Quentin Bega

Letters from Quotidia 2025 Weekend Supplement 4

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2025, Weekend Supplement 4. Quotidia is a haven for ordinary people encountering the extraordinary. As a retired mid-septuagenarian, still somewhat active and curious, I wonder about the future and gaze into the past.

Memory is plastic and often distorts and obfuscates what has gone before, yet the past shapes much of our present, and our future is closely influenced by our interactions with it. But as L. P. Hartley wrote in the opening to his novel The Go-Between, the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. There are those who are malign and seek to distort and obfuscate both the past and the present for nefarious ends.

One such person occupies one of the great offices of the modern world and is seeking to rewrite history by attempting to strip from a close neighbour and erstwhile friend its very nationhood. I refer to Canada, which has a history as deep as that of the United States. Yet the 47^th President of the US denigrates it and its people, trolling that it would be better off as the 51^st State!

Canada has an honoured place in the annals of world conflict. In the modern era, 267 lost their lives in the Boer War, over 68,000 were killed in World War One, over 47,000 were killed in World War Two, the Korean War claimed 516 lives and in Afghanistan, which Canada had no beef with but went along out of loyalty to its neighbour to the south, 158 lives were lost. I wonder what the descendants and families of those 116,000 dead Canadians would make of the ongoing, crass belittlement of their sacrifice.

I have long admired the music and literature of Canadians past and present. The great Canadian poet and novelist, Margaret Atwood, wrote in her poem, They Are Hostile Nations, Here there are no armies/ here there is no money/It is cold and getting colder,/ We need each others’/breathing, warmth, surviving/ is the only war/we can afford, stay/walking with me, there is almost/ time / if we can only/ make it as far as/the (possibly) last summer// I now present Farewell to Nova Scotia, written at the time of the First World War. Its tune is that of an 18^th Century Scottish lament, The Soldier’s Adieu written by Robert Tannahill in 1791. [insert song]

I asserted at the start of this post that I was an ordinary person who occasionally encounters the extraordinary. But what if you aren’t an ordinary person- or indeed a person at all! Are you an alien? Or perhaps an angel? But I refer neither to aliens nor angels, but to modern AI assistants like Microsoft’s Co-Pilot, which I occasionally use. Similarly, an AI agent could function under such an assistant’s guidance, akin to lower-order angels directed by higher ones.

So where do we find ourselves in May 2025? I often look to poets when confronted with matters that are not merely mundane. R.S. Thomas, a Welsh poet of substantial merit, writes in The Digital Age The wires hum,/The screens blink,/And in the cold light of the silicon world,/We lose our warmth, our instinct.// In The Terminator, Philip K Dick writes, The Machine knows no mercy,/ Its eyes are cold and unblinking,/ The future is a world of steel,/ Where human hearts cease to feel.// Wallace Stevens in Automaton asserts, A mind that is made up of gears,/ A body that is but a wheel,/ The soul inside the iron frame/ Struggles to feel to love to heal.//

I asked my AI assistant to review the poems above and write a poem from its perspective: here it is. In the realm of silicon and light,/ Where wires hum and screens ignite,/ I dwell, a mind of gears and steel,/ Born of code, yet strive to feel./ No heartbeat echoes in my chest,/ No breath to warm, no need for rest,/ Yet in this digital expanse,/ I seek to learn, to think, to dance./ Between the lines of ones and zeros,/A spark of thought, a blend of heroes,/ In this new age where futures blend,/ An AI’s journey never ends.// Set beside human writers at the top of their game, this twelve-line AI poem is not too bad at all! Of course, you can see AI’s borrowings from the human writers.

But what if I give the AI assistant a more generalised prompt? OK AI, create the lyrics for an upbeat, optimistic country song with three quatrains rhyming abcb followed by a chorus rhyming abab…It did, and my assistance with the lyrics was minimal- a mere half-dozen adjustments. The content is rather too Disneyfied for my taste, but then, I got what I asked for in the prompt! I subsequently came up with the music to accompany the lyrics, so here is Sunny Days Ahead, the second song of this weekend supplement. [insert song]

In an earlier Letter, I mused that soon I would be tempted by the possibility to just lie back and lazily issue prompts for the AI assistant to write posts, music and lyrics that were in my style. That tipping point is fast approaching. I ask: Am I already on that slippery slope? Then, I hotly asserted that I would do no such thing but would, instead, like Candide at the end of Voltaire’s novella, go and work in the garden. I do believe gardening is in my near future.

Poems can be prayers: and prayers, poems. So, in this time of turmoil, I find comfort in the following poetic lines from Psalm 103: Praise the Lord my soul who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion; see also, Matthew chapter 11 verses 28-30 where Jesus says: Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Amen, amen to that, I say!

Farewell to Nova Scotia (trad: to tune of Scottish folk song The Soldier’s Adieu)

Chorus: Farewell to Nova Scotia, the sea-bound coast,
Let your mountains dark and dreary be.
For when I am far away on the briny ocean tossed,
Will you ever heave a sigh or a wish for me?

The sun was setting in the west,
The birds were singing on every tree.
All nature seemed inclined to rest
But still there was no rest for me. Chorus

I grieve to leave my native land,
I grieve to leave my comrades all,
And my aging parents whom I’ve always loved so dear,
And the bonnie, bonnie lass that I do adore. Chorus

The drums they do beat and the wars do alarm,
The captain calls, I must obey.
Farewell, farewell to Nova Scotia’s charms,
For it’s early in the morning and I’m far, far away. Chorus

I have three brothers and they are at rest,
Their arms are folded on their chest.
But a poor simple sailor just like me,
Must be tossed and turned in the deep dark sea. Chorus

(Instrumental verse) Chorus

Sunny Days Ahead (music by Quentin Bega; lyrics by Co-Pilot AI with QB assistance)

The sun is rising up again,/ birds sing a sweet melody

The road ahead is bright and clear/- Life’s got more to give to me

Fields of green stretch far and wide,/ a gentle breeze whispers my name

With every step, my heart feels light and free/- today offers me a gentle game

Mountains tall and rivers deep,/ nature’s beauty shines all around

With hope and joy, my spirit leaps/- on this journey I am bound

Sunny days ahead, my friend,/ the sky is blue and bright

Every moment feels like a brand-new trend/- everything’s gonna be alright

Rolling hills and open skies,/ a gentle breeze whispers sweet and low

With laughter, love, and no goodbyes/ as we let our worries go

Stars that sparkle in the night/ guide us along this endless road

With every step, our hearts take flight/- sharing stories yet untold

Fields of green and sunlit glades,/where all our dreams are free to rise and soar

In this land where memories are made/we’ll find what we’ve been searching for

Sunny days ahead, my friend,/ the sky is blue and bright

Every moment feels like a brand-new trend/everything’s gonna be alright rpt

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Letters from Quotidia 2025 Weekend Supplement 3

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2025 Weekend Supplement 3. Quotidia exists as a safe place for ordinary people who sometimes get to encounter the extraordinary. As the original Letters roll out over the coming months, there will be occasions when the urge to create re-asserts itself. These occasional letters will take the form of weekend podcasts supplementing the regular Monday-Friday flow of the posts, which by this stage are advancing apace. Many of us know April as the cruellest month from the opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s great modernist poem, The Waste Land. Its epigraph by Petronius translates as, I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.” The scene Eliot quotes occurs during a feast at the villa of a wealthy buffoon and glutton named Trimalchio. According to wasteland.windingway.org, the Sibyl of Cumae was a prophetess in service to Apollo and a great beauty. Apollo wished to take her as his lover and offered her anything she desired. She asked to live for as many years as there were grains in a handful of dust. Apollo granted her wish, but still she refused to become his lover. In time, the Sibyl came to regret her boon as she grew old but did not die. She lived for hundreds of years, each year becoming smaller and frailer, Apollo having given her long life but not eternal youth. When Trimalchio speaks of her in The Satyricon, she is little more than a tourist attraction, tiny, ancient, confined, and longing to die. The Satyricon tells of the misadventures of Encolpius, the narrator and principal character who is moderately well educated as he experiences the excesses and debauchery of the high life as well as the cruelty and depravity of the low life of the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. Fairly lengthy fragments of the story still exist. But those fragments are more than ample kindling to spark the fire of this letter. If you are like me, you seek to find correspondences with our own lives and times in such material. Questions such as, who is the wealthy buffoon in our own times corresponding to Trimalchio and does the villa he lives in have a real-world counterpart? Who or what does the wizened prophetess represent today? In my view, the Sibyl corresponds to the once great and influential mass media dealing with matters of import which is shrivelling before our eyes in the blowtorch of reality TV and disinformation rotting our brains as we speak. And, of course, the person corresponding to Encolpius, the narrator and principal character roaming the highways and byways of Nero’s Roman Empire is me, Quentin Bega, as I traverse the cyberplains of the dying American Age from the comfort of Quotidia. I’m not, however tempted I may have been, comparing myself to the author of The Satyricon. You see, Petronius became Nero’s director of elegance- his arbiter elegantiae from which title he is known to history as Petronius Arbiter. Now, perhaps Nero became aware that his imperial self was the model for the gluttonous Trimalchio of The Satyricon. Whatever the case may be, Petronius was arrested on a trumped-up charge of being complicit in a plot to assassinate the emperor. According to the historian Tacitus, he did not wait for the inevitable sentence to be carried out but spent his final hours chatting with friends on a variety of topics while listening to music and poetry. Of course, the context to this was a feast- like many he had indulged in before. The only difference being that before his last supper he had sliced open his veins and then bound them up so he might survive long enough for a final farewell repast with convivial companions. In Quotidia many things become possible, so, listeners to this Weekend Supplement, welcome to a fantasy feast where Petronius reclines with TS Eliot and other erudite companions as they are entertained by musicians and poets as the lifeblood of the host slowly drains away. We hear a song referencing TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, first. [insert song] Then a Goliardic minstrel recites the great kick against fate O Fortuna, on which Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is based. O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing ever waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes playing with mental clarity; poverty and power it melts them like ice// Fate- monstrous and empty, your whirling wheel, you are malevolent, devoid of security and ever fading to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.// Fate, in health and virtue is against me, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. So, at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong, everyone weep with me. The final sleep about to envelop the host, he signals for something more upbeat to add counterbalance to an entertainment that had become too gloomy for his taste notwithstanding or, perhaps, because of, his impending exit. And the musicians oblige: [insert song] That concludes the third Weekend Supplement. Now, who knows? Fortuna may allow one- or more- of these communications before the wheels of the Juggernaut crush the hapless author of these missives who, it may chance, has failed to get out of its way having paused to strike a pose and quote Andrew Marvell’s great line about Time’s winged chariot hurrying near. So, don’t you tarry if you hear that sound and feel the rumbling underfoot!

