I’m On My Way to Canaan Land
Something for the weekend. A very powerful rendition of I’m On My Way to Canaan Land from the film Elmer Gantry (1961).
A rendition in a completely different style from Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys: Continue reading
Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat
Something for the weekend. Stubby Kaye gives a show stopping performance of Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat from the film adaptation of the play Guys and Dolls (1955). My daughter’s high school is putting on the Guys and Dolls play this semester and my daughter has the role of the Salvation Army General Matilda B. Cartwright. My wife and I viewed the film a few weeks ago. It had been decades since I last watched it and I had forgotten just how much fun it is. A better time in America’s cultural life. Continue reading
Theme From Glory
Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters US, let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States.
Frederick Douglass
Something for the weekend. The theme from the movie Glory (1989), which tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first black regiments raised by the Union in the Civil War; a superb historical film and a long overdue salute to the black Union troops who helped preserve this nation. Continue reading
Messianic Prophecies: Isaiah 7: 11-16 and 9: 1-7
Something for the weekend. Lo How a Rose Ere Blooming. Continuing on with our Advent examination of major Messianic prophecies, we come to Isaiah 7: 11-16:
11 Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.
12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.
13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?
14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
and Isaiah 1-7:
1Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.
2The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
3Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
4For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.
5For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.
6For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
7Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
Saint Cyril of Alexandria commented upon this passage: Continue reading
Messianic Prophecies: Book of Wisdom
Something for the weekend. O Come, O Come Emmanuel. We start Advent tomorrow, and my thoughts have been turning to the many messianic prophecies in the Old Testament that are applicable to Christ. I do not think there is adequate treatment in contemporary catechesis of the remarkable string of prophecies in the Old Testament that find their completion in Christ. All Catholics need to be familiar with these prophecies, for they are an anchor for our Faith. One example is Wisdom 2:12-20: Continue reading
Chester
Something for the weekend. Chester, America’s unofficial national anthem during the American Revolution. Written by William Billings in 1770, he added new lyrics to the song in 1778 and transformed it into a battle hymn for the Patriots in their war for independence. The song reveals the strong religious element that was ever present on the American side of the conflict, with most Patriots viewing the war as a crusade.
Let tyrants shake their iron rods,
And Slav’ry clank her galling chains.
We fear them not, we trust in God.
New England’s God forever reigns.
Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton, too,
With Prescott
and Cornwallis joined,
Together plot our overthrow,
In one infernal
league combined.
When God inspired us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forced,
Their ships were
shattered in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our coast.
The foe comes on with haughty stride,
Our troops
advance with martial noise;
Their vet’rans flee before our youth,
And
gen’rals yield to beardless boys.
What grateful
off’ring shall we bring,
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud
hallelujahs let us sing,
And praise his name on ev’ry chord! 
Continue reading
Shenandoah
Something for the weekend. The haunting American folk song Shenandoah. The above version is by Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Here is a fine violin version by the Irish group Celtic Woman:
Sam Grant, the Beatles and the Internet
I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to “Let us have peace.”
Ulysses S. Grant, written just before his death
Something for the weekend. Quotations from Ulysses S. Grant to the Beatles song In My Life. A follow up to my post on Robert E. Lee, the Beatles and the Internet. Another demonstration of what a wild and wacky place the internet truly is!
Few men in American history have gone from complete obscurity to being a central figure in the life of the nation faster than Ulysses Simpson Grant. Known as Sam Grant by his West Point friends, his first two initials making Sam an inevitable nickname, Grant had an unerring ability to fail at everything he put his hand to, except for war, his marriage and his last gallant race against the Grim Reaper, as he was dying of cancer, to finish his memoirs and provide financially for his wife and children. Most great figures in our history have known success more than failure. Not so Sam Grant. He would encounter humiliating defeats throughout his life, from beginning to end.
At the beginning of the Civil War, he was a clerk, barely able to support his family. Seemingly a dull plodder, but possessed of iron determination and an uncanny ability to never let the trees obscure the forest; happily married and a firm believer in God, but subject to bouts of depression when he would grasp for the bottle; the shabby little man who, incredibly, ended up winning the greatest war in American history.
