustine (d. 604 CE) was appointed the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 597.  A series of structures were built on the site over the centuries, each replacing a predecessor destroyed by fire or marauders.

The Crypt was part of an ambitious construction project launched by Archbishop Anselm (1033-1109).  The Romanesque cathedral built above the Crypt was dedicated in 1130.  In December 1170, Archbishop Thomas à Becket (c. 118-1170) was slain in the cathedral and his body entombed in the Crypt.  Unfortunately, fire gutted the new cathedral in September 1174, but the Crypt (and Becket's tomb) survived the disaster--a fact seen by many as miraculous.  Soon afterward, a new rebuilding effort was begun under the direction of French architect, William of Sens (d. 1180).  The Crypt's tree-like columns were installed in 1176.

A variety of designs can be found on the column shafts.

The surfaces of the columns' shafts are alternately patterned or smooth.  With a few exceptions (intentional or unintentional??), the patterned shafts are topped with smooth capitals and smooth shafts are topped with ornate designs.

The Wood of Stoan Trees; note the zig-zag pattern on two of the columns.

Page 162.  "I put my han on a stoan tree trunk.  There wernt no grean rot on it the stoan fealt clean and dry....  Fealing the carving unner my hans it wer like shaller runnels cut in the stoan.  The runnels come down strait and parrel 1 to the other.  Then they ziggit then they zaggit then gone strait agen.  Running my han over the strait and over the zig zag.  Fealing how other hans done the same thing time back way back.  Some 1 carvit that stoan with a chiswel and mowlit then they run ther han over it.  That carving wudve took some time too.  1st that stoan trunk ben shapit roun then the runnels ben cut in to it.  Then there wudve ben the fitting to do the measuring and the cutting and the pegging and the hoaling and the joyning when they fittit them curving branches on to the trunks.  They wudve had to prop them branches with shapers wunt they.  All of that to make that wood of stoan.  All them hans digging and cutting and hoysting and joyning and carving.  All of that to put the Power of the wood to gether with the Power of the stoan in that wood of stoan trees."

Page 165.  "...the face with the vines and leaves ... wer a thick kynd of face.  Thick nose lookit like it ben bustit.  Thick mouf 1/2 open and the leafy vines growing out of boath sides and curling up roun his head..."

The Green Man in Glastonbury
___________

Another Green Man in Glastonbury
___________

The Green Man at Lyon Cathedral, Lyon
___________

The Green Man at Melrose Abbey, Edinburgh
___________

To learn more about the universal "roots" of the Green Man legend, explore Mike Harding's "Mystery of the Green Man" website.

Page 170.  "HOAP OF A TREE"
 

The Book of Job
Chapter 14
  1. Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.
  2. He springs up like a flower and withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.
  3. Do you fix your eye on such a one?  Will you bring him before you for judgment?
  4. Who can bring what is pure from the impure?  No one!
  5. Man's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.
  6. So look away from him and let him alone, till he has put in his time like a hired man.
  7. At least there is hope for a tree:  If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.
  8. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil,
  9. yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.
10. But man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.
11. As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,
12. so man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, men will not awake or be roused from their sleep.
__________

an excerpt from
The Right to Hope
a sermon delivered by
Paul Tillich (1886-1965)
March 1965

Is there a right to hope for mankind as a whole?  There is one idea which has grasped the imagination of Western man, but which has already lost its power because of the horrors which have happened in our century; it is the idea of progress toward the fulfillment of the age-old hopes of man.  This is still a half-conscious, half-unconscious belief of many people today.  It is often the only hope they have, and its breakdown is a profound shock for them.  Is progress a justified hope for man?  In some respects it is, because man has received the power to control nature almost without limits and there is daily progress in science and in technical production.  But the question is:  Does this progress justify the hope for a stage of fulfillment?  Certainly.  Progress is a justified hope in all moments in which we work for a task and hope that something better and new will replace old goods and old evils.  But whenever one evil is conquered, another appears, using the new which is good to support a new evil.  The goal of mankind is not progress toward a final stage of perfection; it is the creation of what is possible for man in each particular state of history; and it is the struggle against the forces of evil, old ones and new ones, which arise in each period in a different way.

 
Go to:
Weekly Readings
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Lecture Notes
1
3
5
7
9
11
13
15
17
19
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Riddley Guides
--
7