Eggplant.place

124d

They are lang deid, folk that I used to ken
their firm set lips aa mowdert and agley,
sherp-tempert een rusty amang the cley…

—“Elegy” by Robert Garioch (1909–1981) – born #OTD, 9 May
from The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse, @canongatebooks 2021

1/4

https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage

Elegy
by Robert Garioch

They are lang deid, folk that I used to ken
their firm set lips aa mowdert and agley,
sherp-tempert een rusty amang the cley:
they are baith deid, thae wycelike, bienlie men,

heidmaisters, that had been in pouer for ten
or twenty year afore fate's taiglie wey
brocht me, a young, weill-harnit, blate and fey
new-cleckit dominie, intill their den.

Ane tellt me it was time I learnt to write -
round-haund, he meant – and saw about my hair:
I mind of him, beld-heidit, wi a kyte.

Ane sneerit quarterly – I cuidna square
my savings bank – and sniftert in his spite.
Weill, gin they arena deid, it's time they were.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

60d

#OTD in 1930 the First FIFA World Cup Kicks Off

Soccer, or association football, as it is known throughout much of the world, has been an Olympic sport since 1900. In 1930, FIFA—soccer's international governing body—decided to stage its own tournament, the World Cup. Reigning Olympic champion Uruguay was chosen as host and went on to win the inaugural event.

https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/1930+FIFA+World+Cup

#sports

The Football Association poster features a young man with brown hair, seen from the side, running and about to kick a ball. He wears a dark blue long-sleeved jersey, white shorts, red knee-high socks, and brown leather cleats.

Football - Association - 1930 - National Library of France, France - No Copyright - Other Known Legal Restrictions.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

123d

#OnThisDay, 11 May 1978, Margaret Brewer becomes the first woman to reach the rank of General in the US Marines.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

Margaret Brewer in her US Marine dress uniform. She is a white woman with dark hair.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

121d

“It was one of those days when you felt God had forgotten the city…”

The opening line of a 1930s novel of Depression-era Glasgow: not Blake’s THE SHIPBUILDERS or Barke’s MAJOR OPERATION, but HUNGER MARCH by Dot Allan – born #OTD, 13 May 1886 – which preceded them both.

A 🎂 🧵

1/3

https://asls.org.uk/dot-allan-a-glasgow-woman-novelist/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #Glasgow #novel

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

120d

Happy Birthday to David Byrne, Scottish-American musician, founding member, lead singer and guitarist of the American band Talking Heads, born on this day in 1952, Dumbarton, Scotland

📸 Rob Verhorst

#punkrock #postpunk #newwave #davidbyrne #talkingheads #history #otd

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

83d

"There are records of people being whipped for celebrating and being threatened for celebrating. And even outside the context of celebrations, there was retaliation against the Freedmen [..] There was a lot of hope in the middle of a lot of hostility."

Historian #AnnetteGordonReed, author of #OnJuneteenth

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-19-2024/
#Juneteenth #OTD #EmancipationDay #Emancipation #BlackHistory #UShistory #AmericanHistory #TexasHistory #BlackTexas #books @bookstodon

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

120d

#OnThisDay, 14 May 1943, Vera Leigh returns to France to work as a courier for the British Special Operations Executive.

A fashion designer, Leigh had fled France in 1942 after running escape lines for Allied airmen.

After her return, Leigh carried documents and equipment such as guns and explosives around her network's area. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, she was executed at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons

Vera Leigh in uniform. She is a white woman with dark hair.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

118d

“Bide the storm ye canna hinder”

Jenni Calder on Helen Cruickshank (1886–1975): poet, author, founder member of the Saltire Society, Hon Sec of Scottish PEN, & linchpin of the 20th-century Scottish renaissance – born #OTD, 15 May

1/4

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/helen-cruickshank-bide-the-storm-ye-canna-hinder/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

33d

What innocence? Whose guilt? What eyes? Whose breast?
Crumpled orphan, nembutal bed,
white hearse, Los Angeles…

—Edwin Morgan, “The Death of Marilyn Monroe”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

The funeral of Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) took place #OTD, 8 August, 1962