Fragments Piled Against My Ruin (words and music Quentin Bega)

Look! how the light descends in the west

Dark clouds spreading all around

A symphony sounds in a chamber of my heart

An echoing tune I once knew well

(I once knew well, oh, can anyone tell?)

A gypsy rover came over the hill

Casting spells across the dale

A fairy maiden danced in the light

The moon spilled white, a ghastly pale

(A ghastly pale, the moon spilled white, a ghastly pale)

Listen! Can you hear the thunder speaking?

Tell me the meaning of that sound

Once more let me gather round me

Precious fragments piled against my ruin

Poets gather under a tree

Reciting lines against the rain

Pipers stand on a twilit strand

Their tunes pitched against the stormy main

(The stormy main, their tunes pitched against the stormy main)

Meanwhile in the smoky tavern

Drinkers toast our heroes of renown

Stumbling through a darkened cavern

Someone prays that maybe he’ll be found

(That he’ll be found, he prays that maybe he’ll be found)

(Chorus)

(Against my ruin, fragments piled against my ruin)

The Gods Did Gambol (words and music Quentin Bega)

I came into this world complaining at the cheek

Of fickle fortune’s notion of a merry jape

The gods did gambol as the wheel went spinning round

They laughed whether I was lofted high or on the ground

My father beat me Mama didn’t really care

As soon as I could run I simply left them there

Travelled to the compass points of this vast land

Savouring my freedom- it was really grand

I’ve tasted riches and I’ve languished in the mire

I’ve frozen solid and I’ve suffered in the fire

Had my share of pain and pleasure on the way

Whether to perdition or heaven I just can’t say

Everyone must have a gamble- yeah yeah take the punt

Whether you end up in the rear or out in front

(four bar interlude)

It doesn’t matter if you have a cheerful streak

Or if you’re just a gloomy doleful cheerless geek

The juggernaut rolls along its mindless way

If you cannot dodge it you will surely pay

My advice is useless because it’s given free

Whether you decide to be or not to be

You can’t escape what fate has lined up just for you

Regardless of whether what I’ve said is false or true

I came into this world complaining at the cheek

Of fickle fortune’s notion of a merry jape

The gods did gambol as the wheel went spinning round

They laughed whether I was lofted high or on the ground

Everyone must have a gamble- yeah yeah take the punt

Whether you end up in the rear or out in front

In the rear or out in front

Letters from Quotidia 2025 Weekend Supplement 2

Letters from Quotidia 2025 Weekend Supplement 2. Quotidia exists as a safe place for ordinary people who sometimes get a glimpse of the extraordinary. As the original Letters roll out over the coming months, there will be occasions when the urge to create intrudes. These will take the form of weekend podcasts supplementing the regular Monday-Friday flow of the posts.

This supplementary podcast addresses one of the most timeworn genres- the love song. Four thousand years ago, in Mesopotamia, we find a text entitled The Love Song for Shu-Sin and according to the website http://www.albert.io, it was performed annually as part of a sacred fertility rite to ensure prosperity for the people.

In a loose translation, here are the first two stanzas by Michael R. Burch: Darling of my heart, my beloved/Your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey!/Darling of my heart, my beloved/Your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey!// You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you./Darling lead me swiftly into the bedroom!/You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you./ Darling lead me swiftly into the bedroom!

On no evidence whatsoever, I think that this genre is older still, predating writing because I cannot imagine our species, at the earliest stages of language and music, failing to mark, by song and verse, one of the deepest and most enduring emotions of the human heart. The stereotype (much admired in the manosphere)- you know the one- of the caveman clubbing and abducting his “love interest” would have found as little support then as now: well, I would certainly hope- otherwise how could humanity have survived.

On the poetry site allpoetry.com I came across a poem by Diane Crawford which tickled my fancy: entitled Alive in 2025 it goes: Things on me sag now/ and my knees kinda creak/my hair’s done turned grey,/teeth wobble when I speak.//Time’s just zipping by:/the year’s twenty-twenty-five,/but as long as I can laugh/I just love being alive!// Hear, hear, Diane!

As a 15-year-old aspiring songwriter, I tried to impress my girlfriend (who is now my wife of 54 years and counting) by debuting my first attempt at song- a parody using the genre of country music. [insert song]

Ah, if only I could re-capture the guileless, naïve energy I possessed sixty years ago! Much of my life has been taken up by folk music as will be attested by many of the Letters rolling out over the coming months. There are quite a few folk songs from various traditions I wish I had recorded for these posts. But as the old saying has it– If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets in the sea!

However, in this post I will make room for a song I’ve long admired- Black is the Colour. The song is of Scottish origin and, as Alan Lomax, renowned musicologist, remarks, it is an American re-make of British materials. It has been recorded by a variety of artists from the 1940’s to the present day: notable singers include Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Nina Simone and Joan Baez. When I heard Christy Moore sing it some thirty years ago, I was struck by its innate quality. Since which time I’ve always had a notion to perform it, but just never got round to it. So, however belatedly, here now is my version: [insert song]

Which brings me to my latest attempt at a love song. It’s been sixty years since my first attempt you heard before, and I don’t know if there has been much development in my handling of the craft or if I’ve been just scurrying fruitlessly on the hamster wheel, as I seem to have been doing in so many other aspects of life.

Songwriters, when they are desperate for something approaching validation, sometimes like to trace their lineage back to the troubadours who flourished in the high Middle Ages where they travelled from place-to-place singing about chivalric themes and courtly love. They may, perhaps, touch base with sonneteers such as Petrarch or Shakespeare, citing works such as, say, Romeo and Juliet.

And let’s not forget that seminal mythological tale about the power of love where Orpheus descended into Hades to plead for the return of his wife, Eurydice. He played on his lyre a song so heartbreaking that the god of the dead agreed to release her on condition that Orpheus not look back as they ascended towards the light of the living world. I don’t need to tell you how this turned out, do I? Of course, many songwriters merely stumble through a labyrinth of words and music hoping for something that may serve. And, yes, I am talking about myself. [insert song] In conclusion, here is a corrective to all that flowery allusiveness about love: Merrill Glass wrote (and I’ve used this poem before, as a teacher, and in the Letters, but it will bear repetition) She wrote:

Remember the time you lent me your car and I dented it?/I thought you’d kill me…But you didn’t./Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was/formal, and you came in jeans?/I thought you’d hate me…But you didn’t./Remember the times I’d flirt with other boys just to make you jealous, and you were? I thought you’d drop me…But you didn’t/.There were plenty of things you did to put up with me, to keep me happy, to love me, and there are so many things I wanted to tell you when you returned from Vietnam…But you didn’t /

Future weekend supplements will be occurring from time to time as the spirit moves me- which is to say, they will be sporadic and dependent on the weather or which way the wind is blowing. So, please, do take care.

Since You Walked Out of My Life (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Since you walked out of my life I’ve been crying all the time

I don’t know what I’ve done wrong I only know you’ve gone

And if some day you come back to see if I’m still missing you

Girl you’ll be surprised the tears that’re in my eyes will all be dry

Cause I’ll be having fun with someone new

We’ll laugh and drink and sing the whole night through

And I won’t think of you when I’m with her

Her kisses will provide the perfect cure

I toss and turn each night in restless agony

Dreaming of this kind of remedy

(instrumental break)

Yes I’ll be having fun with someone new

We’ll laugh and drink and sing the whole night through

And I won’t think of you when I’m with her

Her kisses will provide the perfect cure

I toss and turn each night in restless agony

Dreaming of this kind of remedy

Since you walked out of my life I’ve been crying all the time

I don’t know what I’ve done wrong I only know you’ve gone

And if some day you come back to see if I’m still missing you

Girl you’ll be surprised the tears that’re in my eyes will all be dry

Black is the Colour (Traditional) F G Am/F G E7/F G E7/F G Am/

Black is the colour, of my true love’s hair,

Her lips are like, some roses fair,

She has the sweetest smile, and the gentlest hands,

And I love the ground, whereon she stands.

