No mayonnaise in Ireland*

*attributed to an author named Will Stanton in a 1971 article in Reader's Digest.

I hope this post won't be too esoteric for you, dear reader, but if it is, it simply can't be helped.

If the title alone seems pretty esoteric, let me explain. It is one of the most famous lines the English poet John Donne ever wrote, expressed in our old friend Anguish Languish.

I'll prove it to you. In 1623, in an essay we know as Meditation XVII, Donne wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

You see what Will Stanton did there. No mayonnaise in Ireland. This is where you laugh politely or groan and roll your eyes, whichever you feel is more appropriate.

Which brings us to Yorkshire Pudding's riddle.

In his spare time my cyberfriend Yorkshire Pudding likes to take long walks in his native Yorkshire and then blog about them afterward. He recently posted the following:

"On the edge of Low Bradfield I came across [a] disused building. I thought it was an old barn but then I spotted an early nineteenth century plaque above one of the doors. It reads like this "1826/ Rebuilt at the Curate's sole cost./Nemo soli sibi natus". Translated, the Latin phrase means "Nobody is born alone". Why would such a plaque appear on a barn? I have been unable to solve this riddle."

I shall now attempt to solve Yorkshire Pudding's riddle, "Why would such a plaque appear on a barn?"

The phrase "Nobody is born alone" had a familiar ring. It reminded me of a somewhat similar statement in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Romans in the New Testament:

7 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

Here it is in the Vulgate, the fourth-century Latin version of the Bible:

7 Nemo enim nostrum sibi vivit, et nemo sibi moritur.

In context, the passage turns out to be all about the Lord (surprise, surprise!) as the next verse says, "Whoever lives lives unto the Lord, and whoever dies dies unto the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." Since many who read this blog are atheist, however, we will not go down this road any further.

I do definitely think, however, that the sentiment on the barn plaque has its roots in the passage from Romans.

In my research I discovered that the same quotation, Nemo soli sibi natus (Nobody is born alone), was also placed over the church door in Ecclesfield in 1695. The following is from page 202 of The History of the Parish of Ecclesfield: In the County of York:

"[Vicar Edward Mansel] also rebuilt the parsonage-house in 1695, over the door of which he placed this inscription, which, or a copy of it, is still just within the entrance of the present Vicarage:

Edward Mansel. Vicar 1695.
Nemo Soli Sibi Natus.
Vivat Rex.
Floreat Ecclesia.

He also gave 50£ towards building a parsonage at Bradfield, and left a still more substantial bequest of about fifteen acres of land to his successors,...."


Of course the vicar in 1695 in Ecclesfield and the curate in 1826 who had the plaque affixed to the barn in Bradfield cannot possibly be the same person, but the quotation from The History Of Ecclesfield does reveal a connection between Ecclesfield and Bradfield, especially where curates (or vicars) are concerned.

The Bradfield structure with the 1826 plaque was very likely once a barn. Interestingly enough, I also found the following on p. 247 of Topographical and Statistical Description of the County of Devon, a book by G.A. Cooke, Esq., in 1825:

"A tablet in the [Brixton] churchyard wall records the planting of an ancient grove of lofty elms, in 1677, by Edmund Fortesque, Esq., of Spriddlestone, who ordained that they should be sold, when mature, and the products applied to the relief of the parochial poor. The motto on this stone, "Nemo sibi soli natus;" "No man is born alone for himself," is most appropriate to every planter; and should be remembered by all, as an antidote to selfishness, and an incentive to benevolence." (emphasis mine)

The plaques in Bradfield and Ecclesfield and Brixton are meant to remind us all that we should not keep our blessings (our produce, our grain, our lumber) to ourselves but share them with others for the benefit of the whole community. Perhaps we are meant for neither dependence nor independence but for a mutually recognized inter-dependence.

John Donne was right. No man is an island. Or as you can still find in certain parts of England, Nemo sibi soli natum.

P.S. -- It is also true literally and cannot be denied that no one is born alone. A mother is always somewhere in the vicinity.

September thoughts

It’s a long, long way from May to December.

John Donne may have said in 1624 that no man is an island, but I have come to the conclusion that many people are definitely peninsulas. They try to cut themselves off from the rest of the world, and there is not a dadblamed thing the rest of the world can do about it.

We are all interconnected (especially if you are a United Methodist), but sometimes it feels like just barely. Sometimes the connectedness feels very intrusive. And sometimes it is very welcome.

We are peculiar creatures.

We have private thoughts that we don’t want to share with anybody, and private fears that we (in the words of John Keats) may cease to be, and private demons that come to us in the dark of night.

Thank God for Jesus.

I don’t know what this post means, but I’m going to post it anyway.

Maybe someone out there will explain it to me.

No man is an island

Yesterday, while I was employed as a precinct clerk during Georgia’s 2012 primary election, Gore Vidal died in California at the age of 86.

He was a writer of novels both historical (Lincoln, Burr) and pornographic (Myra Breckenridge), a playwright (The Best Man, Visit to a Small Planet), an essayist, a writer of screenplays, and possessor of an acerbic wit. He was a failed politician. He was homosexual. He was bisexual. [Editor’s note. Pick one. --RWP] He was an atheist. He was a liberal gadfly who once called William F. Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” to his face on live television.

He was a distant cousin of Vice-President Al Gore, from whom he kept his distance, saying that one day each of them might benefit from “plausible deniability.”

He was a fifth cousin of President Jimmy Carter’s.

His step-father, Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr., an heir to the Standard Oil fortune, was married at one point to Janet Bouvier, mother of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

Gore Vidal once wrote that the happiest words in the English language were “I told you so” and the three saddest ones were “Joyce Carol Oates.”

I read all of these things about him today in various articles and news reports.

I also found this photograph, which, like its subject, is only tangentially related to this post:

It’s the end of an era.

They just don’t make ’em like Gore Vidal any more.

If this post doesn’t make any sense, that’s all right. Grief does strange things sometimes.

John Donne probably said it best:

No man is an island, entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thine own or of thine friend’s were. Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

It’s true. No man is an island. But some men are definitely peninsulas.

------------------------------

Addendum (August 2, 2012): Here is a link to an article that captures Gore Vidal very well. It is by his biographer, Fred Kaplan, and includes 12 photographs of him (Gore, not Fred) over the years. Some of the comments that follow the article are every bit as interesting. To say that Gore Vidal could be outspoken and controversial is an understatement. Perhaps that is one reason I admired him so much even though our lifestyles were so very different. --RWP