Ken Waters needs no introduction to firearm enthusiasts because of his numerous contributions to Rifle and to Handloader magazines plus his reloading publications, Pet Loads. Not only did he know an enormous amount, but he experimented indefatigably. It's more the pity, therefore, that Ken Waters' Notebook (Wolfe Publishing, 2006) does not serve his legacy well.
This volume has numerous faults, none of them attributable to Waters and all of them to Wolfe Publishing. To start at the beginning, the title gives an altogether misleading idea of the book itself. It's a collection of his correspondence, so why call it a notebook? Something like Ken Waters: "Best Wishes for Good Shooting" would have been more accurate, and Waters, as we all know, cared about accuracy.
Second, its principle of organization is chronological, starting with a letter dated July 13, 1968, and closing with one dated December 28, 1989. Such an organization might be useful if in that interval Waters changed his mind about some topic, let's say undersize vs. oversize cast bullets in the .30-06. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't. What a chronological organization does do is create a hodge-podge of topics, all mixed up. The book is divided into chapters, and these chapters list some--but not even all--of the topics covered, but that is it as far as organization goes.
Wait, you may be thinking, what about the index? Index? Wolfe Publishing apparently believed they didn't need no stinking index! I could understand this if the collected letters were arranged differently: by modern rifle calibers, say, then by obsolete ones, then by handgun topics, and then by whatever; within each category, the order could be from smallest caliber to largest. Other arrangements might be even better. Almost anything would be preferable to having to go through the book making notes of the pages on topics that you might want to refer to later.
So: misleading title, lack of organization, no index--all negatives. Unfortunately, that is not all. To me, the final straw is the duplication of letters. You turn the page, wearily go through yet again some minor variation of Waters' customary apology for taking so long to respond (most of these could have been cut with no loss), only to find that you just read this same letter a few pages ago. Check out pp. 107 & 109; 155 & 166; 156 & 167; 222 & 225. This is simply inexcusable. Ken Waters took pains to get it right. This volume is sloppy; it doesn't remotely represent what Ken Waters stood for.
Is this book a hit or a miss? No question: at one time, Ken Waters was a competitive rifleman, and I can imagine his ghost in the target pit, vigorously waving Maggie's Drawers.
Hits and Misses
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Decoding a 1916 SMLE Mark III* by BSA
As the late Charles Stratton observed, the owner of an SMLE is "confronted with a seemingly hopeless array of marks and models and markings and apparently endless varieties of configurations and conversions." Trying to figure out what these marks meant on my Mark III*, I began to wish for a Secret Decoder Ring. In this post, I shall try to illustrate the key markings on my SMLE that was made by Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) in 1916, comment on their implications, and list some reference works if you want to pursue this topic with an SMLE of your own. I hasten to add that I am not remotely an expert, only someone who has tried to figure out the history of this one rifle. If you know better, please don't hesitate to comment.
The place to start is the collar or socket joining the butt stock to the receiver. The collar tells you where and when the rifle was manufactured.
Here you see the King's or Tudor Crown, the GR initials of the monarch, Georgius Rex, or King George V (1911-35), the manufacturer followed by the date, and the model or Mark.
Next might come the serial number (or, in the case of my rifle), the numbers (plural) of the rifle stamped on the right side of the receiver ring. Ideally, the same serial number will be duplicated on the barrel and on the side of the bolt handle. Matching numbers suggest--but do not prove--that headspace is correct. If you plan to shoot the rifle, check out the headspace first.
The serial number on this rifle is M / 25105 (by convention, the slash is used to indicate a different line). Stratton (see list of references at the end of this post) stated that everywhere but at Enfield a given range of numbers was limited to five digits (Enfield limited its range to only four digits), so that when 99,999 was reached, the next series would begin with the letter "A" through A 99,999, then "B" through B 99,999, and so on. M and 25105 are repeated on the barrel and on the rear side of the bolt handle.
If you look closely, you can just make out another number--2316--stamped on the receiver ring but with a line through it, canceling it. The number appears nowhere else on the rifle, evidence perhaps that an older receiver and perhaps its barrel may have been converted or reconditioned as part of a new weapon in time of war. One question is, Which war? Is this a 1916 BSA Mark III* receiver originally numbered 2316? The Mark III* was adopted on January 2, 1916. This rifle's lack of a letter prefix would make it the 2,316th Mark III* made by BSA in 1916, preceding all the serially numbered ones with letter prefixes. During WW I, E.G.B. Reynolds has pointed out, BSA was manufacturing about 10,000 rifles a week. This low a serial number without a letter prefix would place its manufacture in the very first week after the Mark III* was adopted.
But what about the "M" letter and matching serial numbers? The rifle's collar tell us that BSA made the rifle in 1916. During WW I, however, BSA apparently did not use an "M" at all, so that rules out the "M / 25105" as BSA's original 1916 serial number. No other arsenal's use of "M" corresponds to post WW I dates, according to Stratton's listing of prefixes used by the various small arms factories. "M" was used by BSA as a serial number prefix in 1941 and 1942, so it seems likely BSA reconditioned this rifle for service in 1941 or 1942 and at that time gave it the new serial number M / 2515.
Just behind the back sight (or here, where it was), the barrel is stamped H.V. / S.C.
