Local History/ The Sir, the Lady and Rasselas Morjan.

“Sacred to the memory of Rasselas Morjan, who was born at Macadi on the confines of Abyssinia and died at Wanlip Hall August 25th 1839 in the 19th year of his age. Rescued from a state of slavery in this life and enabled by God’s grace to become a member of his Church. He rests here in the hope of a greater deliverance hereafter. This stone is raised in remembrance of his blameless life by one whom he loved.”

The words above come from the gravestone of a slave buried in Our Lady and St Nicholas Church in Wanlip. 

In my blog post called 'The Glory of Birstall' I mentioned about a slave that was buried in a church near to where I live. Today I woke up and decided that it was time for me to seek out this grave,  walk around and look at the history of the surrounding area for a bit. I was not disappointed in the slightest.

It took me no more than fifteen or so minutes for me to get to Wanlip and only a tiny amount of time until I got to Our Lady and St Nicholas Church. It was a tiny churchyard and a tiny church, a stereotypical country place of Christain worship which I learned was built in 1393. 

Wanlip was once an isolated settlement, and its old English name ‘anliepe’ means isolated. 

I was lucky to find the rector walking through the church. He asked me who I was looking for when he saw me walking and bending down to read the stones. He guided me to the headstone I wanted and this is what I saw...

As I got talking with the rector we began chatting about history. The slave was an Abyssinian called Rasselas Morjan and was employed by the members of the local Palmer family in the early 1800's.  It is not known how he got employment at the hall in Wanlip, but it is known that the Palmers were friends with the Babbingtons of Rothley, (another nearby village) who were greatly involved in the anti-slavery campaign in the 19th century. It is not recorded when Rasselas Morjan was rescued from slavery or whether it was one of the Babbingtons who had helped secure his freedom, but it is thought that this may have occurred around 1835- 6, when Morjan was in his early teens. The Babbingtons may have asked their friends, the Palmers, to provide a home for Morjan. This is what happened, and some years later he was baptized in the church where his grave now was. He died when he was nineteen years old in 1839 of some illness... fascinating.

I was told that the diaries from the family mentioned ol' Rasselas. An extract of the family diary talked about Rasselas being proud of gaining a new button on his uniform because it meant that he had just been promoted.

I asked if I was allowed to have a look in the church and to my great excitement and happiness he gave me permission. It was a beautiful church inside, plaques on walls and a tiny organ to the right of the altar, wooden seating. I tasted a past age and it was wonderful.

I was guided to the front of the altar where the rector pulled away a sandy coloured carpet, revealing this...

The above relic depicts two people, Sir Thomas and Lady Katherine Walsh. There is an inscription that you won't be able to see in the photo but read,

“Here lyes Thomas Walsch knyght lorde of Anlep and dame Kat’ine his wife whiche in yer (their) tyme made the kirke of Anlep and halud the kirkyerd first in wirchip of god and of oure lady and seynt Nicholas that god have yer soules and mercy… 1393.”

The relic is the Wanlip brass, which commemorates the building of the church by Sir Thomas and Lady Katherine Walsh. Following the marriage of Roger Walsh to Maud, daughter of Henry of Wanlip, circa 1230, until the death of Thomas Walsh in 1893, eight generations of the Walsh family lived at Wanlip.

I can't exactly remember the exact words that the rector said but it went something along the lines of the relic being the first brass something- or- other in the country ever.

As I left the church I thanked the rector and was uplifted by the new history that I had discovered. I want to buy a history book of the whole area of Birstall, Wanlip and Rothley. The rector also told me about the Birstall History Society that meets up for talks about local subjects in the local library or the village hall... yeah I'm joining that. 

You can go anywhere and find inspiration. It is easy to become obsessed with local landmarks, history and the stories that surround it. I love my place of origin. As I have already said in a previous post, I have been inspired no end through my local area.

Tonight I raise a glass to Rasselas, I hope your life was good and full of happiness. I would have liked to meet you if I lived in an early time. Cheers.

Over and Out.

ED.

Lovecraft Unbound Short Story Compilation.

I want to review two amazing short stories that I read recently.

In a previous post I know that I mentioned that I was reading 'Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two' by Maggie Smith- Bendall for the sake of my gypsy interest but I want to review something else in this post.
I am quite the multi- tasker when it comes to reading books, my limit being reading five novels at one time (*brushes shoulder*).
While I am reading 'Rabbit Stew' I have been reading Lovecraft Unbound, a kind of well known short story collection inspired by the the works of H.P Lovecraft. Here is a review of two of the stories in the collection that are my favorites, "The Tenderness of Jackals" by Amanda Downum and "The Din of Celestial Birds" by Brian Evenson.

These stories aren't necessarily written with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in mind but each of the stories include themes that are famous in his stories and poems.

I'll start with The Tenderness of Jackals by Amanda Downum. This is brilliant. It is based around the psychological workings of a predator. I suppose the theme that Downum took from Lovecraft is the idea of forces that are outside of our understanding influencing us, unknowable things from outside time and space trying to gain their foothold in our reality.
The story begins in a train station as a man is scanning the people around him as he smokes a cigarette. As the narrative continues we learn that he is hearing things in his head, the barks of Jackals urging him to find some prey. To me the jackals that are put in the story are psychological, being representations of the inner urges of the man's mind. When he is fighting against the jackals that he can both see and hear, what he is really fighting against is himself... so... yeah. It gets into the mind of a man with the urge to do something bad... and when a young man comes into his life he is greatly tempted to act on his urges that that he has been trying to repress... the jackals that he hears and sees urging him onwards to unleash the monster within him. Greatedy Great!