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109967/centenary-selected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #MarilynMonroe

Edwin Morgan
The Death of Marilyn Monroe

What innocence? Whose guilt? What eyes? Whose breast?
Crumpled orphan, nembutal bed,
white hearse, Los Angeles,
DiMaggio! Los Angeles! Miller! Los Angeles! America!
That Death should seem the only protector –
That all arms should have faded, and the great cameras and lights
become an inquisition and a torment –
That the many acquaintances, the autograph-hunters, the
inflexible directors, the drive-in admirers should become
a blur of incomprehension and pain –
That lonely Uncertainty should limp up, grinning, with
bewildering barbiturates, and watch her undress and lie
down and in her anguish
call for him! call for him to strengthen her with what could
only dissolve her! A method
of dying, we are shaken, we see it. Strasberg!
Los Angeles! Olivier! Los Angeles! Others die
and yet by this death we are a little shaken, we feel it,
America.
Let no one say communication is a cantword.
They had to lift her hand from the bedside telephone.
But what she had not been able to say
perhaps she had said. “All I had was my life.
I have no regrets, because if I made
any mistakes, I was responsible.
There is now – and there is the future.
What has happened is behind. So
it follows you around? So what?” – This
to a friend, ten days before.
And so she was responsible.
And if she was not responsible, not wholly responsible, Los Angeles?
Los Angeles? Will it follow you around? Will the slow
white hearse of the child of America follow you around?

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

110d

Agnes Owens: Out of the Margins

Agnes Owens (1926–2014) was born 100 years ago #OTD, 24 May. This short film presents Owens as a writer shaped by working-class life, whose fiction exposed power, resisted sentimentality, & centred overlooked voices.

A 🎂🧵

1/7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYRPGGto2Q

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #20thcentury #AgnesOwens #workingclass #workingclasswriters

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

81d

It is a land of wee
hard men and all I
am wanted for is to
stand and cheer…

Prof Alan Riach considers the life & work of the poet & playwright Joan Ure (1918–1978) – born #OTD, 22 June

1/6

https://www.thenational.scot/news/17455955.joan-ure-the-scots-poet-and-playwright-who-set-a-precedent/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poet #drama #playwright #20thcentury #womenwriters

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

108d

A Restless Intellect

“Widely respected – & regularly attacked (once physically) – in her lifetime, she is now largely neglected; an intriguing aside to feminism or to agnosticism. Dixie deserves better.”

Florence Dixie (1855–1905) – novelist, poet, dramatist, war correspondent, campaigning journalist, suffragist, & more – was born #OTD, 25 May. Dr Valentina Bold explores Dixie’s roving life

@litstudies

1/2

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2021/12/a-restless-intellect-florence-dixie-1855-1905/

#Scottish #literature #Victorian #19thcentury #womenwriters

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

108d

#OTD in 1897. First publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Let's celebrate #DraculaDay!

The novel was mostly written in the 1890s, and Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes, drawing extensively from folklore and history. He probably found the name "Dracula" in Whitby's public library while on holiday, selecting it because he thought it meant 'devil' in Romanian.

Dracula at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345

#Books #Literature

Henry Irving is widely considered to have inspired Dracula.

John Bernard Partridge - The Lyceum "Faust." By Joseph Hatton ... with illustrations from drawings by W. Telbin, Hawes Craven, W. H. Margetson, J. Bernard Partridge, and Helen H. Hatton

Taken from "The Ilustrated London News"

A black-and-white engraving of a theatrical figure in a sweeping dark cape, one arm thrust skyward, the other outstretched. He wears a pointed cap, tight hose, and an ornate belt, with a pallid, wide-eyed expression of dark exultation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#/media/File:Mephistophles_on_the_Brocken_(cropped).jpg

ALT

Handwritten notes about the novel's characters.

