ANST - FW: Musing on July 27th -- Sleep, Baby, Sleep

[j'lynn yeates]

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- -----Original Message-----
From: Ellsworth Weaver [mailto:astroweaver at yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 13:13
To: 2thpix at surfari.net
Subject: Musing on July 27th -- Sleep, Baby, Sleep


Dear Folk,

On this date July 27, seven sleepers awoke, lots of lightly-armed
Gottlanders were put to sleep, a Scottish king who "doth murder
sleep"
was defeated, and a gift from the New World arrived in jolly old
England.

There are many stories about folks falling asleep and being revived
years and years later. Rip van Winkle comes to mind. Strangely enough
today is the feast day of seven guys like that: The Seven Sleepers of
Ephesus. The origin of the story seems to be a Symeon Metaphrastes
who
wrote down stories about the lives of saints. Variants abound. Here
is
the story in short form. Trust me, this is short compared with some.

Ephesus is an ancient town in what is now Turkey. Emperor Decius (249
- -251 CE) hated Christians. He came to Ephesus to whomp up on them. He
found seven studly, noble youths and told them get right with Roman
gods or die. No more tuna casserole at the Lutheran potlucks for
them.
Decius said, "Think it over and I will be right back."

I guess you probably want to know their names. Right? Just so happens
I’ve got them. Ready? According to Symeon they were: Maximillian,
Jamblichos, Martin, John, Dionysios, Exakostodianos, and Antoninos
(or
Max, Jam, Marty, Johnboy, Dion, Kosty, and Tony.) Goodfellas, all.
So
what are they going to do? Give up? Hey, they wouldn’t be saint
material if they did. But you already knew that.  No, they gave their
skateboards and CD collections to poor folk, kept a few coins for
phone
calls and coffee, and then climbed up to a cave on Mount Anchilos to
say their prayers. Decius came back looking for his answer. The boys
were just saying the last of their prayers up in the cave when Decius
arrived

Lo and behold, the boys were asleep! How discourteous to not be awake
for their own funerals. Well Decius said, "Let’s just let them sleep
awhile longer. It isn’t a school day, after all." He had his men roll
some big stones over the cave to seal it up. They were buried alive.
After Decius skeedaddled, some unsung Christian came by and wrote the
boys’ names and their story on the entrance. Hey, they were big
rocks!

Years went past, like in a movie when you see the calendar pages
being
ripped off pretty quickly.  The country became Christian. About 400
CE,
a rich landowner named Adolios had the cave rezoned and opened it up
as
a cattle pen. The boys, getting nuzzled by cows, woke up and woke up
hungry. They sent Dion down into town to score some Big Macs and
fries
(super-sized). When Dion got to town he was amazed by all the crosses
he saw up on the buildings. Furthermore, the folks down at the burger
places were not much on accepting money coined a couple hundred years
ago. What was up?

Sooner or later the church folk go involved; a bishop and quite a few
hangers-on trucked up to the cave with Dion to see for themselves.
Even
the Emperor (now a Christian dude), Theodosius, was sent for.
Everyone
heard out the boys, got really happy when they find out that the body
can be resurrected (well, in a few special cases) which made the
bishop
right in a long argument he had been having. The boys immediately
died
(guess no one thought to bring a bagel or anything) praising God.
Theodosius wanted to build them a golden tomb, really he did, but the
sleepers appeared to him in a dream and told him to just put them in
the ground in the cattle stall. Cool! Cost savings in funeral plans.
The cave is now adorned with precious stones, a great church built
over
it, and every year the feast of the Seven Sleepers is kept on July
27.

Macbeth was an actual King of Scotland not just a Shakespearean
character. He lived 1005-57 CE. In 1040 Macbeth became king. His
mother
had been a daughter of Kenneth II and Macbeth used this bloodline to
remove Duncan I and declare himself as king. Sometimes removing kings
does take a tad of steel. Forgive him, he is now food for worms.
Scotland prospered under Macbeth (not quite the picture we had,
right?)
and he visited Rome in 1050. The remains of Macbeth's hill top
fortress
Dunsinane lies just east of Strathearn. In 1054 Malcolm III invaded
with an English army and defeated Macbeth at the Battle of Dunsinane
on
July 27, 1054. In 1057 Macbeth was finally murdered by Malcolm.

Macbeth’s son Lulach became king. Malcolm murdered him in 1058.
Malcolm
then finally became king of Scotland. He reigned until 1093 when he
was
killed during an invasion of England and was succeeded by his brother
Donald Bane. Happy bunch of folks wearing crowns, right?

On July 27, 1361, the Baltic Island of Gottland stood braced for
invasion. Well, they were as braced as they could be. King Waldemar
(IV) Atterdag of Denmark, at war with Sweden, had landed with a large
army of well-equipped German mercenaries and Danish royal troops, and
they were making for the island’s largest town, the prosperous
Hanseatic port of Visby. More about the Hanseatic League on a later
date.

The Swedish defenders, largely made up of a poorly armed peasant
militia, included in their ranks old men, young boys and the lame. A
small number were armed in mail shirts, while even fewer were armed
in
antiquated coat of plates armour. Outside of the city walls, the
defenders formed their battle lines and awaited the Danish charge. In
some stories this would be the part where I would tell you about the
defenders having better ground or clever archers. Sorry, this is not
one of those stories.

The battle opened -- like most of the later Middle Ages battles did
- --
with a murderous shower of crossbow bolts, which played havoc amongst
the lightly armed islanders. That was followed by an equally bloody
hand-to-hand combat that left over 2,000 dead on the field. Most all
of
the dead were the Visby homeboys. The corpses were unceremoniously
heaped into five large common graves, several of which were excavated
by the Swedish archaeologist Bengt Thordemann in the early part of
the
twentieth century. The 1,185 bodies recovered testified to horrible
effectiveness of medieval weaponry: skulls pierced through by
crossbow
bolts, bones crushed and holed by blows of the axe and mace, and even
one unfortunate defender who seems to have had both of his legs
hacked
off with a single blow of an axe or greatsword. Yuck!

Medievalists today use the armour carefully excavated to recreate
very
early coats of plate. There are several sites which detail the
patterns. Visby these days celebrates medieval days (sort of a large
Renfaire) in early August. I think they are over being mad at the
Danes. I understand that it is just a wonderful time. I’d like to
head
to Sweden and check it out sometime.

BTW on this day in 1586 Sir Walter Raleigh brought back the first
tobacco to England from Virginia. All you nicotine-fiends out there,
smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.

What have we learned from all of this? The good guys don’t always
win?
Shakespeare sure twisted history to suit his purposes? Tobacco seems
like a fair trade for all the great things we did for the Native
Americans? By the time some guys get back with the food, you could
starve to death? The boys should have sent out for pizza (maybe not
since they stopped with that 30 minutes or less guarantee)?  My take
on
things? We peasants and other folk should have up-to-date weaponry to
defend ourselves from invaders of all sorts. I do love the 2nd
Amendment to the US Constitution – it covers broadswords, too.

As I usually say at this time, do the right thing: keep my name and
sig. attached when and if you forward these pearls.

Doing that deed without a name,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats



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