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Write up on Tech Geek History: Nintendo 64

admin — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 10:52:24 +0000

Significance of the Study

Chapter II. RISC/ Nintendo 64

N64 CPU is part of the MIPS R4000 family of processors. The N64 CPU consists of the following components:

an execution unit with a 64-bit register file for integer and floating-point operations

a 16 KB instruction cache

an 8 KB writeback data cache

a 32-entry TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer) for virtual address to physical address calculation

The Nintendo 64 game runs in kernel mode with 32-bit addressing. 64-bit integer operations are available in this mode. However, the 32-bit C calling convention is used to maximize performance.

Description

The R4300i is a low-cost RISC microprocessor optimized for demanding consumer applications. The R4300i provides performance equivalent to a high-end PC at a cost point to enable set-top terminals, games and portable consumer devices. The R4300i is compatible with the MIPS R4000 family of RISC microprocessors and will run all existing MIPS software. Unlike its predecessors designed for use in workstations, the R4300i is expected to lower the cost of systems in which it is used, a requirement for price-sensitive consumer products. The R4300i is also an effective embedded processor, supported by currently available development tools and providing very high performance at a low price-point. Description The R4300i is a low-cost RISC microprocessor optimized for demanding consumer applications. The R4300i provides performance equivalent to a high-end PC at a cost point to enable set-top terminals, games and portable consumer devices. The R4300i is compatible with the MIPS R4000 family of RISC microprocessors and will run all existing MIPS software. Unlike its predecessors designed for use in workstations, the R4300i is expected to lower the cost of systems in which it is used, a requirement for price-sensitive consumer products. The R4300i is also an effective embedded processor, supported by currently available development tools and providing very high performance at a low price-point.

The Nintendo 64 game consists of a number of hardware components that work together to produce the graphics and audio for the game. The heart of the system is the Reality CoProcessor (RCP). Attached to the RCP are memory chips, N64 CPU and some miscellaneous I/O chips.

The RCP runs the graphics and audio microcode. The display portion of the RCP renders into the graphics frame buffer located in main memory. The video and audio portions of the RCP, DMA frame buffer, and audio data from main memory to drive the video and audio DACs. Figure 1-1 below is a block diagram of the N64 system.

Figure 1-1 N64 Hardware Block Diagram

The CPU and RCP are both processors that can execute at the same time. Threads execute on the CPU and tasks execute on the RCP. Access to main memory from threads and tasks also occur in parallel.

The game program runs on the N64 CPU as a collection of threads, each of which has its own stack. The operating system is a collection of routines that can be called in a thread. The operating system controls which thread is running on the CPU. A thread can access all of physical memory.

Tasks run on the RCP, which is a microcode engine that processes a task list. Task lists are generated by a thread running on the N64 CPU and are stored in main memory. The game program creates the task list, calls an OS routine to load the appropriate microcode, and then starts the RCP running to process the task list. The microcode on the RCP reads the task list from main memory. The RCP task can also write into main memory.

Memory Management System (MMU) The VR4300 processor has a 32-bit physical addressing range of 4 Gbytes. However, since it is rare for systems to implement a physical memory space this large, the CPU provides a logical expansion of memory space by translating addresses composed in the large virtual address space into available physical memory addresses. The VR4300 processor supports the following two addressing modes: 32-bit mode, in which the virtual address space is divided into 2 Gbytes per user process and 2 Gbytes for the kernel. • 64-bit mode, in which the virtual address is expanded to 1 Tbyte (240 bytes) of user virtual address space.

The main memory in the system is used in parallel by the R4300 CPU, the RSP microcode engine, the RDP graphics pipeline, and the other I/O interfaces of the RCP. The software is responsible for defining the memory map

3.6.1 Addressing

The N64 CPU can use both physical or virtual addresses. The TLB maps virtual addresses into physical addresses (see NOTE). It is anticipated that programs will mainly use KSEG0 (cached, unmapped) addresses for instructions and data. The RSP hardware uses physical addresses. The microcode imposes a segmented addressing scheme to generate the physical addresses. Bits 24 through 27 of the segmented address are used to index into a 16-entry table to obtain the base address of the segment. The upper 4 bits are masked off. The lower bits are an offset into the segment. This scheme is used to create dynamic RSP task lists easily. The RDP hardware uses physical addresses. The RSP microcode translates the segmented addresses stored in the task list into physical addresses.

3.6.2 Data Cache

The N64 CPU has an 8 KB writeback data cache. This means that when the CPU writes a variable, it may not be written to main memory until later. Since the RSP reads the task list directly from main memory, the dynamic portion of the task list must be flushed from the data cache before the RSP starts.

You also need to be careful with DMA operations. The data buffer must be flushed from the cache before the write from memory occurs. The data buffer must be invalidated in the cache before a read into memory occurs. If the cache invalidate does not occur, a write back from the cache may destroy data that has just been transferred into main memory by a read DMA. It is also a good idea to align I/O buffers on the 16-byte data cache line size, to avoid cache line tearing. Tearing occurs when a buffer and an unrelated variable share a cache line. The potential writeback of the variable could destroy data read into the I/O buffer.

3.6.3 Alignment

Please note the following alignment restrictions:

8 byte alignment for most DMA

Access to PI using DMA

Alignment for Main Memory:	8 byte
Alignment for ROM:	2 byte (see NOTE)

64 byte alignment for color frame buffers (cfb) and Z buffer
8 byte alignment for textures

The RCP is a collection of processors, memory interfaces, and control logic. The Reality Signal Processor (RSP) is the microcode engine that executes audio and graphics tasks. The Reality Display Processor (RDP) is the graphics display pipeline that renders into the frame buffer. The memory interfaces provide access to main memory for the CPU, RSP, RDP, video interface, audio interface, peripheral devices, and serial game controllers. It is very important to remember that these interfaces may be active at the same time and that the RSP and RDP are running in parallel. Please see the RCP block diagram in Figure 1-2.

Figure 1-2 Block Diagram of the RCP

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Write up on Tech Geek History: Motorolla 6800

admin — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 10:44:38 +0000

Introduction

Background of the Study

The Motorola 6800, introduced in 1974, is one of the pioneering microprocessors that played a pivotal role in the evolution of computing. As one of the first microprocessors to gain significant market traction, the 6800 influenced numerous applications in both consumer electronics and industrial automation. This article explores the historical context, architectural design, key features, applications, and lasting legacy of the Motorola 6800.

The early 1970s marked a turning point in the field of computing. Microprocessors were emerging as a revolutionary technology, enabling the development of smaller, more affordable computers. Before the introduction of the 6800, many computers relied on discrete transistor technology, which was costly and cumbersome. Motorola recognized the potential for a compact, efficient microprocessor that could power the next generation of computing devices.

Significance of the Study

Development

The 6800 was developed by a team at Motorola led by Dr. Robert Noyce, a co-founder of Intel and a pioneer in semiconductor technology. The design aimed to create a microprocessor that could compete with existing offerings, such as Intel’s 8080 and the Zilog Z80. Motorola focused on creating a processor that was not only powerful but also cost-effective and user-friendly.

The result was a microprocessor with an elegant architecture, low power consumption, and a comprehensive instruction set. It was packaged in a 40-pin dual in-line package (DIP), allowing for easy integration into various devices.

Market Impact

The 6800 quickly gained popularity in various industries, becoming the foundation for several early personal computers and embedded systems. Companies like Apple, Atari, and Commodore adopted the 6800 for their products, marking a significant moment in the history of computing. The processor’s affordability and performance enabled hobbyists and small manufacturers to develop innovative computing solutions, setting the stage for the personal computing revolution.

Architecture of the Motorola 6800

The architecture of the 6800 is characterized by its simplicity, efficiency, and versatility. Below, we delve into its key components, features, and capabilities.

Registers

The 6800 microprocessor features a set of registers that are essential for its operation. These include:

Accumulator (A): The primary register used for arithmetic and logical operations. The accumulator holds the data being processed by the microprocessor.
Index Registers (X and Y): These registers are used for indexed addressing modes, allowing for efficient data manipulation and array handling.
Stack Pointer (SP): The stack pointer points to the current top of the stack in memory, enabling the microprocessor to manage subroutine calls and interrupts.
Program Counter (PC): The program counter holds the address of the next instruction to be executed, allowing for sequential execution of instructions.
Condition Code Register (CCR): This register contains flags that reflect the status of the processor, including zero, carry, overflow, and negative flags.

Instruction Set

The Motorola 6800 boasts a rich instruction set comprising 56 instructions. These instructions can be categorized into several groups:

Data Movement: Instructions that move data between registers and memory. Examples include LDA (Load Accumulator) and STA (Store Accumulator).
Arithmetic Operations: Instructions that perform basic arithmetic operations, such as ADC (Add with Carry) and SBC (Subtract with Carry).
Logic Operations: Instructions that perform bitwise operations, including AND, OR, and EOR.
Control Flow: Instructions that alter the program’s execution flow, such as JMP (Jump) and BRA (Branch).
Branching Instructions: Instructions that allow for conditional execution, such as BEQ (Branch if Equal) and BNE (Branch if Not Equal).

Instruction Set

This processor has an instruction set of only 72 instructions. The instructions + operands range with a usual size of between 1 to 3 bytes. At this size and simplicity, even putting together a simple program without an assembler could be done. Many instructions are variations on the same high-level operation with a different addressing mode. For my task goal, I don’t need to get deep into understanding of the instruction. I just needed to know what is a 1 byte operation that I could do without any additional hardware or memory needed. Many processors support an instruction often called nop, standing for “No Operation.” This instruction, as its name suggest, does nothing beyond take up space. My plan was to hard-wire this instruction into the system. This would let it run without any RAM and without causing any faults or halting conditions.

For this processor, the numerical value for the nop instruction is 0x01. This is an easy encoding to remember. To wire this instruction in the circuit, I only need to connect the least significant bit of the processor’s data line to a high signal and tie the other ones to a low signal.

Addressing Modes

The 6800 supports several addressing modes, which determine how the processor accesses memory. These modes include:

Immediate Addressing: The operand is specified directly in the instruction. For example, LDA #$10 loads the value 10 into the accumulator.
Zero Page Addressing: This mode accesses memory in the first 256 bytes (zero page) for faster access. For example, LDA $20 loads the value from memory address $20.
Absolute Addressing: This mode allows access to any memory location directly using a 16-bit address. For example, LDA $1234 loads the value from memory address $1234.
Indexed Addressing: This mode uses index registers to access memory. For example, LDA $20, X loads the value from memory address $20 + X.
Indirect Addressing: This mode accesses memory indirectly through a pointer stored in a specified location. For example, LDA ($00) loads the value from the address pointed to by the value at $00.

Performance

The Motorola 6800 operates at clock speeds typically ranging from 1 MHz to 2 MHz, depending on the variant. The efficiency of the architecture allows it to execute instructions in a variable number of clock cycles, contributing to its performance. The simplicity of the design, combined with its robust instruction set, enabled the 6800 to perform a wide range of computing tasks effectively.

Applications of the Motorola 6800

The 6800 microprocessor has been widely used in various applications across multiple industries, solidifying its status as a classic processor. Some notable applications include:

Home Computers

Apple I and II: The original Apple computers utilized the 6800 architecture, paving the way for the personal computing revolution. The Apple II, in particular, became one of the most successful home computers, featuring advanced graphics and sound capabilities.
Atari Consoles: The Atari 2600, released in 1977, relied on the 6800 for its gaming capabilities, contributing to the popularity of home gaming.
Commodore PET: The Commodore PET was one of the first all-in-one personal computers, powered by the 6800. Its user-friendly design and built-in monitor made it popular among educational institutions and hobbyists.

Embedded Systems

The 6800 found extensive use in embedded systems due to its low cost and efficiency. Applications included:

Automotive Control Systems: Many early automotive control systems employed the 6800 for tasks such as engine management and dashboard displays, enabling advancements in automotive technology.
Consumer Electronics: The 6800 was integrated into various consumer devices, including microwaves, washing machines, and home appliances, allowing for automation and control.
Industrial Automation: The 6800 was used in programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and other industrial applications, enabling improved efficiency and automation in manufacturing processes

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Write up Tech Geek History: RISC Architecture:

admin — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 10:40:39 +0000

Introduction

Background of the Study

In the early 1970s, telephone calls didn’t instantly bounce between handheld devices and cell towers. Back then, the connection process required human operators to laboriously plug cords into the holes of a switchboard. Come 1974, a team of IBM researchers led by John Cocke set out in search of ways to automate the process. They envisioned a telephone exchange controller that would connect 300 calls per second (1 million per hour). Hitting that mark would require tripling or even quadrupling the performance of the company’s fastest mainframe at the time — which would require fundamentally reimagining high-performance computing.

The exchange controller project may have been canceled before it got off the ground, but the team’s underlying work led to the microprocessor architecture called RISC, for reduced instruction set computer. RISC enabled computers to complete tasks using simplified instructions, as quickly as possible. The goal to streamline hardware could be achieved with instruction sets composed of fewer steps for loading, evaluating and storing operations.

The new architecture enabled computers to run much faster than ever before. Its protocols, the foundation of computer evolution up to the present day, have affected everything from PCs and mobile devices to gaming and space travel. Just about all microprocessors derive from RISC architecture, and it is the basis of the multibillion-dollar UNIX systems market.

https://www.ibm.com/history/risc

Significance of the Study

RISC Architecture:

An Overview MIPS RISC architecture delivers dramatic

cost/performance advantages over computers based on traditional architectures. This advantage is the result of a development methodology that demands optimization across many disciplines including custom VLSI, CPU organization, system-level architecture, operating system considerations, and compiler design. The trade-offs involved in this optimization process typify, and indeed are the essence of, RISC design.

Scope RISC design is a methodology still somewhat in its infancy, enduring the usual growing pains as it strives for maturity. Because of the complexity of the subject and its dynamic state, a thorough and comprehensive discussion is beyond the scope of this book. A concise discussion of RISC is made more difficult by the nature of the design techniques — they involve myriad trade-offs and compromises between software/hardware, silicon area/compiler technology, component process technology/system software requirements, and so on. Therefore, this chapter provides only a brief overview of RISC concepts and their implementation so that the MIPS architecture can be better understood and appreciated. Architecture versus Implementation When discussing MIPS RISC products, an important distinction must be made between application architecture, and the hardware implementation of that architecture. For our purposes, the term application architecture refers to the instruction set, the physical components and timing, etc., to which all hardware implementations must adhere, and to which applications must limit themselves. Implementation refers to specific hardware designs using this application architecture, as presently embodied by the R-Series (R2000, R3000, R4000, and R6000) processors.

What Is RISC?

Historically, the evolution of computer architectures has been dominated by families of increasingly complex processors. Under market pressures to preserve existing software, Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) architectures evolved by the gradual accretion of microcode and increasingly elaborate operations. The intent was to supply more support for high-level languages and operating systems, as semiconductor advances made it possible to fabricate more complex integrated circuits. It seemed self-evident that architectures should become more complex as these technological advances made it possible to hold more complexity on VLSI devices. In recent years, however, Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) architectures have implemented a much more sophisticated handling of the complex interaction between hardware, firmware, and software. RISC concepts emerged from statistical analysis of how software actually uses the resources of a processor. Dynamic measurement of system kernels and object modules generated by optimizing compilers show an overwhelming predominance of the simplest instructions, even in the code for CISC machines. Complex instructions are often ignored because a single way of performing a complex operation rarely matches the precise needs of high-level language and system environments. RISC designs eliminate the microcoded routines and turn the low-level control of the machine over to software.

MIPS RISC Architecture RISC Architecture An Overview This approach is not new. But its application is more universal in recent years thanks to the prevalence of high-level languages, the development of compilers that can optimize at the microcode level, and dramatic advances in semiconductor memory and packaging. Itis now feasible to replace machine microcode ROM with faster RAM, organized as an instruction cache. Machine control then resides in the instruction cache and is, in effect, customized on the fly. The instruction stream generated by system- and compiler-generated code provides a precise fit between the requirements of high-level software and the capabilities of the hardware. Reducing or simplifying the instruction set is not the primary goal of the architectural concepts described here — it is a side effect of the techniques used to obtain the highest performance possible from available technology. Thus, the term Reduced Instruction Set Computers is a bit misleading: it is the push for performance

MIPS RISC Architecture Gerry Kane Joe Heinrich

The RiSC-16 is an 8-register, 16-bit computer. All addresses are short word addresses (i.e. address 0 corresponds to the first two bytes of main memory, address 1 corresponds to the second two bytes of main memory, etc.). Like the MIPS instruction-set architecture, by hardware convention, register 0 will always contain the value 0. The machine enforces this: reads to register 0 always return 0, irrespective of what has been written there. The RiSC-16 is very simple, but it is general enough to solve complex problems. There are three machine-code instruction formats and a total of 8 instructions

The RiSC-16 Instruction-Set Architecture ENEE 446: Digital Computer Design, Fall 2000 Prof. Bruce Jacob The RiSC-16 Instruction-Set Architecture ENEE 446: Digital Computer Design, Fall 2000 Prof. Bruce Jacob

Ond can find MIPS architecture in many modern systems. It’s often used in embedded systems like home routers, video game consoles, and digital TVs due to its efficiency and low power consumption. It’s also used in some supercomputers because of its high performance. you can find MIPS architecture in many modern systems. It’s often used in embedded systems like home routers, video game consoles, and digital TVs due to its efficiency and low power consumption. It’s also used in some supercomputers because of its high performance.

The popular Sony PlayStation I video game console used a MIPS R3000 RISC central processor.

Central Processing Unit:
(R3051) MIPS R3000A-Compatible 32-bit RISC Chip running at 33.8688 MHz
The chip is manufactured by LSI Logic Corp, with technology licensed from SGI
Operating Performance of 30 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Seccond)
Bus bandwidth 132 MB/s
4 KB Instruction Cache
1 KB non-associative SRAM Data Cache
2 MB of main RAM

References:

MIPS RISC Architecture Gerry Kane Joe Heinrich

https://www.ibm.com/history/risc

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Write Up On Tech Geek History: Java Applets

admin — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 10:35:22 +0000

Significance of the Study

APPLET ARCHITECTURE

When you write a Java application for time series data, you use the JDBC Driver to connect to the database, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 1. Runtime architecture for Java programs that connect to a database

The Java application makes calls to the JDBC driver, which sends queries and other SQL statements to the database. The database sends query results to the JDBC driver, which sends them on to the Java application.

You can also use the time series Java classes in Java applets and servlets, as shown in the following figures.

Figure 2. Runtime architecture for a Java applet

The database server is connected to the JDBC driver, which is connected to the applet. The applet is also connected to a browser, which is connected to a web server that communicates with the database.

A request from an application goes through a web server, an HTTP servlet subclass, and the JDBC driver to the database. The database sends responses back along the same path.

What Is Applet In Java?

A Java application that is integrated into a webpage is called an applet. It functions as a front-end and is run within the web computer. It makes a page more interactive and dynamic by operating inside the web browser. Applets are hosted on web servers and inserted into HTML pages via the OBJECT or APPLET tags.

It can be compared to a tiny application that runs on the address bar. In addition to updating content in real-time and responding to human input, it may also play basic puzzles or graphics.

The Life Cycle Of An Applet

The process by which an object is developed, launched, halted, and demolished throughout an application’s implementation is known as the applet life cycle in Java. In essence, it has five main methods: paint(), destroy(), stop(), init(), and start().The browser calls these methods in order to perform their

actions.

1. Init()- The init() function is the first to be executed and is responsible for initializing the applet. It can only be called once throughout the startup process. The initialized objects are created by the web browser, which executes the init() function located inside the applet after confirming the authentication setting.

2. Start()- This function launches the applet and includes the applet’s real code. It begins directly following the call to the init() function. The start() function is called each time the browser loads or refreshes. Additionally, it is triggered when the applet is relaunched, improved, or switched across tabs in the web interface. Until the init() function is used, it is in an idle state.

3. Stop()- The applet’s execution is terminated by using the stop() function. Every time the applet is minimized, paused, or switched between tabs on the web page, the stop() function is triggered. Again, the start() function is called when we return to that page.

4. Destroy()- Once the applet completes its task, the destroy() function terminates it. When the webpage-containing tab closes, or the applet window closes, it is triggered. It is performed just once and expunges the applet data from RAM. We can’t restart the applet after it’s been deleted.

5. Paint()- The Java Graphics class contains the paint() function. It is employed in the applet to draw forms like squares, circles, trapeziums, and so on. It runs following the call to the start() function and whenever the web page or applet display resizes.

Types of Applets

Java applets can be classified as either local or remote, depending on where they are stored and how easily they can be accessed.

