Religion and politics

PROFESSOR MARION MADDOX

Religion and Politics: How Powerful is the Christian Right?

Tuesday Seminar
13 March 3.30-5pm

Hosted in the Auchmuty Library’s Cultural Collections at the University of Newcastle.
Tea, coffee and nibbles provided from 3.30pm for a 3.45 start finishing by 5pm.

Seminar Abstract:
A number of recent articles have argued that the Australian Christian right’s political influence has been overstated, pointing to the failure of signature reforms and lack of electoral pulling-power. I respond that such analyses misconstrue the kind of pressure group politics in which Australia’s Christian right engages and the purpose for which it raises iconic issues. I then draw a comparison with the way in which similar arguments have been made about the US Christian right, usually when it appeared to have reached a low ebb and often predicting its imminent demise, only to herald a resurgence. Where Australia’s Christian right is often treated as a recent phenomenon, it, like its US counterpart, rewards a long-view analysis.

All welcome.

Download the Flyer (PDF)

Claudia Coutu Radmore Book Reading

BOOK READING

CLAUDIA COUTU RADMORE

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Cultural Collections Reading Room
Level 2, Auchmuty Library

10:00 – 11:00 am
followed by morning tea

Claudia Coutu Radmore, winner of the 2009 National Capital Canadian Author’s Award for Poetry, will read excerpts from her latest works, Arctic Twilight and a minute or two/without remembering and discuss the books and her writing.

Arctic Twilight recounts the life of Leonard Budgell who ran the Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts for decades in isolated communities up the Labrador coast and across the Arctic. he chronicles, in an outpouring of letters to a much younger female friend, a traditional way of life that was changing forever.

a minute or two / without remembering covers the history of New France, the settlement of the area around Montreal, Quebec between the years 1672 and 1790. The voices that tell the stories, and of the history, conflict, news stories and cultural development of those times are women, men, children, soldiers erc who are her actual ancestors, members of the Coutu family.

Claudia Coutu Radmore is also a writer of Japanese-form poetry. She is a teacher, artist and writer who has lived in China and the South Pacific, and now lives near Ottawa.

All are welcome to attend the reading.

The Cooee’s Career in English Literature

History Seminar Series
School of Humanities and Social Science
The University of Newcastle

2010, Semester 2

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

October 15^th ,11am, followed by morning tea

Richard White

“The Cooee’s Career in English Literature”

The cooee has long been heard in Australia in many varied contexts, but it has also had a presence in Britain ever since its notable debut on the streets of London in the 1840s. This paper considers its relatively autonomous literary history beyond Australia, from Sherlock Holmes to Lady Chatterley, Tin Tin and the Bobbsey Twins, from Agatha Christie to John Betjeman, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

Richard White is writing a history of the cooee. He teaches Australian history and the history of travel and tourism at the University of Sydney. His most recent book is Symbols of Australia, co-edited with Melissa Harper.

Huldah Turner’s Poetry

Huldah Turner

Selections of Poetry by Huldah M Turner

Huldah Turner was a talented poet, winning the third prize in the Roland Robinson Literary Award for Poetry in 1994.  Some samples of her work are reproduced here with the permission of her family.

• Mootwingie – Snake Cave (Cultural Coll/RB Staff PamA821.3 TURN-1 MOOT 1994)
• Landscape near Madura, Western Australia in Lines from a lakeside city : poems selected for the 1994 Roland Robinson Literary Award / edited by Betty Roe[Boolaroo, N.S.W.] : Lake Macquarie City Council, 1994  (Cultural Coll/RB A821.3 ROE 1994)
• A Late Love Song (excerpt from poem, on the death of her beloved husband)
• A stanza from Elegy
• What am I crying for? (on approaching blindness)

Mootwingie - Snake Cave

Mootwingie – Snake Cave

I

THE WAY

You will find the place.

Leave the level plain
with furrowed shallow dunes,
sand-smoothed wind-blown gibbers
and speckling clumps of salt-bush
baked to brittle hardness
by the desert suns

Walk into a long and narrow valley
carved out man million years ago
from steeply tilted beds
of the Bynguano Range.

Dry crevices and crumbling edges
feed hungry roots
of prickly wattles,
wilga trees
and stunted cypress pines.

Through this lowly scrub
a curving line of river-gums
will mark the way —
creamy trunks,
twisted, gnarled,
deeply slashed with dyes
of purple, grey and indigo,
rise imperially
from roots thrust down
to moister sand below.

