B

Baring-Gould, Rev. Sabine (1834-1924)


In an essay on ‘Wandering Words,’ Mr T. W. Sandrey says :– ‘The talismanic words uttered by children in their innocent games have come down to us very nearly as perfect as when spoken by the ancient Briton, but with an opposite and widely different meaning.[*]

The only degree of likeness that lies between them now is, that where the child of the present day escapes a certain kind of juvenile punish­ment, the retention of the word originally meant DEATH in its most cruel and barbarous way.’

The correspondence is much closer than the writer perceived, for he overlooked the fact that the process in both instances is one of elimination, the one remaining being the victim, the rest being successively set free.

To be set free, you must recite the right words in the right order

I have tried in my novel Perpetua to give a description of what took place, according to tradition, at Nîmes once in every seven years. Nîmes possesses a marvellous spring, a river of green water that swells up out of the bowels of the earth and fills a large circular reservoir. A temple of Nemausus stood near the basin

[S. Baring-Gould, A Book of Folk-lore, p. 106]


Nemausus – Nîmes – Nemesis

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[*] See >Short-term Memory Impairment.

Baxter, James K. (1926-1972)

This can be seen also in the audacious way in which Baxter’s “Poem by the Clock Tower, Sumner” (1948) juxtaposes Minoan Crete and Plato’s mythical lost continent of Atlantis with Kiwi beach culture:

Beside the dark sand and the winged foam
Under the shadow of the naked tower[*]
Play the wild children[+], stranger than Atlanteans.
For them the blazed rock hieroglyph burns clear[#]:
Bear dance and bull dance in the drenched arena[~]

“Terrible mirrors,” he calls them, bowing to their (alleged) superior wisdom:

... An Ice Age lies
Between us;[$] for they know
The place and hour of the young phoenix’ nest
On the bare dune where we can see only
Worn glacial stones and terminal moraine. …

[P. Fletcher, In the Bull-Ring: Hot Air and Hyperbole in Antipodean Writing, p. 73]

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[*] See >Xerxes.

[+] See >Baring-Gould, Rev. Sabine.

[#] See >Felton Mathew’s spider-web plan.

[~] See >Waite, Arthur Edward.

[$] See >Mu.

Bianca

blank [bianca] / clear [clara[*]] / white [candida]


[P. Cannepele & G. Krenn, Infinite Distance in Close-Up, p.15]

The books in her room are:

• André Breton, L’Union libre [Free love] (1923)
• Marquis de Sade, L’Histoire de Juliette (1797)
• Jules >Verne, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870)
• Pierre Benoit, >L’Atlantide [Atlantis] (1919)
• Carlo Collodi, Le Avventure di Pinocchio : Storia di un burratino (1883)
• Ada Boni, Il > Talismano della Felicitá [Talisman of Happiness] (1928)
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale (1851)
• Octave Mirbeau, Le > Jardin des Supplices [Torture Garden] (1899)

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[*] See >Girl in Love, A.