A Notional Song

These are gnomes, truly,
As I thought they would be
Where my dreams outwait me
Where the scattered people go

There are gnomes, Shelly,
As the census tells me
This is where I won't take a loan
For that's how you escape a gnome

47

Prime numbers have that morbid satisfaction of only having themselves and their God as factors. In that sense, they are like the religious hermits of old, or like cats.

It was on this day that I realised how old we were, here in Atlantis. To begin one's life in 1959, only to be told that it really began in 1965, and then to be reminded that gestation began in 1819, or perhaps six hundred years earlier, or a few thousand more... this beggars belief, depletes it to poverty levels.

And yet the Harper says Atlantis was the centre of the ancient archipelagic and peninsular realm that sliced one ocean from another. And Hobson says that the Gateway of the Dragon's Teeth was famous from afar, even unto the streets of Samarkand.

Then I realised. You make a flag of red and white every time you bare your teeth.

The Atlantean Myth (Part IV): Golden Mountain's Tale

In the glorious days of the Third Age, the Thunderer wrested control of Atlantis from the evil Lemurians and their predecessors the Empire. Or so the politically correct and factually negligent account goes.

What is for sure is that Atlantis had already begun to devolve. The Empire's grasp had been fatally weakened and yet, unlike previous empires, it was to prove itself able to fall from grace with a great deal of clever graciousness. It also attempted to tangle the world up in a ball of unpickable knots (some of which still exist in the darker continents, as the Imperials were wont to say).

One such knot was Lemuria, an agglomeration or loose confederation of minor princedoms and submonarchies. Within Greater Lemuria were several semi-independent or semi-autonomous cities, and Atlantis was the greatest of these. In fact, Atlantis inherited the bulk of the Empire's legacy, and if it hadn't been a success, then the Thunderer would have been judged a failure.

The cleverness of the Thunderer and his gang was that they turned this on its head: new line—Atlantis was a success because of the Thunderer. But what to do about the myriads of homeless and starving that any country in this region has had to cope with?

Here is where Golden Mountain's story begins. He was one of the First, and one of the most easily forgotten. He was the Gnome's predecessor in Education, but his forte was Nation-Building. Literally. Like a modern Hephaistos, he forged a dream from stone and metal and glass, and built the topless towers of a modern Ilium. If Helen was the face that launched a thousand ships, Golden Mountain's was the fist that piled the foundations of a myriad blocks of concrete.

For the Golden Mountain was a canny man, a clever and perceptive soul who wanted none of the limelight and all of the doing of things. He was pragmatic, definitive; for him praxis was the apotheosis of thought. He saw through most people and he sawed through most obstacles. And he housed 400,000 people in a year and a day (well, not quite, but this is myth we're talking about here).

Whereas the Thunderer was the Eminence of the Height, and the Gnome was the Brain of the Operation, and Black Diamond was the Voice of the Temple; Golden Mountain was the Builder of the Nation. It is impossible to think of modern Atlantis, the way it looks now, without him; yet it is only too possible not to think of him at all. He died in the heat of summer, in the same year as Black Diamond. In the aftermath of the Diamond's passing, the Mountain received some recognition.

And that was it.

Personally, I remember a shrewd and wise old patriarch who could say a lot and had a temper. But he was also a Wyvern, like the Gnome, and he remained true to his principles of necessity and pragmatism, directness and craft. We will not see his like again.

Other Countries

I was mulling over one of the hymns of my youth the other day. This was Cecil Spring-Rice's 1918 nationalist piece, I Vow To Thee, My Country. Its words read:

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above
entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
the love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
that lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
the love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
the love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago
most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
we may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
and soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
and her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

As is traditional in these politically-correct days, there is an omitted middle verse no longer considered suitable for modern audiences. You can find it here.

In August 2004, around the time this blog was first set up, the Anglican Bishop of Hulme raised his voice against this hymn as an emblem of heretical (his word) nationalism (his other word). He claimed that it set love of country above love of God. This latter assertion is a rather odd claim, no matter how you read the first line — the verse is explicit that love of country is all earthly things above. There is no doubt about its flagrant nationalism though.

But there is indeed another (part of) history I've heard of long ago, which the Bishop was not taking into account. The first verse was written in 1908 and, along with the excluded middle verse, updated in January 1918. These verses were written in the throes of British (well, English) nationalism before the end of the First World War. The last verse was written at the end of the War, and it is heartening to see how the author had come to acknowledge that other, greater country — the one which we can be faithful to despite not being British.

I've always maintained that people who sing anthems are implicitly claiming to live by them. And if they make such implicit claims, they should be careful to remain true to the values and virtues explicit in such verses. Sometimes, these verses may be old, outdated, untrue. They are then perhaps rightly expunged from what is sung. Sometimes, they are all too relevant, cannot be expurgated, and must be sung loudly, with feeling, and in the true spirit which comes from faithful allegiance.