Follow the dry creek-bed
till the loose red sand
washes the feet
of wind-scalloped rocks;
climb past the seven terraced pools,
sandstone-paved,
gouged by cataracts from sudden rains,
now mystery-still,
mirroring weathered tessellations
and slabs of hard blue sky.

Above the seventh pool
a level time-crazed ledge spreads out,
fretted, pitted,
worn to dull mosaic
by water, wind and rain.

II

THE CAVE

Your feet now tread that ancient ground
where once the Wilyakali men
held secret, solemn rites.
Walls of jagged rock
stand sentinel
around the sacred crouching Cave,
arched majestically,
enormously
across the sky.

Over the concave fire-abraded wall
the dreamtime Rainbow serpent coils;
dusky-red
it weaves a way
through upturned ochre-stencilled hands.
Etched and carved
from base to arch,
on a painted web of lore and ritual,
warriors hold high
long spears in battle victory,
hunters triumphantly
bringing home the kill —
kangaroo and euro,
reptile, bird and dingo.

III

THE VISION

If you listen to the quiet
you may chance to hear
an eerie bird call —
message to the living from the dead —
slicing sheer through time and silence.

Rest then beside the Mushroom Rock,
close your mind against the day,
surrender will until the Snake spell
takes you back into the Dreaming;
till your pace throbs to the measure
of the pulse of other days;
till the ashes of Wilyakali
rise before you
from the mists of Dreamtime.

You will see
angularly dark against the night
naked dancers leaping all together
in ritual corroboree;
awesome complex shadows
flung in quivering patterns
intricately moving
over watching walls;
the coiling Snake
flickering life-like in the light
of flame-coloured smoke.

You will hear
Bargundji words
uttering tribal incantations,
initiating tribal laws,
teaching tribal myths and legends
to the young men and children;
you will hear
voices raised in singing exultation,
dark feet beating
in the steady rhythm
of warrior dance.

You will smell
the smoke of campfire —
sharp scent of eucalypt
from crackling leaves and twigs —
and pungent burning flesh
of hunting spoil.

You will feel
abysses at the edge of being,
time like water flowing,
distance rolled out endlessly;
you will know
the bonds of sacred tribal rites
through the tapping out in unison
of dancing rhythms
with the clacking beating sticks;
you will touch,
hands carefully exploring,
mystic carvings,
tribal totems,
cut into the cave-face —
incised texts of ripened wisdom,
books in stone,
lore for all Wilyakali generations.

Here they learned the yearly promise
in the seasons and the stars,
in the spring sap of the eucalypt,
in the flight of a bird
winging to water,
in the ripple of sand-dunes
lipped by the wandering winds,
in creek-beds gently flowing
then soon drying after rain,
in sullen rivers snaking
sluggish over sand-bars
to sink into an inland salt-sand sea.

IV

THE RETURN

The vision passes —
day and sun return.

You will go back
the way you came,
past the pools
and river-gums,
past salt-bush,
gibber
and the dunes,
numbed by a dimension
not known to those you know.

You will make your way
weighted by sadness
and scape-goat shame;
on pilgrim shoulders you will carry
the crime-burden of desecration:
alien crashing into Dreaming,
insolent probing into sacred mysteries,
wanton carving of level boundless vistas
into finite crude divisions,
idle parcelling of smooth timelessness
into crisp hour-glass precisions,
into ticking clock-wedges,
brutal shredding with uncaring hands
of the oldest, longest, wisest
childhood of the earth.

In still moments
you will see again
the Cave and coiling Serpent:
into the quiet of a falling dusk,
into a sleepless hour of the dawn,
guilt-torn wondering will come.
Can the Wilyakali
ever know again
the mellow flow of time,
the singing freedom of the Dreamtime,
the vintage wisdom of their fathers,
the peace and wholeness
of a people living
one-ness with the earth?