1. Local Applet

We will write the Local Applet ourselves and then integrate it into websites. A local applet is created locally and kept on the local machine. When a web page detects a local applet in the Java system’s memory, it does not need to obtain data directly from the internet in order to function. It is defined or provided by the pathname or folder name. When constructing an applet, two properties are used: the source folder, which defines the path name, and the code itself, which defines the filename containing the applet’s programming.

2. Remote Applet

The remote applet is stored or accessible on another computer that is linked to the world over the internet. We must have internet access on the system to be able to obtain and use the applet that resides on the other machine. We need to be familiar with a remote applet’s Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or web location in order to find and download it.

Simple Applet Program In Java

“Hello, World” is a well-known illustration of a basic applet program in Java. The code is as follows:

Java

Advantages Of Java Applets

1. Interaction With Browsers

Through a smooth integration with online sites, applets let viewers engage with dynamic information without exiting the browser. This results in improved customer service while eliminating the need to obtain and set up separate programs.

2. Diminished Server Traffic

Local execution of the applet’s code allows functionality to occur on the front end or the user’s workstation. In doing so, the server’s workload is lessened, and it can process more inquiries and users at once.

3. Availability

Applets may adjust to changing frequency bands and computing power. They can be compact and quick to load for users with poorer interactions while providing more capability for those with greater capabilities.

Disadvantages Of Java Applets

1. Utilizing Excessive Performance And Resources

A common complaint about Java applets is their resource use, particularly with complicated ones. In certain situations, they can even cause crashes, hinder browser performance, and deplete the gadget’s batteries. This slowness and waste of resources are not acceptable in today’s performance-driven online environment.

Examples of Java Applet

Java Applets, small applications that ran within a web browser, have mostly been discontinued since their peak usage in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, here are three real-world examples from when Java Applets were more commonly used in digital marketing:

Website Games: Many businesses and marketers used Java Applets to create engaging and interactive games on their websites. This provided a way to showcase their products or services in a fun and interactive manner while attracting potential customers to their sites. For example, a company selling sports equipment could have an interactive sports game using Java Applets to drive user engagement and encourage them to explore the company’s offerings further.

Interactive Banners: Java Applets were used to create interactive banner ads on websites. These ads were more engaging than static banners, capturing the user’s attention and prompting them to take specific actions like filling out contact forms, subscribing to newsletters, or navigating to the advertiser’s website. This was an effective digital marketing tactic at the time, as interactive ads increase user interaction and engagement with a brand or product.

Financial Tools: Financial services companies often used Java Applets for interactive, real-time stock market charts, mortgage calculators, and other financial tools embedded on their websites. This allowed potential clients to access and manipulate financial data easily, making these companies’ services more attractive and user-friendly. By providing valuable tools and resources for free, businesses were able to establish trust and credibility while indirectly promoting their services through digital marketing.

Examples of Java Applet

Concept of the Problem

The Death of Java Applets

There were so many, many problems with applets.

Beginning in 2013, major web browsers began to phase out support for the underlying technology applets used to run, with applets becoming completely unable to be run by 2015–2017. Java applets were deprecated by Java 9 in 2017

Security was always an issue. Applets ran within the sandbox security model preventing them from accessing things like files on the hard drive, network connections and so on. Often what an applet needed to do required additional privileges, which required a trusted, signed applet and for the user to grant permission through a dialog. Most users didn’t understand the implications of this so simply accepted any applet that wanted additional privileges leading to obvious exploits.
The applet execution environment through browser plugins and APIs was also a perennial security problem. The majority of security related issues that Java has had over the years have been in this area.

In 2013, all the major browser providers started to phase out support for the underlying technology used by applets (primarily the NPAPI). By 2017, it was impossible to run an applet in a modern browser. At the same time, Oracle announced, with the release of JDK 9, that applets were being deprecated. With the release of JDK 11, in 2018, the browser plugin was removed from the Oracle JDK.

Although the java.applet package is still part of the Java SE specification, all classes have been deprecated since JDK 9. The browser plugin and applet viewer standalone tool are not part of the OpenJDK reference implementation so it is not possible to build these from open-source.

For anyone who is still using applets in production, the only possibility for further updates would seem to be to purchase a Java SE Subscription from Oracle and continue using JDK

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Write up on Philip Francis Nowlan’s Buck Rogers

admin — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 10:27:36 +0000

Significance of the Study

Philip Francis Nowlan was an American science fiction author, best known as the creator of Buck Rogers.

While attending the University of Pennsylvania, Nowlan was a member of The Mask and Wig Club, holding significant roles in the annual productions between 1907 and 1909. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania he worked as a newspaper columnist. He married, moved to the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd and created and wrote the Buck Rogers comic strip, illustrated by Dick Calkins. He remained a writer on the strip until 1939. The character Buck Rogers first appeared in Nowlan’s 1928 novella Armageddon 2419 A.D. as Anthony Rogers. The comic strip ran for over forty years and spun off a radio series, a 1939 movie serial, and two television series.

Nowlan also wrote several other novellas for the science fiction magazines as well as the posthumously published mystery, The Girl from Nowhere.

An Unexpected Tale

Science fiction existed before the 1929 debut of the newspaper strip “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.” But “Buck Rogers” popularized it and quickly became a multimedia marketing juggernaut, setting the public’s perception of science fiction for decades to come: “that crazy Buck Rogers stuff.” So it is fascinating to read Philip Francis Nowlan’s 1928 novel, “Armageddon 2419 A.D.,” which introduced the world to displaced World War I aviator Anthony Rogers and his futuristic wife, Wilma Deering. From reading reprints of the newspaper strip, listening to the radio show, and viewing the various movies and TV shows it inspired, you’d expect a space opera saga. What you get is hard military science fiction that morphs into Burroughsian planetary romance (even though the story takes place entirely in North America) before ending on a note straight out of Robert Howard’s “Children of the Night” tales. “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” is definitely a product of its time.

The Story

While searching a Pennsylvania mine for radioactive ores in 1927, former World War I fighter ace Anthony “Tony” Rogers is trapped by a cave-in and succumbs to the radioactive gasses that drew him there in the first place. He is revived by fresh air admitted by another collapse and emerges to find the suburban Pennsylvania landscape is now primeval forest. After living off the land for several weeks, he rescues a green-clad figure being pursued by a trio of thugs armed with what today would be called grenade launchers. The figure, girl-soldier Wilma Deering, takes him back to the mobile headquarters of her “gang” for interrogation and debriefing. Centuries ago, the Han established a global hegemony with their super-science, and Americans have survived as nomadic guerrilla units organized around mob-style “bosses.” Rogers rises in the ranks not by reminding the gangs of their democratic past but by using his practical combat expertise to demonstrate how their existing weaponry can used to defeat the dreaded Han airships, which emerge periodically from the invaders’ fifteen domed cities to hunt the Americans like animals. Rogers persuades the gangs to unite and attack the Han now, before the enemy becomes aware of the Americans’ growing technological and military sophistication.

Nowlan wastes little time on character development. For most of the book, the Han are faceless mooks and American troops exist only to sacrifice themselves heroically at Anthony Rogers’ command. Ultimately the reader gets to know the Big Bad, San-Lan, better than Tony Rogers himself. On the other hand, Nowlan spends whole chapters lovingly describing arcane military hardware and futuristic air and land battles. But the book is short, and he manages to keep the story moving despite the digressions. The tone of the story shifts three-quarters of the way through when Rogers gets captured by the Han and the reader finally gets to meet them face-to-face.

Other reviewers have made much of how Nowlan anticipated such things as the bazooka, guided missiles, and jet aircraft. What strikes me is how uncomfortably close to home his description of decadent Han society hits; although he didn’t intend it, Nowlan could easily have been writing a critique of 21st century American culture. Despite their undeniable artistry, intelligence, and technical prowess the Han are soulless beings living only for personal pleasure and instant gratification. Their advanced technology makes it rarely necessary for them to leave their luxurious condominiums, which are equipped with wall-sized screens on all sides that enable them to beguile their time with endless movies, chat and the city’s intranet. Food, clothing, and other necessities are paid for via electronic funds transfer and are delivered to their apartments. Actual personal contact with another human being is necessary only when one wants to satisfy one’s sexual lusts. “Marriage” is a convenience for men, easily dissolved once they tire of their current favorite. Women, meanwhile, are mercenary seductresses always looking out for a better-heeled catch who can pay for their retirement. Children are turned over to a state daycare/education system as soon as possible so that they don’t distract adults from their pastimes. Since no one’s well-being matters but his own, the typical Han tends to be shallow, cruel and manipulative. They’re a nation of self-centered couch potatoes. The people who have lived under Han domination think genocide is too good for them. Sound familiar?

Is the book racist? No. The Han are the hated invaders, true, but they are not denigrated for any supposed racial failings. They’re not inferior, just not as physically fit and desperate as the feral Americans. They could easily have been Russians or Martians without changing the story. The contrast with depictions of Chinese in Sax Romer’s Fu Manchu novels from the same era is instructional. Ironically, Nowlan’s epilogue hints that the Han may not have been fully human after all, but some sort of alien hybrid. When American diplomats reach China, they learn that the Chinese themselves were overwhelmed by the invaders, who emerged from a meteor crater ready to rumble.

Applicability to Role-playing

“Armageddon 2419 A.D.” is a brutal battlefield epic that would seem to be a fit for gritty military RPGs such as Twilight 2000, Combat!, and the like. It presents a world where war is waged by awesomely destructive long-range weaponry but final victory achieved by savage hand-to-hand fighting. There are certainly plenty of gee-whiz set pieces and gadgetry to steal for a pulp sci-fi game, but the book’s outlook is rather grim, in contrast to the rollicking adventurous tone of the newspaper strip that evolved from it (or of TSR’s Buck Rogers Adventure Game that was based on the comics). Buck Rogers may be a larger than life action paragon, but in Tony Rogers’ reality trying to be a hero will get you wounded, captured, or worse.

Conclusion

Part of the fun of reading vintage science fiction is discovering what the author did and didn’t foresee. Nowlan’s gadgetry remains highly improbable but those 1930s visions of jumping belts, rocket pistols, and ethereal labyrinthine alien cities have stuck in popular culture. His depiction of post-apocalyptic North America jives with Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.” And his account of a decadent high-tech society holds up a mirror to our own.

Literature Review

This is the original ‘Buck Rogers’ SF classic. Thrill to the adventures of Anthony “Buck” Rogers, one of the most celebrated characters in the history of science fiction. Famed in comic strips, television, in movies, and even radio, this is the first novel to introduce Buck Rogers to the reading public. In Armageddon – 2419 A.D., Buck, a victim of accidental suspended animation, awakens five hundred years later to discover America groaning under the tyranny of the villainous Han, ruling from the safety of their armored machine-cities. Falling in love with one of America’s new warrior-women, Wilma Deering, Rogers soon become a central figure in using new-fangled scientific weapons – disintegrators, jumping belts, inertron, and paralysis rays – to revolt against the Han. ‘Nuff said. Adventure awaits!!!!!

In August 1928, Philip Francis Nowlan published a short story called “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. Six months later, in March of 1929, he published a sequel, “The Airlords of Han”. The hero of both of these novellas was a man named Anthony Rogers. The tale told in this pair of stories begins with Rogers being overcome by a mysterious gas while inspecting a mine. The gas puts him into a coma from which he does not awake until five hundred years later. He finds himself in a world of advanced technology and amazing adventure.

The popularity of the two stories caught the attention of John F. Dille. Dille teamed up the author, Philip Nowlan, with cartoonist Richard ‘Dick’ Calkins within the syndication framework of the the John F. Dille Company to continue the tale in graphic form as a newspaper cartoon series for a mass audience.

It was in connection with the organization of this team effort that the name of the hero was changed from “Anthony Rogers” to the snappier, “Buck Rogers”.

Nowlan’s, Dille’s and Calkin’s efforts combined to produce what was to become an important part of American pop culture. The comic strip itself ran for 38 years. In addition to this long-running comic strip, Buck Rogers was popularized in books, a television serial and a computer game. The Buck Rogers theme gave rise to emulations such as Flash Gordon and other swashbuckling space heros.

In Worcester, Massachusetts, the Buck Rogers comic strip series was carried by the Worcester Evening Gazette, appearing six days a week – Monday to Saturday. These Buck Rogers comic strips were collected by Roland N. Anderson (1916-1982) while working as a paperboy. He was able to assemble an almost complete collection of the series from its start in the Evening Gazette on February 4, 1929 until March 25, 1933. During this more than four year period 1302 daily strips were created by the Dille Company and Roland missed getting hold of only four of the strips published in the Evening Gazette – numbers 100, 1033, 1052 and 1129. Publication in the Evening Gazette, however, had began exactly four weeks after the official start of the series on January 7, 1929, so the series in the Evening Gazette was continuously behind other newspapers. In an effort to catch up a bit, the Evening Gazette skipped strips 667 to 672, publishing strip 666 on Saturday, March 21, 1931 and then strip 673 on Monday, March 23, 1931. Additionally, the Evening Gazette wasn’t published on the Fourth of July national holidays and the Gazette skipped strips scheduled to be published on those dates to avoid falling further behind. Occasionally, when Roland was unable to obtain a certain strip, the night editorial staff helped him, providing the missing strip either from some reserve or the strip as published in the Boston Herald. This was the case on July 4, 1931 as the strip included here originated from that source. The strips from the Boston Herald can be identified by the deviant type in the titling. Titles were set locally at the newspapers, only the images were provided by the Dille Company.

Literature Sample:

CHAPTER IV

A Han Air Raid

THERE was a girl in Wilma’s camp named Gerdi Mann, with whom Bill Hearn was desperately in love, and the four of us used to go around a lot together. Gerdi was a distinct type. Whereas Wilma had the usual dark brown hair and hazel eyes that marked nearly every member of the community, Gerdi had red hair, blue eyes and very fair skin. She has been dead many years now, but I remember her vividly because she was a throwback in physical appearance to a certain 20th Century type which I have found very rare among modern Americans; also because the four of us were engaged one day in a discussion of this very point, when I obtained my first experience of a Han air raid.

We were sitting high on the side of a hill overlooking the valley that teemed with human activity, invisible beneath its blanket of foliage.

The other three, who knew of the Irish but vaguely and indefinitely, as a race on the other side of the globe, which, like ourselves, had succeeded in maintaining a precarious and fugitive existence in rebellion against the Mongolian domination of the earth, were listening with interest to my theory that Gerdi’s ancestors of several hundred years ago must have been Irish. I explained that Gerdi was an Irish type, evidently a throwback, and that her surname might well have been McMann, or McMahan, and still more anciently “mac Mathghamhain.” They were interested too in my surmise that “Gerdi” was the same name as that which had been “Gerty” or “Gertrude” in the 20th Century.

In the middle of our discussion, we were startled by an alarm rocket that burst high in the air, far to the north, spreading a pall of red smoke that drifted like a cloud. It was followed by others at scattered points in the northern sky.

“A Han raid!” Bill exclaimed in amazement. “The first in seven years!”

“Maybe it’s just one of their ships off its course,” I ventured.

“No,” said Wilma in some agitation. “That would be green rockets. Red means only one thing, Tony. They’re sweeping the countryside with their dis beams. Can you see anything, Bill?”

“We had better get under cover,” Gerdi said nervously. “The four of us are bunched here in the open. For all we know they may be twelve miles up, out of sight, yet looking at us with a projecto’.”

Bill had been sweeping the horizon hastily with his glass, but apparently saw nothing.

“We had better scatter, at that,” he said finally. “It’s orders, you know. See!” He pointed to the valley.

Here and there a tiny human figure shot for a moment above the foliage of the treetops.

“That’s bad,” Wilma commented, as she counted the jumpers. “No less than fifteen people visible, and all clearly radiating from a central point. Do they want to give away our location?”

The standard orders covering air raids were that the population was to scatter individually. There should be no grouping, or even pairing, in view of the destructiveness of the disintegrator rays. Experience of generations had proved that if this were done, and everybody remained hidden beneath the tree screens, the Hans would have to sweep mile after mile of territory, foot by foot, to catch more than a small percentage of the community.

Gerdi, however, refused to leave Bill, and Wilma developed an equal obstinacy against quitting my side. I was inexperienced at this sort of thing, she explained, quite ignoring the fact that she was too; she was only thirteen or fourteen years old at the time of the last air raid.

However, since I could not argue her out of it, we leaped together about a quarter of a mile to the right, while Bill and Gerdi disappeared down the hillside among the trees.

Wilma and I both wanted a point of vantage from which we might overlook the valley and the sky to the north, and we found it near the top of the ridge, where, protected from visibility by thick branches, we could look out between the tree trunks, and get a good view of the valley.

No more rockets went up. Except for a few of those warning red clouds, drifting lazily in a blue sky, there was no visible indication of man’s past or present existence anywhere in the sky or on the ground.

Then Wilma gripped my arm and pointed. I saw it; away off in the distance; looking like a phantom dirigible airship, in its coat of low-visibility paint, a bare spectre.

“Seven thousand feet up,” Wilma whispered, crouching close to me. “Watch.”

The ship was about the same shape as the great dirigibles of the 20th Century that I had seen, but without the suspended control car, engines, propellors, rudders or elevating planes. As it loomed rapidly nearer, I saw that it was wider and somewhat flatter than I had supposed.

Now I could see the repellor rays that held the ship aloft, like searchlight beams faintly visible in the bright daylight (and still faintly visible to the human eye at night). Actually, I had been informed by my instructors, there were two rays; the visible one generated by the ship’s apparatus, and directed toward the ground as a beam of “carrier” impulses; and the true repellor ray, the complement of the other in one sense, induced by the action of the “carrier” and reacting in a concentrating upward direction from the mass of the earth, becoming successively electronic, atomic and finally molecular, in its nature, according to various ratios of distance between earth mass and “carrier” source, until, in the last analysis, the ship itself actually is supported on an upward rushing column of air, much like a ball continuously supported on a fountain jet.

The raider neared with incredible speed. Its rays were both slanted astern at a sharp angle, so that it slid forward with tremendous momentum.

The ship was operating two disintegrator rays, though only in a casual, intermittent fashion. But whenever they flashed downward with blinding brilliancy, forest, rocks and ground melted instantaneously into nothing, where they played upon them.

When later I inspected the scars left by these rays I found them some five feet deep and thirty feet wide, the exposed surfaces being lava-like in texture, but of a pale, iridescent, greenish hue.

No systematic use of the rays was made by the ship, however, until it reached a point over the center of the valley—the center of the community’s activities. There it came to a sudden stop by shooting its repellor beams sharply forward and easing them back gradually to the vertical, holding the ship floating and motionless. Then the work of destruction began systematically.

Back and forth traveled the destroying rays, ploughing parallel furrows from hillside to hillside. We gasped in dismay, Wilma and I, as time after time we saw it plough through sections where we knew camps or plants were located.

“This is awful,” she moaned, a terrified question in her eyes. “How could they know the location so exactly, Tony? Did you see? They were never in doubt. They stalled at a predetermined spot—and—and it was exactly the right spot.”

We did not talk of what might happen if the rays were turned in our direction. We both knew. We would simply disintegrate in a split second into mere scattered electronic vibrations. Strangely enough, it was this self-reliant girl of the 25th Century, who clung to me, a relatively primitive man of the 20th, less familiar than she with the thought of this terrifying possibility, for moral support.

We knew that many of our companions must have been whisked into absolute non-existence before our eyes in these few moments. The whole thing paralyzed us into mental and physical immobility for I do not know how long.

It couldn’t have been long, however, for the rays had not ploughed more than thirty of their twenty-foot furrows or so across the valley, when I regained control of myself, and brought Wilma to herself by shaking her roughly.

“How far will this rocket gun shoot, Wilma?” I demanded, drawing my pistol.

“It depends on your rocket, Tony. It will take even the longest range rocket, but you could shoot more accurately from a longer tube. But why? You couldn’t penetrate the shell of that ship with rocket force, even if you could reach it.”

I fumbled clumsily with my rocket pouch, for I was excited. I had an idea I wanted to try; a “hunch” I called it, forgetting that Wilma could not understand my ancient slang. But finally, with her help, I selected the longest range explosive rocket in my pouch, and fitted it to my pistol.

“It won’t carry seven thousand feet, Tony,” Wilma objected. But I took aim carefully. It was another thought that I had in my mind. The supporting repellor ray, I had been told, became molecular in character at what was called a logarithmic level of five (below that it was a purely electronic “flow” or pulsation between the source of the “carrier” and the average mass of the earth). Below that level if I could project my explosive bullet into this stream where it began to carry material substance upward, might it not rise with the air column, gathering speed and hitting the ship with enough impact to carry it through the shell? It was worth trying anyhow. Wilma became greatly excited, too, when she grasped the nature of my inspiration.

