There’s a place in the world named Kandy, with a Temple of the Tooth. They’re
both in Sri Lanka. This knowledge didn’t come from the history of sugar I’ve
been reading; my sister’s taking a trip and I wanted to check the spelling of
“Sri Lanka.” Candy does, however, come from a word that occurs in
"Vedic-period hymns” (I’m quoting from Elizabeth Abbot, “Sugar, a Bittersweet
History” because I’m out of my depth linguistically and historically) “khanda,”
which is one of the five kinds of sugar descibed by a government official in
325 BC. Sugar cane was first domesticated in New Guinea. It originated
“somewhere in the South Pacific” and traveled from there to India to the Middle
East to the Mediterranean to Madeira and Cape Verde and West Africa before
landing in the Caribbean.
I went into the library yesterday to talk with the contact for my play. I
settled a couple of details and then made the mistake of checking the “for
sale” shelf. Why “mistake”? Well I’d already picked up Lord Nelson’s letters
in a thrift store and we have too many books. Lord Nelson’s letters begin
with a facsimile of the first letter he wrote after losing his right arm. I’d
never thought about whether he was right or left handed.
Artists in their correspondence are pretty much guaranteed to mention the state
of their finances. So it is, apparently, with famous officers of the Royal
Navy.
And what was found in the library? Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
2010 edition for a dollar fifty. Why would I want that? “Jam and Jerusalem.
A traditional epithet of the Women’s Institute. The movement originated in
Canada in 1897 and was introduced into Britain in 1915 by a Canadian, Mrs
Alfred Watt (1866-1948), who founded a branch in Angelsey. The aim of the
first WI members was to help the war effort, and an early lecture was on
jam-making. A competition was held in the 1920s to find a theme song. No
decision was made, but Hubert Parry’s Jerusalem (1916), a setting of William
Blake’s poem, was sung at the 1924 annual WI meeting and has been associated
with the movement ever since.”
A flood of memories: the first teddy bear I bought L., a pink one that one
daughter treasured, came from a W.I. sale of work in the Cotswolds. Lower
Slaughter or Upper Slaughter…some such place. Evenings at the pub in college
finishing with loud renditions of Jerusalem. Monty Python’s mattress skit
wherein the only cure for madness is to sing Jerusalem. The TV series Home
Fires.
I made a mental note to find for you some funny names from the book I bought in
California, but I failed to mark the page and now can’t. I did, however, run
across the story of Herman Ehrenberg who, if the Wikipedia entry is accurate,
lived quite the life. You could look him up.
Carry on,
David Ritchie,
Portland,
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