Landscape near Madura, Western Australia

No Gruner landscape this.
White sharp-edged rocks and fossil-shells spill
steeply down the long escarpment:
mid-day haze blurs lazy clumps
of squatting summer-dusted salt-bush -
ink-daubs on a crescent canvas
stretched taut and dry
between the escarpment and the ocean.
Sand-whipped by winds from the south
low bushes bend in twisted nakedness
or wear old wigs of matted leaves
in dusky green and olive.
All lean to the north.
Out where white scalloped dunes
fold in the land
a thin pure line of emerald sea
pencils off untainted blue of sky
streaked with one wisp of sleepy cloud.
That is the landscape now.
A fossil-shell
once live and free on the ocean floor
now choked with alien sand
no longer sings into my ear
its legend of wild waters:
but deep beneath my feet I think I hear
the muffled pulse of a kinder earth
and the faint surge of forgotten seas.

Winner of the Third Prize in the 1994 Roland Robinson Literary Award for Poetry.

---

A Late Love Song

(excerpt from poem, on the death of her beloved husband) by Huldah M Turner aged 93

Our bright day closes in:
The long night will soon begin.
Then you and I, separate handfuls of a remnant dust,
swept by the uncaring flow
of ceaseless rhythms of earth and sea and sky,
inert, unaware must
sleep through time.

---

A stanza from Elegy

The spirit has slit its drab cocoon
to shed the clinging web of flesh.
Wearied and bruised, it rests; awaits,
fragile, alone, but free,
the drift on a mounting tide
that will ferry it down through a silent tunnel of dark
to radiant birth
in the blinding shock of perpetual light.

---

What am I crying for?

(on approaching blindness)

I cry for the sheen that has gone from the day
for sharp slant of sun and soft silver moon
for diamond night canopy spread on the sky
nuances of light.

I cry for colour washed out of the world
for scarlet poinsettias riding the breeze
for heaped saffron sunset clouds slashed with vermilion
blue of the sky.

I cry for loveliness misted and blurred
for intricate tracery veining a leaf
for rhythm and dance of a branch blowing high in the wind
bird on the wing.

I cry for song-words singing now lost on the page
for music of phrase flowing over the mind
for notes on a stave starting echoes and dreaming
sounds from the deep.

I cry for gentleness clouded in haze
for dark of your hair on the pillow beside me
for tenderness welling in grieving grey eyes
curve of your smile.

That is why I am crying.

Happy Easter from Cultural Collections

Due to popular demand and to celebrate Easter 2010 we present ‘Edward Bridle – The Man Behind the Suit’. This was a student film profile of Dr Edward Bridle, Project Archivist at the Archives of the University of Newcastle Australia.

It was the brainchild of director Katherine Jones Torres. Producer Shevaun O’Neill. Camera – Andrew Kable.

The premiere screening took place as part of ‘Docu-mental 2004′ at the McMullin Theatre, Friday the 11th June 2004.

Filming of The Man Behind the Suit (2004)

Filming of The Man Behind the Suit (2004)

Filming of The Man Behind the Suit (2004)

For more information on the work of the Archives (now Cultural Collections) click here: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/service/archives/

All of us here at Cultural Collections (University Archives) wish you all a very happy and safe Easter.

Witches, Wends and Werplons

The Werplon by Rosaleen Norton

Day Shift – 22/09/2009 – 02:10 PM
Presenter: Carol Duncan
Interviewee: Gionni Di Gravio, Archivist, Newcastle University Newcastle University

Archivist Gionni Di Gravio discusses an interesting research enquiry into an artistic trance figure by the late notorious Australian artist Rosaleen Norton, and its interesting connections to the ancient mythology of the Wendic/Sorbian Community of the Hunter Region.

Broadcast Notes:

Back in 2001 I responded to an enquiry by a University scholar to see what I could find out about  a werplon. What is a werplon you may ask? It is a monstrous creature from the trance imagination of Australian artist and famous ‘Witch of King’s Cross’ Rosaleen Norton.  It appears in her controversial book entitled ‘The Art of Rosaleen Norton’ which first appeared in 1952. I have brought in the University’s copy which is the 1982 edition. Much of her trance art relate to mythological figures that are reasonably well known, such as Pan for instance. The Werplon, however proved more elusive.

On the evening of 22 September 2001 I went looking…

Email: 23/09/2001 12:01 AM

I went looking for Werplon tonight. Couldn’t find anything anywhere on it. Then the thought appeared to divide the word into ‘Wer’ and ‘Plon’, and I hit pay dirt.

Apparently a “Plon” is a very obscure Slavic demon of sorts, with the “wer” prefix denoting a male form of this being, much in the same vein as a were-wolf (or man-wolf). So our being is a wer-plon.

