The Angry Exile: More people needing freedom lessons.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday 18 June 2009

More people needing freedom lessons.

This is where the idea of replacing liberty with human rights ends up - a bunch of witches complaining of being ~~persecuted~~ discriminated against by the Catholic Church when they booked a church hall for a Halloween do. Yep, really.

Sandra Davis, the "high priestess" of Crystal Cauldron group in Stockport, Greater Manchester, said she was shocked to be told that the pagan group was not considered to be compatible with the church's "ethos".

Shocked her? Why? What the fuck did she think they'd say? "Yeah, come on in, we're planning to have mass in the local Sikh temple that night anyway, because the Sikhs are using the synagogue and the Jews are using the mosque and the muslims are using the CofE church ever since they got that fucking druid in and made Anglicanism about as fashionable as brown cords, tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and a Zapata moustache. It's called 'Faith Swap', what do you think?" Of course they're going to fucking discriminate against you for not being compatible with their beliefs, and this is perfectly fine because - deep breath - IT'S THEIR FUCKING BUILDING. Oh, and incidentally it doesn't come remotely fucking close to 'persecution' despite what you'd like to imagine to achieve that coveted victim status you're so clearly after in order to get your way.

"It makes you think that there is still a little bit of that attitude from the past of the Catholics wanting to burn witches," she said.

See? In the mind of this silly witch (sorry, gratuitous pun I know) "no, you can't use the hall" is equal to "we're going to put you on a pile of oily wood and light it".

"I thought we had made progress, tat [sic] we could accept other people's religious paths."

Dream on! Clearly we haven't made any fucking progress at all. Your idea of acceptance of "other people's religious paths" is for them to accept you not matter how batshit crazy your beliefs may be. You, on the other hand, feel absolutely no obligation to accept them and their crazy beliefs, one of which involves not renting out their property to people whose beliefs aren't reconcilable with their own.

As I said the other day, I don't believe in anything you can't show me. Values I can "believe in" in the sense that I have an opinion on them, but I'll treat with equal scepticism* any mystic forces, gods and other entities that must be taken on faith. But I'm siding with the Pope's ~~troops~~ er, wrong thing to say, his team on this. Their beliefs are no more convincing to me than those of Wiccans, but they own the building and are perfectly at liberty to set the house rules. If that's no Wiccans, no food, no Abba tribute bands or whatever then that's just tough for Amethyst Selmeselene, or Mrs Davis as she's known in this dimension, or that ridiculous bullying fuckwit as she's known in this house.

Amethyst thingummy Davis, go fuck yourself with the bristly end of your own broom, you deranged bat.

*To anyone reading this who is a believer of something, I'm not saying it's not there - I'm just saying that you can't prove it is. If you want to believe then good for you, and I'm not going to knock you for it. I'm literally agnostic (only because atheism strikes me as being belief in the absence of something) about everything from God to the zodiac, but in the continuing absence of anything convincing I think it all seems equally unlikely.