His men didn’t hold him in awe as Lee’s men did Lee; Grant was far too common and prosaic a figure for that. However, they did respect him, as this section of Stephen Vincent Benet’s epic poem on the Civil War, John Brown’s Body, indicates: Continue reading
Te Deum, Triumphalism and History
Something for the weekend. Te Deum (To God) sung by the Benedictine monks of Saint Maurice and Saint Maur. A song sung by Catholics in moments of triumph and thanksgiving, it was probably written by Saint Nicetas in the late Fourth century or early Fifth century.
One of the swear words common since Vatican II in the Catholic Church is triumphalism. We are to avoid it at all costs, and it is a bad, bad thing. In a small way this makes sense. The Church is both a divine and a human institution. As a divine institution the Church is always victorious and triumphant as result of the Triumph of the Cross, and proceeds serenely through time and eternity. As a human institution the Church consists of we sinful individuals here on Earth, and meets with victories and defeats as she seeks to spread the message of Christ, often on very stony fields indeed. To view the Church here on Earth through rose colored glasses and to assume that simply because the ultimate victory will be claimed by the Church against the Gates of Hell that all is well within the Church is to mistake the Church Triumphant for the Church Militant.
Over There
When I was 12 or so, my father picked up a newly released album of World War One music entitled, after the most famous American song of the war, Over There. It is now long out of print (though still occasionally available used). As is sometimes the case with highly singable songs one heard as a youth, several of these songs had been on my mind lately, and so when the breakdown of the dishwasher the other night set everyone to washing and drying dishes, I put it on and we sang along to the oddly cheerful songs inspired by one of the world’s darker interludes.
“Over There”, written in 1917 by George M. Cohan (I didn’t like the historical versions I found on YouTube as much, so I made my own with the Feinstein rendition of the song.)
Saving Civilization One Word at a Time
For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell today
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar’s sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
G.K. Chesterton
Something for the Weekend. From the endlessly talented songsters at Music For History Lovers, Illuminated Manuscripts sung to the tune of Nowhere Man by the Beatles. Monks toiling in Scriptoriums in monasteries throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and thereby rescuing some of the classic works of Antiquity is a cliche, but a true cliche. When the secular world of the Western Empire dissolved in chaos and ruin following the babarian invasions, it was the Church that rescued the lamp of knowledge. Only an institution like the Church, a rock in the river of time, could century following century ensure the survival and copying of manuscripts that preserved a precious fraction of the writings of Greece and Rome. Jerusalem rescued Athens. Continue reading
Get Off the Track!
Something for the weekend. Get Off The Track! by the Hutchinson Family Singers, a family group of singers who were very popular in the North during the 1840′s, 1850′s and 1860′s. They were fiery abolitionists and this song became the anthem of the crusade against slavery in the US. Continue reading
The Irish Volunteer
Something for the weekend. The Irish Volunteer. A mainstay of the Union armies in the eastern theater during the Civil War were Irish Americans who volunteered in huge numbers to fight. This song was popular among the men who fought so gallantly on many a field for their adopted nation. Continue reading
Lilies of the Field
Something for the weekend. The closing “Amen sequence” from the film Lillies of the Field (1963). The film was based on Williamn Edmund Barrett’s novel of the same name which was inspired by his admiration for the Benedictine Sisters of Saint Walburga in Colorado. Continue reading
Waltzing Matilda
Something for the weekend. A first rate vido explaining the rollicking song Waltzing Matilda to those of us who do not speak Australian. 