Here is the excerpt that comes from article by V.J. Mansikka entitled ‘Demons and Spirits (Slavonic)’ pp.622a – 630b in Volume 4 of James Hastings (Editor) Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1908 – 1926 (on p.628a):

“The Polish skrzatek is a winged creature which supplies corn, and, when flying about in the vicinity of homes, steals children. His Wendic counterpart is the plon, a dragon in the form of a fiery sphere; a common saying about a rich man is: ‘He has a plon‘. The plon may assume various shapes, and the proper place to confer with him is the cross-roads.”

Three days later I came across a number of other references on this goblin from Jan Machal’s Slavic Mythology in The Mythology of All Races (Edited by L. H. Gray) New York: Cooper Square, 1964 Vol 3 pp.244 – 246:

“Another designation of the family genius was Skritek (Hobgoblin) a term which was derived from the German Schrat or Schratt. This goblin who appeared in the shape of a small boy, usually lived behind the oven or in the stable, favouring the household and sharing the joys and sorrows of the family; and he liked to do some work in the house, such as weaving on the loom, sweeping the floor, or tending the flocks. In order to court his favour the household set aside a portion of their meals for his consumption, especially on Thursdays and at Christmas dinner, when three bits from every dish were assigned to him. If they failed to do this, he was angry and stormed about, worrying people, damaging the flocks, and doing all sorts of harm to the master of the house. His memory still lives in popular tradition, and he was represented by a wooden statue, with arms crossed on its breast and wearing a crown upon its head. The image stood, as a rule, on a chiffonier in a corner behind the table; and in any absence of the family the Skritek was placed on a chiffonier or on a table to guard the house. The Slovaks call this spirit Skrata or Skriatek and conceive him as a drenched chicken; while in Poland he is known as Skrzatek, Skrzat, or Skrzot, and is represented as a bird (again most frequently a drenched chicken) dragging its wings and tail behind it. He often transforms himself into a small bird emitting sparks from its body, and he may be bred from an egg of a peculiar shape carried for a certain length of time beneath one’s arm pit. He haunts the corn-loft and steals corn; in bad weather he also visits human dwellings; and those who give him shelter under their roofs will profit by his presence, for he brings the householder grain and will make them rich. The Slovenians in Styria likewise believe that the Skrat (Skratec) brings money and corn. He assumes different shapes, looking now like a young lad, and now like and old man or woman, or he can transform himself into a cat, dog, goose, etc.: but since he is covered in hair, he takes great pains to hide his body. He likes to dwell in mountains and dense forests, and does not allow people to shout there; by day he perches on a beech-tree and takes his rest in dark caves; at night he haunts villages and smithies, where he forges and hammers until the dawn. This goblin may be hired for one’s services or bred from an egg of a black hen; but to gain his assistance it is necessary to promise him one’s own self, as well as one’s wife and children, and such an agreement must be signed in one’s own blood. In return for all this the Skrat will bring whatsoever a may may wish, placing these things on the window-sill, although when he carries money, he comes in the shape of a fiery broom, flying down the chimney. Since millet gruel is his favourite dish, it must be placed on the window-sill whenever he brings anything.”

I was intrigued by the references to this being a Wendic mythological being. So, I did a search on the University’s Library Catalogue, Newcat, and what came up were all these books on the Wendic folk tales and history mostly written/co-authored by a local gentleman Hans Deiter von Senff. A local connection!

From these books I soon learned the first Sorb settlers were originally brought out to the Hunter Region as shepherds by the Australian Agricultural Company in 1826. (We hold some of the early papers of the AACo. in the Region, the majority are at the Noel Butlin Archives in Canberra).

The Wendic settlers to the Hunter Region mostly came from Saxony, along with their herds of Saxon Merinos to settle on the Company’s holdings in the Port Stephens – Stroud district. So I was completely delighted that I had found someone who could probably shed some further light on the Werplon.

So I rang Mr Senff on the 29 September 2001 and spoke to his daughter, who said he would really love to speak to me about Wendic folklore. We eventually spoke and after correcting me on the pronunciation of the word ‘Plon’ as sounding more like ‘Ploone’,  he visited us on the following Monday. Here is my diary/email notes for the day:

2/10/2001 1:45 PM

Today I was visited by Mr Hans-Deiter Von Senff who kindly brought in a number of books for inclusion into the rare books section, as well as his personal copy of Wilibald von Schulenburg’s Wendisches Volkstum in Sage, Brauch und Sitte (Wendic Ethnicity in Legend, Tradition and Custom) . 3rd Edition [Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag Bautzen, 1993]. This book is a modern reprinting of a very rare work on the culture of the Wendic peoples, reproduced from the only surviving copy (1934) to have escaped the Nazi destruction.