Feverishly I looked around for some formation of branches against which I could rest the pistol, for I had to aim most carefully. At last I found one. Patiently I sighted on the hulk of the ship far above us, aiming at the far side of it, at such an angle as would, so far as I could estimate, bring my bullet path through the forward repellor beam. At last the sights wavered across the point I sought and I pressed the button gently.

For a moment we gazed breathlessly.

Suddenly the ship swung bow down, as on a pivot, and swayed like a pendulum. Wilma screamed in her excitement.

“Oh, Tony, you hit it! You hit it! Do it again; bring it down!”

We had only one more rocket of extreme range between us, and we dropped it three times in our excitement in inserting it in my gun. Then, forcing myself to be calm by sheer will power, while Wilma stuffed her little fist into her mouth to keep from shrieking, I sighted carefully again and fired. In a flash, Wilma had grasped the hope that this discovery of mine might lead to the end of the Han domination.

The elapsed time of the rocket’s invisible flight seemed an age.

Then we saw the ship falling. It seemed to plunge lazily, but actually it fell with terrific acceleration, turning end over end, its disintegrator rays, out of control, describing vast, wild arcs, and once cutting a gash through the forest less than two hundred feet from where we stood.

The crash with which the heavy craft hit the ground reverberated from the hills—the momentum of eighteen or twenty thousand tons, in a sheer drop of seven thousand feet. A mangled mass of metal, it buried itself in the ground, with poetic justice, in the middle of the smoking, semi-molten field of destruction it had been so deliberately ploughing.

The silence, the vacuity of the landscape, was oppressive, as the last echoes died away.

Then far down the hillside, a single figure leaped exultantly above the foliage screen. And in the distance another, and another.

In a moment the sky was punctured by signal rockets. One after another the little red puffs became drifting clouds.

“Scatter! Scatter!” Wilma exclaimed. “In half an hour there’ll be an entire Han fleet here from Nu-yok, and another from Bah-flo. They’ll get this instantly on their recordographs and location finders. They’ll blast the whole valley and the country for miles beyond. Come, Tony. There’s no time for the gang to rally. See the signals. We’ve got to jump. Oh, I’m so proud of you!”

Over the ridge we went, in long leaps toward the east, the country of the Delawares.

From time to time signal rockets puffed in the sky. Most of them were the “red warnings,” the “scatter” signals. But from certain of the others, which Wilma identified as Wyoming rockets, she gathered that whoever was in command (we did not know whether the Boss was alive or not) was ordering an ultimate rally toward the south, and so we changed our course.

It was a great pity, I thought, that the clan had not been equipped throughout its membership with ultrophones, but Wilma explained to me, that not enough of these had been built for distribution as yet, although general distribution had been contemplated within a couple of months.

We traveled far before nightfall overtook us, trying only to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the valley.

When gathering dusk made jumping too dangerous, we sought a comfortable spot beneath the trees, and consumed part of our emergency rations. It was the first time I had tasted the stuff—a highly nutritive synthetic substance called “concentro,” which was, however, a bit bitter and unpalatable. But as only a mouthful or so was needed, it did not matter.

Neither of us had a cloak, but we were both thoroughly tired and happy, so we curled up together for warmth. I remember Wilma making some sleepy remark about our mating, as she cuddled up, as though the matter were all settled, and my surprise at my own instant acceptance of the idea, for I had not consciously thought of her that way before. But we both fell asleep at once.

In the morning we found little time for love making. The practical problem facing us was too great. Wilma felt that the Wyoming plan must be to rally in the Susquanna territory, but she had her doubts about the wisdom of this plan. In my elation at my success in bringing down the Han ship, and my newly found interest in my charming companion, who was, from my viewpoint of another century, at once more highly civilized and yet more primitive than myself, I had forgotten the ominous fact that the Han ship I had destroyed must have known the exact location of the Wyoming Works.

This meant, to Wilma’s logical mind, either that the Hans had perfected new instruments as yet unknown to us, or that somewhere, among the Wyomings or some other nearby gang, there were traitors so degraded as to commit that unthinkable act of trafficking in information with the Hans. In either contingency, she argued, other Han raids would follow, and since the Susquannas had a highly developed organization and more than usually productive plants, the next raid might be expected to strike them.

But at any rate it was clearly our business to get in touch with the other fugitives as quickly as possible, so in spite of muscles that were sore from the excessive leaping of the day before, we continued on our way.

We traveled for only a couple of hours when we saw a multi-colored rocket in the sky, some ten miles ahead of us.

“Bear to the left, Tony,” Wilma said, “and listen for the whistle.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Haven’t they given you the rocket code yet?” she replied. “That’s what the green, followed by yellow and purple means; to concentrate five miles east of the rocket position. You know the rocket position itself might draw a play of disintegrator beams.”

It did not take us long to reach the neighborhood of the indicated rallying, though we were now traveling beneath the trees, with but an occasional leap to a top branch to see if any more rocket smoke was floating above. And soon we heard a distant whistle.

We found about half the Gang already there, in a spot where the trees met high above a little stream. The Big Boss and Raid Bosses were busy reorganizing the remnants.

We reported to Boss Hart at once. He was silent, but interested, when he heard our story.

“You two stick close to me,” he said, adding grimly, “I’m going back to the valley at once with a hundred picked men, and I’ll need you.”

References

http://rolandanderson.se/comics/buckrogers/buckrogers.phphttp://rolandanderson.se/comics/buckrogers/buckrogers.php

The post Write up on Philip Francis Nowlan’s Buck Rogers appeared first on DayDreamin’ Comics.

Write up on Comic Books utilized in education reading compression and logic models for psychometrics

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 12:19:18 +0000

Significance of the Study

Comics can be an invaluable teaching tool, but aside from the occasional non-serial graphic novel, they are underused. For every Maus, Fun Home, and American Born Chinese, countless superhero comics are disregarded as too superficial for the level of analysis afforded “real” works of literature. But comics can serve three primary roles in the classroom:

They can facilitate a better understanding of complex required texts by serving as a preliminary reading activity;
They can extend the analysis of a classic work of literature, either by providing examples of derivative fiction or by making strong allusions to the classics;
They can replace less-accessible works from the literary canon while still conveying the same messages and using the same literary and rhetorical conventions.

Words and Pictures Together Increase Recall and Problem Solving “…the low-level students receiving the high-level text with the comic strip scored significantly higher than their counterparts receiving the high-level text only.” —Jun Liu. “Effect of Comic Strips on L2 Learners’ Reading Comprehension.” TESOL Quarterly, 2004. http://sfl.ieu.edu.tr/tdu/TESOL_Quarterly_Reading.pdf

“Across the eleven studies, people who learned from words and graphics produced between 55 percent to 121 percent more correct solutions to transfer problems than people who learned from words alone. Across all studies, a median percentage gain of 89 percent was achieved with a median effect size of 1.50.” — Mayer, Richard E. and Clark, Ruth Colvin. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning. Pfeiffer, 2011. “Results of Study 2 find that verbatim recognition was superior with graphic novel texts compared to traditional textbooks.” —McKenny, Aaron, Short, Jeremy, & Randolph-Seng, Brandon. Abstract: “Graphic presentation: an empirical examination of the graphic novel approach to communicate business concepts.” http://www.academia.edu/2210806/Graphic_presentation_an_empirical_examination_of_the_graphic_novel_ approach_to_communicate_business_concepts “

Results document children’s deliberate use of images and point to the important role of images in text processing.” —Arya, Poonam & M. Feathers, Karen. (2015). “Exploring Young Children’s Use of Illustrations in a Picturebook.” Language and Literacy. 17. 42-62. 10.20360/G2630C. Comics Aid Comprehension “A graphic adaptation of a traditionally taught text (Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”) was explored as (a) a replacement text and (b) a supplemental text. The study design utilized a factorial analysis of variance with three independent variables: text type, grade level, and gender.

A reading comprehension test was developed to serve as the dependent variable. Findings indicated significant effects for all factors.” —Cook, M.P. (in press). Now I “see”: Graphic novels promoting reading comprehension in high school English classrooms. Literacy Research & Instruction. 10.1080/19388071.2016.1244869 “…24 mixed-ability fifth grade students chose to read six novels: two traditional novels, two highly illustrated novels and two graphic novels. …

In this study, reading of graphic novels stimulated more student discussion using the structure of thinking skills and greater story comprehension. … The mean number of student responses to the de Bono thinking skill prompts initiated by students was higher for the graphic novels than for either of the other two novel forms. …Graphic novels also increased student comprehension as measured by the midterm assessment writing prompts and final project scores. …Student midterm assessment responses for graphic novels showed higher assessment scores than either of the other two novel forms. …The survey results showed that the students reading graphic novels reported greater enjoyment of reading and stronger interest in the story than when reading either of the other two novel forms. —Jennings, K. A., Rule, A. C., & Zanden, S. M. V. (2014). “Fifth Graders’ Enjoyment, Interest, and Comprehension of Graphic Novels Compared to Heavily-Illustrated and Traditional Novels.” International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 6(2), 257–274. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1013 &context=ci_facpub “…a diverse group of second grade students during a nine week unit of study focused on graphic stories. …Images, written text, and dialog are utilized to scaffold reading comprehension and to practice fluency. Then, students construct their own graphic stories based on characters from books, popular culture, and personal experiences. …The results indicate student growth in the areas of comprehension and fluency.” —Brown, S. (2013). “A Blended Approach to Reading and Writing Graphic Stories.” The Reading Teacher, 67(3), 208–219. https://doi.org/10.1002/TRTR.1211

Comics Have a High Average Vocabulary Level Comic books average 53.5 rare words per thousand, while children’s books average 30.9, adult books average 52.7, expert witness testimony averages 28.4, and the conversations of college graduates with friends average 17.3. —“Big Ideas in Beginning Reading: Vocabulary.” University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning. http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/voc/voc_what.php

Learning Coaches can prompt students to delve into their reading analyses by using the questions below. Also, the questions can be tailored to fit a student’s level of academic progress. Here are some question ideas based on the 5 Ws (and How).

Who

Who is the main character and what are their traits?
Who is the antagonist and what are their characteristics?
Who are the supporting characters and how would you describe them?
Who is your favorite character and why?
Who is your least favorite character and why?
Who do you think is responsible for the conflict?

What

What happened in this chapter?
What is at stake for the protagonist? What is being risked?
What does the protagonist want and why?
What does the antagonist want and why?
What do you think is going to happen next?
What are some themes in the story?
What do you feel is the story’s overall message?

Where

Where does this story take place?
Does the location impact the characters or the storyline?
Could this story take place at any other location? Why or why not?

When

When does this story take place?
Does the time period impact the story or characters?
Could this story take place at any other time? Why or why not?
When is the inciting incident?
When does the story’s arc take place?
When does the story’s resolution take place?

Why

Why are the protagonist and antagonist at odds with one another?
Do you sympathize with the protagonist? Why or why not?
Do you sympathize with the antagonist? Why or why not?
Why do you think the author created this story?
Why is this an enjoyable/unenjoyable story for you?

How

How does the protagonist overcome obstacles?
How does the protagonist resolve the conflict?
How does the antagonist create obstacles for the protagonist?
How do you feel about the story’s ending?
How does the author use literary devices such as metaphor, symbolism, and simile?
If you could, how would you change the story?

Psychometric Model

Most reading comprehension assessments are analyzed using classical test theory methodology, where examinees’ scores are total number of correct answers or some scaling thereof Psychometric Model Most reading comprehension assessments are analyzed using classical test theory methodology, where examinees’ scores are total number of correct answers or some scaling thereof

Visual texts, which are increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, also play a crucial role in reading comprehension assessments such as SAT, TOEFL, PISA, and PIRLS. These assessments specifically measure students’ ability to make inferences, conclude, and critically analyze the relationship between textual and visual information, thereby assessing higher-level skills (Cahalan et al., 2002; Cohen & Upton, 2006; Unsworth, 2014; Mullis et al., 2017; OECD, 2019). Additionally, well-constructed visual texts with captivating visual stimuli enhance students’ motivation for exams (Glenberg & Langston, 1992; Hoyt, 1992). However, creating visual texts and writing visual reading comprehension items can be challenging and time-consuming compared to other item types (Author, 2023). Visual texts demand effective integration of visual elements with accompanying text, including selecting appropriate visuals that align with the content and purpose of the item. Balancing textual and visual components coherently and meaningfully can be more complex than writing text-only items (Daly & Unsworth, 2011; Sabatini et al., 2014). The images used in visual texts must accurately represent the information presented in the text be clear, appealing, and effectively convey the intended message. Additionally, factors such as layout, design, and readability of visuals should align with the objectives of the item and support comprehension for the target audience (Hoyt, 1992). Furthermore, the integration of visual and auditory elements has become a compelling feature of computer-based tests, making them highly appealing and widely used in modern educational settings. Sayın, 2024 382 As a result, computer-based testing is shown to be an effective method for assessing students’ visual reading comprehension skills. Computer-based tests offer flexible testing options and rapid score calculation, benefiting educators and students alike (Chen et al., 2019; Gierl et al., 2021). This flexibility is particularly advantageous in classroom practice, where traditional paper-and-pencil exams can be time-consuming to score due to large class sizes and other responsibilities (Chen et al., 2019). It provides swift feedback, allowing teachers to identify individual learning needs promptly and facilitate targeted support (Weber et al., 2003). Moreover, the use of multimedia elements, such as photos and videos, in electronic tests enhances assessment opportunities and supports diverse item types (Gierl et al., 2021; Kosh et al., 2019). However, digital assessments or computer-based tests also face challenges, particularly in the context of distance education (Arrend, 2007). Security concerns and the need to create a substantial item pool are noteworthy issues. To prevent the disclosure of items before exams, synchronous test administrations have been adopted, but this approach sacrifices the flexibility that computer-based tests can offer (ÖSYM, 2020). Furthermore, the practice effect, where repeated test performance influences scores, can compromise the validity and reliability of measurement (Hausknecht et al., 2007). To ensure diverse items for inclass follow-up tests and personalized assessments, a substantial item pool with established psychometric properties is essential (Hausknecht et al., 2007). For that, creating an item pool with scalable difficulty is crucial, and it applies not only to the textual components but also to visuals in visual reading comprehension items. Ensuring that visuals are adaptable to difficulty levels adds flexibility to computer-based tests, allowing students to take the test at different times and locations, such as over three days. However, it’s worth knowing that this process is challenging and resource intensive. To address this challenge, the field of AIG has emerged, combining computer technology with cognitive and psychometric theories (Arendasy & Sommer, 2012; Embretson & Yang, 2006; Gierl & Haladyna, 2012b). Automatic item generation Automatic item generation (AIG) is the process of automatically generating tests, exams, or items for educational and assessment purposes. It leverages cognitive and psychometric theories along with computer technology to produce high-quality items efficiently (Embretson & Yang, 2006; Gierl et al., 2019; Gierl & Lai, 2018; Gierl et al., 2012; Irvine & Kyllonen, 2013). AIG aims to continuously generate and diversify new items to assess student’s various abilities and learning styles. It ensures items meet assessment criteria such as objectivity, reliability, and validity (Gierl & Haladyna, 2012a). AIG enables the creation of item pools for individual-specific tests, facilitates adaptation to updated curricula and learning objectives, and saves time and costs compared to traditional item writing processes (Gierl et al., 2019; Kosh et al., 2019

Children can learn to form images to accompany the words they read if we teach them to do that. We don’t need complicated procedures, expensive technology, fancy organizational charts, or anything other than a very clear focus, humor, and relaxed time with the children

Visual processing is the brain’s ability to interpret and make sense of visual information from the environment (different from visual acuity which measures how sharp your vision is at distance). In the context of reading, visual processing involves recognizing letters, decoding words, and understanding the spatial arrangement of text on a page. Good visual processing is necessary for these important reading skills:

Letter Recognition: One of the fundamental skills in reading is the ability to recognize letters. Efficient visual processing allows individuals to quickly identify and distinguish between different letters, which forms the basis for word recognition.
Word Decoding: Decoding involves translating written symbols (letters) into their corresponding sounds to pronounce words. Efficient visual processing facilitates rapid and accurate decoding, which helps to read fluently.
Visual Tracking: Reading requires smooth and accurate eye movements to track text from left to right across a page. Strong visual processing skills help to maintain focus and prevent skipping or repeating lines while reading.
Visual Memory: Remembering and recalling visual information, such as the shapes of letters and words, is essential for building vocabulary and comprehending text. A strong visual memory enables readers to recognize words encountered previously which helps us to read fluently.

Here are some important foundations of visual processing abilities:

Visual Discrimination: being able to recognize the differences and similarities between objects, symbols or shapes (in this case letters).
Visual Memory: being able to remember what something looks like, which helps remember letters, sight words, and spelling rules.
Visual Form Constancy: knowing that letters can exist in different contexts and being able to identify them across contexts.
Visual Sequential Memory: being able to understand the sequence of order of words after viewing them. This helps with spelling and decoding words (ordering letters in a particular sequence). Difficulties here can result in meaning of words being changed and impacting understanding.
Visual Figure-Ground: ability to distinguish and find a particular object (or word) which helps with scanning text to find a particular piece of information.
Visual Closure: being able to recognise a word when only a part of it is shown which helps to recognise a word without having to fully decode it each time it is encountered.

What is Auditory Processing?

Auditory processing is the brain’s ability to interpret and make sense of sounds. In reading, auditory processing skills are important for skills in phonemic awareness, understanding spoken language, and recognizing the letter-sound correspondence. Efficient auditory processing is necessary for these reading skills:

Phonemic Awareness: Phonemic awareness involves the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Good auditory processing skills enable children to identify subtle differences in sounds, which is crucial for phonemic awareness and phonics instruction.
Letter-Sound Correspondence: Understanding the relationship between sounds and written symbols is fundamental to learning to read. Strong auditory processing skills facilitate the association between spoken sounds and their corresponding letters or letter combinations, which aids in recognising and decoding words.
Oral Language Comprehension: Reading comprehension relies on the ability to understand spoken language. Effective auditory processing enables individuals to extract meaning from oral language, which translates to improved comprehension when reading written text.

Here are some important foundations of auditory processing abilities:

Auditory Awareness: ability to detect where a sound is coming from
Auditory Discrimination: ability to detect differences in specific sounds. This helps to identify differences such as /th/ and /f/.
Auditory Identification: ability to attach meaning to particular sounds which aids in having good letter-sound association

Visual and Auditory Processing and Reading Comprehension – The Workshop Reading Centre

Data Collection

Discuss the Science of formulating Psychometric Questions based on Logic compared to Discrete Mathematics and Pedagogy Science’s Logic all the same theory of Decision Making

Discrete Mathematics in Psychometrics Logical Programming Questions for Reading Comprehension questions based on formulating questions after the text:

Discussed at a Later timeData Collection

Discuss the Science of formulating Psychometric Questions based on Logic compared to Discrete Mathematics and Pedagogy Science’s Logic all the same theory of Decision Making

Discrete Mathematics in Psychometrics Logical Programming Questions for Reading Comprehension questions based on formulating questions after the text:

Discussed at a Later time

A logic Program is typically, a collection of Clauses that consist of preconditions for running the clause and a should be taken. Matching exercises in a Cognitive Compression way to develop a child’s brain to think Logically and Mathematically even about Reading Compression.

Designed for Fuzzy Logic in A.I in advanced way to train Human Interactions and Brain Cognitive and Generally how Programming works

#35. In context which of the following would NOT improve sentence 14

Whatever their experience, I believe that more and more women are playings, sports today, than ever before did play sports, and I think that is has many positive consequences for LARGER SOCIETY

Delete “ I believe that:
Delete “than ever before did play sports.”
Delete: I think that “
Insert the word” trend: after “this.:
Replace “many” with : alot of .”

Imagine if utilized Daydreamin Comics with a computational abstraction: in OCR( optical character recognition) a child’s imagination of reading a comic book or literature give a survey of comments to what the context of the story was about, not knowing it , training for great reading compression. example

COMMENT BOX AND ABOVE IS THE FOLLOWING:

Delete “ I believe that:
Delete “than ever before did play sports.”
Delete: I think that “
Insert the word” trend: after “this.:
Replace “many” with : alot of .”

Computational Abstractions

Introduction

Pupils should be taught to: design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behavior of real-world problems and physical systems.

In computer science, abstraction is the process by which data and programs are defined with a representation similar in form to its meaning (semantics), while hiding away the implementation details. Abstraction tries to reduce and factor out details so that the programmer can focus on a few concepts at a time. A system can have several abstraction layers whereby different meanings and amounts of detail are exposed to the programmer refines the definition of computational thinking to six concepts: a thought process, abstraction, decomposition, algorithmic design, evaluation, and generalization. All of these concepts are employed in problem solving processes. Again, the emphasis in this list of concepts is on thought processes, not the production of artefacts or evidence.