Continue reading
Remember
Something for the weekend. Scenes from the American Revolution set to the music of the film National Treaure. This Fourth of July weekend we should recall our heritage, especially the eight long years of war it took to achieve American independence. We should also remember these words of our second President John Adams in a letter to his wife Abigail on April 26, 1777: Continue reading
Scotland the Brave
Something for the weekend. Scotland the Brave. The tune is only from the early 20th Century. The lyrics are frankly forgettable compared to the grandeur of the song so I will not repeat them here. Instead, time for a little Bobbie Burns:
O’, I’m a Good Old Rebel
Something for the weekend. O’, I’m a Good Old Rebel by Major James Randolph. This rendition is sung by Bobby Horton, who has fought a one man crusade to bring Civil War music to modern audiences. It is the most moving rendition I have heard of this song, with Horton conveying well the bitterness and despair felt by almost all Confederates after the conclusion of the War. The author served on the staff of General J.E.B. Stuart. The song has always been popular in the South and was a favorite of Queen Victoria’s son, the future Edward VII, who referred to it as “that fine American song with cuss words in it.” Continue reading
Holst the Planets: Neptune the Mystic
Something for the weekend. Neptune the Mystic from Gustav Holst‘s The Planets. A very mellow piece of music for what I hope will be a mellow weekend. Continue reading
Keynes vs. Hayek, Round Two
Russ Roberts and friends have come out with another Keynes vs. Hayek rap video:
The production values on this are great, and I like the noir look they’ve got with, but I have to admit I slightly prefer their original: Continue reading
What Wondrous Love is This?
Something for the weekend. What Wondrous Love is This? and the Pieta. After Michelangelo completed it and had the Pieta moved to display it, the workmen who did it refused to accept a penny for their hard labor, saying they would get their reward in Heaven. I pray that they did, and I pray we all meet a similar fate. Continue reading
Lilliburlero
Something for the weekend. The lilting strains of Lilliburlero from the classic movie Barry Lyndon (1975).
The song originated during the Not So Glorious Revolution of 1688, after the usurper William of Holland, with the help of English traitors, chased James II, the rightful King of England, from his throne due to James’ Catholicism. Like most of the Stuart monarchs, the bad points of James tended to outweigh his good points, but the obloquy heaped upon his reign in most of the histories of this period is largely a function of partisan distortion and outright religious bigotry. On the other hand, Jacobite views of this period of British history, which goes to 1746 and the smashing of the army of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the grandson of James II at Culloden, tend greatly to exaggerate the virtues of the “Kings across the waters” who, Old Pretender (James II), Young Pretender (James III) and Bonnie Prince Charlie, were basically selfish blockheads who probably would have been disasters as monarchs if they had succeeded in regaining the throne. History, alas, often gives us unpalatable alternatives. Continue reading
Charlemagne
Something for the weekend. Charlemagne by the endlessly talented folks at music for history lovers, sung to the tune of Call Me by Blondie.
Charles the Great. He found the crown of the Roman emperors lying in the gutter of time, and by his efforts, against the odds, restored, in alliance with the popes, a Western Empire. Charlemagne laid the foundation that allowed Catholic Europe to survive the siege by Islam and to ultimately defeat the Vikings through conversion. In his reign Western Europe began waking from the long night described by Chesterton:
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar’s sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
When the ends of the earth came marching in
To torch and cresset gleam.
And the roads of the world that lead to Rome
Were filled with faces that moved like foam,
Like faces in a dream.
And men rode out of the eastern lands,
Broad river and burning plain;
Trees that are Titan flowers to see,
And tiger skies, striped horribly,
With tints of tropic rain.
Where Ind’s enamelled peaks arise
Around that inmost one,
Where ancient eagles on its brink,
Vast as archangels, gather and drink
The sacrament of the sun.
And men brake out of the northern lands,
Enormous lands alone,
Where a spell is laid upon life and lust
And the rain is changed to a silver dust
And the sea to a great green stone.
And a Shape that moveth murkily
In mirrors of ice and night,
Hath blanched with fear all beasts and birds,
As death and a shock of evil words
Blast a man’s hair with white.
And the cry of the palms and the purple moons,
Or the cry of the frost and foam,
Swept ever around an inmost place,
And the din of distant race on race
Cried and replied round Rome.
And there was death on the Emperor
And night upon the Pope: Continue reading
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