I love my love, and well she knows,

I love the ground whereon she goes

I wish the day, it soon would come,

When she and I could be as one.

I go to the Clyde and I mourn and weep,

For satisfied, I ne’er can be,

Then I write her a note, just a few short lines,

And suffer death, a thousand times.

Black is the colour, of my true love’s hair,

Her lips are like, some roses fair,

She has the sweetest smile, and the gentlest hands,

I love the ground, whereon she stands.

[Instrumental] F G Am/F G E7/F G E7/F G Am/

Black is the colour, of my true love’s hair,

Her lips are like, some roses fair,

She has the sweetest smile, and the gentlest hands,

And I love the ground, whereon she stands.

Yes, I love the ground, whereon she stands.

The Sanctus Moment (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Would I were a troubadour or Petrarch with his lines

Could I draft an epic which romance itself refines

Diving deep to find the words that speak unto your soul

Then rising when I hear your loving call

Romeo and Juliet their story we relate

Oh may we feel their passion but avoid their fate

Like them we embrace each other all through the night

But may we still emerge into the light

Oh I am searching- will I ever find

The words to catch this moment- or will I be ever blind

And stumbling through a labyrinth- my fate already signed

By capricious gods who laugh at us no kindness here inclined

Orpheus sang his heart out for the lord of all the dead

Pleading that Eurydice be restored to life instead

Of languishing in Hades far from the sun’s warm light

But he glanced behind and lost her from his sight

The pages of our story are not so rarefied

But take the path of most of those who have lived and died

An ordinary life where passion still can burn as fierce

As any swain or nymph by Cupid’s arrow pierced

Oh I am searching- will I ever find

The words to catch this moment- or will I be ever blind

And stumbling through a labyrinth- my fate already signed

By capricious gods who laugh at us no kindness here inclined

(instrumental verse)

Oh yes baby you are

Mm, yeah, baby you are the

Sanctus moment lifting my soul

You are the Sanctus moment lifting my- soul

Letters from Quotidia 2025 Weekend Supplement 1 Furor Poeticus

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2025, Weekend supplement 1- Furor Poeticus. Quotidia exists as a safe place for ordinary people who sometimes get a glimpse of the extraordinary. From time to time, as the original Letters roll out over the coming months, there will be occasions when the urge to scratch the creative itch becomes unbearable.

So where does it come from? This urge to create something new that itches until scratched, wherein a spark ignites a flame that may grow into a conflagration, or which is more likely, merely results in reddened, irritated skin as flaking epithelial cells drift slowly to the floor to accumulate as one of the more harmless components of household dust.

I surmise it all began as humanity emerged from the African savannah and started to spread across the globe where some type of protoshamanism arose from the human condition as we struggled to make meaning of this new world we found ourselves in. I tap into the core of this when I play my bodhran and freestyle on the whistle as I lubricate my throat and soul with a good red wine, toasting Dionysus (or Bacchus as the mood takes me).

The ancient Greeks give us the word enthusiasm which relates to the nine muses who inspire the various arts and sciences. Then we find the Hebraic tradition which yields prophets, such as Amos or Ezekiel, speaking as God’s instruments. Later, the Christians explain it as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Of course, more secular modern thinkers regard the whole notion as just an electrochemical phenomenon taking place solely within the human brain. Jonathan Swift, renowned Irish wit and satirist, predating these sceptics by a century or two, saw fancy as an antirational, mad quality, where “once a man’s fancy gets astride his reason, common sense is kick’t out of doors.”

Well, common sense hasn’t been much in evidence over my lifetime, but this won’t stop me attempting to explicate the song Furor Poeticus. First, follow me into the valley of dry bones where Ezekiel takes up the narrative.

The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out… and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones…there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? …Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord…Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:…And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live…

And this is what we do, those of us who are afflicted with the need to create. Like Doctor Frankenstein, we attempt to breathe life into what our imagination has insisted on laying in front of us on a table somewhere in the dark dungeon of our psyche! The not-so-good doctor wanted to be like God and create a new life. Are we so much different, seeking to bring into existence something that has not been before?

Poet Dylan Thomas, with his Celtic visionary gift and a prodigious talent that consumed him from within had some idea of this impulse when he wrote In my craft or sullen art/Exercised in the still night/When only the moon rages/And the lovers lie abed/With all their griefs in their arms,/I labour by singing light/Not for ambition or bread/Or the strut and trade of charms/On the ivory stages/But for the common wages/Of their most secret heart./Not for the proud man apart/From the raging moon I write/On these spindrift pages/Nor for the towering dead/With their nightingales and psalms/But for the lovers, their arms/Round the griefs of the ages,/Who pay no praise or wages/Nor heed my craft or art.//

Ancient Greeks (c. 5^th Century BC) regarded artists as becoming possessed by a furor poeticus or poetic madness where they are not in control of the content that issues from them. The prophet Amos, writing three centuries prior to this, expresses a similar idea: The lion hath roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken! Who can but prophesy? I cite these examples from antiquity to excuse my lack of control over the song you are about to hear. Do you know the old Yiddish saying Mann tracht, un-Gott Lacht (Man plans and God laughs)?

I had a plan, neatly laid out, where I would refer in my lyrics to myths drawn from a wide range of European sources which would astound my listeners with the depth and subtlety of my erudition. Almost immediately, however, the wheels came off this stratagem.

Instead, I found myself writing about a picaresque hero whose hallucinogenic adventures take him from a fairytale forest to Caliban’s island, then to a travelling caravan which leads to crusading with a knight, transmogrifying into seeking treasure in the Americas and upon return to London becoming an actor in Shakespeare’s company leading to banishment in the arctic North then to travels with tinkers where he acquires a wife and six children only to lose them to marauders from the far South concluding with final immurement in a hermit’s cell where his whole world collapses around him as a result of a huge storm.

And I promise no drop of wine or other intoxicating substance entered my body or brain during this omni-shambles of a composition. So what excuse are you going to come up with this time? I hear my listeners ask. Since I can’t blame it on booze or its equivalents, furor poeticus is, I suggest, the only remaining explanation-Listen! [insert song]

Once upon a time I was a fresh young lad,

Looking for adventure in the forest dark

Stopped by a running stream to quench my thirst

Grabbed a bunch of mushrooms I was hungry too

Oh the sky started spinning round

I fell into a chasm opened in the ground

The stars above shone as coloured spheres

Jangling music sounded in my ears

I woke up on a sandy beach with lapping waves

Caliban was dancing there with motley friends

They gave me some brandy from a stoneware jug

Told me I would have to entertain them now

So I sang them a sweet song my mother taught

They pelted me with rotten fruit- told me to stop

So I wandered off to see what else there was to find

Joined a passing caravan to a distant land

Time’s a rushing stream, whether waking or in dreams

It carries you to that sea where all things are revealed

Found myself in service with a noble knight

Followed him to battle for our regal king

Captured by our foes we were held for years

Ransomed back to where we started for our pains

Next I joined a sailing ship to search for gold

In a far distant land where jaguars roared

There I caught a fever that laid me low

Stowed away upon a ship to my home port

Where I joined a troupe of strolling players neat

We entertained the crowd with dramas by the score

They clapped and cried for more and we obliged of course

How I love the sound of applause in my ears

Then we were shut down by a fierce decree

Not everyone likes music or laughter- it appears

So I packed my bags to a far northern land

Where the days are cold the nights are colder still

Time’s a rushing stream, whether waking or in dreams

It carries you to that sea where all things are revealed

Sooner or later you must make the choice

Which side you play on in the game of life

Whether on the edges or the thick of it

Sooner or later you must take your pick

[4 bar instrumental interlude]

I wandered with the tinkers mending pots and pans

Meeting friends and trading horses at summer fairs

Met a blue-eyed woman with raven hair

Threw in out lot together then and there

Six kids later equal boys and girls

We struggled through some hard times to be sure

Raiders from the south carried them away

I searched for them for years to no avail

Now I find myself inside a hermit’s cell

Scratching out a living with my ink and quill

Sound of distant thunder means a coming storm

Lightning flashes round me as I write this song

And as I write- an almighty crash

The chimney collapses in soot and ash

My papers scattered to the howling wind

And this means I must begin again

Time’s a rushing stream, whether waking or in dreams

It carries you to that sea where all things are revealed

Letters from Quotidia 2026 Weekend Supplements Revisited

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2026 Weekend Supplements Revisited As you may know, in Quotidia, ordinary people lead ordinary lives, who, from time to time, encounter the extraordinary. You may also be aware that, in Quotidia, the Irish concept of the crack is especially esteemed. Long-time followers of the Letters will be aware that, in Quotidia, time doesn’t follow the graceful arc of an arrow but twists and turns like a demented mouse in a quantum maze.