He made a running translation for me as we sat here this morning. The section on the shape-shifting Plon is from pages 74 – 78 [Translation by H.D. von Senff]:

The Plon

The Plon has seven heads. When the dragon flies all shall say “Plon, Plon” and throw something at him. [ref. from the town of Schleife/Stepo]

When the dragon has money, he is much brighter. When he has grain he is blue.  He eats thick porridge with syrup and sugar.
He normally sits on the rooves of houses and only picks food from the houses of those who have the dragon, the others he does not. [ref. Grob-Schulzendorf]

In order that the dragon brings money, the woman must give him a black pullet to eat. [ref. Heiligensee.]

The dragon flies at night down the chimney and brings riches. [ref: Pyritz]

The dragon flies [ref: Grunfier bei Fiehne]

They saw the dragon flying, he flew fiery red through the air. [ref: Landsberg a.d.W.]

The Plon as Suckling Pig
Shepherds watched a Plon, with the appearance of a suckling pig fall from the sky and land among the sheep. [ref: Burg bei Burghammer.]

The Pear Tree
A man once saw a light in a pear tree. The light then divided itself into 15 parts and danced amongst the branches of the tree. It fell to the ground where it became one again.

The Plon of Schleife
In the year 1817, in the evening around 11-12 midnight, the old Madra (which means blue) saw a Plon flying over the village of Schleife. The Plon was as  big  as a chook and the whole village was illuminated by the light. Someone shouted Plon! plon! and it then began to shrink and disappeared.

The Plon as a Tree Trunk
A man named Hanko, was on a journey from Halbendorf to Schleife. At midnight, when he was a thousand steps from the village he heard a noise like a rope hitting something, there was  big light and then Hanko said: You condemned (or damned) dragon, what do I owe you? As soon as he said it, there was a glowing tree trunk across the road and he was so frightened that his hair rose like a mountain and it lifted the cap off his head. Then the glowing tree trunk lifted into the air and grew smaller and smaller and became like a little round ball and disappeared as a little dot in the air.

The Plon as Protector
In Grausten there was rich pub owner who had  a Plon. In his garden there was  boy who tended the cows. He wanted to pick some plums and so climbed the tree. Below him he saw a Plon, the appearance of a black lump. The Plon notified the publican and the boy had to run away.

The Hungry Plon
The Plon had given a farmer much money. The farmer now wished to get rid of the Plon. In order to do so, the farmer hung on a beam in his granary a stocking, with the bottom cut off. He told the Plon to fill the stocking or else the Plon would get nothing to eat. The Plon, unable to fill the stocking, starved. All the money in the farmer’s house that had been given to him by the Plon turned to horse dung, except the money which the farmer had lent to other people.

The Dragon
A maid amazed her dinner guests one night when she produced a meal of pears and dumplings very quickly. She had gone to the Plon and asked it to vomit out the meal.

A maid refused to eat what had been vomited out by the colourful calf. Upon two sticks the dragon sat near the chimney and shat upon the head of the maid. She was unable to remove the blue from her skin after the incident. The saying to this day is that if you look black and blue, you have been shat upon by a Plon.

The Evil Dragon
A reluctant maid had to feed a dragon, so she gave him hot food, because she was any that she had to feed the calf, that had to sit in a barrel, wide open and with beady eyes. The thick hot porridge went down the throat of the dragon, and it became very angry and told the owner what the maid had done. So, the woman had to cure the throat of the dragon with sweet milk.

——————————————————

After he provided his information, I filled him in on the background detail to the enquiry, and how we didn’t really know whether the “Werplon” was a figment of Rosaleen Norton’s artistic trance imagination or a ‘real’ mythical creature.

He told me that it was certainly a mythical being, but a very rare one. He told me that when I initially rang and mentioned the Plon, he thought “Oh my God”, because to be able to refer to such a creature means that you have obtained information from very scarce sources. It is not common knowledge.

Whether Rosaleen Norton was versed in such obscure mythology is difficult to know, as a practicing witch, we can probably be safe to assume that through her trance art she tapped into something akin to Jung’s collective subconscious, and out poured this creature.