According to Stratton, "H.V." stands for high velocity, a mark stamped on rifles that had had the rear sight altered for the Mark VII bullet with its faster 174 grain bullet. The "S.C." stands for small cone: the forcing cone was lengthened 0.02 inches at the same time to improve accuracy. Stratton terms these stampings the second variation, found on later Mark III and Mark III* rifles. This marking is therefore consistent with the 1916 date of manufacture.
As the hucksters used to say on early TV commercials, "But wait, there's more!" Another mark is relevant here. On top of the Knox-form (the flat on the barrel immediately ahead of the receiver) is a circle enclosing two overlapping "F's":
This mark indicates a part of this rifle's history between the two world wars. When the Irish Free State was formed in 1922, most of its military equipment came from Great Britain, including Lee-Enfield rifles. The National Army marked these rifles with an FF enclosed by a circle, signifying "Fianna Fail." (Exactly when this practice began is less clear.) "Fianna" alludes to an ancient and rather informal military organization that with a slight stretch of the imagination could be taken to correspond to the standing army of a modern country. "Fail" means "destiny," as in one of the ancient names of Ireland, "Innisfail," the Isles of Destiny. "Fianna Fail" thus signifies something on the order of the Fianna or National Army of Ireland. (Post script 1/07/2015: Thanks to Fritz's sticky on the Lee Enfield page at Gunboards, I now know FB 26 marks on the underside of the barrel and visible here just in front of the Knox-form denote the Firth Brown steel batch.)
So far, therefore, we have a Mark III* made by BSA in 1916 that became the property of the National Army of Ireland in or shortly after 1922. But why then would BSA in 1941 or 1942 be reconditioning a rifle that had belonged to the Irish Free State? My first thought was that this rifle had been reacquired by the Brits following the Battle of Dunkirk in WW II. In May, 1940, the British Army had to abandon a great deal of equipment in what Churchill called "the miracle of Dunkirk," the evacuation of 338,226 British and French soldiers off the beaches by over 900 ships and boats. The British army then had to obtain rifles wherever they could be found, including Ireland.
I felt rather pleased with this line of reasoning, but my pleasure was short-lived. The very next day, I noticed yet another set of markings on the left side of the Knox-form:
Reynolds identifies the number, '37, as the Date Stamp, indicating the year of government acceptance. The Broad Arrow to its right indicates British government property. It could have been applied in 1916, but what I take to be its original serial number (the canceled 2316) also has a Broad Arrow below it. Here, the Broad Arrow's placement next to the number '37 suggests that this rifle came back into British service in 1937, three years before the Battle of Dunkirk. It may or may not be coincidental that the Irish Free State had become Ireland in that same year. In any case, the "M" series number on the bolt, barrel, and receiver suggests that BSA probably reconditioned this well-used rifle a few years later, in 1941 or 1942, stamping it with its final serial number, "M / 25105."
Useful References:
British Enfield Rifles. NRA American Rifleman reprint, 2004.
De Haas, Frank and Wayne van Zwoll. Bolt Action Rifles. 4th rev. ed. Iola, WI: Krause
Publications, 2003.
Reynolds, E.G.B. The Lee-Enfield Rifle. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1960.
Stratton, Charles R. British Enfield Rifles, Vol. 1: SMLE (No. 1) Rifles, Mark I and Mark
III. 2nd rev. ed. Tustin, CA: North Cape Publications, n. d.
_______________. British Enfield Rifles, Vol. 2: Lee-Enfield No. 4 and No 5 Rifles. 3rd
rev. ed. Tustin, CA: North Cape Publications, 2008.
Web: Gunboards' Lee Enfield page: http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?322796-Fritz-s-FF-marked-Enfield-sticky
Not consulted:
Skennerton, Ian. The Lee-Enfield: A Century of Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield Rifles &
Carbines. 2007.
The place to start is the collar or socket joining the butt stock to the receiver. The collar tells you where and when the rifle was manufactured.
Here you see the King's or Tudor Crown, the GR initials of the monarch, Georgius Rex, or King George V (1911-35), the manufacturer followed by the date, and the model or Mark.
Next might come the serial number (or, in the case of my rifle), the numbers (plural) of the rifle stamped on the right side of the receiver ring. Ideally, the same serial number will be duplicated on the barrel and on the side of the bolt handle. Matching numbers suggest--but do not prove--that headspace is correct. If you plan to shoot the rifle, check out the headspace first.
The serial number on this rifle is M / 25105 (by convention, the slash is used to indicate a different line). Stratton (see list of references at the end of this post) stated that everywhere but at Enfield a given range of numbers was limited to five digits (Enfield limited its range to only four digits), so that when 99,999 was reached, the next series would begin with the letter "A" through A 99,999, then "B" through B 99,999, and so on. M and 25105 are repeated on the barrel and on the rear side of the bolt handle.
If you look closely, you can just make out another number--2316--stamped on the receiver ring but with a line through it, canceling it. The number appears nowhere else on the rifle, evidence perhaps that an older receiver and perhaps its barrel may have been converted or reconditioned as part of a new weapon in time of war. One question is, Which war? Is this a 1916 BSA Mark III* receiver originally numbered 2316? The Mark III* was adopted on January 2, 1916. This rifle's lack of a letter prefix would make it the 2,316th Mark III* made by BSA in 1916, preceding all the serially numbered ones with letter prefixes. During WW I, E.G.B. Reynolds has pointed out, BSA was manufacturing about 10,000 rifles a week. This low a serial number without a letter prefix would place its manufacture in the very first week after the Mark III* was adopted.