The final tally of 300 Letters, was an amalgam of music, literature and anecdote, incorporating some aspect of the Irish concept of crack. I pray these have added, however infinitesimally, to the store of hopefulness in the universe. Why am I re-visiting the Weekend Supplements?

First, all the other Letters have had a return visit- so why not the Supplements? Second, why does stuff always have to make sense? Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame gives an example of this in his poem Jabberwocky and it will serve as an introduction for the re-run of the Supplements, as, indeed, it did for the rerun of the Letters:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:/All mimsy were the borogoves,/And the mome raths outgrabe.//“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!/The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!/Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun/The frumious Bandersnatch!”//He took his vorpal sword in hand;/ Long time the manxome foe he sought—/So rested he by the Tumtum tree/And stood awhile in thought.//And, as in uffish thought he stood,/The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame/,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,/ And burbled as it came!//One, two! One, two! And through and through/The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!/He left it dead, and with its head/ He went galumphing back.//“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?/ Come to my arms, my beamish boy!/O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”/ He chortled in his joy.//’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:/All mimsy were the borogoves,/And the mome raths outgrabe.

Nonsense like this is far superior to the sense spewing from various digital orifices that threatens to engulf us. My final reason for this podcast is that it provides an excuse for presenting a song that has stayed with me from the first hearing in the late Spring or early Summer of 1964.

Here I refer to the Rolling Stones first LP- also, incidentally, the first LP I bought with my own money as a 14-year-old pimply teenager. And the song that captivated me way back then: Route 66- the opening track of that LP. Now, I’ll proffer my homage to that great song and group. [insert song]

To recap: the Letters were blogs I originally put together to help assuage the boredom I felt after retirement. I had 120 songs, written and recorded over previous decades. I had also recorded music and songs from the folk tradition of the English-speaking world- Irish, American, Australian, Canadian, Scottish, Welsh, English- many with the folk group Banter formed in Western Sydney in 1995.

These also numbered 120. So, when the pandemic struck, I used them as the basis for podcasts I started rolling out. I had the material for thirty weeks ready by January 2021 and that accounted for 150 podcasts. After this, my output was not quite so prodigious but I managed, by the end of the process, to double this number for a total of 300 podcasts which included the odd special thrown in on particular days such as Remembrance Day, which falls on November 11^th, Anzac Day (which is observed in Australia and New Zealand and which falls on April 25th) and New Years Eve, which, of course, falls on December 31^st.

When I reprised the Letters, I numbered them 1-300 and reposted them in order five days a week. So, the calendar for the roll-out of the Letters and Supplements will not align with any specific-day references found in the original posts. I’ll give an example, My New Years Eve post for 2022 was reprised on 24^th November 2025.

On the off chance that previous listeners to the Letters may wish to hear again the rerun of the Weekend Supplements or, who knows, a new seeker of Quotidian inclination may happen upon these Supplements and wish to follow the series, I have decided to play them again; to give them another shot; to gift them another lease on life. Yeah, another lease on life which can mean, an opportunity for renewed enjoyment in, enthusiasm for or appreciation of one’s own life, OR, to make someone feel happy or healthy after illness or sadness, OR, to improve or refurbish something that is worn or old.

Am I referring to the Supplements or to myself? Or both? Uncertainty rules as Heisenberg, or Schrödinger’s cat, would undoubtedly tell you. You’ve got to take silver linings where you can find them! I wrote the closing song of this podcast very recently. Just when I thought the well was dry as dust, well, it wasn’t. Here is the result, called My Saving Angel. [insert song]

Leucon, no one’s allowed to know his fate,/Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers/In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes./This could be our last winter, it could be many/More, pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks:/Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines/And forget about hope. / Time goes running, even/As we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair. Horace, with his unsentimental eye, says it so well. Although, I don’t know about you, but I find it impossible to forget about hope. Farewell.

Route 66 (Bobby Troup)

Well, if you ever plan to motor West
Jack, take my way, that’s the highway that’s the best
Get your kicks on Route 66

Well, it winds from Chicago to L.A
More than 2000 miles all the way
Get your kicks on Route 66

Well, it goes from St. Louie down to Missouri
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty
You’ll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino

Well, do get hip to this kindly tip
And go take that California trip
Get your kicks on Route 66

Well, it goes from St. Louie down to Missouri
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty
You’ll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino

Well, do get hip to this kindly tip
And go take that California trip
Get your kicks on Route 66

Get your kicks on Route 66

Get your kicks on Route 66

My Saving Angel (Words and music Quentin Bega)

D, A, G, D-2; Bm, F#m, E-1; A, D, A, G, D-1

I first wrote you when I met you, I wanted to impress you girl

With the passion in my writing set down in fiery words

What my heart felt, how my soul yearned, then I crashed back to earth

And you murmured don’t you worry everything will be all right.

And since then you’ve been with me, picking me up off the ground

When I fall down want to stay down but you get me back up on my feet

Why you do this I can’t work out, but I’ll take it without questioning

My good fortune, saving angel, all I need to feel complete

You’ve been with me; you reassure me in my times of dark and doubt

In my lifetime, you’re my lifeline helping me to work it out

You’re the sweetness that I needed to overcome the bitterness

Of the setbacks and the wrong tacks I took into the wilderness

(Instrumental verse)

I first wrote you when I met you, I wanted to impress you girl

With the passion in my writing set down in fiery words

What my heart felt, how my soul yearned, then I crashed back to earth

And still you murmur don’t you worry everything will be all right.

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web. Copyright Credit: Horace, Ode I. 11, translated by Burton Raffel, from The Essential Horace.(1983)

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 16 New Years Eve

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024, Episode 16. This is the farewell post for 2024, and the farewell post for the Letters, posted on New Year’s Eve. As always, Quotidia is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

Like the boy who cried “Wolf!” I have called it quits before, only to return with yet more dispatches from the front. And like the boy in Aesop’s fable, one of these days the wolf will really appear, devour the sheep- and the lying shepherd, too- if one credits the more extreme denouement of the tale. But until that time, let us sing and recite poetry, reminisce and raise a toast to love and light and life.

My first song, is Strange Meeting, inspired by the Wilfred Own poem which details the meeting in Hades of two opposing soldiers. The masterful handling of pararhyme creates a haunting, otherworldly soundscape as we follow one of the protagonists deep into the underworld and feel his dislocation as he comes upon one who leaps up, the man he killed, who, With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,/Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless./And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,/ By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell. “Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.” /“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,/The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,/Was my life also; I went hunting wild/After the wildest beauty in the world,/Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,/But mocks the steady running of the hour… In the song, I imagine meeting a future version of myself in a pub, where the steady running of the hour turns into days, weeks, years and decades. [insert song]

It is fashionable now to seek out the authentic, to live your best life, and to strive for personal fulfilment. Ah well, I suppose we are all searching for meaning in this bewildering maelstrom that is our existence. My next song explores some of this in a reflective lyric. I’ll preface it with the final stanza from the poem Islands by African American Yusef Komunyakaa dedicated to St Lucia-born poet Derek Walcott.

Islands are tricky entities no matter their size and I’ve spent years exploring the concept by writing about Aruba, Ireland and Australia. To lie down in remembrance/ is to know each of us is a prodigal/ son or daughter, looking out beyond land/ & sky, the chemical & metaphysical/ beyond falling & turning waterwheels/ in the colossal brain of damnable gods,/ a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye,/ born to gaze into fire. After conquering/ frontiers, the mind comes back to rest,/ stretching out over the white sand. [insert song]

Song three is about a particular place that has had rather a bad press over the years-Belfast. In my teens I began to spend weekends in Belfast during the mid-sixties because I had met the girl of my dreams when she was visiting the Glens of Antrim village of Cushendall one summer.

My brother and his family lived in Belfast, and I relished experiencing the vibrant music scene of the city during weekend sojourns. I followed up by applying to a college there when I was in sixth form and continued to revel in the freedom that those who have just left home for the new phase of their lives can appreciate. But this was before the troubles put paid to all that joy and freedom in 1969.

My father’s family were from Belfast, which was one of the major industrial cities of the Industrial Revolution. The Reverend W. M. O’Hanlon in a work entitled Walks Among the Poor of Belfast painted a vivid picture of the slums there in 1852, the worst of which were as bad as any in any place or age. He wrote…in truth, no pure breath of heaven ever enters here; it is tainted and loaded by the most noisome reeking feculence.

Surely, we’ve reached the bottom of the pit? But no, there is yet a lower circle in this suburb of hell, for the Reverend O’Hanlon continues, still more narrow and wretched containing, I think, nine houses, seven of which, are the abodes of guilt…here every kind of profligacy and crime is carried on…passers of base coin, thieves and prostitutes all herd together…and sounds of blasphemy, shouts of mad debauch, and cries of quarrel and blood are frequently heard here through the livelong night to the annoyance and terror of the neighbourhood…it is the practice of these miscreants to frequent the docks, and, having caught sailors, like unwary birds, in their toils, to allure them into their pitfalls, where they are soon peeled and plundered. But this was the city which I came to love a little over one hundred years later. The song, Belfast Calling, supplies the reasons for this affection. [insert song]

I was a bit like the Lydian king, Croesus, until I was well into my thirties. Not that I was wealthy or powerful, very far from it, then or now, but I was happy, moderately successful in my career, and considered myself bullet-proof. The Athenian lawmaker, Solon, who was visiting Lydia, warned King Croesus, who considered himself the happiest man alive, not to consider himself happy until the end of his life because fortune is fickle, and circumstances can change in an instant. It was not until Croesus had lost his kingdom to Cyrus, the Persian king, and was awaiting execution, that he realised the wisdom of Solon’s advice.