The Computing Progression Pathways (Dorling and Walker, 2014) is an example of a non-statutory assessment framework. It was produced by a small team of authors and reviewers, all teachers, based on their classroom experiences. It is an interpretation of the breadth and depth of the content in the 2014 national curriculum for computing program of study. It includes the dependencies and interdependencies between concepts and principles. This may help non-specialist teachers and inexperienced teachers to understand what should be taught in the classroom. It is publicly available at this link:

Evidence of assessing computational thinking Given that computational thinking concepts have been defined (Selby and Woollard, 2013) and an assessment framework for the computing program of study has been proposed (Dorling and Walker, 2014), a mapping can be developed to illustrate how computational thinking can be assessed over the full breadth and depth of the computing programme of study.

2.3. Problem solving techniques.

2.3.1. Introduction Now, it’s easy to write down these stages but harder to see how they apply in practical problem solving for programming.

Significance of the Study:

Logo is a programming language that was developed in the late 1960s by a team of researchers at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) led by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon.

The language was designed to be a simple and intuitive tool for teaching children the principles of computer programming. The development of Logo was closely tied to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and the broader movement to make computers more accessible to the general public.

Feurzeig, Papert, and Solomon were all influenced by the work of the pioneering AI researcher Marvin Minsky, who believed that children could learn to think logically and computationally if they were given the right tools.

At the time, most programming languages were designed for use by professional programmers, and were considered too difficult for children to learn. Logo was different in that it was designed to be simple and intuitive, with a focus on using graphics and turtle-based commands to create simple programs and animations.

The first version of Logo was implemented on a DEC PDP-1 computer, using a turtle as a visual representation of the cursor. The turtle could be moved around the screen by giving it commands in Logo, allowing children to create simple drawings and animations.

This innovative approach to teaching programming quickly gained popularity, and by the early 1970s, Logo was being used in schools around the world.

In the 1980s, it was adapted for use on home computers, including the Apple II and the Commodore 64, and became widely accessible.

One of the key features of Logo is its use of English-like commands, which made it easy for children to learn and use. This was a major departure from other programming languages of the time, which were often difficult for non-experts to understand.

Over the years, Logo has evolved and been implemented on a variety of different platforms, including personal computers and mobile devices.

One of the most famous uses of Logo was the development of the first widely-used educational robotics platform, the LEGO Mindstorms system. Using the Logo programming language, students were able to create simple programs that could control LEGO robots and make them move, turn, and interact with their environment.

In the decades since its inception, the Logo programming language has evolved and grown in complexity, but it remains a popular choice for educators looking to introduce children to the world of computer programming.

The Logo Programming Language, a dialect of Lisp, was designed as a tool for learning. Its features — modularity, extensibility, interactivity, and flexibility — follow from this goal.

For most people, learning Logo is not an end in itself, and programming is always about something. Logo programming activities are in mathematics, language, music, robotics, telecommunications, and science. It is used to develop simulations, and to create multimedia presentations and games. Logo is designed to have a “low threshold and no ceiling”: It is accessible to novices, including young children, and also supports complex explorations and sophisticated projects by experienced users.

The most popular Logo environments have involved the Turtle, originally a robotic creature that sat on the floor and could be directed to move around by typing commands at the computer. Soon the Turtle migrated to the computer graphics screen where it is used to draw shapes, designs, and pictures.

Some turtle species can change shape to be birds, cars, planes, or whatever the designer chooses to make them. In Logo environments with many such turtles, or “sprites” as they are sometimes called, elaborate animations and games are created.

Out Into the World

Widespread use of Logo began with the advent of personal computers during the late 1970s. The MIT Logo Group developed versions of Logo for two machines: The Apple ][ and the Texas Instruments TI 99/4. The Logo language itself was similar in both versions, but the video game hardware of the TI 99/4 lent itself to action-oriented projects, while the Apple version was best suited to turtle graphics, and language projects.

In 1978 a pilot project sponsored by MIT and Texas Instruments was begun at the Lamplighter School in Dallas, Texas with 50 computers and a student population of 450. In 1980 the Computers in Schools Project was initiated by the New York Academy of Sciences and Community School Districts 2, 3, and 9 in New York City, and supported by Texas Instruments and MIT. Twelve TI 99/4 computers were placed in six New York City Public Schools. These were later joined by a few Apple ][s.

Both projects offered teachers extensive training and support through intensive two-week Summer Institutes and follow-up workshops during the school year.

These projects have had lasting results. Theresa Overall, who was a leader in both the Dallas and New York workshops, continued to teach Logo at Lamplighter and to offer summer workshops. Michael Tempel, then of the New York Academy of Sciences is now President of the Logo Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides Logo professional development and support services to schools and districts throughout the world, including New York City Community School District 3. Two of the teachers who represented that district in the original project, Peter Rentof and Steve Siegelbaum, went on to form the Computer School, one of the District’s alternative middle schools where Logo is still in use today.

The prototype Logo implementations used in those pioneering projects evolved into commercial products. TILOGO was released by Texas Instruments. Terrapin Software, a company that was set up in 1977 to distribute robot floor Turtles, licensed the Apple ][ version of MIT Logo and has marketed it and upgraded it to this day.

A new company, Logo Computer Systems, Inc. (LCSI) was formed in 1980. Many of the researchers, teachers, programmers, and writers who were involved in this venture have played major roles in the subsequent development of Logo. Seymour Papert is LCSI’s chairman. Brian Silverman was Director of Research and guided the development of all of LCSI’s products. Cynthia Solomon, who was on the team that created the original Logo in 1967, headed up LCSI’s first development office in Boston and later directed the Atari Cambridge Research Center. Michael Tempel provided educational support services from LCSI’s New York City office for ten years until he started the Logo Foundation in 1991.

LCSI developed Apple Logo, followed by versions for a host of other computers. With commercial availability, Logo use spread quickly.

Another important event occurred in 1980 – the publication of Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms . Teachers throughout the world became excited by the intellectual and creative potential of Logo. Their enthusiasm fueled the Logo boom of the early 1980s.

New versions of Logo were implemented in more than a dozen spoken languages on a variety of machines, many with video game style graphics and sound capabilities. Logo for MSX computers was popular in Europe, South America, and Japan. Atari Logo and Commodore Logo were popular in North America.

Logo received considerable support from mainstream computer manufacturers. Apple Computer marketed LCSI’s Apple Logo and, at one point, bundled it with the computers given away to each school in California. IBM marketed LCSI’s IBM Logo and Logo Learner.

Atari not only distributed Atari Logo, but set up the ambitious Atari Cambridge Research Center under the direction of Cynthia Solomon.

By the mid 1980’s the computers with video game capabilities had dropped off the market and taken their versions of Logo with them. MSDOS machines increasingly dominated the world of educational computing, except in the United States where Apple was the school favorite. Logo developers concentrated on these machines. Although new implementations added features and took advantage of the increased speed and memory of newer computers, the most popular versions of Logo in use in 1985 were similar to those of 1980.

Around this time there was also some interest in using Logo as a “serious” programming language, especially for the new Macintosh computer. MacLogo from LCSI added new functionality to the Logo environment. Coral Software, developed an object-oriented version of Logo called Object Logo. It included a compiler which allowed programs to run at higher speed, and stand-alone applications could be created. But Logo did not become popular among applications programmers.

Innovation

In 1985 Logo Computer Systems, Inc. introduced LogoWriter, which was novel in several ways. First, it included word processing capability – hence the name. Second, the user interface was simplified and made more intuitive. LogoWriter also included, as the earlier “sprite” Logos had, multiple turtles that could take on different shapes, although in this area the Apple and IBM computers on which LogoWriter ran were no match for the earlier game machines. LogoWriter was implemented in many spoken languages and became popular throughout the world.

Another innovation of the mid-eighties was LEGO Logo. Mitchel Resnick and Steve Ocko, working at the MIT Media Lab, developed a system which interfaced Logo with motors, lights and sensors that were incorporated into machines built out of LEGO bricks and other elements. Robotics systems with Logo were not new, but the popular and well-supported LEGO TC Logo was a commercial success which reached thousands of teachers and their students.

It was around this time that a unique series of Logo conferences took place at MIT. Beginning with LOGO ’84 and continuing for two more years with LOGO ’85 and LOGO ’86, these meetings brought a worldwide community together at Logo’s unofficial home.

In 1988 the Programa Informática Educativa was initiated in Costa Rica by the Omar Dengo Foundation, the Ministry of Public Education, and IBM Latin America. This project put Logo in the hands of most of Costa Rica’s elementary school students and their teachers. A similar project was initiated in Costa Rica’s secondary schools.

The Costa Rican projects have provided extensive teacher education and support with a strong emphasis on Logo’s contructionist educational approach. They have been taken as models for similar endeavors in a dozen other Latin American countries. Through the 1990s Latin American Logo enthusiasts came together every two years in a different country for the Congreso Logo.

In Japan, Logo saw growing acceptance in the country’s schools where the original LogoWriter, then the enhanced LogoWriter2, and then LogoWriter Win were the most popular versions.

In England, Logo was a mandated part of the national curriculum. This guaranteed that Logo was widely, if not necessarily well used. England is also the birthplace of the extinct Valiant Turtle and the Roamer.

There are Logo hot spots throughout Europe where there is a biennial EuroLogo conference. Now renamed, this conference was most recently held in Vienna, Austria as Constructionism 2014. European Logo software developments have included WinLogo in Spain and Comenius Logo from Slovakia.

New Developments during the 1990s

A new version of Logo called MicroWorlds was released in 1993 by LCSI. It embodied major changes both in the Logo environment and the Logo language. It included many extra-Logo features – drawing tools, a shape editor, a melody maker, the ability to import graphics and sounds – that work along with Logo to support the creation of multimedia projects, games, and simulations. Microworlds has been upgraded several times and is available today as MicroWorlds EX.

MicroWorlds Logo includes a number of changes, the most significant being multi-tasking, or parallel processing. Several processes can be launched independently. This is invaluable when creating animations with more than one actor – the car can drive off a cliff while the dog wags its tail while the fat lady sings. This sort of thing is possible in a non-parallel Logo environment but it is far easier and more natural in MicroWorlds.

Control Lab and Control System were LEGO Logo products whose multi-tasking software was built on the same core as MicroWorlds.

Another LEGO Logo innovation was the Programmable Brick , a research project at MIT spearheaded by Fred Martin. Unlike earlier LEGO Logo products where the robot received instructions through wires connected to a computer, the Programmable Brick had a computer inside. A program written on a desktop or laptop computer could be downloaded to the Brick, which could then be detached from the host computer and run its program autonomously.

LEGO commercialized the programmable brick as the RCX and later the NXT, and now the EV3 in products called LEGO Mindstorms. Smaller versions of the Programmable Brick, called crickets, where also developed commercially as the Handy Cricket and PICO Cricket .

As part of the Programmable Brick project at the MIT Media Lab a new version of Logo called Logo Blocks was created. Instead of writing lines of code in text, programs were built by snapping together jigsaw-like puzzle pieces.

A radically different Logo called StarLogo was introduced in 1994. It is a massively parallel version that was developed by Mitchel Resnick at MIT. Thousands of turtles can carry on independent processes and interact with each other and with patches of background. The system is specifically designed to facilitate the exploration of decentralized systems, emergent phenomena, and self organizing behavior. Resnick’s Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams is the source book on StarLogo and the ideas underlying its conception.

A similar program called NetLogo was developed by Uri Wilensky, who now heads the Center for Connected Learning at Northwestern University.

The 21st Century

In 2004 a new Logo programming environment called Scratch emerged from the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It uses the blocks programming paradigm that was originally implemented as Logo Blocks. Scratch is well suited to designing and building interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art. It can gather information from the outside world via a sensor board connected to the computer. The Scratch Web site provides the focal point for a community of millions of users who have shared more than nine million projects.

Following from the popularity of Scratch, blocks programming has become widespread and is used in a number of other Logo applications including Turtle Art, Scratch for Arduino, Snap!, and StarLogo TNG .

Meanwhile, traditional versions of Logo continue to be used.Brian Harvey, author of the three-volume classic Computer Science Logo Style wrote UCBLogo, a public domain version for Macintosh, MSDOS, and Unix.George Mills used the core of UCBLogo as the basis for his MSWLogo which runs under Windows with many enhancements that are possible in that operating system. FMSLogo is a more recent version of Logo based on MSWLogo.

After more than four decades of growth, Logo has undergone dramatic changes in step with the rapid pace of development in computer technology. The family of Logo environments is more divers than ever before.

Pavel Boytchev, who created Elica, has compiled the Logo Tree, which lists all the versions of Logo, past and current, that he has information about. There are more than 300 of them.

Logo is a growing family of programming languages and a learning environments, and a worldwide community of people drawn together by a shared commitment to a constructivist educational philosophy.

To find out more about Logo you can continue to wander around this website and check out the links to other sites.

Today, it is still widely used in schools and other educational settings as a tool for teaching computational thinking and problem-solving skills.

There are many different versions of Logo available, including versions that run on personal computers and mobile devices. Overall, the Logo programming language has played a significant role in the history of personal computing, and continues to be an important tool for teaching the next generation of computer programmers.

Despite its age, Logo remains an important part of the history of programming and continues to inspire new generations of programmers and computer scientists. It stands as a testament to the power of simple, intuitive tools for teaching complex concepts and encouraging children to think critically and creatively.

The Logo Programming Language, a dialect of Lisp, was designed as a tool for learning. Its features — modularity, extensibility, interactivity, and flexibility — follow from this goal.

Content of Problem:

Computational Abstractions

1.0

Pupils should be taught to:

design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behaviour of real-world problems and physical systems.

refines the definition of computational thinking to six concepts: a thought process, abstraction, decomposition, algorithmic design, evaluation, and generalisation. All of these concepts are employed in problemsolving processes. Again, the emphasis in this list of concepts is on thought processes, not the production of artefacts or evidence

Computing Progression Pathways and describes how it can be used to acknowledge progression and reward performance in mastering both the computing programme of study content and computational thinking skills.

There is some debate about whether it is important that the arbitrary values of progression be standardized across schools. Naace (Harrison, 2014), in their guidance, indicate “…a school approach to assessment will need to be tailored to match their approach to the curriculum” (p. 1).

Alternatively, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) propose when translating the national curriculum into assessment criteria “… there is little room for meaningful variety, we suggest this job be shared between schools” (2014, p. 10).

Whether it is designed by a single school or a collection of interested parties, an assessment framework is required by classroom practitioners.

It is an interpretation of the breadth and depth of the content in the 2014 national curriculum for computing programme of study.

It includes the dependencies and interdependencies between concepts and principles. This may help non-specialist teachers and inexperienced teachers to understand what should be taught in the classroom. It is publicly available at this link:

The framework is grid-based.

Five of the six strands, represented as columns, are aligned with the range and content categories from the Computing at School curriculum (Computing at School, 2012) and the requirements of applicants to initial teacher training courses (DfE, 2012).

These include algorithms, programming and development, data and data representation, hardware and processing, communication and networks.

The sixth strand incorporates the more traditional concept of information technology. This breadth affords an opportunity to view the subject of computing as a whole, rather than the separate subjects of Computer Science, Digital Literacy, and Information Technology.

Each row represents a level of pupil progression. Annotation of the framework suggests that key stages 1-2 cover the first four levels (pink, yellow, orange, and blue), that key stages 3-4 cover the next four levels (purple, red, and black), and that GCSE covers the final level (white).

As an example, the purple cell under the “Hardware and Processing” strand states that a pupil “Recognises and understands the function of the main internal parts of basic computer architecture” (Dorling and Walker, 2014).

The colour-coded rows may aid teachers in assessing whether pupils are exhibiting competences at different levels and in recognizing achievement and attainment. In addition, adherence to the colour-coded statements can provide standardization across schools as identified by the NAHT (2014).

Institutions planning to use this assessment framework with existing assessment or reporting systems may: • assign values or levels to the coloured rows, • agree the benchmark value, level, or entry point for a particular key stage, assign the benchmark value or level to the appropriate progression statements.

The Computing Progression Pathways also affords opportunities to celebrate achievement in computing. There is a growing interest in badges as an informal recognition of skill, knowledge, understanding, or attitude.

They are made and awarded by commercial organisations, educational suppliers, websites, schools, teachers, and pupils (Hamilton and Henderson, 2013; Mozilla, 2014; Radiowaves Schools, 2014).

Recognizing and rewarding pupil achievement in each strand can be accomplished via coloured digital badges. Each strand can be assigned a separate digital badge. There may be two-tone badges for pupils working between coloured progression levels. Currently, there are no digital badge designs for the strands.

Teachers and pupils who will be using the digital badge system are better placed to design and create them. The process of designing and creating the digital badges might promote learner ownership and student-centeredness (Reigeluth, 2013).

The computational thinking concepts of abstraction, decomposition, algorithmic design, evaluation, and generalisation have been abbreviated to the first two letters. Care has been taken by 3 iterations of expert evaluation of the statements to avoid making assumptions about how the teaching might afford opportunities for computational thinking rather than strictly interpreting what is explicitly stated in the Computing Curriculum Pathways.

For example, an exercise in a classroom might afford opportunities to identify suitability for purpose and efficiency of input and output devices.

Table 1: Computational thinking and progression pathways in computing (Based on Dorling and Walker, 2014) Using this strategy of identifying computational thinking concepts associated with the pathways’ statements enables computational thinking to be assessed using the same framework as the programme of study. From a practitioner’s perspective, there is no additional assessment or progression tracking required to fulfil the broad aim of the computing programme of study to incorporate computational thinking.

Conclusion The computing programme of study (DfE, 2013b) includes the broad aim of incorporating computational thinking into the classroom.

The subject content is detailed in the document, but the connection to computational thinking and its meaning is not. Removal of the statutory assessment frameworks, which did not assess computational thinking, leaves a void in assessing pupils’ attainment.

Both of these shortcomings have been addressed in this paper. An understanding of 9 computational thinking, based on the work of Selby and Woollard (2013), has been established. An assessment framework, the Computing Progression Pathways, has been used to illustrate the dependencies and interdependencies between the concepts and principles of the programme of study (Dorling and Walker, 2014). This work has demonstrated how the Computing Progression Pathways can be used to evidence the assessment of computational thinking directly. By using the assessment framework to evidence progression, with its underlying support for computational thinking concepts, it is possible for the classroom practitioner to assess computational thinking without introducing additional complexity to the assessment process. However, this does raise questions around the provision for teachers of a framework for the pedagogy of computational thinking that aligns to this assessment approach

2.3. Problem solving techniques 2.3.1. Introduction Now, it’s easy to write down these stages but harder to see how they apply in practical problem solving for programming. It’s really not clear where to begin. Programming isn’t hard when you know how to solve the problem. It then becomes a matter of battling with the vagaries of language‐specific syntax, semantics and tools. For people new to programming, this language specific detail can become overwhelming, leading to a plethora of tiny, low level concerns at the expense of understanding how to solve an original problem. And there is curiously little material on problem solving and programming.

For example, Wienberg’s (1971) classic study of the psychology of programming assumes that programming is an activity based on a specification that is elaborated from analysis, but says nothing about analysis itself. This echoes the then prevalent waterfall model of software development with distinct stages which are never revisited.

One of the few books that ostensibly focuses on problem solving and programming, Dromey’s How to solve it by computer (Dromey, 1982), draws explicitly on Polya’s 1950 foundational study How to solve it (Polya, 1990) and on later work by Wickelgren (1974). Polya (pp5 & 6) characterises problem solving as a four stage process of: understanding the problem; linking unknowns to data to make a plan; carrying out the plan; looking back and reviewing the solution. He offers a long list of problem solving heuristics, many of which correspond to different aspects of CT (e.g. analogy, auxiliary problem, decomposing and recombining, do you know a related problem, specialisation) but doubts any systematic way of deploying them: ‘Rule of discovery. The first rule of discovery is to have brains and good luck.

The second rule of discovery is to sit tight and wait till you get a bright idea. … To find unfailing rules applicable to all sorts of problems is an old philosophical dream; but this dream will never be more than a dream.’ (p172)

Nonetheless, Wickelgren attempts to provide a methodical approach to solving what he terms formal problems that is those couched in some formal notation, typically logical or mathematical. Wickelgren sees a problem as being specified as a starting state, a set of allowable operations over states, and a goal state. Thus, a solution is found by a sequence of state to state transitions leading from the start state to the goal state. Much of the book focuses on techniques for pruning the space of transitions, in particular reasoning backwards from the goal, but there is little on problem formulation. Dromey (1982) is a proponent of top down design and stepwise refinement, linking decomposition to algorithm, which we will consider briefly below. He also uses logical statements to capture properties of program stages, typically loop invariants.