The Din of Celestial Birds is by far my most favourite tale in the collection. It carries on the Lovecraft theme of mystreious, sinister forces in the universe acting on humanity in naughty ways...because the dark forces in our universe just do that.
The story is set in some poor Indian village. A man remembers running down a mountain where he remembers seeing a cage made of bones and feathers around it. As the story is told strange things begins to happen to the man. Holes begin to appear all around his body, he wakes up in a place without any idea how he got there. The local shaman type character keeps saying that the man is cursed and that "he is already dead..."
As things turn more crazy he becomes more alienated to the people around him. During the end scene he collapses and his body breaks apart into many beautiful birds that fly away into the sky.
The Din of Celestial Birds was written in the style of a written account, much like how M.R James might write one of his famous ghost stories.

I have never been attempted to write much fan fiction. I have always felt that I am trespassing onto an authors work. The only fan fiction that I have wanted to do was a tribute to True Blood (I have never read the books and have only seen up to series two of the t.v series...but I am intrigued in a world in which vampires have openly revealed their existence, you can only contemplate the endless tales that you can spin in a universe like that). The good thing about writing fan fiction in the dark world of Lovecraft is that you can go crazy. It is easy to write Lovecraftian fiction and when you write this type of fan fiction you don't feel at all guilty that you are corrupting another persons work in any way. I class Lovecraft Unbound not to be a book of fan fiction but a book of stories from authors who appreciate Lovecraft and his work, not by writing Mythos stories but by writing stories that have been inspired by his work, stories that were created when the creative cogs in the writers brains were set spinning with the help of H.P's weird tales.
You cannot be a fan of horror and the gothic without coming across Lovecraft sometime in your life.
Some of the stories I enjoyed throughly...some were ok...but none of them were bad.

Review over.
The book 'Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two' to be reviewed after this small announcement from our sponsor...
I'll write about 'Rabbit Stew' some time in the future.

Good old H.P.
Over and Out.
ED

Download Festival Review.

Here I sit...typing on a computer. I am unshaven with two shirts on, soggy trainers and muddy socks and the letter P on my hand. Download festival eh.
The bands that I can remember seeing are,

• Skunk Anasie.
• Avenged Sevenfold.
• The Darkness. 
• Turisas.
• Disturbed.
• Gaslight Anthem.
• Rob Zombie. 
• System of a Down.
• Korn.
• (A little bit of) Pendulum.
• The Ed Astill Experience.........what?

It should be every persons duty to listen to all sorts of music but this was the time for Rock Music and my love for it. Below is a picture during the Avenged Sevenfold performance. I am somewhere in that crowd.

Quite frankly it was amazing. We arrived at the campsite pretty sharpish and settled down with our tents and our food and drink and prepared ourselves for our birth right, rockers and music fans coming together and jumping about and getting excited about music.
The portable toilets got a bit... built up...after a few days. ( have read through these last two paragraphs that they weren't as funny as I thought they would be...but I make it my business to make what I write on my blog go no further than first draft, apart from the slightest errors.)
I feel that I shall turn my attention to Blues Music for a while and a bit of Folk and Punk, perhaps a squeeze of classical over the next few months.

Pretty amazing time.
Love Life Always.
Over and Out.
ED (Snorlax).

The Astill Elderflower Champagne (special brew).

Today was a day that my family do every year. My grandad used to make elderflower champagne and it occured to ma famille that the creation of this elixir of life should carry on down the line in later generations. So it came to pass, that four years ago my family began making elderflower champagne, gathering the elderflower from bushes all around the place, taking advantage of the great bounty of nature and making the special (*wink*) elderflower champagne.

We set out to Syston (my Nan lives in this village) at about 10am to go to Meadow Lane, a long stretch of road where there was an abundant supply of elderflower. We got our scissors and our baskets and began gathering the main ingredient.
The picture below shows us cutting off the elderflower stems after coming back home because if you leave them on then your champagne will be a bit bitter.

Pollen was everywhere... it's a good thing that none of us suffer from any allergies or hay fever or we would be lying on the floor after a few minutes.

Elderflower champagne is an absolute treat. It tastes of wilderness and nature and smells of summer fetes and sounds like.... brilliance.
I'm not going to write down the accurate recipe that we use to make our taste masterpiece but here are the basic ingredients that you are meant to add to the mix,

• Elderflowers (Meeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh).
• Vinegar.
• Sugar.
• Loads of lemon juice with some zest added in.
• Lots and lots of water, with hot water added to cold to help with the fermentation and the dissolving sugar.

After we had added all the ingredients my brother stirred everything with a spatula while I stood with his camera and took pictures of him. He is wasting his talents... he should have become a famous hand model. Look how skillfully he is posing his hand at the top of this shot.

We then we closed the lids of the fermentation thingy- ma- bobs and signed in contentment and sat down with a caffeine beverage and wrote down a diary entry on a piece of paper of the details of this years batch of awesomeness.

It will take three weeks until we can drink it. Elderflower is said to keep only for three months but over the last few years the elderflower batch that we make lasts us a year. 

My Mum, brother and I were also debating what we should call our elderflower champagne. Here are three of the things that we came up with,

• Momma Astill's Elderflower Champagne.
• Elly May's Elderflower Champagne. 
• Astill's Elderflower Champagne.

It's amazing the stuff you can get from nature. Thank you nature, much appreciated.

My new favourite smell... lemons.

Over and Out.

ED.