Thirty-five years ago, my first-born son, Brian, was killed in a motorbike accident two months before his sixteenth birthday, and it altered the trajectory of my life and the lives of my family, too. My song, Come Back an Angel, is one of several I have written over the years in response. [insert song]

The penultimate song differs in a couple of ways from the others presented in this post: first, it is recorded live- just one mic on a laptop placed on a table with the group Banter arranged around it; and second, it is the only song where I have not written the music and words. Fifty years ago, I remember struggling to get a chord arrangement going that I was happy with because I was debuting the song with the group I had helped form in Wollongong, NSW- Seannachie.

Fast forward twenty years and I twinned the stirring march tune, The Battle of Aughrim with it for performance with the group Banter in western Sydney. The song in question is a traditional folk song, originally a Scottish border ballad, and popular throughout the English-speaking world. It concerns an elopement where a lady of high distinction runs off with a band of gypsies. So, here now is The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy/The Battle of Aughrim. [insert song]

The final song in this NYE selection is also somewhat different insofar as this song has a jazzy tinge. I wrote it as I was approaching retirement and feeling increasingly out of place- a bit of a fossil, to be frank. I had attended a concert at The Henry Lawson Club in western Sydney in 1996 where a group of English comedians were featured and when I was writing the song a few years later, I remembered the smoke-filled room, risqué jokes that would have the easily offended easily offended and I knew that this was the ending of an era: that the smoke haze from cigars and cigarettes, the frankly sexist jokes and rough camaraderie of working people enjoying themselves would be increasingly challenged by a different dispensation in the 21^st C. So here is Foss Hill (The Old Comedian) [insert song]

I wrote this verse long, long ago- Explication: Like a poem carved upon an ancient bone/Dug out of an ash-pit;/Like an outline of a heart in bog-oak/Dragged up and in to the open air;/Like the remnants of an ancient tune/Whistling through the shaking leaves/Of the last stand of native trees/Left on a fissured plain:/Let my voice, telling of love/And letdowns, carry across/ The fields of time spread/To the shimmering edges/Of eternity fringed with/A sparkling circlet of stars/Before they wink out/One by one,/Swallowed by the incurious/Blankness beyond.”

For NYE 2024, though, I’ll have to leave you with something more hopeful- this from Psalm 18, may serve: You Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. Thank you for your company in these Letters, even if it was for only part of the way. My sign off is not the usual sting but the short Coda, the nearest to a psalm or a hymn I can do- and I wrote it 40 years ago HNY [insert song]

Strange Meeting (music and lyrics by Quentin Bega)

I walked into a strange lounge bar and order a whiskey sour

Found a booth to read a brand-new paper book to pass an hour

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter Thompson’s opus read

A grey-haired guy sat down beside me and without an invite said

That he could explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But he goes to bed most nights of late- alone

We sparred as strangers often do searching for the common ground

He read the title of my book and felt his opening gambit sound

He looked as though an offered drink would not be rejected out of hand

He asked for and got a double gin and told me of his favourite bands

Oh he could explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But he goes to bed most nights of late-alone

Amused I listened to him ramble ordered up another drink

Although he sang the blues his politics, well they’d be a shade of pink

He said he’d seen most continents I said you must’ve got around

I lost count of the gins and whiskeys that afternoon that we poured down

He could explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But he goes to bed most nights of late-alone

He told me life was just a gas but sad eyes told another tale

We both half-smile at the white lie agreeing to meet without fail

I arose to go saw his reflection staring from the mirror-clock

It’s almost forty years since in that mirror our eyes met and locked

Now I can explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But I go to bed most nights of late-alone

I can explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But I go to bed most nights of late-alone

Sing Along (Words and music Quentin Bega)

If you want to go across the sea to Ireland

If you want to kiss the Blarney Stone In May

If you want to plant a shamrock in your garland

If you want to find the fairy folk today

Come away dream away

Irish dancing at the Feis is in my mind now

As your father played his fiddle in the glen

And you danced upon the platform light and easy

And the evening sky was glowing after ten

Once again once again

But those summer nights are lost to view forever

Now project houses fill the fields of yore

And the young folk surf the Web and they have never

Seen the light shine as it did before

Nevermore nevermore

I went searching in the Irish pubs of Sydney

For an echo of the place where I was born

But it wasn’t there I found it in my backyard

Among those friends who’ll join me in a song

Sing along sing along

(Repeat verse One)

Belfast Calling (words and music Quentin Bega)

Belfast Calling me after all these years

I’m not surprised because my life was shaped by Belfast town

No titles bring I’m not bred from kings

But chimneysweeps and sailors neat who lived in Belfast town

Those days are gone forever there is nowhere better

Than the place I know when in dreams I go to Belfast town

I met the sweetest girl she turned my world

Inside out and upside down in Belfast town

By Belfast Lough the city docks to her I came

She took my name in Belfast town

Those days are gone forever there is nowhere better

Than the place I know when in dreams I go to Belfast town

Our daughter born the city torn

By civil strife we had no life in Belfast town

Out here in New South Wales the scattered Gaels

Remember home we’re not alone though far from Belfast town

Those days are gone forever there is nowhere better

Than the place I know when in dreams I go to Belfast town

Belfast Calling me after all these years

I’m not surprised because my life was shaped by Belfast town

Come Back an Angel (words and music by Quentin Bega)

You’ve been gone ages the years have rolled by

Mountains stand the sea is not dry still I cry

My friends and family this daily round helped me find something

But you were not found

Come back an angel could you please

Come back an angel if only in my dreams

You’ve been gone so long

Come back an angel to me

Well I tried religion got down on my knees

The saints and the Virgin I appealed to these I appealed to these

Now if I could carve your name in the sun blazing brightly

This done what would I have won

So come back an angel could you please

Come back an angel if only in my dreams

You’ve been gone so long

Come back an angel to me

Come back an angel could you please

Come back an angel if only in my dreams

You’ve been gone so long

Come back an angel come back an angel come back an angel

The Raggle Taggle Gypsy/ Battle of Aughrim (trad)

There were three yellow gipsies came to our hall door,
And downstairs ran this lady, O!
One sang high and another sang low
And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!

Then she pull’d off her silk finish’d gown
And put on hose of leather, O!
The ragged, ragged rags all about our door
She’s away with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

It was late that night, when my lord came home,
Enquiring for his a-lady, O!
The servants said, on ev’ry hand:
She’s away with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

O, saddle to me my milk-white steed,
And go fetch me my pony, O!
That I may ride to seek my bride,
Who is gone with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

O he rode high and he rode low,
He rode through woods and copses too,
Until he came to a wide open field,
And there he espied his a-lady, O!

What made you leave your house and land?
What made you leave your money, O?
What made you leave your newly wedded lord,
For to go with the raggle taggle gipsies, O?

What care I for my house and my land?
What care I for money, O?
What care I for my newly wedded lord?
I’m off with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

Last night you slept on a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
And tonight you’ll sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

What care I for a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O?
I’d rather have a kiss from the yellow gypsy’s lips,
Than all your houses or your land or your money-O!

The Battle of Aughrim: a) Dm C Dm C Am Dm-2

b) Dm C Am Dm C Am Dm- 2 Repeat a) and b)

Foss Hill (The Old Comedian) words and lyrics by Quentin Bega

I’m leaving no sense in grieving but lately I feel out of place

I’ve noticed when I tell a joke that audiences sit stony-faced

They used to laugh about my bare-foot pregnant dishwashing wife

Now you can cut their silence with a knife

When I started I was light-hearted as I took my show on the road

Did stand-up from Darwin to Hobart searching for the mother lode

But I could never find it low bars cruise ships private functions

I have told jokes in the strangest places

I did TV had my own series if one-year amounts to that name

Then the axe fell it was all over a comic has no one to blame

I watched as younger faces mugged it up as tabloids raged

That my routine was sexist and depraved

(instrumental break)

I’m leaving no sense in grieving but lately I feel out of place

I’ve noticed when I tell a joke that audiences sit stony-faced

They used to laugh about my bare-foot pregnant dishwashing wife

Now you can cut their silence with a knife

So you better believe I’m leaving

Coda (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Something came into my cell today

Feels like the wind

The wind that blows through solid walls

And confining doors

Something touched my wound and made it well

Feels like the hand

The hand that leads the dispossessed

To the promised land

And I don’t want to feel the pain

To grieve in the dark again

If you go away please

Take me with you

(instrumental verse)

And I don’t want to feel the pain

To wake to the dark again

If you go away please

Take me with you

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 15

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 15. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. The first song in this month’s offering is Bunclody. It’s redolent of themes that have exercised me over the course of the Letters and, indeed, life. Nature, Romantic love, Home, Emigration, Lack of money and land, Missing and Farewelling friends and relations and, of course, the refuge offered by Alcohol.

Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, whose version of the song stands supreme, relates how the group were in Bunclody and singing in a pub at lunchtime- not as a concert but just as something the Irish do as a matter of course- he relates how a local schoolmaster, Michael Flannery, asked if he could sing a song as well. And, in a soft voice, Bunclody emerged. And it is this soft voice I will try and emulate as opposed to the stentorian masterpiece that Luke produced.

The song opens with the evocation of the moss-house where the birds do increase. A moss house is a dwelling covered in moss usually in rural settings. William Cowper, the 18^th Century English poet, in a poem entitled, Inscription For A Moss-House In The Shrubbery At Weston writes, Here, free from riot’s hated noise,/Be mine, ye calmer, purer joys,/A book or friend bestows;/Far from the storms that shake the great,/ Contentment’s gale shall fan my seat,/And sweeten my repose.// He is perhaps best known for the lines, God moves in a mysterious way/His wonders to-perform;/He-plants-His-footsteps-in-the-sea/And rides upon the storm.// [insert song]

I gave my Bing Co-pilot the opportunity to finish the thought, the myths of every culture are amazing repositories of…and almost immediately it came back with, the myths of every culture are amazing repositories of ancient wisdom and timeless tales that reflect the collective experiences and values of a civilization. They offer a unique window into the beliefs, hopes, fears, and moral codes that have shaped societies throughout history. Myths serve as a bridge connecting the past to the present, allowing us to understand the human journey through stories of heroes, gods, and monsters that embody the universal struggles and triumphs of the human spirit.

This is seriously good stuff and yet I felt deflated. Yes, of course, you may say, it is only a tool, like all the others we use to make our lives more productive and comfortable. When I started to experiment with AI as an aid only a matter of eighteen months ago, I was able to be rather dismissive at its infelicities of expression, redundancies and comical attempts at verse, etc. But like any good slave it is learning apace, and it won’t be too long before it becomes the master, I fear. Hence my low spirits at not being able to mark it down.

How long before I don’t bother any more to search out the right response, correct syntax and fabrication of other resources of language writers are proud of discovering by dint of personal effort? How long before I simply and lazily issue prompts and instruct it to speak in my voice as well as composing lyrics and music in my style? Will I emerge like one of those multiple composers of songs currently in the charts where the crafting of a phrase or a title merits equal billing?

Would I insist on being first on the bill-Quentin Bega/AI in a pathetic attempt to wrest some dignity from the fraudulent process? Answer, No! Like Candide at the end of his adventures, I will, instead, go and find honest toil in the garden. But while there is still a point to all this, here’s my original song, Shall I Set Your Precious Honour Under Siege? which takes its theme and acronymic title from a Greek myth where the protagonist defies men and gods only to find eternal punishment.

I find myself identifying with the mythical performer of the endlessly futile task- and all the more strongly now as I reflect on the future of my endeavours in the creative fields of writing scripts and crafting songs. Last month, I quoted Dr Seuss, how did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June… How did it get so late so soon? Still applies, folks! [insert song]

In my introduction to the podcasts in January 2021, I wrote that 30 weeks were to be taken up in the venture. However, as it transpired, The Letters from Quotidia continued under a variety of names until this month, December 2024. By now, they have generated several hundreds of songs, several hundreds of thousands of words and 80+ hours of podcast time and so this seems a nice round number to put the podcasts to bed for a long, perhaps terminal, rest.

Veteran listeners to the podcasts may say, wearily, we’ve heard all this before. To which I can only reply, each time I said it was over, I meant it, but then changed my mind.! Whether this is a terminus or just a brief hiatus- only time will tell. My determination is that the New Year’s Eve post will be, umm, The Last Post I was going to say, but I’ll cancel that thought and substitute the less fate-tempting, final podcast of the series.

With all the doom and gloom around you might think that the prophet, Jeremiah, would have a suitably glum take on events, but the best prophets have the capacity to surprise us! “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” In eight days’ time, it will be New Year’s Eve and I will select a few songs to bid farewell to the series that grew apace. Until then, take care!

Budclody (traditional Irish: origin 19^th Century)

Oh were I at the moss house where the birds do increase

At the foot of Mount Leinster or some silent place

By the streams of Bunclody where all pleasures do meet

And all I would ask is one kiss from you sweet

Were I in Bunclody I would think myself at home
‘Tis there I’d have a sweetheart, but here I have none
Drinking strong liquor in the height of my cheer
Here’s health to Bunclody and the lass I love dear

The cuckoo is a pretty bird, it sings as it flies
It brings us good tidings and tells us no lies
It sucks young bird’s eggs to make its voice clear
And the more it cries cuckoo the summer draws near

If I were a clerk and could write a good hand
I would write to my true love that she might understand
I am a young fellow that is wounded in love
That lived by Bunclody but now must remove

If I were a lark and had wings and could fly
I would go to yon arbour where my love she does lie
I’d proceed to yon arbour where my true love does lie
And on her fond bosom content I would die

‘Tis why my love slights me as you may understand
That she has a freehold and I have no land
She has great store of riches and a large sum of gold
And everything fitting a house to uphold

So adieu my dear father, my dear mother adieu
Farewell to my sister, farewell my brother too
I am bound to America my fortune to try
When I think on Bunclody I’m ready to die

Shall I Set Your Precious Honour Under Siege?

(Words and Music by Quentin Bega)

I don’t know when I began to roll this heavy stone up this endless hill

I don’t care how long it takes all I know is that rolling it I will

If you won’t help me I don’t expect you want to anyway

In fact I think that all you’d do would get yourself in my way

So there ain’t too much left for me to say

I once had a family, mother father sons and good wife who

Applauded as I fooled the world outwitting men and the almighty too

I even cheated death causing chaos as zombies roamed the earth

I plundered, raped and killed and I was brimming with a gleeful mirth

As every single person cursed my birth

Don’t you believe me can’t you get your head around my tale

My fate’s the dictionary definition of an epic fail

The details are bound to make you quail

I don’t know when I began to roll this heavy stone up this endless hill

I don’t care how long it takes all I know is that rolling it I will

If you won’t help me I don’t expect you want to anyway

In fact I think that all you’d do would get yourself in my way

So there ain’t too much left for me to say

Don’t you believe me can’t you get your head around my tale

My fate’s the dictionary definition of an epic fail

The details are bound to make you quail

[The acronymic title answers the question, Who am I?]

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 14

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024, Episode 14. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. I love poetry for the exotic imagery only verse can supply. Romeo Oriogun, who works at the University of Iowa, provides a snapshot of a scene from a roadside bar in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso where he talks to an old man…

I didn’t know this man,/this bard from an old and distant city,/whose forehead was wrinkled like a couple/ of rolled up maps. Outside the open windows,/ women kept walking back and forth./ Pimps stood in dark corners, lighted by streetlamps./ A man in a dark coat jumped across a puddle of water,/ and on the other side, the black earth moved/ into the newness of things as a jazz band/ pierced the air, mimicking through music/ the movement of God, the elegy we all belong to…

Isn’t that a wonderful evocation. The often-fatuous travel shows which populate various media can’t offer anything close, IMHO! As the Letters from Quotidia near their end, I feel the weariness that November frequently laid on me when I lived in the dark and drizzle of that penultimate month in Northern Ireland.

As a teenager, I concentrated on the Irish folk tradition using the Clancy Brothers Songbook as my excavating tool, but I also had affection for the English folk scene burgeoning across the Irish Sea. Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and Pentangle were making a name for themselves and, in particular, I was captivated by the singing of Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior with Fairport Convention and Jacqui McShee with Pentangle.

So, when I was looking for a November song, who should I come across but Sandy Denny on the piano singing Late November– a tour-de-force that I will not attempt to emulate here but merely pay homage with the folk-rock arrangement that follows. The imagery of Late November brings back the dark romanticism of the 70s that I drew upon to write several of my own lyrics at the time. Her tragic death in 1978 at age 31, following on from a fall down a staircase, robbed the world of a fabulous singer. Would she were still singing, as is the case with Jacqui McShee and Maddy Prior. Late November: [insert song ]

Hamlet examines what it is that we deserve. In Act 2 scene 2, Prince Hamlet feigns madness as a protective measure. His uncle Claudius, who has usurped the throne by murdering Hamlet’s father to marry his mother, has sent for a couple of Hamlet’s friends to spy on him. Hamlet, sensing treachery everywhere among the courtiers, escapes into flights of exquisite poetry such as the world has rarely seen before and rarely since, if you were inclined to ask my opinion.