Artists, as well as  dreamers,  do sometimes tap into archetypes that are not part of their personal experience, that come from strange places in the human mind. This is one of those strange places.

The translations above are probably the first time this material has ever been rendered into the English language. The text he was reading from was mostly in German, however the statements made by the witnesses was recorded in the original Sorbian language (along with German translation), which he was also able to read for me.

Such are the wonderful gifts of knowledge and expertise that are present in our Hunter Region. I wish to sincerely thank Mr Hans-Deiter Von Senff  for his generosity and help in this research. It was a real privilege to learn, through this research, a little more about the interesting cultures that make up the Australian Nation. To hear such an ancient tongue, and to be able to listen to it rendered in English is something I am very honoured to experience. We certainly have to count our blessings for living in such a wonderful place.

Gionni Di Gravio
September 2009

The first journey to the Moon

Moon phases from James Ferguson's 'Lectures on Select Subjects' (1793)

Day Shift – 21/07/2009 – 02:10 PM
Presenter: Carol Duncan
Producer: Jeannette McMahon
Interviewee: Gionni Di Gravio, Archivist University of Newcastle

On the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing University of Newcastle Archivist Gionni Di Gravio discusses early (fictional) accounts of journeys to the moon dating back to AD 160 and their inspiration towards the quest for lunar exploration that culminated in the Apollo landing on this day in 1969.

Broadcast Notes:

A beautiful and brief introduction to early works dedicated to travels to the Moon can be had in Lester G. Wells ‘Fictional Accounts of Trips to the Moon’ published in 1962. Wells was the rare books librarian of Syracuse University and wrote brief introductions to a number of works that documented imaginary voyages to the Moon.

According to Wells, Lucian of Samosata’s ‘Vera Historia’ (True History) was the first work of science fiction, and written sometime in the 2nd century of our era. It contains the first journey of a man to the Moon. In it Lucian travelled to the ‘great country of the air’ by a whirlwind that propelled his ship to the Moon. On the Moon he found the inhabitants to be quite advanced, they adhorred filth, had no knowledge of sex, and when they died they dissolved in a puff of smoke. The Moon men could observe the goings on the Earth by a glass bottom at the end of a deep well.

Another of Lucian’s works, the ‘Icaromenippus’, contains another journey to the Moon. The traveller, in this case sticks wings  (from a vulture and eagle respectively) to his body. When he arrived at the Moon he didn’t like it there and so proceeded onto Heaven, where the immortals have him packed back to Earth via the swift and secret messenger Hermes.

Title page of Lucian's 'True History'

'The Visit to the Moon'

'Manners and customs in the Moon'

Here is a schematic history of imaginary voyages to the Moon:

AD 160
Lucian of Samosata travels to the Moon in his Vera Historia and Icaro-Menippus, using a waterspout/whirlwind to carry him upward and an artificial set of wings of eagle and vulture respectively.

1516
Lodovico Ariosto in the Orlando Furioso makes his journey to the Moon via a chariot pulled through the sky by powerful horses.

1638
Bishop Francis Godwin – The Man in the Moone or, A Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales – The Speedy Messenger

Title Page of Godwin's 'The Man in the Moon' (1638)

First account in English of a journey to the Moon. Shipwrecked on an Island, the hero, Domingo Gonsales, manages to train birds to lift things into the air. One day while experimenting with a trapeze contraption he is taken by them directly to the Moon which took 11 days. He experienced diminishing gravitational pull (incidently he wrote this half a century before Newton proposed his principle of gravitation). On the Moon he found men twice as big as earth men, no disease, moved by leaping and fanning themselves along. Gonzales speaks with them about a number of subjects including Spanish wine and Antwerp beer. The prince of the Lunarians gives him a jewel which allows him to return to Earth taking only 9 days because of the ‘Earth’s pull’.

Lunarians spoke in a form of music

1638
John Wilkins – The Discovery of a World in the Moone or a Discourse tending to prove that ’tis Probable there may be another habitable world in that planet.

This was a scientific/philosophical work where he advanced 13 propositions concerning the nature of the moon and the possibilities of creating craft to get there and establish a colony there. These craft would be propelled by flying wings or ‘a flying chariot’.

Title page of Wilkins' Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638)

Page from Wilkins' Work

1650
Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac – Histoire Comique des Estats et Empires de la Lune.