A handwritten manuscript page headed "Historiae Personae — Dracula" — Bram Stoker's early working notes listing characters for his novel, with many names cross…A handwritten manuscript page headed "Historiae Personae — Dracula" — Bram Stoker's early working notes listing characters for his novel, with many names crossed out and revised. Recognisable entries include Jonathan Harker (the lawyer's clerk), Wilhelmina Murray (called Mina), Lucy Westenra, Dr. Seward, and Count Dracula. Earlier rejected names are heavily struck through. Notes at the bottom mention a "secret room" and "dinner of 13," revealing the novel's plot still in formation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#/media/File:Stoker_Dracula_Notes_Personal.jpg

ALT

3 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

106d

Into perplexity: as an itch chased round
an oxter or early man in the cave mouth
watching rain-drifts pour from beyond

his understanding…

—“The Beautiful”, by Roddy Lumsden (1966–2020) – born #OTD, 28 May. A 🎂 🧵
from POETRY magazine, Dec 2008

1/7

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51938/the-beautiful

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #RoddyLumsden

The Beautiful
by Roddy Lumsden

Into perplexity: as an itch chased round
an oxter or early man in the cave mouth
watching rain-drifts pour from beyond

his understanding. Whether to admire
the mere sensation, enough, or hold out
for sweeter ornament, vessels of wonder

born with that ur-charm of symmetry;
lovely ones we ache to prize and praise,
climb into and become because they try

our day-by-day significance: some of us
ugly and most of us plain, walked past
in the drowned streets: pearls of paste,

salted butter, secondary colors. They
drift unapproached, gazed never-selves,
blunt paragons of genetic industry. We

desire them but cannot want such order.
We stand, mouths open, and cannot help
stammering our secrets, nailed to water.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

80d

Schyr Hanry myssit the noble king…

Robert I, King of Scots, killed Sir Henry de Bohun in single combat on the first day of the Battle of Bannockburn #OTD, 23 June 1314. The epic vernacular #poem “The Brus” by John Barbour (c1320–95) describes the event

1/3

https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/aboutus/resources/stella/projects/starn/poetry/the-brus/book-12/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #medieval #14thcentury #history #MiddleAges #Bannockburn #epic #vernacular #poem #Scots #Scotslanguage

Text is too long for ALT-text – however full text can be found via the link, lines 25 to 85.

Image description: “Bruce and de Bohun”, by John Duncan (1866–1945), Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum. King Robert I, wearing chain mail, with a gold circlet around his helmet, and a flowing red-gold cloak and a surcoat bearing the Scottish lion rampant (red, on a yellow background) , stands up in the stirrups of the grey horse he is riding. He holds the reins tightly in his left hand and wields a battle-axe in his right. Sir Henry de Bohun, with golden plate armour and a flowing red cloth tied to his helm, rides past, his long lance missing the king. He is crouched low, almost seeming to bow, his head lined up for the blow from the king's axe.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

104d

Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889–1982) – author, poet, film-maker, botanist, arctic explorer – was born #OTD, 30 May. A 🎂 🧵

WalkHighlands shares an extract from PEAK BEYOND PEAK, describing how she tackled the Corrieyairack Pass between the Cairngorms & Loch Ness

1/4

https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/news/peak-beyond-peak-the-unpublished-scottish-journeys-of-isobel-wylie-hutchison/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #hillwalking #mountaineering #cairngorms

Edited 104d ago

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

97d

Ye think thon wes the end?
Yon meetin in the wuids
When Thracian Orpheus heard the drum, the cries,
The whud o the bacchantes’ thrangan feet…

—“Orpheus”, by Tom Scott (1918–1995): born #OTD, 6 June
Published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS

1/3

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage

Tom Scott
Orpheus

Ye think thon wes the end?
Yon meetin in the wuids
When Thracian Orpheus heard the drum, the cries,
The whud o the bacchantes’ thrangan feet
And, seik in saul,
Mad to be jyned for aye to his Eurydikee,
Strung his harp
And gaed to meet them wi a sang.
Ye think thon wes the end?

Na. Eftir the thrang breeled on, red
Fingert, bluidie-mawed, the riven limbs
Quiveran aye amang the mairtyred gress,
There wes a lull
And throu it syne a roun
And syne as muckle’s a moan
And syne a voice,
Yon voice o his
That quietit the forest and its fowk,
That reconcilit lion and lamb,
Ordert the rain,
Spoke frae the grund
And threept in the greitan tree
‘Euridikee! Euridikee!’