But what about the "M" letter and matching serial numbers? The rifle's collar tell us that BSA made the rifle in 1916. During WW I, however, BSA apparently did not use an "M" at all, so that rules out the "M / 25105" as BSA's original 1916 serial number. No other arsenal's use of "M" corresponds to post WW I dates, according to Stratton's listing of prefixes used by the various small arms factories. "M" was used by BSA as a serial number prefix in 1941 and 1942, so it seems likely BSA reconditioned this rifle for service in 1941 or 1942 and at that time gave it the new serial number M / 2515.
Just behind the back sight (or here, where it was), the barrel is stamped H.V. / S.C.
According to Stratton, "H.V." stands for high velocity, a mark stamped on rifles that had had the rear sight altered for the Mark VII bullet with its faster 174 grain bullet. The "S.C." stands for small cone: the forcing cone was lengthened 0.02 inches at the same time to improve accuracy. Stratton terms these stampings the second variation, found on later Mark III and Mark III* rifles. This marking is therefore consistent with the 1916 date of manufacture.
As the hucksters used to say on early TV commercials, "But wait, there's more!" Another mark is relevant here. On top of the Knox-form (the flat on the barrel immediately ahead of the receiver) is a circle enclosing two overlapping "F's":
So far, therefore, we have a Mark III* made by BSA in 1916 that became the property of the National Army of Ireland in or shortly after 1922. But why then would BSA in 1941 or 1942 be reconditioning a rifle that had belonged to the Irish Free State? My first thought was that this rifle had been reacquired by the Brits following the Battle of Dunkirk in WW II. In May, 1940, the British Army had to abandon a great deal of equipment in what Churchill called "the miracle of Dunkirk," the evacuation of 338,226 British and French soldiers off the beaches by over 900 ships and boats. The British army then had to obtain rifles wherever they could be found, including Ireland.
I felt rather pleased with this line of reasoning, but my pleasure was short-lived. The very next day, I noticed yet another set of markings on the left side of the Knox-form:
Reynolds identifies the number, '37, as the Date Stamp, indicating the year of government acceptance. The Broad Arrow to its right indicates British government property. It could have been applied in 1916, but what I take to be its original serial number (the canceled 2316) also has a Broad Arrow below it. Here, the Broad Arrow's placement next to the number '37 suggests that this rifle came back into British service in 1937, three years before the Battle of Dunkirk. It may or may not be coincidental that the Irish Free State had become Ireland in that same year. In any case, the "M" series number on the bolt, barrel, and receiver suggests that BSA probably reconditioned this well-used rifle a few years later, in 1941 or 1942, stamping it with its final serial number, "M / 25105."
Useful References:
British Enfield Rifles. NRA American Rifleman reprint, 2004.
De Haas, Frank and Wayne van Zwoll. Bolt Action Rifles. 4th rev. ed. Iola, WI: Krause
Publications, 2003.
Reynolds, E.G.B. The Lee-Enfield Rifle. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1960.
Stratton, Charles R. British Enfield Rifles, Vol. 1: SMLE (No. 1) Rifles, Mark I and Mark
III. 2nd rev. ed. Tustin, CA: North Cape Publications, n. d.
_______________. British Enfield Rifles, Vol. 2: Lee-Enfield No. 4 and No 5 Rifles. 3rd
rev. ed. Tustin, CA: North Cape Publications, 2008.
Web: Gunboards' Lee Enfield page: http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?322796-Fritz-s-FF-marked-Enfield-sticky
Not consulted:
Skennerton, Ian. The Lee-Enfield: A Century of Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield Rifles &
Carbines. 2007.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Making Over a SMLE Sporter, Part 2
At some point, probably in the 1950's or '60's when surplus SMLE's were widely available and cheap (I can remember in the 60's seeing barrels of them in Warshall's Sporting Goods in downtown Seattle for about $35 apiece), someone purchased this SMLE made by BSA in 1916 and converted it into a sporter. Although most owners of SMLE's simply cut the service stock down, this person took two unusual steps: first, he discarded the two piece military stock and handguard and fit the barreled action, magazine, and trigger guard into a Fajen two piece sporter stock. That had the obligatory white spacers at butt and grip together with a Monte Carlo comb. Second, he removed the bridge for charging the rifle, giving a cleaner top line to the rifle, but leaving a large crescent cutout on the left side of the receiver.
I bought the rifle sight unseen from the auction GunBroker.com in May 2009 for $115 (probably a bit under the '60's price of $35, correcting for inflation). I thought that it was an excellent candidate for an inexpensive make-over into a British-styled light rifle. Here is an example of what I was thinking of, this one with a flush magazine.
My aging eyesight dictated that I'd have to mount a peep sight instead of the open express sights on the example above.
I cut off the Monte Carlo comb and used a rasp to reduce the cheek piece, reshaping it into the traditional pancake style with a sharply defined line. Looking at several illustrations from old catalogs, I noticed that the English typically ended the forward edge of the cheek piece slightly to the rear of an imaginary line extended up from the rear of the grip, so I followed suit.
The pitch of the butt was, well, unusual, so I changed the angle of the butt to the comb line to 90 degrees. I had on hand an old Winchester red pad, so I sanded off the brand name and mounted it. It looked quite like a traditional Silvers pad. I gave the butt some cast off, rasping away at the cheek piece until the sights were on target when I mounted the rifle quickly.
Altering the fore end was comparatively straightforward. I attached an ebony tip with dowels and epoxy and then shaped it into the shallow curve typical of English sporting rifles. I slimmed the sides of the fore end considerably. I cut off the two hollow studs in front of the magazine, originally intended to secure the detachable canvas breech cover, filed the metal smooth, and cold blued it.
I then took the gun to Fred Cornell (570 888-9236) of Sayre, PA, who was able to machine a fill-in for the charging bridge cavity and then soldered it in place and cold blued it. He removed the rear sight, filing down the screw that secured it to the barrel until it was flush.
Fred soldered on a Williams ramp front sight and drilled, tapped, and mounted a Williams FP aperture sight. The one negative of this sight is that unlike a Lyman, the sight bar can't be easily withdrawn. If I were to do this over again, I'd search out an older Lyman with its quick release.
I wanted to mount the old-fashioned rings for a sling, but I couldn't find a source for them. Instead, I ordered swivels and a sling from NECG, and Fred soldered on the front swivel in a typical English position. Similarly, I placed the rear swivel closer to the grip than we're accustomed to.
Refinishing the rifle was straightforward. The Fajen stock was black walnut with a somewhat greenish cast, so to kill the green I added red mahogany aniline dye to extra dark walnut dye in 50-50 proportions. I then rubbed in two coats of alkanet oil, rubbing each down with 0000 steel wool after it had dried. Two coats of satin polyurethane varnish followed as a sealer, again rubbing each coat down with steel wool. I then top coated with Tru-Oil with a slight amount of alkanet oil added to it.
For checkering, I used a simple V pattern of 18 lines per inch on the grip and the fore end. The checkering on the fore end wraps around.
At some point, I'd like to have the magazine shortened so it only holds five rounds. It would still protrude, but not look quite so military. As of now, the rifle with sling weighs seven and a half pounds, handles like a dream, and is a delight to hunt with.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Making Over a SMLE Mark III* Sporter in .303 British
SMLE stands for Short Magazine, Lee Enfield; less formally, troops called it the "Smellie." The Mark I was adopted in 1902 as the British service rifle following their decidedly unpleasant experiences fighting the Boers, many of whom were using charger-fed 7x57 Mausers, in what we now call South Africa.
It is "Short" because its barrel was shorter and therefore less cumbersome than its predecessors, the Lee-Metford of 1888 and the Lee-Enfield of 1895. The "Magazine" denotes that it could be loaded with two five-round chargers, so it held five more rounds than the Mauser and was much faster to reload than the older Lee-Metfords and Lee-Enfields (their magazines held eight and ten rounds, respectively, but like the US's Krag, the rounds had to be loaded one at a time).
"Lee" commemorates Richard Paris Lee, the Scottish-born American who invented this box magazine system, while "Enfield" refers not to the armory located at Enfield Lock but to the system of rifling with deeper grooves than those used in the Medford system.
With me so far? We've almost finished! The * following the Mark III indicates an official modification of the model pattern, but not one so sweeping as to require a different mark, as in, say, the Mark IV used by the British in WW II (the Australians stayed with the Mark III). The SMLE Mark II's were updated Mark I's; the Mark III was adopted in 1907. The Mark III*, adopted on January 2, 1916, did away with the long-range volley sight and the cut-off for the magazine. In May 1926, Great Britain began a different system of nomenclature: the Mark III* became the Rifle No. 1, Mark III*. If you can keep this straight, you're a better person than I am.
All of these models plus the later Mark IV and Mark V fired the .303 British, a rimmed cartridge introduced with the Lee-Metford in 1888. It was at first loaded with black powder for about 1850 fps, then with smokeless cordite for about 1950 fps, both with a 215 grain round-nosed bullet. In November 1910, the S. A. Ball Cartridge Mark VII became the standard, a smokeless round with a 174 grain spritzer developing about 2450 fps.
In the next post, I'll discuss how I made over a sporterized Mark III* SMLE.
It is "Short" because its barrel was shorter and therefore less cumbersome than its predecessors, the Lee-Metford of 1888 and the Lee-Enfield of 1895. The "Magazine" denotes that it could be loaded with two five-round chargers, so it held five more rounds than the Mauser and was much faster to reload than the older Lee-Metfords and Lee-Enfields (their magazines held eight and ten rounds, respectively, but like the US's Krag, the rounds had to be loaded one at a time).
"Lee" commemorates Richard Paris Lee, the Scottish-born American who invented this box magazine system, while "Enfield" refers not to the armory located at Enfield Lock but to the system of rifling with deeper grooves than those used in the Medford system.