Cyrano proposed a number of methods of getting to the Moon. One method was the use of bottles full of dew which were drawn up by the sun, but unfortunately he fell to earth in Canada. He escaped the Canadian barbarians and created another method which was a iron cube with a loadstone that formed an iron machine that took them to the Moon and another using wings and a spring attached to rockets. Covered his body with beef marrow  and the Moon sucked him up. Therefore he was the first to reach the Moon in a rocket ship.

Description: Moon inhabitants were spirits, conversing while making gestures with the body. Wore no cloths and ate by inhaling fumes from boiling meats. They lived in a sensual world.

1703
David Russen – Iter Lunare: or, a Voyage to the Moon.

Proposes spring mechanism attached to mountain in order to propel voyager to the Moon. Discussion of Cyrano’s description of the Moon, along with conversation with a ‘God Like’ Person he met on the Moon.

1705.
Daniel Defoe – The Consolidator: or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon Translated from the Lunar Language by the Author of a True-Born English Man.

He reached the Moon with a flying machine propelled by fuel. On route he took a tranquilizer that numbed him. On the Moon he found things much like the Earth, no differences in the living things at least. He satirizes English political life along the way.

1827
Joseph Atterly (Pseudonym of George Tucker) – A Voyage to the Moon with some account of the manners and customs science and philosophy of the people of Morosofia and other Lunarians.

He constructs a space ship of a special metal substance (which a holy Brahmin hermit  taught him about) called a ‘Lunarium’. The ship was made out of copper, and fitted with doors and windows. Quantities of Lunarium was placed outside the ship and controlled from the inside. They discussed a number of topics before landing on the lunar country of Morosofia and proceeded to a town not as large as Albany. Thee Lunarians were tall, thin and of a yellowish complexion. The houses were constructed with half underground to protect from the sun’s rays. The residents were the same as though on earth, born without intellect, they moved as automatons until a ray from the earth illuminated them. They became knowledgable while the earth man lost theirs. They were called Glonglims. They practiced birth control, had no capital punishment, arbitrated all disputes, bred animals to improve strains and had invented steam cookers. They (Atterley and the Brahmin) entered their copper balloons and returned to earth on August 20, 1825.

1835
Edgar Allan Poe – The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfaal Southern Literary Messenger.

This is an account of a Dutchman’s trip to the Moon in a balloon. He built a cloth balloon, coated with rubber attached to a wicker basket. Filled the bag with a gas manufactured by combining a particular metallic substance with a common acid.

1836
John Russell (attributed) – Adventures in the Moon, and other worlds.

A breezy tale of comfort and ease of space travel, with the Moon being the place where everything that was ever lost from the Earth lies, dreams of youth, words once spoken, various passions and traits.

1859.
[Sir John Herschel] Literary hoax perpetrated by Richard Adams Locke reporter and later editor of the Sun.
Discoveries in the Moon lately made at the Cape of Good Hope by Sir John Herschel The New York Sun August -September 1835. Later published as The Moon Hoax, New York, 1858.

First hand observations made in Africa by Sir William Herschel and his son, of the Moon real close up to examine all life there from five miles away caused a sensation not unlike Welles’ War of the Worlds.

Nature had carved columns of green basalt, hills covered in amethysts, mountains in sapphires and rubies. Creatures were simians between man and anumal, like lunar batmen, 4 foot high, short glossy copper coloured hair and wings of a thin membrane.

1865, 1870.
Jules Verne – De La Terre a La Lune (From the Earth to the Moon)

He selected a space gun as the means for propulsion to the Moon via a projectile with a scientist inside like a bullet. The Baltimore Gun Club constructed the cannon called a Columbiad which was propelled on an orbit of the Moon from which they would make close observations before firing rockets to send themselves back to Earth. No life.

1901
H.G. Wells – The First Men in the Moon

Used a ship similar to Atterley’s flying cube with anti gravitational metal substance.

Kingship, Priesthood, and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings

Professor Barry Gordon photographed in 1987

We were recently delighted in being able to track down an elusive and important hitherto unpublished paper on Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings written many years ago by the late Professor Barry Gordon, Professor in Economics here at the University of Newcastle.

We received an enquiry from a scholar in the United Kingdom who was trying to track down the article entitled “Kingship, Priesthood and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings”. He believed the article may have been unpublished.