And at the name
A ferlie thing wes duin.
Thir broken bits o bodie, bits o bane,
Brisket, gash, airm and droukit hair
Cam thegither as gin some will
Mair nor the merely real
Had wrocht on them.
And on yon slauchtert grund was formed
Orpheus anew,
Orpheus the singer, Orpheus the makar,
Orpheus cleansed o the auld despair.
And by the halie tree
In the leaman licht o the wuid,
Squired by a houlet, a hawk and a doo,
Wes his Euridikee.

They say he made a new sang,
A nobler nor the auld,
And sings it aye in the great haa o the warld.

They say it will nevir end.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

67d

47 years ago today
The B-52's is the debut album of the American band The B-52s, released on this day in 1979, includes the singles Planet Clair and Rock Lobster

#punk #punks #punkrock #newwave #theb52s #history #punkrockhistory #otd

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

96d

Aonghas Dubh – Ceòl às na Briathran

The poet & writer Aonghas MacNeacail (1942–2022) was born #OTD, 7 June. This programme, originally aired on the BBC, is drawn from “Skerries, Trawlings, Tides” – a literary event celebrating Aonghas’s 80th birthday

1/3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAb0LdDuaSk

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #AonghasMacNeacail #poetry

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

72d

😍 81 years young 💥
Happy Birthday to the georgeous, fantastic Angela Trimble aka Deborah Ann Harry, born on this day in 1945, Miami, Florida.

Photo by John Lamparski

#punkrock #womenofpunk #debbieharry #blondie #history #punkrockhistory #otd

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

162d

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) – author, historian, journalist, screenwriter – was born #OTD, 2 April, 1925

“His dedication to strongly researched stories, built firmly on a bedrock of historical fact, but always with an eye to the humour of a situation, was the core of what appealed to me”

Historical novelist Michael Jecks discusses MacDonald Fraser’s writing for the Royal Literary Fund

@bookstodon

1/6

https://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/not-a-serious-writer/

#Scottish #literature #historicalfiction

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

91d

On this day in 1942, Anne Frank received her first diary for her 13th birthday. On the cover page, she wrote: 'I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support." When she went into hiding during the Holocaust, her diary was one of the first items she packed.

Journeys in Film offers free Holocaust Education resources based on award-winning films to support educators who are teaching "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl".

Learn more:

https://journeysinfilm.org/film/holocaust-education-lessons/?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=social+media&utm_campaign=OTD&utm_id=June+2026&utm_term=Anne+Frank&utm_content=comments+link

@histodons @bookstodon

#AnneFrankDay #AnneFrankTag #AnneFrank #DiaryOfAnneFrank #HolocaustEducation #Education #TeachingResources #Homeschooling #Bookstodon #OTD #Histodons #History

The last known photograph of Anne, taken at a passport photo shoot in May 1942.

ALT

Edited 90d ago

1 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

91d

Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781–1857) was born #OTD, 12 June. She edited Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, famous for its liberal stance & incisive literary reviews, & wrote some of the most remarkable Scottish novels of the Romantic era

1/4

https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/christian-isobel-johnstone

#Scottish #literature #romanticism #18thcentury #19thcentury #womenwriters

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

90d

40 years ago today
Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth at CBGB, New York City on June 13, 1986.

Photo by Ebet Roberts

#punk #punks #punkrock #womenofpunk #kimgordon #leeranaldo #cbgb #history #punkrockhistory #otd

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

90d

#OTD in 1752 Frances Burney was born. She "was a novelist, diarist and playwright. In all, she wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography and twenty-five volumes of journals and letters. She has gained critical respect in her own right, but she foreshadowed such novelists of manners with a satirical bent as Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Burney

Burney at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2010

#books #literature

Painting of Frances Burney by her cousin Edward Francis Burney. She is shown from the waist up. She has light brown hair which is covered by a huge puffy tan hat. It has a big bow and ruffled lace on top. Her dress is white with a pink bow at her chest. A dark black shawl covers her shoulders and arms, and she wear dark gloves.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original