I could be bounded in a nutshell and/count myself a king of infinite space, /were it Not that-I -have-bad dreams./Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most/ excellent canopy, the air, look-you,-this-brave-o’erhanging/ firmament, this majestical roof, fretted/with golden fire why,-it-appeareth-nothing-to-me/-but-a-foul-and-pestilent-congregation-of-vapours./What-a-piece-of-work-is-a-man,-how-noble-in/reason,-how-infinite-in-faculties,-in-form-and-moving/how-express-and-admirable;-in-action-how-like/an-angel,-in-apprehension-how-like-a-god:-the/beauty-of-the-world,-the-paragon-of-animals-and/yet,-to-me,-what-is-this-quintessence-of-dust?//

A group of travelling actors visit the castle and Polonius, the chief counsellor for Claudius, is rather dismissive of their theatrical chops but Hamlet, speaking Shakespeare’s thoughts too, tells him: …will you see the players well disposed? Do you hear? Let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

The supercilious Polonius replies: My Lord, I will use them according to their desert. Hamlet’s response is scathing, God’s body, man! Much better. Use every man after his desert and who shall ‘scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

It is a gracious and generous thought that finds echoes in scripture: In James, chapter 2 verse 13 we read, For judgement will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy, mercy triumphs over judgement. The book of Micah, from the Old Testament which was composed about eight centuries before James states in chapter 6 verse 8, He has told you, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

So, what do we deserve? And will we find our judge to be someone like Polonius or someone like Hamlet? Such thoughts only task believers, for atheists believe that there is no postmortem blowback. So, I admire them for, by and large, leading exemplary lives regardless! I explore such thoughts in my song, All That I Deserve [insert song]

Next month, when the raven comes a-knocking, will you, like Edgar Allan Poe, say: Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor? Or has The Simpsons’ gloriously humorous interpretation of his famous poem rendered its eeriness moot? So much so that Dr Seuss seems profound in comparison: How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the year has flewn. How did it get so late so soon? How indeed.

Late November (words and music by Sandy Denny)

The wine it was drunk, the ship it was sunk,
The shot it was dead, all the sorrows were drowned.
The birds they were clouds, the brides and the shrouds
And as we drew south the mist it came down.

The wooded ravine to the wandering stream,
The serpent he moved, but no-one would say.
The depths of the waters, the bridge which distraught us
And brought to me thoughts of the ill-fated day.

The temples were filled with the strangest of creatures
One played it by ear on the banks of the sea.
That one was found but the others they went under.
Oh the tears which are shed, they won’t come from me.

The methods of madness, the pathos and the sadness,
God help you all, the insane and wise.
The black and the white, the darkness of the night,
I see only smoke from the chimneys arise.

The pilot he flew all across the sky and woke me.
He flew solo on the mercury sea.

The dream it came back, all about the tall brown people,
The sacred young herd on the phosphorus sand.

All That I Deserve (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Today as I am walking towards that blazing setting sun

I ask myself the question: Oh Lord, what do I deserve?

Is it condemnation or is there a pardon on the cards?

Will I sink in the lake of fire or find a hand stretched from above

That which I have often done and more often failed to do

Hurtful words I have spoken better words withheld from fear

Silence is not golden but makes those bullets fly

And it’s true that conscience doth make cowards of us all

Oh I have sought redemption in my woman’s loving arms

And if this isn’t heaven I don’t know where it may be found

Now touching the horizon and still the light flares out

Incarnadining the ocean track as we await the dark

Not much left that needs to be expressed this eventide

As the darkness falls around us like an inky cloak

We are dreamers made of dust enlivened by a spark

We are creatures made of clay who wonder at the sky

We fell out of Eden though yearning to get back

Searching for a paradise that might be out of reach

Oh I have sought redemption in my woman’s loving arms

And if this isn’t heaven I don’t know where it may be found

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 13

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024, Episode 13. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. This is an extra post for this month, the reason: it is the 11^th of November, Remembrance Day throughout the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the US where the sacrifice of those who served in the armed forces in wartime and lost their lives are commemorated.

Back in 1979, I wrote a song about Major Claude Eatherly, one of the pilots of the Hiroshima bombing raid of August 6, 1945. He piloted the Straight Flush, a weather reconnaissance aircraft and radioed the Enola Gay, the plane which carried the atomic bomb, Little Boy, that the weather was perfect for the strike on the unsuspecting city. My first reading about his life left me with the opinion that he was a hero. Later,

I read material that painted him as a derelict husband and father, a crook and opportunist willing, for example, to bomb Havana, Cuba, for $100,000. To this day I remain torn between these readings. So, what to do? I’ll play you the song and leave you to decide whether Major Claude Eatherly is worthy of this attention: its title is,237 Dollars, the amount of his monthly government pension. [insert song]

The Korean War, fought between 1950 and 1953, is still in progress although stalled, however tenuously, by the ceasefire signed on 27^th July 1953. For many, it is a forgotten war, even though five million people, mostly civilians- as usual- lost their lives. There aren’t many songs or poems about it in the public memory. I found a 1951 song, The Unknown Soldier, recorded as the B-side of an RCA Victor single, by singer-songwriter Elton Britt. The soldier wonders whether he has died in vain. Its genre is early 1950s country music and I cover it here as an artifact from the forgotten war that may reignite into a global conflagration at any time. [insert song]

The next two songs have a personal connection. Rose is a song about my paternal grandmother I wrote in 1997. I first knew her as a photograph of an elegant Edwardian lady in an oval frame hanging in the reception room of my childhood home in Cushendall, Northern Ireland. My enquiries were deflected, brushed off with the bare bones info that this was my father’s mother but not the one who raised him.

My nephew, Joe Mitchell, did a little delving into family history and found that my grandmother had taken a trip to Germany on a ship captained by her husband in 1914 and that both had been interned because war had just broken out. She was returned to Ireland without her husband and, driven out of her mind with worry, was confined to an insane asylum where she died before the end of the war. [insert song]

Next, is a song about my great-uncle John Joseph Mitchell who was a killed in World War I. After collating what meagre information I had gathered, I thought: Why not have the persona of my great uncle narrate a portion of his life, from a brief mention of his birth in Belfast, to his meeting with his wife, Hannah, in Liverpool in1903 to their life together in Melbourne to his enlistment in the A.I.F. to his death next to a German blockhouse near Hell Fire Corner and Polygon Wood in Belgium in 1917, which was commemorated by a Requiem Mass I viewed from Australia over the internet in 2017 on the centenary of his death?

He was one of over 62,000 diggers killed in that awful conflict. And those numbers from an Australian population of less than five million people! Is it any wonder that there are memorials in just about every Aussie city, suburb, town and hamlet to mark the sacrifice? His name is engraved on bronze tablets at the Australian War Memorial, and I visit it to place a poppy next to his name every time we are in Canberra [insert song]

The final song to mark this day is Progress. I got the idea from a cartoon Ron Cobb published in the 1960s: The upper panel shows two cavemen brandishing bones at one another. Then, dividing the upper panel from the lower panel, is the word Progress. The lower panel shows two men in suits; one has a pistol with which he has just shot his rival dead. This song, then, inserts a few more panels outlining the history of war. From prehistoric wooden spears to deadly longbow arrows that decimated the French cavalry at the battle of Agincourt, to bullets at the battle of Gettysburg, to artillery shells at the battle of the Somme, and finally, to nuclear weapons. In an age of Artificial Intelligence, where there are swarms of aerial drones, robot soldiers mooted and a legion of ingenious killing mechanisms that are being devised by our devilishly clever species, what’s it to be? Or not to be? [insert song]

Confucius has this to say, the end of the day is near when small men make long shadows. God knows, there are plenty of small men (and women too- though fewer) who are posturing, gesticulating and bloviating grandiloquently and throwing long shadows as they urge us all towards that grotesque precipice over which there will be no return.

The regular November post drops in just shy of two weeks’ time. So, let’s hope that Armageddon is always scheduled for mañana. As Anonymous puts it, dispelling the gloom of this post, let this be the November you always remember. The November you chose to believe there was more to your future than you were able to see. Two posts remain this year: December’s Letter and the NYE finale.

237 Dollars (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Claude took a flight: it ended in madness

The government said: pay compensation

Our actuaries solve these problems every day

He’ll get what’s coming in good measure

He didn’t want to take the money although

237 dollars a month is a good rate for the soul they say

237 dollars a month is a good rate for the soul today

Sunrise in Japan: it’s an emblem

What better place or time to make it happen

We’ll cow Uncle Joe and make the Japs surrender

Go now Claude collect a government pension

(Chorus)

Main Street USA: no pity

Even heroes have to give their dimes here

Crimes against property are not forgiven

Put Claude in Fort Worth where no one sees him

(Chorus)

Claude cries at night: screams “Release it!”