We checked our library and archival listings, including four boxes of unaccessioned material with no luck. So we hoped to be able to get in touch with Professor Gordon’s family to see whether they could help.

We were fortunate to make contact with his wife, Dr Moira Gordon who kindly tracked down the original manuscript of not one but two versions, and transcribed them for us in order to complete the enquiry. She also kindly provided her permission for us to upload the article onto our library catalogue and Cultural Collections blog.

Our Newcat catalogue entry for the electronic article is located here:

http://library.newcastle.edu.au/record=b2474576~S16

Author: Gordon, Barry
Title: Kingship, priesthood, and prophecy in The Lord of the Rings [electronic resource] / [written by Barry Gordon ; transcribed by Moira Gordon]
Edition: [Version 3, 1967]

View or Print: Kingship, Priesthood and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings [Version 3]

View or Print: Kingship, Priesthood, and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings [Version 2]

Subject: Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973.
Lord of the rings — Criticism, Textual
Redemption in literature
Fantasy fiction, English — Criticism, Textual
Fiction — Religious aspects — Christianity

Electronic version created 05/05/2009 by Dr Moira Gordon.
Other Auth: Gordon, Moira

Relating the history of the article, Dr Moira Gordon writes (Email, 8 May 2009):

To the best of my knowledge Barry’s article “Kingship, Priesthood and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings” was not published, although one draft of this article may have been circulated as a paper given to the Newcastle Theological Society some time around 1964.   There are manuscript copies among Barry’s papers.  I have located two carbon copies of drafts, which could be regarded as presenting three versions of his paper, as I will explain.

What appears to be the earliest typed manuscript dates from around 1964.  This paper is quite long (over 5000 words) and, from correspondence also found during my search, it seems to have been submitted for consideration for publication to a journal edited from the University of Keele (in England, from where I have a letter signed by W.J. Harvey who recommended sending it to Modern Fiction Studies).  This advice appears to have been followed, as there is a letter from Maurice Beebe at Purdue University (then editor of Modern Fiction Studies) dated June 24, 1964.  Because of its length and publication queues at that time, neither of these journals accepted the paper for publication.  The paper also appears to have been sent to PMLA, for which Patricia M Spacks read the manuscript in June 1965 and suggested it was more appropriate for “a theologically oriented journal such as Religion in Life”.  The copy I have contains a few hand-written alterations made by Barry Gordon, giving what could be regarded as a second version.  It is this version which I have converted to an electronic file.

Paul Fromer, the editor of HIS, magazine of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, (Chicago) wrote to Professor Gordon in January 1967, saying “it has come to me indirectly that you wrote an article on Tolkien entitled “Kingship, Priesthood and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings” and inviting him to send a copy for possible publication.  The second of the manuscripts which I have appears to be the version sent in response to this request.  This draft is considerably shorter.  The three core sections of the article are unchanged.  However, in this draft a much tighter introduction replaces the longer introduction and the first section of the earlier draft, and a long final section is deleted.   Subsequent correspondence from Mr Fromer indicated that this 3800 word draft substantially exceeded their usual 2000 word limit for articles and expressed the hope that Professor Gordon would reduce the paper to fit into this limit.  I have found no evidence that this was ever done.

In searching through Professor Gordon’s papers I have not found any evidence that he sent a copy to Professor Tolkien, although it is possible that he may have done so.  I do know that Miss Rhona Beare, who was at one time a member of the Classics Department at the University of Newcastle (Professor Bernie Curran would remember her), did correspond with J.R.R. Tolkien and, in the draft of another article which Barry was working on, “J.R.R. Tolkien on Death as the Gift to Men”, Barry quotes from a letter she received from Tolkien in 1958.

The quality of both of the carbon copies which I have is extremely poor.  However I re-typed these into electronic files, and will forward these to you.  The original pages are folio length and I have not attempted to reproduce them.  Nevertheless, as a result of the type-face which has been used, the paging is broadly similar.   I am sure that Barry would be only too happy to have his work used, with the appropriate acknowledgement.

October 2009 Update

The online version of “‘From Mirrored Truth the Likeness of the True’: J.R.R. Tolkien and Reflections of Jesus Christ in Middle-Earth” by Jonathan Padley and Kenneth Padley has been published and is located here:

http://english.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/efp032v1.pdf

Gionni Di Gravio