Sorcha Ni Ghuairim (1911-1976), a native of the Connemara Peninsula of Western Ireland, is probably one of the greatest Irish Gaelic vocalists ever recorded. Hers was a voice that seems to echo across a thousand years. After decades of fighting for the preservation of the Gaelic language and its musical tradition, Sorcha decided in the 1950s, [...]
Flora MacNeil, OBE, (born 1928) is probably the greatest Scottish Gaelic vocalist ever recorded. A native of the Isle of Barra in the Hebrides, she was first discovered and recorded in 1951 by American musicologist Alan Lomax, who was then attempting to document the folk music tradition of Europe. She played an enormous role in the [...]
During the late 1960s, Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges gave a series of Harvard Lectures about the subject of poetry. Recordings of the lectures surfaced in the 1990s. They were then transcribed, annotated, and published in 2000 under the title "This Craft of Verse" by Harvard University Press. In his lecture "Word Music and Translation", Borges [...]
"The Internationale," which may be seen and heard in the footage below, dates from the brief seizure of power by the Paris Commune during the Franco-Prussian War. It has since been translated into scores of languages and adopted as the anthem of militant Marxism, particularly as interpreted by Vladimir Lenin. Nazism teaches that anyone born [...]
I do enjoy Monsignor Benson's "Lord of the World", but there is one matter in it which deeply troubles me. It involves Fr. Percy Franklin successfully urging the Pope to ban all other Liturgies except the Latin Rite. At the time Lord of the World was written, the Eastern Catholic martyrs of the Red Terror and [...]
The following selections are from "Writing Metrical Poetry: Contemporary Lessons for Mastering Traditional Forms" by William Baer. Writer's Digest Books, 2006. "What Distinguishes Poetry from Prose." Pages 3-4, By William Baer. 1). Emphasis on the Line. Poetry emphasises the line over the sentence, and this is immediately clear when we observe its placement on the [...]
I first read Father Peter Milward's conclusions about Shylock, the Jewish antagonist of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" in Claire Asquith's "Shadowplay." According to Father Milward, a staunch believer in the Catholic Shakespeare, Shylock was a thinly disguised Puritan rather than a Jew. In arguing this conclusion, Father Milward strengthened a belief I had already held [...]
For the last several weeks, I have been writing an article about Nazi Germany for a Catholic magazine editor who shall remain nameless. In the process, I have often reflected on the following interview with actor Ralph Fiennes, in which he reflects on his performance as SS Captain Amon Goeth in Stephen Spielberg's "Schindler's List." https://ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/index.php?content=20100304
I must say, Peter Jackson's travestied trilogy works well with this alteration...http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AV1LR2WH1-g
With Apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, George Lucas, and the Writers of Robot Chicken.Aragorn and the Lord of the Nazgul are crossing swords on a foggy moor.Nazgul: "Gandalf never told you about your father." Aragorn: "He told me enough! He told me you killed him!" Nazgul: "No, Strider, I AM your father!" Aragorn: "That's not true! That's impossible!" Nazgul: "And Arwen [...]