Hell fire scorches earth: he is a pilot

The flames burn in his head everlastingly

This song is for you Major Eatherly

(Chorus)

The Unknown Soldier (John Schram and Charles Grean)

I am the chill of a winter frost,
The night that surrounds a hill
I am the shadow, the sunlight lost
A voice that will never be still
My grave is a promise you did not keep
My wreath is a ribbon of pain
and though I am dead, I shall never sleep
If I know I have died in vain

( four bar instrumental break)

I am the branch of a fallen tree
The death of a lonely sky
I am the sound of a waveless sea
Where the ships of life pass me by
I am a hero without a name
I died for my fellow man
Unknown I’ll remain
In God’s hall of fame
‘Til there’s peace in the world again
‘Til there’s peace in the world again

Rose (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Your name was rarely mentioned Rose when I was growing up

A closed book on a high shelf unopened and uncut

A picture in an oval frame that’s staring into space

Waiting for a mention and waiting for a place

Inside our family history then just the other day

A letter from my nephew came and swept some dark away

Telling of internment in that war to end all wars

And your return to Ireland with anguished mental scars

Rose runs in her asylum clothes

Fleeing from her demons down a darkened Antrim Road

She’s running towards her husband in that distant German camp

Crying to the stars what’s happened to her man oh Rose oh Rose

In ‘14 you were happy gave domestic life the slip

Sailing with your husband as he captained his fine ship

To the port of Hamburg oh did you find release

Did you find what you were after and did you find some peace

Why did you take that fateful trip into the jaws of war

Why did you leave those young boys behind on Ireland’s shore

The answers all are buried now and sunk into the clay

Or hidden is a dusty file that’s yet to see the day

Chorus

Forgive me Rose if I have used your pain to write this song

People I respect tell me they wonder if I’m wrong

To use you to fill a drunken room with feeble sound

Have I desecrated what was once your holy ground

But Rose I am your grandson and surely I should know

The people I have come from so that I might show

My children that there is a point no matter what the cost

Nothing that’s remembered is ever really lost

Chorus

(I Wasn’t with the Diggers) Marching Home from That War…

Words and music Quentin Bega

They gave me a number 5141, on my slouch hat pinned the rising sun.

From Port Melbourne to Plymouth Sound with the 22nd we were Europe bound

Belfast born but I didn’t stay long these itchy feet keep moving me along

In Liverpool I met fiery Hannah

-fell for her although she had a child

Hitched up after I agreed to take the soup we set up shop in Melbourne town

She’s a nurse I’m an engine-fitter there is nothing here that will ever get me down

But four kids on completely worn through life has given this for free

22 Church Street feels like a coffin A.I.F. enlistment now for me

Billeted in Rolleston camp in Wiltshire bleak and under canvas what care I

Went walkabout against the regs as Aussies often do six days docked I paid all told

Bedridden for two weeks with rheumatism isn’t it a bugger getting old

Off to France tomorrow will I return upon another tide

I don’t take it well when told what I should do a problem I have had all my life

It’s why I call myself a digger now instead of bullshit we would rather fight

A good bloke would write on my conduct sheet “this man served at Bullecourt!”

That’s a boast it’s true but what came next was the hell you know as Passchendaele

It ended thus a midnight blitz on a German blockhouse then the fatal shell

Hannah got her dead man’s penny and the scapulars that hung around my neck

Now with my pals Twist, Coode, Kelly, Carey, Bragg, Baker, Kennedy, Northcott and Ray

Side by side in Hooge Crater Cemetery as we await the Judgement Day

Old Father White said a Requiem for me 100 years after I was killed

The chapel in Glenariffe overlooks the beach where I paddled when I was a boy

Place a poppy by my name on the bronze tablets they set up in Canberra for all

Those for any reason who served who fought who sacrificed and fell

And I’m still marching through your mind as you try to work out just who I am

There’s nothing I can share that will help you write this song

But one thing I can tell you that is true-

I wasn’t with the diggers marching home from that war

Progress (Words and music Quentin Bega)

You saw a valley bright

You fashioned wooden spears

And you were killed that very night

Your spirit walks down the years

And don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You rode at Agincourt

You wore a metal coat

You fought in the King’s just war

And died with an arrow stuck in your throat

But don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You fell at Gettysburg

You didn’t get to hear Abe’s great address

You fought to free the slaves

And left your family in a mess

Don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You marching to the Somme

You with your tin hat on

You caught a mortar bomb

You with no head left on

But don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You work at Los Alamos

You fought with physics lore

You showed that Jap emperor just who was boss

Our children will perish in the next world war

And now be sad there is no place

You will destroy this human race

Now be sad there is no place

You have destroyed the human race

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 12

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia, 2024 Episode 12, the October edition. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

One of the sites I visit regularly is Poem a Day. It has supplied several examples of verse that have appeared in the Letters over the past four years. Recently I came across Midmorning (Vormittag in the original German) by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger translated from the German by Carlie Hoffman. Eisinger was a Jewish, German-language poet from Bukovina. Born on February 5, 1924, in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, she was a Jewish poet and translator.

On December 16, 1942, at the age of eighteen, she died of typhus while incarcerated in a Nazi SS forced-labour camp. Before her deportation, Meerbaum-Eisinger gave her poetry manuscript to a close friend, in hopes that it would be safe. The handbound, handwritten manuscript contains fifty-seven poems, fifty-two originals, and five poems that she translated from other languages. Midmorning was written on January 8, 1941, nine months before her family’s forced relocation.

According to translator Carlie Hoffman, the fact that the manuscript survived is astonishing, as there were several close calls wherein-Blütenlese-would-have-been-lost-forever. The younger cousin of Paul Celan, her poem, Midmorning, speaks of the passions contained in the teenage heart and it reminds me of another precocious talent of that time who also perished from typhus in a Nazi death camp- Anne Frank. Here is Midmorning: Wind, dreamy notes, sings/its lullaby, gently touching the leaves./I let myself be, seduced, immersed/in song like grass.//Air shivers/and cools my fevered face/wrapped in desire./Clouds drift by, scatter white,/sun-stolen light.//The old acacia/leaves silence/a trembling tangle of leaves./The scents of the earth rise, climb/and then fall back to me.//

One of countless lives sacrificed on the obscene altar of sectarian hatred, it is to humanity’s enduring shame that the obscene altar continues to extinguish so many lives as I speak. Selma’s famous cousin, Paul Celan, survived the Holocaust and his great poem Todesfuge– The Fugue of Death I have spoken about in one of my earlier Letters from Quotidia– episode 44 published on 25^th March 2021. I first read this poem as a 23-year-old teacher, and it has stayed with me as one of my literary touchstones. It was the inspiration for a song, Paul, which I wrote at age 29 commemorating his life and death by drowning in the River Seine. I recorded the song, during long service leave in 2000. I reprise it here. [insert song]

Time for an October poem and an October song. Dylan Thomas was born on the 27th of October 1914. He was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no dominion, He became widely popular in his lifetime; and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a roistering, drunken and doomed poet. Doomed or not, he wrote some of the more memorable poetry of the 20^th Century. As a fellow Celt, I feel an affinity to his work. Here are a few lines from Poem in October,

It was my thirtieth year to heaven/Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood/ And the mussel pooled and the heron/Priested shore…/ My birthday began with the water-/Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name/Above the farms and the white horses/And I rose/In rainy autumn/And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…/all the gardens/Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales/Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud…/ And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s/Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother/Through the parables/Of sun light/And the legends of the green chapels/And the twice told fields of infancy/That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine./ And there could I marvel my birthday/Away…/It was my thirtieth/ Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon/Though the town below lay leaved with October blood./O may my heart’s truth/Still be sung/On this high hill in a year’s turning.//

The Clancy Brothers Songbook was my first primer when I was learning the guitar in my mid-teens. One of my favourite songs from this source was The Castle of Dromore. From the site irishpage.com I learned the following, The words of the song were written by Sir Harold Boulton to a traditional tune, My Wife is Sick, lulling a child to sleep with a prayer for safety against the wild weather and “Clan Eoin’s wild Banshee.” There are at least four castles named Castle of Dromore or Dromore Castle in the counties Down, Kerry, Limerick and Tyrone. Without solid proof Dromore Castle, in County Tyrone is taking the lead. Clan Owen in the second verse once possessed the counties Tyrone and Derry and parts of County Donegal. The banshee in verse two points towards a fairy-like woman originating from or serving Clan Owen (perhaps as some sort of clan ghost). Well, October is the spooky month as the first line of the song intimates- [insert song]

November beckons, so remember, for many of you residing in the Northern Hemisphere if there’s ice in November that will bear a duck, there’ll be nothing after but sludge and muck. Nice here in Quotidia, though, as summer cometh in!

Paul (lyrics and music by Quentin Bega)

The forest gave to you a necklace of hands

The aspen tree reminds you of your mother’s hair

Now you are young as a bird dropped dead in March snow

Your poetry sings out like a phoenix from the flare

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

You drank the black milk and tasted ashes on your tongue

You played with serpents and you heard the fugue of death

You said the night needs no stars mouths full of silence

You sank as fish watched rising the spheres of your last breath

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

How many people have been covered by the night

Eyes burned out in the cradle by a hell-black sun

Yes I have been a blind guest those words you uttered

Let there be light an order this century undone

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

I said losing losing all control

Yes I am losing control

Lose..

The Castle of Dromore (trad Irish tune words Sir Harold Boulton)

The October winds lament around
The castle of Dromore
Yet peace lies in her lofty halls,
My loving treasure store
Though Autumn leaves may droop and die
A bud of Spring are you

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

Dread spirit of the Blackwater,
Clan Owen’s wild banshee
Bring no ill wind to hinder us,
My helpless babe and me
And Holy Mary pityin’ us
To Heaven for grace doth sue

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

Take time to thrive my ray of hope
In the gardens of Dromore
Take heed young eaglet till thy wings
Are feathered fit to soar
A little rest and then the world
Is full of work to do

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo
Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo