Clay Lane
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Clay Lane’
Four knights thought they were helping their King, but they could not have made a greater mistake.
Henry II (r. 1154-1189) appointed his friend Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury, thinking he would always do as he was told. But Becket proved very independent-minded, and even had to flee to France to escape his King’s anger.
A dozy rabbit gets an idea into his head and soon all the animals of India are running for their lives.
The following tale from the fourth-century BC Jataka Tales was told to illustrate how Hindu ascetics blindly copied one another’s eye-catching but useless mortifications; but it might just as well be applied to stock-market rumours or ‘project fear’ politics.
Several English pianists impressed Joseph Haydn on his visits to London, but Maria Hester Park was a particular favourite.
What sort of piano music should we imagine Elizabeth Bennet playing in the drawing rooms of Longbourn and Meryton? The only name dropped in Jane Austen’s novels is John Baptist Cramer, but we do know of other widely published composers of the day; several were women, and one of the most celebrated was Maria Hester Park, née Reynolds.
The mayor and corporation of Hamelin outsource a rodent problem to a professional rat-catcher.
The tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin in Lower Saxony goes back to the 13th century, and has been retold by the Brothers Grimm, Goethe and our own Robert Browning. Scholars have surmised that its origins lie in the migration of Hamelin’s population to work in lands from modern-day Poland to Romania.
A woman advises her husband to entrust their modest savings to the bank of God.
This story was told to John Moschus (?550–619) by Maria, a Christian lady on the Greek island of Samos who was devoted to the care of the poor. The events occurred in Nisibis in Syria, an ancient Christian centre now just inside Turkey, whose early fourth-century church is ruined but still partially standing.
Cuthbert’s friend comes asking for a priest to attend his dying wife — so long as it isn’t Cuthbert.
St Cuthbert’s miracles not only brought healing or deliverance from danger, but left others wiser and kinder for having lived through them. In this example, his friend Hildemer learnt that illness, and specifically mental illness, is nothing for a Christian to be ashamed of.