[muglo] Re: Fwd: MUGLO Meeting Sponsorship?

Hawk <taylorc547@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> What's Crispin? Jim
> 

------------------------------
 
It's the feast day honouring a couple of early Christian martyrs, Hawk.
Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinius were Roman brothers who went off to
Gaul to convert the heathen and got themselves killed for their
trouble, some time in the third century CE. It falls on Oct. 25, but
"Crispin" is also sometimes used in England as a jokey reference to
Christmas, possibly to a certain degree the words sound alike and
possibly also because the day of the month is the same. Remember Walt
Kelly doing the same sort of thing, having Pogo sing "We wish you a
merry Crispness"? 

I gather the feast day is no longer celebrated in the Catholic church,
but it hangs on to some extent in the Anglican ? likely, I would guess,
because it's associated with a couple of points of national pride,
i.e., Shakespeare and the Battle of Agincourt. Not that Shaky Bill
fought in that dustup, but he wrote about it and famously had Henry V
rallying his troops with one of the great political speeches of all
time:
   This day is call'd the feast of Crispian. 
    He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, 
    Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd, 
    And rouse him at the name of Crispian . . . 
    . . . And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, 
    From this day to the ending of the world, 
    But we in it shall be remembered -- 
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . 

Churchill invoked those last lines to stiffen British morale during
World War II. Noël Coward used "We Happy Few" as the title of a highly
successful wartime play that he later made into a highly successful
film, and "Band of Brothers" has been used over and over as a title
(several novels, several films and television series and at least one
black rock group.

OK, OK, I'll shut up now.
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