With me so far? We've almost finished! The * following the Mark III indicates an official modification of the model pattern, but not one so sweeping as to require a different mark, as in, say, the Mark IV used by the British in WW II (the Australians stayed with the Mark III). The SMLE Mark II's were updated Mark I's; the Mark III was adopted in 1907. The Mark III*, adopted on January 2, 1916, did away with the long-range volley sight and the cut-off for the magazine. In May 1926, Great Britain began a different system of nomenclature: the Mark III* became the Rifle No. 1, Mark III*. If you can keep this straight, you're a better person than I am.
All of these models plus the later Mark IV and Mark V fired the .303 British, a rimmed cartridge introduced with the Lee-Metford in 1888. It was at first loaded with black powder for about 1850 fps, then with smokeless cordite for about 1950 fps, both with a 215 grain round-nosed bullet. In November 1910, the S. A. Ball Cartridge Mark VII became the standard, a smokeless round with a 174 grain spritzer developing about 2450 fps.
In the next post, I'll discuss how I made over a sporterized Mark III* SMLE.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
"The Great Day That Dawns": The Source for a Kitlinguharmiut Song and My Redaction
Judging from the number of quotations on the web, this song from the Kitlinguharmiut or "Copper" Eskimo people (they made copper tools) has had a remarkably widespread and pervasive influence. The US Department of Health has even used part of its concluding lines as the title for a handbook on suicide prevention: To Live To See The Great Day That Dawns . . . Preventing Suicide by American Indian and Alaska Native Youth and Young Adults. I read this song for the first time about ten years or so ago, when I was researching the hunting cultures of Northern Indians and of the Inuit, and it made a great impression on me.
I copied the English translation of the song and subsequently rewrote it. I wasn't concerned about altering the integrity of the original: after all, that was already at two removes. This song first had been translated into Danish and that version then had been translated into English. If you want to be strict about it, every translation is a betrayal, an idea expressed more succinctly in Italian: traduttore, traditore.
Recently, as part of an extended conversation, I wrote down my redacted version and sent it to a group of friends that included Steve Bodio, who wanted to post it on his blog Querencia. He asked me where it was from, and I told him that I'd reworked it but had lost my note on its source. After Steve posted it, "Anonymous" then commented that a longer version could be found in Nick Jans's excellent The Last Light Breaking. That is correct, on both counts: that book gives the source, and that book is indeed excellent. Thanks to Jans's citation of The Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24 by Knud Rasmussen, I was able to run down the original English translation. It can be found in Rasmussen's Intellectual Culture of the Hudson Bay Eskimos (Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24. Trans. W. E. Calvert. [Copenhagen: Gyldendalkse Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1932]), IX, 53. I believe that this is the first time it has been quoted on the web with a full citation.
It goes as follows:
And I think over again
My small adventures
When from a shore wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And thought I was in danger.
My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.
__ __ __
And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing:
To live to see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.
__ __ __
I felt by shortening the song and dividing it into three quatrains it could be more expressive and, perhaps, even more emphatic. I was pleased enough with my version that I decided to inscribe on a canoe paddle I'd made. That might have been a good idea, but my execution wasn't. Although my handwriting was legible, the design didn't look right on the blade of the paddle, so I erased it. Apparently, I then tossed the notes I had made on the source of this song, keeping only the version I had reworked on my computer.
Now that the source is clear, here is my reworked version:
Kitlinguharmiut Song
As I recall once more
The time I drifted out
On an off-shore wind
And believed I was in danger,
I recall again my fears,
Those small ones I thought so big,
I copied the English translation of the song and subsequently rewrote it. I wasn't concerned about altering the integrity of the original: after all, that was already at two removes. This song first had been translated into Danish and that version then had been translated into English. If you want to be strict about it, every translation is a betrayal, an idea expressed more succinctly in Italian: traduttore, traditore.
Recently, as part of an extended conversation, I wrote down my redacted version and sent it to a group of friends that included Steve Bodio, who wanted to post it on his blog Querencia. He asked me where it was from, and I told him that I'd reworked it but had lost my note on its source. After Steve posted it, "Anonymous" then commented that a longer version could be found in Nick Jans's excellent The Last Light Breaking. That is correct, on both counts: that book gives the source, and that book is indeed excellent. Thanks to Jans's citation of The Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24 by Knud Rasmussen, I was able to run down the original English translation. It can be found in Rasmussen's Intellectual Culture of the Hudson Bay Eskimos (Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24. Trans. W. E. Calvert. [Copenhagen: Gyldendalkse Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1932]), IX, 53. I believe that this is the first time it has been quoted on the web with a full citation.
It goes as follows:
And I think over again
My small adventures
When from a shore wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And thought I was in danger.
My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.
__ __ __
And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing:
To live to see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.
__ __ __
I felt by shortening the song and dividing it into three quatrains it could be more expressive and, perhaps, even more emphatic. I was pleased enough with my version that I decided to inscribe on a canoe paddle I'd made. That might have been a good idea, but my execution wasn't. Although my handwriting was legible, the design didn't look right on the blade of the paddle, so I erased it. Apparently, I then tossed the notes I had made on the source of this song, keeping only the version I had reworked on my computer.
Now that the source is clear, here is my reworked version:
Kitlinguharmiut Song
As I recall once more
The time I drifted out
On an off-shore wind
And believed I was in danger,
I recall again my fears,
Those small ones I thought so big,
For all the things I hadn't yet
Accomplished in my life.
Yet there is only one big thing
That truly matters: to live
To see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Caroline Gordon's novel, Aleck Maury, Sportsman (1934)
I had never heard of this novel until I read about it in Stephen J. Bodio's illuminating Sportsman's Library, but his praise convinced me to run down a used copy and read it. I bogged down half way through the first time: I kept feeling I was missing something. A year later, I picked it up again and persevered, becoming more and more interested in this novel's power of suggestion, a power the more unusual because it derives less from what is said than from what is left unsaid.
The novel is narrated by Aleck Maury, a surviving representative of a socially privileged, literate but largely unintellectual Southern culture. Maury apparently was born some time during or shortly after the Civil War at Oakleigh plantation in Louisa County, Virginia. Just as reading most of Jane Austen you'd never know the Napoleonic Wars were in progress, so in Aleck Maury, Sportsman you'd hardly realize the Civil War had been fought.
Aleck Maury's mother had died while rocking baby Mary to sleep, so Aleck, the second youngest of five, was brought up by his eldest sister. Aleck Maury's father did little but blame the parlous times for the ever-declining yields of his plantation, its soil depleted by successive crops of tobacco. Impoverished from gambling, his father passed the time by writing blank verse, reading Classical literature, and declaiming poetry to his children.
When Aleck was eight, his father began to teach him first Latin and then Greek. He made no effort to accommodate his instruction to a child's understanding. One of the novel's memorable moments is Maury recalling his father fixing his eye on him when he mistranslated a line of the Aeneid, saying sternly, "That, sir, is a dative." Maury became good at Latin and Greek, and after graduating from the University of Virginia and working hand-to-mouth as far as Seattle and San Francisco, he eventually returns, not to Virginia, but to Tennessee to become a school teacher. Almost by default, Maury adopts the vocation of teaching Classics. He persists in this endeavor until late middle age, and one of the many unvoiced but remarkable aspects of this novel is that its narrator seems to have learned almost nothing from the material he taught to others.
Maury's vocation may be teaching Classics, but that is not remotely his avocation. From his first experience as an eight-year-old on a possum hunt with Rafe, hunting and fishing afforded him the most intense experiences of his life. By hunting I mean bird shooting, not, as the English would have it, riding to hounds (which Maury tried and didn't like especially), and by fishing I mean angling for crappies, bream, and bass with fly or bait. Bird shooting and fishing offer him an escape from himself, and Gordon is careful to leave it to the reader to judge whether that alternative is a viable, let alone a sufficient, one. Ironically, the closest Maury comes to uniting his vocation with his avocation is writing down on the flyleaf of his first copy of the Aeneid his fishing mentor's recipe for making dough balls to catch suckers.
We learn more about Maury's affection for his muzzleloading Greener shotgun than we do about his favorite writers. The only time anything from Classical literature becomes important to his life is when Maury muses he'd like to hear his student Molly Fayerlee read aloud some lines from Horace. Typically, Gordon doesn't give the source, but it's Ode I.9:
In George F. Whicher's translation, one I like to think Maury would have appreciated:
Apparently Molly did read those lines aloud, and apparently that led to his marrying her (or, possibly, her marrying him) in 1890: Caroline Gordon routinely omits seemingly relevant details like these.
Some years afterwards, following moves first to Mississippi and then to Missouri, misfortunes befall Maury and his family. Their son dies from an accident while swimming, Molly and he grow a bit apart, and then Molly dies while undergoing surgery (perhaps for cancer; again, we do not know). Maury grieves after his own fashion, putting aside hunting and fishing. Soon after that, he is asked to resign from the college where he teaches. Suddenly he is free, and it's ironic that at first he has absolutely no idea what he wants to do. Depressed, he begins to realize that he's getting old.
He spends the next few years attempting to establish a fish farm but is not especially successful. For the very first time in his life, drifting about on the still waters of Lake Lydia, he does contemplate his own death, but, unsurprisingly, his memento mori doesn't reach any resolution. He remains depressed and at loose ends. On a whim he decides to go to Florida and fish--again, not a successful experience.
In the last chapter, his daughter Sally and his son-in-law Steve suggest he come to live with them. The three of them begin looking for a suitable house near Caney Fork, Tennessee. The first part of this chapter serves primarily to demonstrate not merely how old-fashioned but how old Maury has become: their youthful energy highlights his decrepitude. He's fat, his legs hurt, and he quickly becomes winded. Sally's contemporary slang seems to him altogether inappropriate (much, perhaps, as Maury's mode of addressing blacks, young and old, seems inappropriate to our own sensibilities). Stiff old age has indeed replaced his youth.
Then, everything changes for the better. Hearing about the fishing to be had in Caney Fork and then seeing the river itself revive Maury's spirits remarkably. While Sally and her husband are debating about where to live, Maury quietly sneaks on a bus and takes off to go fishing in Caney Fork. He may perhaps have finally realized the wisdom of the Englishman who years before taught him to cast a fly. Back then, Colonel Wyndham had pursed his lips reflectively and told Maury: "You're young and you don't realize it yet, but there isn't time enough . . . There isn't time enough."