While he acknowledges the central role of the choice of data structures in programming, he largely focuses on algorithm design, suggesting that structures are somehow chosen from a menu of JPD: 5:1:55

Journal of Pedagogic Development Volume 5, Issue 1 options. Despite acknowledging Polya’s and Winkelgren’s influences, Dromey has little to say about problem formulation. Still, we already have tried and tested techniques for teaching programming so why can’t we retrofit CT to what we do already? Let us now consider a range of these in slightly more detail, in inconsistently chronological order. Please note that much of the following is partial, anecdotal and superficial.

Effective Tool of Logical Programming in Curriculums for Highschool, and Middle Schools:

1.1 Learning Outcomes

In our LP course, we decided not to put emphasis into Prolog knowledge per-se (although

basic elements of the language should be taught), but to focus on all the above aspects. We

believe the students appreciate more the skills acquired through this course, which can be

used to change the mind-set of the programming task as a whole. By the end of the course

should be able to:

• understand the basic principles of logic programming theory and symbolic reasoning,

• demonstrate good knowledge of the basic Prolog language by constructing small

programs,

• make sense of more complicated Prolog programs, predict and describe what they do,

• modify existing code to perform a similar task,

• identify the advantages of declarative programming and evaluate its shortcomings in

comparison with imperative languages,

• comprehend the basic principles of programming languages, like procedural abstraction,

program design and development, parameter passing, recursion, variable binding etc.,

• adapt declarative programming techniques to other programming paradigms.

These learning outcomes are assessed through coursework and final examinations.

1.2 Discrete Mathematics Preparation

Discrete Mathematics

Discrete mathematics is foundational material for computer science: Many areas of computer science require the ability to work with concepts from discrete mathematics, specifically material from such areas as set theory, logic, graph theory, combinatorics, and probability theory.

1.3 Common Lisp

The material in discrete mathematics is pervasive in the areas of data structures and algorithms but appears elsewhere in computer science as well. For example, an ability to create and understand a proof is important in virtually every area of computer science, including (to name just a few) formal specification, verification, databases, and cryptography. Graph theory concepts are used in networks, operating systems, and compilers. Set theory concepts are used in software engineering and in databases. Probability theory is used in artificial intelligence, machine learning, networking, and a number of computing applications.

Consequently, a Common Lisp program tends to provide a much clearer mapping between your ideas about how the program works and the code you actually write. Your ideas aren’t obscured by boilerplate code and endlessly repeated idioms. This makes your code easier to maintain because you don’t have to wade through reams of code every time you need to make a change. Even systemic changes to a program’s behavior can often be achieved with relatively small changes to the actual code. This also means you’ll develop code more quickly; there’s less code to write, and you don’t waste time thrashing around trying to find a clean way to express yourself within the limitations of the language.2

Common Lisp is also an excellent language for exploratory programming–if you don’t know exactly how your program is going to work when you first sit down to write it, Common Lisp provides several features to help you develop your code incrementally and interactively.

For starters, the interactive read-eval-print loop, which I’ll introduce in the next chapter, lets you continually interact with your program as you develop it. Write a new function. Test it. Change it. Try a different approach. You never have to stop for a lengthy compilation cycle.3

Other features that support a flowing, interactive programming style are Lisp’s dynamic typing and the Common Lisp condition system. Because of the former, you spend less time convincing the compiler you should be allowed to run your code and more time actually running it and working on it,4 and the latter lets you develop even your error handling code interactively.

Another consequence of being “a programmable programming language” is that Common Lisp, in addition to incorporating small changes that make particular programs easier to write, can easily adopt big new ideas about how programming languages should work. For instance, the original implementation of the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), Common Lisp’s powerful object system, was as a library written in portable Common Lisp. This allowed Lisp programmers to gain actual experience with the facilities it provided before it was officially incorporated into the language.

Literature Review:

Designed for Fuzzy Logic in A.I in advanced way to train Human Interactions and Brain Cognitive and Generally how Programming works

#35. In context which of the following would NOT improve sentence 14

Whatever their experience, I believe that more and more women are playings, sports today, than ever before did play sports, and I think that is has many positive consequences for LARGER SOCIETY

Delete “ I believe that:
Delete “than ever before did play sports.”
Delete: I think that “
Insert the word” trend: after “this.:
Replace “many” with : alot of .”

COMMENT BOX AND ABOVE IS THE FOLLOWING:

Delete “ I believe that:
Delete “than ever before did play sports.”
Delete: I think that “
Insert the word” trend: after “this.:
Replace “many” with : alot of .”

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write up on THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 10:30:51 +0000

THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

The story begins before Alexandria itself. Among the Greeks, it is

said, Peisistratus, tyrant of Athens, was the first to found a library –

subsequently taken by Xerxes to Persia, an act which set a fashion for

sovereigns and sovereign cities, to seek out the books of all peoples,

especially those of alien and conquered lands; and by the act of trans[1]lating, render them, their languages, and their peoples members of

the dominant culture. I According to Arrian, when Alexander the

Great, Aristotle’s most famous pupil, halted during one of his journeys

at the western end of the Nile Delta between Lake Mareotis and the

sea, he noted that ‘the site was the very best in which to found a city,

and that the city would prosper’. Looking to a place remote from the

shrines of Olympus, he commanded that there should be dedicated to

the Muses a ‘library’ in the new city, the most important to bear his

name.2 Flushed with imperial ambition, Alexander’s successors in

Egypt, the first three Macedonian kings, obeyed his instructions, and

created an institution whose history and influence would reach outward

in space and endure in time, bequeathing a vast legacy to the Euro[1]pean intellectual tradition. 3 This legacy survives in the restoration of

the Bibliotheca Alexandrina at the close of the present century.4

The story of the Great Library at Alexandria is part history, part myth.

Ten years ago, Luciano Canfora published a literary account – perhaps

THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

‘non-fiction novel’ is a better description – that scanned the cultural

milieu of Hellenic Egypt at a time when the Alexandrian rulers chose to

project power and influence through the encouragement and control of

scholarly research. 5 That project focused upon a community of people,

objects and texts within the palace at the Brucheion, the Greek section of

the city.t’ For the next two thousand years – for linguists, archaeologists,

historians, and scholars of religion, culture, and the book – that commu[1]nity became a place within a place, a constellation of identities, a

heterotopia, in the language of Foucault, where text elides into subtext,

and myth endures long after masonry disappears.

Library of Alexendria

Uruk IV and III tablets, but we shall not be far

off in assigning them a broad time range of c. 3400 to 3000 BC. 10 In

spite of much investigation elsewhere, it still seems true to say that

writing was invented, not broadly in southern Mesopotamia, but very

specifically at the site of Uruk, prompting one Sumerologist to speak of

‘an’ inventor, literatus Sumericus Urukeus, rather than a vague cohort of

anonymous early scribes. 11 As many scholars have emphasized in

recent years, 12 with an estimated size of over 200 ha. by the late fourth

millennium BC, Uruk surpassed all other early urban centres in the

region in areal extent and most probably population concentration,

and it was here that the pre-conditions for the emergence of writing

were most clearly in evidence. The fiction that all land belonged to the

gods; that men and women should work that land on the deity’s behalf;

and that the deity’s ‘house’, in our terms, his temple, but more

realistically his oikos or household, should be managed by his servants –

i.e., a priesthood – created not only social stratification but also generated a massive agricultural sector and a redistributive economy. It was

here, in the nexus between production and redistribution in the form

of rations to household employees, that the need for arithmetic and

algebraic calculation and for the storage of information arose and that

the modus operandi, in the form of writing, was invented. 13

Writing was devised, purely and simply, as a solution to an account[1]technical problem, not for the perpetuation of myths, epics, hymns,

historical records, or royal propaganda. All of this followed, but it was

not in the minds of writing’s inventor(s). What did accompany the

earliest economic texts immediately, i.e. in the very first phase of

writing’s development, were lexical texts, word lists containing terms

belonging to discrete semantic domains – titles and professions, names

of metal objects, ceramic vessels, textiles, cities, trees, plants, cattle,

swine, birds, fish, etc. Along with mathematical reckoning, these lexical

lists were undoubtedly the backbone of early scribal education.

With this new technology came, it seems, an associated development

of what we may call ‘archival behaviour’. The vast majority of the c.

4500 Archaic texts from Uruk were found abandoned in lots, in

secondary or even tertiary context (e.g. used as fill beneath new build[1]ings) outside of the temples and other structures which make up the

Eanna complex, the great temple household of Inanna, the city

goddess of Uruk. 14 What is evident is that they had been discarded

some time, perhaps a century or more, after having been written. As

Veenhof has noted, ‘Normally, old records no longer needed by the

administration were thrown away in due time or put to secondary use,

as building material.. etc’. 15 The important point here, however, is

that, for an unspecified period of time which probably exceeded several

BEFORE ALEXANDRIA: LIBRARIES IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

generations, texts at Uruk were curated or archived, in spite of the fact

that the economic texts among them were certainly no longer current.

Thus, in tandem with the birth of writing in the Near East we observe

the birth of an archival, curatorial attitude towards written texts.

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write up on Tuatha de Danaan (“Children of Danu”)

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 10:21:46 +0000

Significance of the Study

Tuatha de Danaan (“Children of Danu”)

Nicknames: Celtic Gods, Gallic Gods, British Gods, Gods of the Celts, Gods of Gaul, Gods of Eire, Irish Gods, et al

Other Associated Dimensions: Avalon exists in a cosmology of worlds known collectively as Otherworld including but not confined to the realms of Momur (aka Tir na bog, a land of faeries), Tir fo Thuinn, the Land of the Waves, ruled by Llyr, Tir inna Mbhan, a Land of Paradise, ruled by Manannan, and Anwyn (Annfwn), the realm of the dead, ruled by Arawn, the god of the dead. The realm is populated by other beings such as faeries and leprechauns (Celtic elves), giants and ogres, trolls and dragons. Time seems to pass by much quicker in Otherworld than on Earth; when the hero Bran (the son of Febhal, not to be confused with Bran, the son of Llyr) spent a year in Tir inna Mbhan, he and his crew sailed back to Eire to realize they had actually been gone for hundreds of years. Unable to leave their ship because they would regain their true age upon touching Eire, they returned to Tir inna Mbhan.

==History==

The Tuatha de Danaan or Celtic Gods are a race of superhumanly powerful humanoid beings who were once worshipped by the ancient Celts and Britons from about 1500 BC to 600 AD when they were replaced by Christianity. The Danaans dwell on Avalon, a small planetary body existing in a cosmology of worlds known collectively as Otherworld which is also home to a number of other beings such as elves, leprechauns, faeries, trolls and the Fomore, the ancestral spirits and gods of Eire from whom the Danaans might be descended. Unlike most of the realms of the gods of Earth, Otherworld through several “sidhs” or faerie mounds located through Ireland. (In later years, “sidh” was also used as a word to describe the faerie spirits who protected these mounds.) Because these portals rested underground, later myths claimed the Celtic gods retreated beneath the Earth. In actuality, Avalon seems to be an actual planetary body existing in other-dimensional space with regular seasonal intervals of night and day. The Danaan’s human worshippers in Ancient Eire called these gods by different names than those by which the gods were known in ancient Gaul: for example, the Celts called the king of the gods the Dagda, whereas the Gaels knew him as Sucellos. The invading Romans knew him as Taranis in order to merge his worship rites with their god, Zeus. The Celtic gods, however, no longer have or actively seek worshippers on Earth.

The precise origin of the Celtic gods, like that of all of Earth’s pantheons of gods, is shrouded in legend. According to one legend, the Celtic gods are the descendants of the Dagda and another goddess later known as Morrigan. However, the Dagda was the son of Bile (Belenus), also known as Elathan, one of the chieftains of the race known as the Fomore. The Fomore identified their maternal ancestor as the goddess, Domnu, later know as Danu. It is believed that Danu was actually Gaea, the primordial earth-mother who had survived the destruction of the Elder Gods of Earth by infusing her life into the life-giving essence of the Earth. Many of the Elder Gods had degenerated into demonic status and were destroyed by Atum or had fled Earth for other planes of existence. Atum had been born from Gaea by mating with the sentient biosphere of the Earth known as the Demiurge. Atum later departed the earth after shedding the excess demonic energies of the Elder Gods he had slain.

According to myths, Danu had sired a race of beings known as the Fomore by Neit (or Net), later confused with Nuadhu, a mortal chieftain of the Tuatha de Danaan and ancestor of CuChulainn, one of the greatest heroes of Ancient Eire. Neit was supposedly a Danaan ruler overthrown by the Fomore. The Fomore were later claimed by Early Christian writers documenting the stories of the Celts as descendants of Ham, one of the sons of the Biblical Noah, who had survived a flood in Ancient Mesopotamia around 2490 BC. The Fomore had claimed Ancient Eire at the center of the ley lines of Earth for themselves. They repelled a consecutive series of invasions by Fintan and Cessair, descendants of Japeth, another of Noah’s sons around 2340 BC. Partholon, the grandson of Fintan, lead another invasion about thirty-three years later. A third invasion by the Nemedians was more successive, forcing the Fomore as far as the Isle of Man, but eventually the Fomore returned and subjugated the Nemedians, their survivors departing for Greece, the land of their ancestors. The Fir Bholg tribes, descendants of the Nemedians, returned and laid siege to Ireland, taking it away from the Fomore.

According to Celtic myth, the Tuatha de Danaan were another tribe descended from Partholon, having departed from Eire to settle near Scythia near the Black Sea and along the Danube River. Meanwhile, Elathan, a Fomore chieftain, known as Beli or Belenus to the Welsh, took Danu as his wife and she conceived him a number of children. Also known as Donn to the Welsh, Danu concealed the births of her children in the land of Gaul along the Danube River from which she had derived her name. Among these children were the gods, Eochaid (later known as the Dagda), Llyr, Gwydion, Amaethon, Arianrhod, Penardun and others. Danu departed Eire with her children to raise them as antagonists to the Fomore. The Dagda, Leir and Gwydion learned their magicks from Earthly wizards, mystics and mages. Gwydion stayed behind to become a tutelary deity of the Gaels, while the Dagda lead a majority of the Danaans back to Eire. When Eochaid Mac Erc, the last of the Fir Bholg died without a worthy heir, the Danaans and the Fomore clashed at the battlefield of Magh Tureidh to lay claim to Eire. Nuadhu, son of the Dagda and the greatest champion of the Danaans, faced off against Sreng, the greatest champion of the Fir Bholg. The Danaans were victorious, but Nuadhu was unable to rule because he lost an hand in battle and the Danaans could not honor a ruler with an obvious wound. The Dagda allowed his half-brother, Bres, to rule in place of his son, but Bres turned Eire over to the Fomore, forcing the Danaans into subservient roles. The hero, Lugh, hidden away since birth, however, eventually joined the Tuatha de Danaan, and lead them to a second victory on the plains of Magh Tureidh by slaying Balor, forcibly exiling the Fomore into another dimension.

The ascendant Danaans claimed Eire and became the divine rulers of the land. In departing Earth for the last time, the Dagda divided Eire into provinces between his sons, Oenghus, Bodb, Ogmios and Mider, with Badb possessing sovereign power over all after Lugh. The Dagda departed Eire for the realm of Otherworld to become ruler of the gods. In the Tenth Century BC, the last wave of invaders invaded Eire. Arriving from Gaul, the Milesians lead by Milesius claimed Eire by divine right as descendants of Partholon, the rightful ruler of Eire. The Danaans were forced to comply and departed Eire through hidden underground portals concealed by various sidhs or “faerie mounds” located through the countryside. (In later myths, it would be claimed the Tuatha de Danaan were driven underground. Later generations of Eire would also call the faerie spirits and former gods of Eire collectively as the Sidh.) The Milesians would become ancestors of the British monarchy. Trojan refugees lead by Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas, a hero of Troy, later claimed Britain around 1150 BC. Their ancestors included King Arthur who converted England over to Christianity from their native worship of the Celtic Gods. Arthur’s Britain would be seized by the Saxons bringing worship of their native Asgardian gods, their chieftains later becoming ancestors of the later British Kings.

At their zenith, worship of the Celtic Gods covered much of the British Isles and much of modern-day Spain, France and parts of Germany.

One of the most often encountered and yet least understood of the fairies which inhabit the same everyday world as humans is the Gremlin. Folklorists have shown little enthusiasm for documenting the Gremlin, possibly due to its contemporary nature. They are sufficiently well known, however, to be found in standard references. Webster, for example, defines them as “impish foot high gnomes reported by airmen as interfering with and disordering equipment such as motors, instruments, machine guns”. The Dictionary of Folklore defines them as “any airborne supernatural being (spirit, demon, imp) whose function is to cause pilots and air-crew (especially military) trouble and inconvenience”. A more general description is found in the Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were, where they are defined as spirits associated with tools and machinery.

In early stories concerning these creatures, they were depicted as craftsmen, rather like the Dwarfs. The “Shoemaker Elves”, who used the tools and technology of the time to help poor artisans were probably Gremlins. Contemporary myths, on the other hand, generally portray their destructive side, presenting them more as imps or devils. Unlike devils, however, they are not wholly malign and in fact were once considered helpful to man.

This was particularly true for craftsmen and inventors, who found that the Wee Mechanics have the ability to make tools work more efficiently and are credited with assisting in the invention of the steam engine and helping Ben Franklin in his studies of lightning. It is believed that they turned against man, or at least became disillusioned, when denied recognition for their contributions.

The first notice of Gremlins, as such, took place amongst aviators. This is not surprising as malfunctions in an aircraft often have disastrous results, and unexplained problems become a matter of some discourse. The first obvious reference to them was in the British newspaper “The Spectator” which wrote that “the old Royal Naval Air Service in 1917 and the newly constituted Royal Air Force in 1918 appear to have detected the existence of a horde of mysterious and malicious sprites whose whole purpose in life was…to bring about as many as possible of the inexplicable mishaps which, in those days as now, trouble an airman’s life.”

The word ‘Gremlin’ is claimed by Brew’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable to have been first coined by a Squadron of Bomber Command serving on the North West Frontier in India in 1939. This squadron began to have numerous difficulties with its aircraft, the cause of which was duly placed on a mischievous fairy with an intimate knowledge of aerial sabotage, called the Gremlin. The word probably formed by analogy with Goblin. Of course, there are competing versions of how the word came about. The Dictionary of Folklore, for example, supposes that it may be related to an obsolete Old English transitive verb ‘gremian’ meaning to vex. Yet another version involves the relation of the word to a popular been of the time, called Fremlins.

There have been numerous published descriptions of the physical appearance of Gremlins. Those most commonly encountered by airmen during the second world war were considered to be between six and eighteen inches tall, and either blue or green in color. Some writers maintain that they have horns, like incipient devils, others that these are merely large ears which are covered by a rudimentary growth of hair. Their feet were reported to be large, and may have some special kind of suction grip which enables them to walk in safety all over aircraft (2). Although they are considered to be true Fairies, they are differentiated by the fact that Gremlins have no trouble handling and working with metals like iron, which fairies find deadly.

Their character can be described as mischievous, by which they resemble hobgoblins. Usually, they confine themselves to causing minor annoyances and only occasionally serious trouble. The latter still with a sense of mischief and never out of evil malice. Typically, World War II Gremlins would sit on an aircraft’s wing, fiddling with the aileron (American Gremlins were sometimes called Yehudis, because they are always fiddling) or blow dust into the fuel pipes. The time and place they would manifest themselves was predictable only by its unpredictability.

Gremlins are very sophisticated technologically, and implicitly understand even the most complicated equipment. No known instrument is beyond their intellectual capacity to master. They may also possess a sense of telepathy as they seem to know what a pilot is going to do before he does. The range of their activities are limitless, and besides their mechanical tricks they have been known to produce the appearance of the ground in a completely unexpected place out of a cloud. Navigators claim they are capable of moving mountains, island, and under extreme conditions even reshuffle the stars, although this more accurately represents the state of confusion they can produce in an aviator’s mind rather than a talent for earth moving.

During World War II, the existence of Gremlins was recognized by such authorizes as the British Air Ministry – where they were studied on the Ministry’s behalf by the well known Gremlorist, Pilot Officer Percy Prune, who wrote up their exploits in a service manual. This was the first official document to take Gremlins seriously and to propose ways to either placate them or distract them sufficiently to accomplish the mission without major mishap.

SECTION II

THE PEOPLE OF THE GODDESS DANA (Tuatha Dé Danann) OR THE SIDHE (pronounced Shee)

‘So firm was the hold which the ethnic gods of Ireland had taken upon the imagination and spiritual sensibilities of our ancestors that even the monks and Christianized bards never thought of denying them. They doubtless forbade the people to worship them, but to root out the belief in their existence was so impossible that they could not even dispossess their own minds of the conviction that the gods were real supernatural beings.’—Standish O’Grady.

