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Dispatch dated 23rd December 2003

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It occurred to me I ought to top up this site's professed 'Counter-Reformation' and 'Anarcho-Jacobite' credentials. Not only that, but we are approaching the festive season and a High and Holy holiday. Therefore, please find in this update a selection of appropriate quotes. 'Quote Qorner': Batch the Sixth.

On a related note, kindly accept as a Christmas gift the following, which in my humble opinion is one of the finest poems ever written in English. Not at all festive, granted; inappropriately melancholic perhaps; but certainly 'fine' ...

Epitaph on a Jacobite

'To my true king I offer'd free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languish'd in a foreign clime,
Gray-hair'd with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fever'd sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I ask'd, an early grave.
O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.'

Thomas Babington Macaulay. 1800–1859.

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Also, imagine if you will, my DEEP JOY in discovering the most unlikely juxtaposition of two pet subjects in a recent 'Weekly Worker' ( journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain - see Favourite Links ). If you'd previously asked me to bet on the likelihood of pro-Jacobite article in a Marxist-Leninist journal I wouldn't have wagered the farm on it ...

See and marvel for yourself at: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/507/scotland.html

Finally, may I take this opportunity to wish all readers a very merry Christmas. May you receive all that you deserve.

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