Habitually unreflective, Maury doesn't grasp the significance of Wyndham's insight, and he doesn't even recall it when, a number of years later, he once again sees Wyndham, now aged ninety, gamely stumbling down to a river to fish. Even at the very end of the novel, when he realizes in surprise that he'd just turned seventy a few days before, it is impossible to say whether Maury decides to seize the day and to make the most of his remaining time, or whether he simply decides he wants once more to go fishing. A lesser novelist would have been underlining the theme of carpe diem every time the narrative would allow it. Caroline Gordon, thankfully, is content to just make a slight gesture toward it.
This is a self-portrait by a sportsman who has resolutely remained focused on the surface of life, but Caroline Gordon has made brilliant use of what in graphic art is termed negative space: What is not said by Aleck Maury, Sportsman, is just as important as what he does say.
The novel is narrated by Aleck Maury, a surviving representative of a socially privileged, literate but largely unintellectual Southern culture. Maury apparently was born some time during or shortly after the Civil War at Oakleigh plantation in Louisa County, Virginia. Just as reading most of Jane Austen you'd never know the Napoleonic Wars were in progress, so in Aleck Maury, Sportsman you'd hardly realize the Civil War had been fought.
Aleck Maury's mother had died while rocking baby Mary to sleep, so Aleck, the second youngest of five, was brought up by his eldest sister. Aleck Maury's father did little but blame the parlous times for the ever-declining yields of his plantation, its soil depleted by successive crops of tobacco. Impoverished from gambling, his father passed the time by writing blank verse, reading Classical literature, and declaiming poetry to his children.
When Aleck was eight, his father began to teach him first Latin and then Greek. He made no effort to accommodate his instruction to a child's understanding. One of the novel's memorable moments is Maury recalling his father fixing his eye on him when he mistranslated a line of the Aeneid, saying sternly, "That, sir, is a dative." Maury became good at Latin and Greek, and after graduating from the University of Virginia and working hand-to-mouth as far as Seattle and San Francisco, he eventually returns, not to Virginia, but to Tennessee to become a school teacher. Almost by default, Maury adopts the vocation of teaching Classics. He persists in this endeavor until late middle age, and one of the many unvoiced but remarkable aspects of this novel is that its narrator seems to have learned almost nothing from the material he taught to others.
Maury's vocation may be teaching Classics, but that is not remotely his avocation. From his first experience as an eight-year-old on a possum hunt with Rafe, hunting and fishing afforded him the most intense experiences of his life. By hunting I mean bird shooting, not, as the English would have it, riding to hounds (which Maury tried and didn't like especially), and by fishing I mean angling for crappies, bream, and bass with fly or bait. Bird shooting and fishing offer him an escape from himself, and Gordon is careful to leave it to the reader to judge whether that alternative is a viable, let alone a sufficient, one. Ironically, the closest Maury comes to uniting his vocation with his avocation is writing down on the flyleaf of his first copy of the Aeneid his fishing mentor's recipe for making dough balls to catch suckers.
We learn more about Maury's affection for his muzzleloading Greener shotgun than we do about his favorite writers. The only time anything from Classical literature becomes important to his life is when Maury muses he'd like to hear his student Molly Fayerlee read aloud some lines from Horace. Typically, Gordon doesn't give the source, but it's Ode I.9:
Quid fit futurum cras, fuge quaerere; et
Quem fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro
Adpone; nec dulces amores
Sperne puer, neque tu choreas . . .
In George F. Whicher's translation, one I like to think Maury would have appreciated:
Pry not into the morrow's store;
Thy profit doth advance
By every day that fate allots,
So, lad, improve thy chance,---
Ere stiff old age replace thy youth,--
To love and tread the dance.
Apparently Molly did read those lines aloud, and apparently that led to his marrying her (or, possibly, her marrying him) in 1890: Caroline Gordon routinely omits seemingly relevant details like these.
Some years afterwards, following moves first to Mississippi and then to Missouri, misfortunes befall Maury and his family. Their son dies from an accident while swimming, Molly and he grow a bit apart, and then Molly dies while undergoing surgery (perhaps for cancer; again, we do not know). Maury grieves after his own fashion, putting aside hunting and fishing. Soon after that, he is asked to resign from the college where he teaches. Suddenly he is free, and it's ironic that at first he has absolutely no idea what he wants to do. Depressed, he begins to realize that he's getting old.
He spends the next few years attempting to establish a fish farm but is not especially successful. For the very first time in his life, drifting about on the still waters of Lake Lydia, he does contemplate his own death, but, unsurprisingly, his memento mori doesn't reach any resolution. He remains depressed and at loose ends. On a whim he decides to go to Florida and fish--again, not a successful experience.
In the last chapter, his daughter Sally and his son-in-law Steve suggest he come to live with them. The three of them begin looking for a suitable house near Caney Fork, Tennessee. The first part of this chapter serves primarily to demonstrate not merely how old-fashioned but how old Maury has become: their youthful energy highlights his decrepitude. He's fat, his legs hurt, and he quickly becomes winded. Sally's contemporary slang seems to him altogether inappropriate (much, perhaps, as Maury's mode of addressing blacks, young and old, seems inappropriate to our own sensibilities). Stiff old age has indeed replaced his youth.