The Goddess Dana and the modern cult of St. Brigit—The Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe conquered by the Sons of Mil—But Irish seers still see the Sidhe—Old Irish MSS. faithfully represent the Tuatha De Danann—The Sidhe as a spirit race—Sidhe palaces—The ‘Taking’ of mortals—Hill visions of Sidhe women—Sidhe minstrels and musicians—Social organization and warfare among the Sidhe—The Sidhe war-goddesses, the Badb—The Sidhe at the Battle of Clontarf, A. D. 1014—Conclusion.

The People of the Goddess Dana, or, according to D’Arbois de Jubainville, the People of the god whose mother was [Pg 284]called Dana,[220] are the Tuatha De Danann of the ancient mythology of Ireland. The Goddess Dana, called in the genitive Danand, in middle Irish times was named Brigit.[220] And this goddess Brigit of the pagan Celts has been supplanted by the Christian St. Brigit[220]; and, in exactly the same way as the pagan cult once bestowed on the spirits in wells and fountains has been transferred to Christian saints, to whom the wells and fountains have been re-dedicated, so to St. Brigit as a national saint has been transferred the pagan cult rendered to her predecessor. Thus even yet, as in the case of the minor divinities of their sacred fountains, the Irish people through their veneration for the good St. Brigit, render homage to the divine mother of the People who bear her name Dana,—who are the ever-living invisible Fairy-People of modern Ireland. For when the Sons of Mil, the ancestors of the Irish people, came to Ireland they found the Tuatha De Danann in full possession of the country. The Tuatha De Danann then retired before the invaders, without, however, giving up their sacred Island. Assuming invisibility, with the power of at any time reappearing in a human-like form before the children of the Sons of Mil, the People of the Goddess Dana became and are the Fairy-Folk, the Sidhe of Irish mythology and romance.[221] Therefore it is that to-day Ireland contains two races,—a race visible which we call Celts, and a race invisible which we call Fairies. Between these two races there is constant intercourse even now; for Irish seers say that they can behold the majestic, beautiful Sidhe, and according to them the Sidhe are a race quite distinct from our own, just as living and possibly more powerful. These Sidhe (who are the ‘gentry’ of the Ben Bulbin country and have kindred elsewhere in Ireland, Scotland, [Pg 285]and probably in most other countries as well, such as the invisible races of the Yosemite Valley) have been described more or less accurately by our peasant seer-witnesses from County Sligo and from North and East Ireland. But there are other and probably more reliable seers in Ireland, men of greater education and greater psychical experience, who know and describe the Sidhe races as they really are, and who even sketch their likenesses. And to such seer Celts as these, Death is a passport to the world of the Sidhe, a world where there is eternal youth and never-ending joy, as we shall learn when we study it as the Celtic Otherworld.

The recorded mythology and literature of ancient Ireland have, very faithfully for the most part, preserved to us clear pictures of the Tuatha De Danann; so that disregarding some Christian influence in the texts of certain manuscripts, much rationalization, and a good deal of poetical colouring and romantic imagination in the pictures, we can easily describe the People of the Goddess Dana as they appeared in pagan days, when they were more frequently seen by mortals than now. Perhaps the Irish folk of the olden times were even more clairvoyant and spiritual-minded than the Irish folk of to-day. So by drawing upon these written records let us try to understand what sort of beings the Sidhe were and are.

Nature of the Sidhe

In the Book of Leinster[222] the poem of Eochaid records that the Tuatha De Danann, the conquerors of the Fir-Bolgs, were hosts of siabra; and siabra is an Old Irish word meaning fairies, sprites, or ghosts. The word fairies is appropriate if restricted to mean fairies like the modern ‘gentry’; but the word ghosts is inappropriate, because our evidence shows that the only relation the Sidhe or real Fairies hold to ghosts is a superficial one, the Sidhe and ghosts being alike only in respect to invisibility. In the two chief Irish MSS., the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Leinster, the Tuatha De Danann are described as ‘gods[Pg 286] and not-gods’; and Sir John Rhŷs considers this an ancient formula comparable with the Sanskrit deva and adeva, but not with ‘poets (dée) and husbandmen (an dée)’ as the author of Cóir Anmann learnedly guessed.[223] It is also said, in the Book of the Dun Cow, that wise men do not know the origin of the Tuatha De Danann, but that ‘it seems likely to them that they came from heaven, on account of their intelligence and for the excellence of their knowledge’.[224] The hold of the Tuatha De Danann on the Irish mind and spirit was so strong that even Christian transcribers of texts could not deny their existence as a non-human race of intelligent beings inhabiting Ireland, even though they frequently misrepresented them by placing them on the level of evil demons,[225] as the ending of the story of the Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn illustrates:—‘So that this was a vision to Cuchulainn of being stricken by the people of the Sid: for the demoniac power was great before the faith; and such was its greatness that the demons used to fight bodily against mortals, and they used to show them delights and secrets of how they would be in immortality. It was thus they used to be believed in. So it is to such phantoms the ignorant apply the names of Side and Aes Side.’[226] A passage in the Silva Gadelica (ii. 202-3) not only tends to confirm this last statement, but it also shows that the Irish people made a clear distinction between the god-race and our own:—In The Colloquy with the Ancients, as St. Patrick and Caeilte are talking with one another, ‘a lone woman robed in mantle of green, a smock of soft silk being next her skin, and on her forehead a glittering plate of yellow gold,’ came to them; and when Patrick asked from whence she came, she replied: ‘Out of uaimh Chruachna, or “the cave of Cruachan”.’ Caeilte then asked: ‘Woman, my soul, who art thou?’ ‘I am Scothniamh or “Flower-lustre”, daughter of the Daghda’s son Bodhb derg.’ Caeilte proceeded: ‘And what started thee hither?’ ‘To[Pg 287] require of thee my marriage-gift, because once upon a time thou promisedst me such.’ And as they parleyed Patrick broke in with: ‘It is a wonder to us how we see you two: the girl young and invested with all comeliness; but thou Caeilte, a withered ancient, bent in the back and dingily grown grey.’ ‘Which is no wonder at all,’ said Caeilte, ‘for no people of one generation or of one time are we: she is of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are unfading and whose duration is perennial; I am of the sons of Milesius, that are perishable and fade away.’ The exact distinction is between Caeilte, a withered old ancient—in most ways to be regarded as a ghost called up that Patrick may question him about the past history of Ireland—and a fairy-woman who is one of the Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann.[227]

In two of the more ancient Irish texts, the Echtra Nerai[228] or ‘Expedition of Nera’, a preliminary tale in the introduction to the Táin bó Cuailnge or ‘Theft of the Cattle of Cuailnge’; and a passage from the Togail Bruidne dâ Derga, or ‘Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’,[229] there seems[Pg 288] no reasonable doubt whatever about the Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe being a race like what we call spirits. The first text describes how Ailill and Medb in their palace of Cruachan celebrated the feast of Samain (November Eve, a feast of the dead even in pre-Christian times). Two culprits had been executed on the day before, and their bodies, according to the ancient Irish custom, were left hanging from a tree until the night of Samain should have passed; for on that night it was dangerous to touch the bodies of the dead while demons and the people of the Sidhe were at large throughout all Ireland, and mortals found near dead bodies at such a time were in great danger of being taken by these spirit hosts of the Tuatha De Danann. And so on this very night, when thick darkness had settled down, Ailill desired to test the courage of his warriors, and offered his own gold-hilted sword to any young man who would go out and tie a coil of twisted twigs around the leg of one of the bodies suspended from the tree. After many had made the attempt and failed, because unable to brave the legions of demons and fairies, Nera alone succeeded; but his success cost him dear, for he finally fell under the power both of the dead man, round whose legs he had tied the coil, and of an elfin host: with the dead man’s body on his back, Nera was obliged to go to a strange house that the thirst of the dead man might be assuaged therein; and the dead man in drinking scattered ‘the last sip from his lips at the faces of the people that were in the house, so that they all died’. Nera carried back the body; and on returning to Cruachan he saw the fairy hosts going into the cave, ‘for the fairy-mounds of Erinn are always opened about Halloween.’ Nera followed after them until he came to their king in a palace of the Tuatha De Danann, seemingly in the cavern or elsewhere underground; where he remained and was married to one of the fairy women. She it was who revealed to Nera the secret hiding-place, in a mysterious well, of the king’s golden crown, and then betrayed her[Pg 289] whole people by reporting to Nera the plan they had for attacking Ailill’s court on the Halloween to come. Moreover, Nera was permitted by his fairy wife to depart from the síd; and he in taking leave of her asked: ‘How will it be believed of me that I have gone into the síd?’ ‘Take fruits of summer with thee,’ said the woman. ‘Then he took wild garlic with him and primrose and golden fern.’ And on the following November Eve when the síd of Cruachan was again open, ‘the men of Connaught and the black hosts of exile’ under Ailill and Medb plundered it, taking away from it the crown of Briun out of the well. But ‘Nera was left with his people in the síd, and has not come out until now, nor will he come till Doom.’

All of this matter is definitely enough in line with the living Fairy-Faith: there is the same belief expressed as now about November Eve being the time of all times when ghosts, demons, spirits, and fairies are free, and when fairies take mortals and marry them to fairy women; also the beliefs that fairies are living in secret places in hills, in caverns, or under ground—palaces full of treasure and open only on November Eve. In so far as the real fairies, the Sidhe, are concerned, they appear as the rulers of the Feast of the Dead or Samain, as the controllers of all spirits who are then at large; and, allowing for some poetical imagination and much social psychology and anthropomorphism, elements as common in this as in most literary descriptions concerning the Tuatha De Danann, they are faithfully enough presented.

The second text describes how King Conaire, in riding along a road toward Tara, saw in front of him three strange horsemen, three men of the Sidhe:—‘Three red frocks had they, and three red mantles: three red steeds they bestrode, and three red heads of hair were on them. Red were they all, both body and hair and raiment, both steeds and men.’ ‘Who is it that fares before us?’ asked Conaire. ‘It was a taboo of mine for those Three to go before me—the three Reds to the house of Red. Who will follow them and tell them to come towards me in my track?’ ‘I will follow [Pg 290]them,’ says Lé fri flaith, Conaire’s son. ‘He goes after them, lashing his horse, and overtook them not. There was the length of a spearcast between them: but they did not gain upon him and he did not gain upon them.’ All attempts to come up with the red horsemen failed. But at last, before they disappeared, one of the Three said to the king’s son riding so furiously behind them, ‘Lo, my son, great the news. Weary are the steeds we ride. We ride the steeds of Donn Tetscorach (?) from the elfmounds. Though we are alive we are dead. Great are the signs: destruction of life: sating of ravens: feeding of crows, strife of slaughter: wetting of sword-edge, shields with broken bosses in hours after sundown. Lo, my son!’ Then they disappear. When Conaire and his followers heard the message, fear fell upon them, and the king said: ‘All my taboos have seized me to-night, since those Three [Reds] [are the] banished folks (?).’ In this passage we behold three horsemen of the Sidhe banished from their elfmound because guilty of falsehood. Visible for a time, they precede the king and so violate one of his taboos; and then delivering their fearful prophecy they vanish. These three of the Tuatha De Danann, majestic and powerful and weird in their mystic red, are like the warriors of the ‘gentry’ seen by contemporary seers in West Ireland. Though dead, that is in an invisible world like the dead, yet they are living. It seems that in all three of the textual examples already cited, the scribe has emphasized a different element in the unique nature of the Tuatha De Danann. In the Colloquy it is their eternal youth and beauty, in the Echtra Nerai it is their supremacy over ghosts and demons on Samain and their power to steal mortals away at such a time, and in this last their respect for honesty. And in each case their portrayal corresponds to that of the ‘gentry’ and Sidhe by modern Irishmen; so that the old Fairy-Faith and the new combine to prove the People of the God whose mother was Dana to have been and to be a race of beings who are like mortals, but not mortals, who to the objective world are as though dead, yet to the subjective world are fully living and conscious.

[Pg 291]O’Curry says:—‘The term (sídh, pron. shee), as far as we know it, is always applied in old writings to the palaces, courts, halls, or residences of those beings which in ancient Gaedhelic mythology held the place which ghosts, phantoms, and fairies hold in the superstitions of the present day.’[230] In modern Irish tradition, ‘the People of the Sidhe,’ or simply the Sidhe, refer to the beings themselves rather than to their places of habitation. Partly perhaps on account of this popular opinion that the Sidhe are a subterranean race, they are sometimes described as gods of the earth or dei terreni, as in the Book of Armagh; and since it was believed that they, like the modern fairies, control the ripening of crops and the milk-giving of cows, the ancient Irish rendered to them regular worship and sacrifice, just as the Irish of to-day do by setting out food at night for the fairy-folk to eat.

Thus after their conquest, these Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann in retaliation, and perhaps to show their power as agricultural gods, destroyed the wheat and milk of their conquerors, the Sons of Mil, as fairies to-day can do; and the Sons of Mil were constrained to make a treaty with their supreme king, Dagda, who, in Cóir Anmann (§ 150), is himself called an earth-god. Then when the treaty was made the Sons of Mil were once more able to gather wheat in their fields and to drink the milk of their cows;[231] and we can suppose that ever since that time their descendants, who are the people of Ireland, remembering that treaty, have continued to reverence the People of the Goddess Dana by pouring libations of milk to them and by making them offerings of the fruits of the earth.

The Palaces of the Sidhe

The marvellous palaces to which the Tuatha De Danann retired when conquered by the race of Mil were hidden in[Pg 292] the depths of the earth, in hills, or under ridges more or less elevated.[232] At the time of their conquest, Dagda their high king made a distribution of all such palaces in his kingdom. He gave one síd to Lug, son of Ethne, another to Ogme; and for himself retained two—one called Brug na Boinne, or Castle of the Boyne, because it was situated on or near the River Boyne near Tara, and the other called Síd or Brug Maic ind Oc, which means Enchanted Palace or Castle of the Son of the Young. And this Mac ind Oc was Dagda’s own son by the queen Boann, according to some accounts, so that as the name (Son of the Young) signifies, Dagda and Boann, both immortals, both Tuatha De Danann, were necessarily always young, never knowing the touch of disease, or decay, or old age. Not until Christianity gained its psychic triumph at Tara, through the magic of Patrick prevailing against the magic of the Druids—who seem to have stood at that time as mediators between the People of the Goddess Dana and the pagan Irish—did the Tuatha De Danann lose their immortal youthfulness in the eyes of mortals and become subject to death. In the most ancient manuscripts of Ireland the pre-Christian doctrine of the immortality of the divine race ‘persisted intact and without restraint’;[233] but in the Senchus na relec or ‘History of the Cemeteries’, from the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, and in the Lebar gabala or ‘Book of the Conquests’, from the Book of Leinster, it was completely changed by the Christian scribes.[233]

When Dagda thus distributed the underground palaces, Mac ind Oc, or as he was otherwise called Oengus, was absent and hence forgotten. So when he returned, naturally he complained to his father, and the Brug na Boinne, the king’s own residence, was ceded to him for a night and a day, but Oengus maintained that it was for ever. This palace was a most marvellous one: it contained three trees which always bore fruit, a vessel full of excellent drink, and two pigs—one alive and the other nicely cooked ready to eat [Pg 293]at any time; and in this palace no one ever died.[234] In the Colloquy, Caeilte tells of a mountain containing a fairy palace which no man save Finn and six companions, Caeilte being one of these, ever entered. The Fenians, while hunting, were led thither by a fairy woman who had changed her shape to that of a fawn in order to allure them; and the night being wild and snowy they were glad to take shelter therein. Beautiful damsels and their lovers were the inhabitants of the palace; in it there was music and abundance of food and drink; and on its floor stood a chair of crystal.[235] In another fairy palace, the enchanted cave of Keshcorran, Conaran, son of Imidel, a chief of the Tuatha De Danann, had sway; ‘and so soon as he perceived that the hounds’ cry now sounded deviously, he bade his three daughters (that were full of sorcery) to go and take vengeance on Finn for his hunting’[236]—just as nowadays the ‘good people’ take vengeance on one of our race if a fairy domain is violated. Frequently the fairy palace is under a lake, as in the christianized story of the Disappearance of Caenchomrac:—Once when ‘the cleric chanted his psalms, he saw [come] towards him a tall man that emerged out of the loch: from the bottom of the water that is to say.’ This tall man informed the cleric that he came from an under-water monastery, and explained ‘that there should be subaqueous inhabiting by men is with God no harder than that they should dwell in any other place’.[237] In all these ancient literary accounts of the Sidhe-palaces we easily recognize the same sort of palaces as those described to-day by Gaelic peasants as the habitations of the ‘gentry’, or ‘good people’, or ‘people of peace.’ Such habitations are in mountain caverns like those of Ben Bulbin or Knock Ma, or in fairy hills or knolls like the Fairy-Hill at Aberfoyle on which Robert Kirk is believed to have been taken, or beneath lakes. This brings us directly to the way in which the Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann of the olden times took fine-looking young men and maidens.

[Pg 294]

How the Sidhe ‘took’ Mortals

Perhaps one of the earliest and most famous literary accounts of such a taking is that concerning Aedh, son of Eochaid Lethderg son of the King of Leinster, who is represented as contemporary with Patrick.[238] While Aedh was enjoying a game of hurley with his boy companions near the sídh of Liamhain Softsmock, two of the sídh-women, who loved the young prince, very suddenly appeared, and as suddenly took him away with them into a fairy palace and kept him there three years. It happened, however, that he escaped at the end of that time, and, knowing the magical powers of Patrick, went to where the holy man was, and thus explained himself:—‘Against the youths my opponents I (i. e. my side) took seven goals; but at the last one that I took, here come up to me two women clad in green mantles: two daughters of Bodhb derg mac an Daghda, and their names Slad and Mumain. Either of them took me by a hand, and they led me off to a garish brugh; whereby for now three years my people mourn after me, the sídh-folk caring for me ever since, and until last night I got a chance opening to escape from the brugh, when to the number of fifty lads we emerged out of the sídh and forth upon the green. Then it was that I considered the magnitude of that strait in which they of the sídh had had me, and away from the brugh I came running to seek thee, holy Patrick.’ ‘That,’ said the saint, ‘shall be to thee a safeguard, so that neither their power nor their dominion shall any more prevail against thee.’ And so when Patrick had thus made Aedh proof against the power of the fairy-folk, he kept him with him under the disguise of a travelling minstrel until, arriving in Leinster, he restored him to his father the king and to his inheritance: Aedh enters the palace in his minstrel disguise; and in the presence of the royal assembly Patrick commands him: ‘Doff now once for all thy dark capacious hood, and well mayest thou wear thy father’s spear!’ When the lad removed his hood, and none there but recognized him, great [Pg 295]was the surprise. He seemed like one come back from the dead, for long had his heirless father and people mourned for him. ‘By our word,’ exclaimed the assembly in their joyous excitement, ‘it is a good cleric’s gift!’ And the king said: ‘Holy Patrick, seeing that till this day thou hast nourished him and nurtured, let not the Tuatha De Danann’s power any more prevail against the lad.’ And Patrick answered: ‘That death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained is the one that he will have.’ This ancient legend shows clearly that the Tuatha De Danann, or Sidhe, in the time when the scribe wrote the Colloquy were thought of in the same way as now, as able to take beautiful mortals whom they loved, and able to confer upon them fairy immortality which prevented ‘that death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained’.