Then, everything changes for the better. Hearing about the fishing to be had in Caney Fork and then seeing the river itself revive Maury's spirits remarkably. While Sally and her husband are debating about where to live, Maury quietly sneaks on a bus and takes off to go fishing in Caney Fork. He may perhaps have finally realized the wisdom of the Englishman who years before taught him to cast a fly. Back then, Colonel Wyndham had pursed his lips reflectively and told Maury: "You're young and you don't realize it yet, but there isn't time enough . . . There isn't time enough."
Habitually unreflective, Maury doesn't grasp the significance of Wyndham's insight, and he doesn't even recall it when, a number of years later, he once again sees Wyndham, now aged ninety, gamely stumbling down to a river to fish. Even at the very end of the novel, when he realizes in surprise that he'd just turned seventy a few days before, it is impossible to say whether Maury decides to seize the day and to make the most of his remaining time, or whether he simply decides he wants once more to go fishing. A lesser novelist would have been underlining the theme of carpe diem every time the narrative would allow it. Caroline Gordon, thankfully, is content to just make a slight gesture toward it.
This is a self-portrait by a sportsman who has resolutely remained focused on the surface of life, but Caroline Gordon has made brilliant use of what in graphic art is termed negative space: What is not said by Aleck Maury, Sportsman, is just as important as what he does say.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Pasta alla Norma (Pasta with eggplant, tomato, and ricotta salata sauce)
I first noticed this eggplant recipe in Italian Cooking in the CIA atHome series (see my earlier review). It was delicious, so I did some research, experimented, and came up with my own version. Tradition has it that the name derives from the custom in Catania, Sicily, of using Bellini's opera title to describe whatever was especially good.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 small eggplants
Oil for frying
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 chili pepper, cut in half and seeded, or 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (to taste)
1 3/4 pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped; or a 26 oz. box of Pomi
chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup grated ricotta salata*
Fresh basil, torn into small pieces, to sprinkle on top, if available
1 pound bucatini (hollow spaghetti), or 1 pound penne
After cutting off the ends of the eggplant, slice them across into 1/2" slices. Place in a colander either in the sink or with a bowl under it and salt the slices to draw out any bitter juices. If possible, press down with a bowl weighted with some cans of food. Let drain for at least an hour. Then rinse thoroughly and dry each slice.
Traditionally, the eggplant slices are then fried in oil until they are lightly brown on each side. If in doubt, undercook slightly, as you don't want them to fall apart when you slice them. Alternatively, you can oil a baking sheet and bake them at 350 degrees, turning once.
When they have cooled, slice the rounds into strips 1/2" wide. Cut the longer ones in two. Set aside some of the best looking ones for topping.
Heat the water for pasta. Salting it will improve the pasta's flavor.
Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce. Add some olive oil to a sauté pan over low heat and add the garlic and the hot pepper. When the garlic is just starting to color, add the tomatoes. Cook over medium heat, 20-25 minutes. If you used a chili pepper, remove the halves.
Boil the pasta until it's al dente. Drain, keeping back 1 cup of pasta water.
In a bowl, mix the pasta and tomato sauce and most of the eggplant slices. If the sauce seems too dry, add some of the reserved pasta water. Taste for seasoning. If the eggplant tastes bitter, add a pinch of sugar, mix, and taste again. Add the reserved eggplant on top. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with the torn-up basil and then the grated ricotta salata. Enjoy!
*Ricotta salata (salty ricotta) is made by salting and pressing fresh ricotta and then aging it for three months. It's somewhat like feta, but not as salty.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 small eggplants
Oil for frying
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 chili pepper, cut in half and seeded, or 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (to taste)
1 3/4 pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped; or a 26 oz. box of Pomi
chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup grated ricotta salata*
Fresh basil, torn into small pieces, to sprinkle on top, if available
1 pound bucatini (hollow spaghetti), or 1 pound penne
After cutting off the ends of the eggplant, slice them across into 1/2" slices. Place in a colander either in the sink or with a bowl under it and salt the slices to draw out any bitter juices. If possible, press down with a bowl weighted with some cans of food. Let drain for at least an hour. Then rinse thoroughly and dry each slice.
Traditionally, the eggplant slices are then fried in oil until they are lightly brown on each side. If in doubt, undercook slightly, as you don't want them to fall apart when you slice them. Alternatively, you can oil a baking sheet and bake them at 350 degrees, turning once.
When they have cooled, slice the rounds into strips 1/2" wide. Cut the longer ones in two. Set aside some of the best looking ones for topping.
Heat the water for pasta. Salting it will improve the pasta's flavor.
Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce. Add some olive oil to a sauté pan over low heat and add the garlic and the hot pepper. When the garlic is just starting to color, add the tomatoes. Cook over medium heat, 20-25 minutes. If you used a chili pepper, remove the halves.
Boil the pasta until it's al dente. Drain, keeping back 1 cup of pasta water.
In a bowl, mix the pasta and tomato sauce and most of the eggplant slices. If the sauce seems too dry, add some of the reserved pasta water. Taste for seasoning. If the eggplant tastes bitter, add a pinch of sugar, mix, and taste again. Add the reserved eggplant on top. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with the torn-up basil and then the grated ricotta salata. Enjoy!
*Ricotta salata (salty ricotta) is made by salting and pressing fresh ricotta and then aging it for three months. It's somewhat like feta, but not as salty.
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