Mortals, did they will it, could live in the world of the Sidhe for ever, and we shall see this more fully in our study of the Otherworld. But here it will be interesting to learn that, unlike Aedh, whom some perhaps would call a foolish youth, Laeghaire, also a prince, for he was the son of the king of Connaught, entered a dún of the Sidhe, taking fifty other warriors with him; and he and his followers found life in Fairyland so pleasant that they all decided to enjoy it eternally. Accordingly, when they had been there a year, they planned to return to Connaught in order to bid the king and his people a final farewell. They announced their plan, and Fiachna of the Sidhe told them how to accomplish it safely:—‘If ye would come back take with you horses, but by no means dismount from off them’; ‘So it was done: they went their way and came upon a general assembly in which Connaught, as at the year expired, mourned for the aforesaid warrior-band, whom now all at once they perceived above them (i. e. on higher ground). Connaught sprang to meet them, but Laeghaire cried: “Approach us not [to touch us]: ’tis to bid you farewell that we are here!” “Leave me not!” Crimthann, his father, said: “Connaught’s royal power be thine; their silver and their gold, their horses with their bridles, and their[Pg 296] noble women be at thy discretion, only leave me not!” But Laeghaire turned from them and so entered again into the sídh, where with Fiachna he exercises joint kingly rule; nor is he as yet come out of it.’[239]

Hill Visions of Sidhe Women

There are many recorded traditions which represent certain hills as mystical places whereon men are favoured with visions of fairy women. Thus, one day King [Pg 297]Muirchertach came forth to hunt on the border of the Brugh (near Stackallan Bridge, County Meath), and his companions left him alone on his hunting-mound. ‘He had not been there long when he saw a solitary damsel beautifully formed, fair-haired, bright-skinned, with a green mantle about her sitting near him on the turfen mound; and it seemed to him that of womankind he had never beheld her equal in beauty and refinement.’[240] In the Mabinogion of Pwyll, Prince of Dyvet, which seems to be only a Brythonic treatment of an original Gaelic tale, Pwyll seating himself on a mound where any mortal sitting might see a prodigy, saw a fairy woman ride past on a white horse, and she clad in a garment of shining gold. Though he tried to have his servitor on the swiftest horse capture her, ‘There was some magic about the lady that kept her always the same distance ahead, though she appeared to be riding slowly.’ When on the second day Pwyll returned to the mound the fairy woman came riding by as before, and the servitor again gave unsuccessful chase. Pwyll saw her in the same manner on the third day. He thereupon gave chase himself, and when he exclaimed to her, ‘For the sake of the man whom you love, wait for me!’ she stopped; and by mutual arrangement the two agreed to meet and to marry at the end of a year.[241]

The Minstrels Or Musicians of the Sidhe

Not only did the fairy-folk of more ancient times enjoy wonderful palaces full of beauty and riches, and a life of eternal youth, but they also had, even as now, minstrelsy and rare music—music to which that of our own world could not be compared at all; for even Patrick himself said that it would equal the very music of heaven if it were not for ‘a twang of the fairy spell that infests it’.[242] And this is how it was that Patrick heard the fairy music:—As he was travelling through Ireland he once sat down on a grassy[Pg 298] knoll, as he often did in the good old Irish way, with Ulidia’s king and nobles and Caeilte also: ‘Nor were they long there before they saw draw near them a scológ or “non-warrior” that wore a fair green mantle having in it a fibula of silver; a shirt of yellow silk next his skin, over and outside that again a tunic of soft satin, and with a timpán (a sort of harp) of the best slung on his back. “Whence comest thou, scológ?” asked the king. “Out of the sídh of the Daghda’s son Bodhb Derg, out of Ireland’s southern part.” “What moved thee out of the south, and who art thou thyself?” “I am Cascorach, son of Cainchinn that is ollave to the Tuatha De Danann, and am myself the makings of an ollave (i. e. an aspirant to the grade). What started me was the design to acquire knowledge, and information, and lore for recital, and the Fianna’s mighty deeds of valour, from Caeilte son of Ronan.” Then he took his timpán and made for them music and minstrelsy, so that he sent them slumbering off to sleep.’ And Cascorach’s music was pleasing to Patrick, who said of it: ‘Good indeed it were, but for a twang of the fairy spell that infests it; barring which nothing could more nearly than it resemble Heaven’s harmony.’[243] And that very night which followed the day on which the ollave to the Tuatha De Danann came to them was the Eve of Samain. There was also another of these fairy timpán-players called ‘the wondrous elfin man’, ‘Aillén mac Midhna of the Tuatha De Danann, that out of sídh Finnachaidh to the northward used to come to Tara: the manner of his coming being with a musical timpán in his hand, the which whenever any heard he would at once sleep. Then, all being lulled thus, out of his mouth Aillén would emit a blast of fire. It was on the solemn Samain-Day (November Day) he came in every year, played his timpán, and to the fairy music that he made all hands would fall asleep. With his breath he used to blow up the flame and so, during a three-and-twenty years’ spell, yearly burnt up Tara with all her gear.’ And it is said that Finn, finally overcoming the magic of Aillén, slew him.[243]

[Pg 299]Perhaps in the first musician, Cascorach, though he is described as the son of a Tuatha De Danann minstrel, we behold a mortal like one of the many Irish pipers and musicians who used to go, or even go yet, to the fairy-folk to be educated in the musical profession, and then come back as the most marvellous players that ever were in Ireland; though if Cascorach were once a mortal it seems that he has been quite transformed in bodily nature so as to be really one of the Tuatha De Danann himself. But Aillén mac Midhna is undoubtedly one of the mighty ‘gentry’ who could—as we heard from County Sligo—destroy half the human race if they wished. Aillén visits Tara, the old psychic centre both for Ireland’s high-kings and its Druids. He comes as it were against the conquerors of his race, who in their neglectfulness no longer render due worship and sacrifice on the Feast of Samain to the Tuatha De Danann, the gods of the dead, at that time supreme; and then it is that he works his magic against the royal palaces of the kings and Druids on the ancient Hill. And to overcome the magic of Aillén and slay him, that is, make it impossible for him to repeat his annual visits to Tara, it required the might of the great hero Finn, who himself was related to the same Sidhe race, for by a woman of the Tuatha De Danann he had his famous son Ossian (Oisin).[244]

In Gilla dé, who is Manannan mac Lir, the greatest magician of the Tuatha De Danann, disguised as a being who can disappear in the twinkling of an eye whenever he wishes, and reappear unexpectedly as a ‘kern that wore garb of yellow stripes’, we meet with another fairy musician. And to him O’Donnell says:—‘By Heaven’s grace again, since first I heard the fame of them that within the hills and under the earth beneath us make the fairy music, … music sweeter than thy strains I have never heard; thou art in sooth a most melodious rogue!’[245] And again it is said of [Pg 300]him:—‘Then the gilla decair taking a harp played music so sweet … and the king after a momentary glance at his own musicians never knew which way he went from him.’[246]

Social Organization and Warfare among the Sidhe

So far, we have seen only the happy side of the life of the Sidhe-folk—their palaces and pleasures and music; but there was a more human (or anthropomorphic) side to their nature in which they wage war on one another, and have their matrimonial troubles even as we moderns. And we turn now to examine this other side of their life, to behold the Sidhe as a warlike race; and as we do so let us remember that the ‘gentry’ in the Ben Bulbin country and in all Ireland, and the people of Finvara in Knock Ma, and also the invisible races of California, are likewise described as given to war and mighty feats of arms.

The invisible Irish races have always had a very distinct social organization, so distinct in fact that Ireland can be divided according to its fairy kings and fairy queens and their territories even now;[247] and no doubt we see in this how the ancient Irish anthropomorphically projected into an animistic belief their own social conditions and racial characteristics. And this social organization and territorial division ought to be understood before we discuss the social troubles and consequent wars of the Sidhe-folk. For example in Munster Bodb was king and his enchanted palace was called the Síd of the Men of Femen;[248] and we already know about the over-king Dagda and his Boyne palace near Tara. In more modern times, especially in popular fairy-traditions, Eevil or Eevinn (Aoibhill or Aoibhinn) of the Craig Liath or Grey Rock is a queen of the Munster fairies;[249] and Finvara is king of the Connaught fairies. There are also the Irish fairy-queens [Pg 301]Cleeona (Cliodhna, or in an earlier form Clidna [cf. p. 356]) and Aine

We are now prepared to see the Tuatha De Danann in their domestic troubles and wars; and the following story is as interesting as any, for in it Dagda himself is the chief actor. Once when his own son Oengus fell sick of a love malady, King Dagda, who ruled all the Sidhe-folk in Ireland, joined forces with Ailill and Medb in order to compel Ethal Anbual to deliver up his beautiful daughter Caer whom Oengus loved. When Ethal Anbual’s palace had been stormed and Ethal Anbual reduced to submission, he declared he had no power over his daughter Caer, for on the first of November each year, he said, she changed to a swan, or from a swan to a maiden again. ‘The first of November next,’ he added, ‘my daughter will be under the form of a swan, near the Loch bel Draccon. Marvellous birds will be seen there: my daughter will be surrounded by a hundred and fifty other swans.’ When the November Day arrived, Oengus went to the lake, and, seeing the swans and recognizing Caer, plunged into the water and instantly became a swan with her. While under the form of swans, Oengus and Caer went together to the Boyne palace of the king Dagda, his father, and remained there; and their singing was so sweet that all who heard it slept three days and three nights.[250] In this story, new elements in the nature of the Sidhe appear, though like modern ones: the Sidhe are able to assume other forms than their own, are subject to enchantments like mortals; and when under the form of swans are in some perhaps superficial aspects like the swan-maidens in stories which are world-wide, and their swan-song has the same sweetness and magical effect as in other countries.[251]

In the Rennes Dinnshenchas there is a tale about a war among the ‘men of the Elfmounds’ over ‘two lovable maidens who dwelt in the elfmound’, and when they delivered the battle ‘they all shaped themselves into the [Pg 302]shapes of deer’.[252] Midir’s sons under Donn mac Midir, in rebellion against the Daghda’s son Bodh Derg, fled away to an obscure sídh, where in yearly battle they met the hosts of the other Tuatha De Danann under Bodh Derg; and it was into this sídh or fairy palace on the very eve before the annual contest that Finn and his six companions were enticed by the fairy woman in the form of a fawn, to secure their aid.[253] And in another tale, Laeghaire, son of the king of Connaught, with fifty warriors, plunged into a lake to the fairy world beneath it, in order to assist the fairy man, who came thence to them, to recover his wife stolen by a rival.[253]

The Sidhe as War-Goddesses or the Badb

It is in the form of birds that certain of the Tuatha De Danann appear as war-goddesses and directors of battle,[254]—and we learn from one of our witnesses (p. 46) that the ‘gentry’ or modern Sidhe-folk take sides even now in a great war, like that between Japan and Russia. It is in their relation to the hero Cuchulainn that one can best study the People of the Goddess Dana in their rôle as controllers of human war. In the greatest of the Irish epics, the Taín Bó Cuailnge, where Cuchulainn is under their influence, these war-goddesses are called Badb[255] (or Bodb) which here seems to be a collective term for Neman, Macha, and Morrigu (or Morrigan)[256]—each of whom exercises a particular supernatural power. Neman appears as the confounder of armies, so that friendly bands, bereft of their senses by her, slaughter one another; Macha is a fury that riots and revels among [Pg 303]the slain; while Morrigu, the greatest of the three, by her presence infuses superhuman valour into Cuchulainn, nerves him for the cast, and guides the course of his unerring spear. And the Tuatha De Danann in infusing this valour into the great hero show themselves—as we already know them to be on Samain Eve—the rulers of all sorts of demons of the air and awful spirits:—In the Book of Leinster (fol. 57, B 2) it is recorded that ‘the satyrs, and sprites, and maniacs of the valleys, and demons of the air, shouted about him, for the Tuatha De Danann were wont to impart their valour to him, in order that he might be more feared, more dreaded, more terrible, in every battle and battle-field, in every combat and conflict, into which he went.’

The Battles of Moytura seem in most ways to be nothing more than the traditional record of a long warfare to determine the future spiritual control of Ireland, carried on between two diametrically opposed orders of invisible beings, the Tuatha De Danann representing the gods of light and good and the Fomorians representing the gods of darkness and evil. It is said that after the second of these battles ‘The Morrigu, daughter of Ernmas (the Irish war-goddess), proceeded to proclaim that battle and the mighty victory which had taken place, to the royal heights of Ireland and to its fairy host and its chief waters and its river-mouths’.[257] For good had prevailed over evil, and it was settled that all Ireland should for ever afterwards be a sacred country ruled over by the People of the Goddess Dana and the Sons of Mil jointly. So that here we see the Tuatha De Danann with their war-goddess fighting their own battles in which human beings play no part.

It is interesting to observe that this Irish war-goddess, the bodb or badb, considered of old to be one of the Tuatha De Danann, has survived to our own day in the fairy-lore of the chief Celtic countries. In Ireland the survival is best seen in the popular and still almost general belief among the peasantry that the fairies often exercise their magical powers under the form of royston-crows; and for this[Pg 304] reason these birds are always greatly dreaded and avoided. The resting of one of them on a peasant’s cottage may signify many things, but often it means the death of one of the family or some great misfortune, the bird in such a case playing the part of a bean-sidhe (banshee). And this folk-belief finds its echo in the recorded tales of Wales, Scotland, and Brittany. In the Mabinogi, ‘Dream of Rhonabwy,’ Owain, prince of Rheged and a contemporary of Arthur, has a wonderful crow which always secures him victory in battle by the aid of three hundred other crows under its leadership. In Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands the fairies very often exercise their power in the form of the common hoody crow; and in Brittany there is a folk-tale entitled ‘Les Compagnons’[258] in which the chief actor is a fairy under the form of a magpie who lives in a royal forest just outside Rennes.[259]

W. M. Hennessy has shown that the word bodb or badb, aspirated bodhbh or badhbh (pronounced bov or bav), originally signified rage, fury, or violence, and ultimately implied a witch, fairy, or goddess; and that as the memory of this Irish goddess of war survives in folk-lore, her emblem is the well-known scald-crow, or royston-crow.[260] By referring to Peter O’Connell’s Irish Dictionary we are able to confirm this popular belief which identifies the battle-fairies with [Pg 305]the royston-crow, and to discover that there is a definite relationship or even identification between the Badb and the Bean-sidhe or banshee, as there is in modern Irish folk-lore between the royston-crow and the fairy who announces a death. Badb-catha is made to equal ‘Fionog, a royston-crow, a squall crow’; Badb is defined as a ‘bean-sidhe, a female fairy, phantom, or spectre, supposed to be attached to certain families, and to appear sometimes in the form of squall-crows, or royston-crows’; and the Badb in the three-fold aspect is thus explained: ‘Macha, i. e. a royston-crow; Morrighain, i. e. the great fairy; Neamhan, i. e. Badb catha nó feannóg; a badb catha, or royston-crow.’ Similar explanations are given by other glossarists, and thus the evidence of etymological scholarship as well as that of folk-lore support the Psychological Theory.

The Sidhe in the Battle of Clontarf, a. d. 1014

The People of the Goddess Dana played an important part in human warfare even so late as the Battle of Clontarf, fought near Dublin, April 23, 1014; and at that time fairy women and phantom-hosts were to the Irish unquestionable existences, as real as ordinary men and women. It is recorded in the manuscript story of the battle, of which numerous copies exist, that the fairy woman Aoibheall [261] came to Dunlang O’Hartigan before the battle and begged him not to fight, promising him life and happiness for two hundred years if he would put off fighting for a single day; but the patriotic Irishman expressed his decision to fight for Ireland, and then the fairy woman foretold how he and his friend Murrough, and Brian and Conaing and all the nobles of Erin and even his own son Turlough, were fated to fall in the conflict.

On the eve of the battle, Dunlang comes to his friend Murrough directly from the fairy woman; and Murrough [Pg 306]upon seeing him reproaches him for his absence in these words:—‘Great must be the love and attachment of some woman for thee which has induced thee to abandon me.’ ‘Alas O King,’ answered Dunlang, ‘the delight which I have abandoned for thee is greater, if thou didst but know it, namely, life without death, without cold, without thirst, without hunger, without decay, beyond any delight of the delights of the earth to me, until the judgement, and heaven after the judgement; and if I had not pledged my word to thee I would not have come here; and, moreover, it is fated for me to die on the day that thou shalt die.’ When Murrough has heard this terrible message, the prophecy of his own death in the battle, despondency seizes him; and then it is that he declares that he for Ireland like Dunlang for honour has also sacrificed the opportunity of entering and living in that wonderful Land of Eternal Youth:—‘Often was I offered in hills, and in fairy mansions, this world (the fairy world) and these gifts, but I never abandoned for one night my country nor mine inheritance for them.’

And thus is described the meeting of the two armies at Clontarf, and the demons of the air and the phantoms, and all the hosts of the invisible world who were assembled to scatter confusion and to revel in the bloodshed, and how above them in supremacy rose the Badb:—‘It will be one of the wonders of the day of judgement to relate the description of this tremendous onset. There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, mad, inexorable, furious, dark, lacerating, merciless, combative, contentious badb, which was shrieking and fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and sprites, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches, and goblins, and owls, and destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the demoniac phantom host; and they were inciting and sustaining valour and battle with them.’[263] It is said of Murrough (Murchadh) as he entered the thick of the fight and prepared to assail the [Pg 307]foreign invaders, the Danes, when they had repulsed the Dal-Cais, that ‘he was seized with a boiling terrible anger, an excessive elevation and greatness of spirit and mind. A bird of valour and championship rose in him, and fluttered over his head and on his breath’.[264]

Conclusion

The recorded or manuscript Fairy-Faith of the Gaels corresponds in all essentials with the living Gaelic Fairy-Faith: the Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe, the ‘Gentry’, the ‘Good People’, and the ‘People of Peace’ are described as a race of invisible divine beings eternally young and unfading. They inhabit fairy palaces, enjoy rare feasts and love-making, and have their own music and minstrelsy. They are essentially majestic in their nature; they wage war in their own invisible realm against other of its inhabitants like the ancient Fomorians; they frequently direct human warfare or nerve the arm of a great hero like Cuchulainn; and demons of the air, spirit hosts, and awful unseen creatures obey them. Mythologically they are gods of light and good, able to control natural phenomena so as to make harvests come forth abundantly or not at all. But they are not such mythological beings as we read about in scholarly dissertations on mythology, dissertations so learned in their curious and unreasonable and often unintelligible hypotheses about the workings of the mind among primitive men. The way in which social psychology has deeply affected all such animistic beliefs was pointed out above in chapter iii. In chapter xi, entitled Science and Fairies, our position with respect to the essential nature of the fairy races will be made clear.

SECTION II

BRYTHONIC DIVINITIES AND THE BRYTHONIC FAIRY-FAITH [265]

‘On the one hand we have the man Arthur, whose position we have tried to define, and on the other a greater Arthur, a more colossal figure, of which we have, so to speak, but a torso rescued from the wreck of the Celtic pantheon.’—The Right Hon. Sir John Rhŷs.

The god Arthur and the hero Arthur—Sevenfold evidence to show Arthur as an incarnate fairy king—Lancelot the foster-son of a fairy woman—Galahad the offspring of Lancelot and the fairy woman Elayne—Arthur as a fairy king in Kulhwch and Olwen—Gwynn ab Nudd—Arthur like Dagda, and like Osiris—Brythonic fairy-romances: their evolution and antiquity—Arthur in Nennius, Geoffrey, Wace, and in Layamon—Cambrensis’ Otherworld tale—Norman-French writers of twelfth and thirteenth centuries—Romans d’Aventure and Romans Bretons—Origins of the ‘Matter of Britain’—Fairy-romance episodes in Welsh literature—Brythonic origins.

Arthur and Arthurian Mythology

As we have just considered the Gaelic Divinities in their character as the Fairy-Folk of popular Gaelic tradition, so now we proceed to consider the Brythonic Divinities in the same way, beginning with the greatest of them all, Arthur. Even a superficial acquaintance with the Arthurian Legend [Pg 309]shows how impossible it is to place upon it any one interpretation to the exclusion of other interpretations, for in one aspect Arthur is a Brythonic divinity and in another a sixth-century Brythonic chieftain. But the explanation of this double aspect seems easy enough when we regard the historical Arthur as a great hero, who, exactly as in so many parallel cases of national hero-worship, came—within a comparatively short time—to be enshrined in the imagination of the patriotic Brythons with all the attributes anciently belonging to a great Celtic god called Arthur.[266] The hero and the god were first confused, and then identified,[267] and hence arose that wonderful body of romance which we call Arthurian, and which has become the glory of English literature.

Arthur in the character of a culture hero,[268] with god-like powers to instruct mortals in wisdom, and, also, as a being in some way related to the sun—as a sun-god perhaps—can well be considered the human-divine institutor of the mystic brotherhood known as the Round Table. We ought, probably, to consider Arthur, like Cuchulainn, as a god incarnate in a human body for the purpose of educating the race of men; and thus, while living as a man, related definitely and, apparently, consciously to the invisible gods or fairy-folk. Among the Aztecs and Peruvians in the New World, there was a widespread belief that great heroes who had once been men have now their celestial abode in the sun, and from time to time reincarnate to become teachers of [Pg 310]their less developed brethren of our own race; and a belief of the same character existed among the Egyptians and other peoples of the Old World, including the Celts. It will be further shown, in our study of the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, that anciently among the Gaels and Brythons such heroes as Cuchulainn and Arthur were also considered reincarnate sun-divinities. As a being related to the sun, as a sun-god, Arthur is like Osiris, the Great Being, who with his brotherhood of great heroes and god-companions enters daily the underworld or Hades to battle against the demons and forces of evil,[269] even as the Tuatha De Danann battled against the Fomors. And the most important things in the traditions of the great Brythonic hero connect him directly with this strange world of subjectivity. First of all, his own father, Uthr Bendragon,[270] was a king of Hades, so that Arthur himself, being his child, is a direct descendant of this Otherworld. Second, the Arthurian Legend traces the origin of the Round Table back to Arthur’s father, Hades being ‘the realm whence all culture was fabled to have been derived’.[271] Third, the name of Arthur’s wife, Gwenhwyvar, resolves itself into White Phantom or White Apparition, in harmony with Arthur’s line of descent from the region of phantoms and apparitions and fairy-folk. Thus:—Gwenhwyvar or Gwenhwyfar equals Gwen or Gwenn, a Brythonic word meaning white, and hwyvar, a word not found in the Brythonic dialects, but undoubtedly cognate with the Irish word siabhradh, a fairy, equal to siabhra, siabrae, siabur, a fairy, or ghost, the Welsh and the Irish word going back to the form *seibaro.[272] Hence the name of Arthur’s wife means the white ghost or white phantom, quite in keeping with the nature of the Tuatha De Danann and that of the fairy-folk of Wales or Tylwyth Teg—the ‘Fair Family’.

Fourth, as a link in the chain of evidence connecting [Pg 311]Arthur with the invisible world where the Fairy-People live, his own sister is called Morgan le Fay in the romances,[273] and is thus definitely one of the fairy women who, according to tradition, are inhabitants of the Celtic Otherworld sometimes known as Avalon. Fifth, in the Welsh Triads,[274] Llacheu, the son of Arthur and Gwenhwyvar, is credited with clairvoyant vision, like the fairy-folk, so that he understands the secret nature of all solid and material things; and ‘the story of his death as given in the second part of the Welsh version of the Grail, makes him hardly human at all.’[275] Sixth, the name of Melwas, the abductor of Arthur’s wife, is shown by Sir John Rhŷs to mean a prince-youth or a princely youth, and the same authority considers it probable that, as such, Melwas or Maelwas was a being endowed with eternal youth,—even as Midir, the King of the Tuatha De Danann, who though a thousand years old appeared handsome and youthful. So it seems that the abduction of Gwenhwyfar was really a fairy abduction, such as we read about in the domestic troubles of the Irish fairy-folk, on a level with the abduction of Etain by her Otherworld husband Midir.[276] And in keeping with this superhuman character of the abductor of the White Phantom or Fairy, Chrétien de Troyes, in his metrical romance Le Conte de la Charrette, describes the realm of which Melwas was lord as a place whence no traveller returns.[277] As further proof that the realm of Melwas was meant by Chrétien to be the subjective world, where the god-like Tuatha De Danann, the Tylwyth Teg, and the shades of the dead equally exist, it is said that access to it was by two narrow bridges; ‘one called li Ponz Evages or the Water Bridge, because it was a narrow passage a foot and a half wide and as much in height, with water above and below it as well as on both sides’; the other [Pg 312]li Ponz de l’Espée or the Sword Bridge, because it consisted of the edge of a sword two lances in length.[278] The first bridge, considered less perilous than the other, was chosen by Gauvain (Gwalchmei), when with Lancelot he was seeking to rescue Gwenhwyfar; but he failed to cross it. Lancelot with great trouble crossed the second. In many mythologies and in world-wide folk-tales there is a narrow bridge or bridges leading to the realm of the dead. Even Mohammed in the Koran declares it necessary to cross a bridge as thin as a hair, if one would enter Paradise. And in living folk-lore in Celtic countries, as we found among the Irish peasantry, the crossing of a bridge or stream of water when pursued by fairies or phantoms is a guarantee of protection. There is always the mystic water between the realm of the living and the realm of subjectivity.[279] In ancient Egypt there was always the last voyage begun on the sacred Nile; and in all classical literature Pluto’s realm is entered by crossing a dark, deep river,—the river of forgetfulness between physical consciousness and spiritual consciousness. Burns has expressed this belief in its popular form in his Tam O’Shanter. And in our Arthurian parallel there is a clear enough relation between the beings inhabiting the invisible realm and the Brythonic heroes and gods. How striking, too, as Gaston Paris has pointed out, is the similarity between Melwas’ capturing Gwenhwyvar as she was in the woods a-maying, and the rape of Proserpine by Pluto, the god of Hades, while she was collecting flowers in the fields.[280]

A curious matter in connexion with this episode of Gwenhwyvar’s abduction should claim our attention. Malory relates[281] that when Queen Guenever advised her knights of the Table Round that on the morrow (May Day, when fairies have special powers) she would go on maying, she warned them all to be well-horsed and dressed in green. This was the colour that nearly all the fairy-folk of Britain and [Pg 313]Ireland wear. It symbolizes, as many ancient mystical writings declare, eternal youth, and resurrection or re-birth, as in nature during the springtime, when all vegetation after its death-sleep of winter springs into new life.[282] In the Myvyrian Archaiology,[283] Arthur when he has reached the realm of Melwas speaks with Gwenhwyvar,[284] he being [Pg 314]on a black horse and she on a green one:—‘Green is my steed of the tint of the leaves.’ Arthur’s black horse—black perhaps signifying the dead to whose realm he has gone—being proof against all water, may have been, therefore, proof against the inhabitants of the world of shades and against fairies:—

Black is my steed and brave beneath me,
No water will make him fear,
And no man will make him swerve.

The fairy colour, in different works and among different authors differing both in time and country, continues to attach itself to the abduction episode. Thus, in the fourteenth century the poet D. ab Gwilym alludes to Melwas himself as having a cloak of green:—‘The sleep of Melwas beneath (or in) the green cloak.’ Sir John Rhŷs, who makes this translation, observes that another reading still of y glas glog resolves it into a green bower to which Melwas took Gwenhwyvar.[285] In any case, the reference is significant, and goes far, in combination with the other references, to represent the White Phantom or Fairy and her lover Melwas as beings of a race like the Irish Sidhe or People of the Goddess Dana. And though by no means exhausting all examples tending to prove this point, we pass on to the seventh and most important of our links in the sequence of evidence, the carrying of Arthur to Avalon in a fairy ship by fairy women.

From the first, Arthur was under superhuman guidance and protection. Merlin the magician, born of a spirit or daemon, claimed Arthur before birth and became his teacher afterwards. From the mysterious Lady of the Lake, Arthur received his magic sword Excalibur,[286] and to her returned it, through Sir Bedivere. During all his time on earth the ‘lady [Pg 315]of the lake that was always friendly to King Arthur’[287] watched over him; and once when she saw him in great danger, like the Irish Morrigu who presided over the career of Cuchulainn, she sought to save him, and with the help of Sir Tristram succeeded.[287] The passing of Arthur to Avalon or Faerie seems to be a return to his own native realm of subjectivity. His own sister was with him in the ship, for she was of the invisible country too.[288] And another of his companions on his voyage from the visible to the invisible was his life-guardian Nimue, the lady of the lake. Merlin could not be of the company, for he was already in Faerie with the Fay Vivian. Behold the passing of Arthur as Malory describes it:—‘… thus was he led away in a ship wherein were three queens; that one was King Arthur’s sister, Queen Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen of Northgalis; the third was the Queen of the Waste Lands. Also there was Nimue, the chief lady of the lake, that had wedded Pelleas the good knight; and this lady had done much for King Arthur, for she would never suffer Sir Pelleas to be in no place where he should be in danger of his life.’[289] Concerning the great Arthur’s return from Avalon we shall speak in the chapter dealing with Re-birth. And we pass now from Arthur and his Brotherhood of gods and fairy-folk to Lancelot and his son Galahad—the two chief knights in the Arthurian Romance.

According to one of the earliest accounts we have of Lancelot, the German poem by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, as analysed by Gaston Paris, he was the son of King Pant and Queen Clarine of Genewis.[290] In consequence of the hatred [Pg 316]of their subjects the royal pair were forced to flee when Lancelot was only a year old. During the flight, the king, mortally wounded, died; and just as the queen was about to be taken captive, a fairy rising in a cloud of mist carried away the infant Lancelot from where his parents had placed him under a tree. The fairy took him to her abode on an island in the midst of the sea, from whence she derived her title of Lady of the Lake, and he, as her adopted son, the name of Lancelot du Lac; and her island-world was called the Land of Maidens. Having lived in that world of Faerie so long, it was only natural that Lancelot should have grown up more like one of its fair-folk than like a mortal. No doubt it was on account of his half-supernatural nature that he fell in love with the White Phantom, Gwenhwyvar, the wife of the king who had power to enter Hades and return again to the land of the living. Who better than Lancelot could have rescued Arthur’s queen? No one else in the court was so well fitted for the task. And it was he who was able to cross one of the magic bridges into the realm of Melwas, the Otherworld, while Gauvain (in the English form, Gawayne) failed.

Malory’s narrative records how Lancelot, while suffering from the malady of madness caused by Gwenhwyvar’s jealous expulsion of Elayne his fairy-sweetheart,—quite a parallel case to that of Cuchulainn when his wife Emer expelled his fairy-mistress Fand,—fought against a wild boar and was terribly wounded, and how afterwards he was nursed by his own Elayne in Fairyland, and healed and restored to his right mind by the Sangreal. Then Sir Ector and Sir Perceval found him there in the Joyous Isle enjoying the companionship of Elayne, where he had been many years, and from that world of Faerie induced him to return to Arthur’s court. And, finally, comes the most important element of all to show how closely related Lancelot is with the fairy world and its people, and how inseparable from that invisible realm another of the fundamental elements in the life of Arthur is—the Quest of the Holy Grail, and the story of Galahad, who of all the knights was pure and good [Pg 317]enough to behold the Sacred Vessel, and who was the offspring of the foster-son of the Lady of the Lake and the fairy woman Elayne.[291]

In the strange old Welsh tale of Kulhwch and Olwen we find Arthur and his knights even more closely identified with the fairy realm than in Malory and the Norman-French writers; and this is important, because the ancient tale is, as scholars think, probably much freer from foreign influences and re-working than the better-known romances of Arthur, and therefore more in accord with genuine Celtic beliefs and folk-lore, as we shall quickly see. The court of King Arthur to which the youth Kulhwch goes seeking aid in his enterprise seems in some ways—though the parallel is not complete enough to be emphasized—to be a more artistic, because literary, picture of that fairy court which the Celtic peasant locates under mountains, in caverns, in hills, and in knolls, a court quite comparable to that of the Irish Sidhe-folk or Tuatha De Danann. Arthur is represented in the midst of a brilliant life where, as in the fairy palaces, there is much feasting; and Kulhwch being invited to the feasting says, ‘I came not here to consume meat and drink.’

And behold what sort of personages from that court Kulhwch has pledged to him, so that by their supernatural assistance he may obtain Olwen, herself perhaps a fairy held under fairy enchantment [292]: the sons of Gwawrddur Kyrvach, [Pg 318]whom Arthur had power to call from the confines of hell; Morvran the son of Tegid, who, because of his ugliness, was thought to be a demon; Sandde Bryd Angel, who was so beautiful that mortals thought him a ministering angel; Henbedestyr, with whom no one could keep pace ‘either on horseback, or on foot’, and who therefore seems to be a spirit of the air; Henwas Adeinawg, with whom ‘no four-footed beast could run the distance of an acre, much less go beyond it’; Sgilti Yscawndroed, who must have been another spirit or fairy, for ‘when he intended to go on a message for his Lord (Arthur, who is like a Tuatha De Danann king), he never sought to find a path, but knowing whither he was to go, if his way lay through a wood he went along the tops of the trees’, and ‘during his whole life, a blade of reed-grass bent not beneath his feet, much less did one ever break, so lightly did he tread’; Gwallgoyc, who ‘when he came to a town, though there were three hundred houses in it, if he wanted anything, he would not let sleep come to the eyes of any whilst he remained there’; Osla Gyllellvawr, who bore a short broad dagger, and ‘when Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek for a narrow place where they might pass the water, and would lay the sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would form a bridge sufficient for the armies of the three Islands of Britain, and of the three islands adjacent, with their spoil.’ It seems very evident that this is the magic bridge, so often typified by a sword or dagger, which connects the world invisible with our own, and over which all shades and spirits pass freely to and fro. In this case we think Arthur is very clearly a ruler of the spirit realm, for, like the great Tuatha De Danann king Dagda, he can command its fairy-like inhabitants, and his army is an army of spirits or fairies. The unknown author of Kulhwch, like Spenser in modern times in his Faerie Queene, seems to have made the Island of Britain the realm of Faerie—the Celtic Otherworld—and Arthur its king. But let us take a look at more of the men pledged to [Pg 319]Kulhwch from among Arthur’s followers: Clust the son of Clustveinad, who possessed clairaudient faculties of so extraordinary a kind that ‘though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her nest in the morning’; and the wonderful Kai, who could live nine days and nine nights under water, for his breath lasted this long, and he could exist the same length of time without sleep. ‘A wound from Kai’s sword no physician could heal.’ And at will he was as tall as the highest tree in the forest. ‘And he had another peculiarity: so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire.’

Yet besides all these strange knights, Arthur commanded a being who is without any reasonable doubt a god or ruler of the subjective realm—‘Gwynn ab Nudd, whom God has placed over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy the present race. He will never be spared thence.’ Whatever each one of us may think of this wonderful assembly of warriors and heroes who recognized in Arthur their chief, they are certainly not beings of the ordinary type,—in fact they seem not of this world, but of that hidden land to which we all shall one day journey.[293] But to avoid too much conjecture and to speak with a degree of scientific exactness as to how Arthur and these companions of his are to be considered, let us undertake a brief investigation into the mythological character and nature of the chief one of them next to the great hero—Gwynn ab Nudd. Professor J. Loth has said that ‘nothing shows better the evolution of mythological personages than the history of Gwynn’;[294] and in Irish we have the equivalent form of Nudd in the name Nuada—famous for having had a hand [Pg 320]of silver; and Nuada of the Silver Hand was a king of the Tuatha De Danann. The same authority thus describes Gwynn, the son of Nudd:—‘Gwynn, like his father Nudd, is an ancient god of the Britons and of the Gaels. Christian priests have made of him a demon. The people persisted in regarding him as a powerful and rich king, the sovereign of supernatural beings.’[295] And referring to Gwynn, Professor Loth in his early edition of Kulhwch says:—‘Our author has had an original idea: he has left him in hell, to which place Christianity had made him descend, but for a motive which does him the greatest honour: God has given him the strength of demons to control them and to prevent them from destroying the present race of men: he is indispensable down there.’[295] Lady Guest calls Gwynn the King of Faerie,[296] the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg or ‘Family of Beauty’, who are always joyful and well-disposed toward mortals; and also the ruler of the Elves (Welsh Ellyllon), a goblin race who take special delight in misleading travellers and in playing mischievous tricks on men. It is even said that Gwynn himself is given to indulging in the same mischievous amusements as his elvish subjects.

The evidence now set forth seems to suggest clearly and even definitely that Arthur in his true nature is a god of the subjective world, a ruler of ghosts, demons, and demon rulers, and fairies; that the people of his court are more like the Irish Sidhe-folk than like mortals; and that as a great king he is comparable to Dagda the over-king of all the Tuatha De Danann. Arthur and Osiris, two culture heroes and sun-gods, as we suggested at first, are strikingly parallel. Osiris came from the Otherworld to this one, became the first Divine Ruler and Culture Hero of Egypt, and then returned to the Otherworld, where he is now a king. Arthur’s father was a ruler in the Otherworld, and Arthur evidently came from there to be the Supreme Champion of the Brythons, and then returned to that realm whence he took his origin, a realm which poets called Avalon. The passing of Arthur seems mystically to represent the sunset over the Western Ocean: Arthur disappears beneath the horizon into the Lower World which is also the Halls of Osiris, wherein Osiris journeys between sunset and sunrise, between death and re-birth. Merlin found the infant Arthur floating on the waves: the sun rising across the waters is this birth of Arthur, the birth of Osiris. In the chapter on Re-birth, evidence will be offered to show that as a culture hero Arthur is to be regarded as a sun-god incarnate in a human body to teach the Brythons arts and sciences and hidden things—even as Prometheus and Zeus are said to have come to earth to teach the Greeks; and that as a sixth-century warrior, Arthur, in accordance with the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, is an ancient Brythonic hero reincarnate.

Reference: The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries

Author: W. Y. Evans Wentz

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Tales of the Trionous Galaxy: The Educators war

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Write up on searching for eden

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Literature Review

Garden of Eden

What the next world is, however, is far from clear. The rabbis use the term Olam Ha-Ba to refer to a heaven-like afterlife as well as to the messianic era or the age of resurrection, and it is often difficult to know which one is being referred to. When the Talmud does speak of Olam Ha-Ba in connection to the afterlife, it often uses it interchangeably with the term Gan Eden (“the Garden of Eden”), referring to a heavenly realm where souls reside after physical death.

The use of the term Gan Eden to describe “heaven” suggests that the rabbis conceived of the afterlife as a return to the blissful existence of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the “fall.” It is generally believed that in Gan Eden the human soul exists in a disembodied state until the time of bodily resurrection in the days of the Messiah.

One interesting talmudic story, in which the World to Come almost certainly refers to a heavenly afterlife, tells of Rabbi Joseph, the son of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, who dies and returns back to life.

“His father asked him, ‘What did you see?’ He replied, ‘I beheld a world the reverse of this one; those who are on top here were below there, and vice versa.’ He [Joshua ben Levi] said to him, ‘My son, you have seen a corrected world.’”

In the kabbalistic (Jewish mystical) tradition, there is much discussion about the voyages of the human soul to the Garden of Eden and other heavenly realms during one’s life on earth. In the Zohar, the greatest of the medieval mystical works, there are many stories about the soul-ascents of various members of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai’s mystical brotherhood. Most often, these journeys take place at night, while the body is at rest (see, for example, Zohar I: Parashat Vayehi, 217b-218b).

Gehinnom: A Jewish Hell

Only truly righteous souls ascend directly to the Garden of Eden, say the sages. The average person descends to a place of punishment and/or purification, generally referred to as Gehinnom.

The name is taken from a valley (Gei Hinnom) just south of Jerusalem, once used for child sacrifice by the pagan nations of Canaan (II Kings 23:10). Some view Gehinnom as a place of torture and punishment, fire and brimstone. Others imagine it less harshly, as a place where one reviews the actions of his/her life and repents for past misdeeds.

The soul’s sentence in Gehinnom is usually limited to a 12-month period of purgation before it takes its place in Olam Ha-Ba (MishnahEduyot 2:9, Shabbat 33a). This 12-month limit is reflected in the yearlong mourning cycle and the recitation of the Kaddish (the memorial prayer for the dead).

Only the utterly wicked do not ascend to the Garden of Eden at the end of this year. Sources differ on what happens to these souls at the end of their initial time of purgation. Some say that the wicked are utterly destroyed and cease to exist, while others believe in eternal damnation (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Law of Repentance, 3:5-6).

RING OF VESSELS

In Kabbalah, Adam and Eve are viewed as symbols of male and female energy, and as a metaphor for the “primordial Vessel” whose existence came before creation, thus encompassing all the souls of humanity to come.⁶⁸ The presence of the Serpent, considered a fragmenting force, was necessary for creation; otherwise, all would have remained united with God.⁶⁹ This gave man the opportunity to earn the Light on his own.⁷⁰

One of the hidden meanings in the creation story, according to Kabbalah, is that there are two gardens of Eden—one above, and one below—and reuniting these two gardens is the goal of humankind.⁷¹ Yehuda Berg believes that the forbidden fruit was a sexual act between Eve and the Serpent.⁷² Matt interprets Adam’s sin as driving out the Shekhinah by eating only from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and not from the Tree of Life, thus separating the Shekhinah from her “husband,” Tiferet, and separating consciousness from unconsciousness.⁷³ This act caused Adam and Eve to lose their garments of light and fall into a lower physical form, becoming clothed with garments of animal skin.⁷⁴

Philip Berg’s interpretation of the fall is that Adam and Eve chose with good intentions to have more Light, since this is what the Serpent offered. Their choice was wrong, but because the Serpent’s temptation enhanced the difficulty of their choice, it was also worthy.⁷⁵ This sounds contradictory, but Berg explains that evil comes from God and serves the Creator. Cooper says that everything, including evil, has a divine nature.⁷⁶ Adam and Eve took a second bite of the fruit, done out of self-serving motives, thus short-circuiting their ability to receive the fullness of the Creator’s Light and moving them back to the material level with a knowledge of death and evil.⁷⁷ God’s command that Adam must now work the land was not literal; rather, it meant that he must “rebuild the Vessel of [himself] through [his] own work in the world.”⁷⁸

The Tree of Life, Kabbalah teaches, is a fountain of God’s light, flowing ever downward. This was free flowing in the garden of Eden, but humankind has disrupted this flow and is in shattered vessels, which it must rebuild on its own. The garden must be regained.

IN THE GARDEN: THE SHATTERING OF VESSELS

Reference:https://www.equip.org/articles/kabbalah-getting-back-to-the-garden/

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