Maggie's Farm

Loved the essay, thanks! BUT, Bird Dog, please expand upon your comment about the saints. Were you referring to this in the article "the English Rule of the Saints, was a military despotism enlivened by witchcraft trials."? Although it is a fascinating comparison, and I will probably follow hundreds of links tonight exploring it, it seems to grossly oversimplify the history of the saints. Not all Puritans were military despots and witch-hunters. Not all of them were vicious Protestant reincarnations of Inquisitors. To study Oliver Cromwell alone makes that clear. Remember, he was on the point of emigrating to America shortly before the Civil War...He might have been one of our New England ancestors had things been different....

I was indoctrinated thru years of British schooling that he was a villain on a par with Beast Raban in the scifi classic Dune. But he was far more complicated and interesting than that...

I'm descended from Puritans, Huguenots, Red Indians, failed Scottish revolutionaries, and successful Scottish imperialist adventurers, Southern US planters, New Englad whalers and pepper traders, and assorted scholarly and literary types in recent 200 years, and I find the Puritan ancestors by far the most interesting. The redskins were uncivilized barbarians. The Scots cared only for lost causes, whisky and/or money. The Southerners were civilized dilettantes with a taste for cheating on their wives with gorgeous coffee colored babes and too much affinity for the demon rum, and all crazy. The Huguenots -- mean-spirited French petty bourgeoisie, stingy and into beggaring their neighbors. The New Englander traders and academics were pretty cool, but I have been so ceaselessly reminded of my own deficiencies by comparison with them that I am sick of them(the preferred New England childrearing technique is to destroy child's self-image in hopes that he will get mad, sail to China to prove you wrong, make his fortune and endow a church or start a museum. If a female that she become a bluestocking, marry rapacious capitalist and bear many children and DO GOOD WORKS but only get praised at her funeral where she will be compared to the virtuous housewife in Proverbs).

But the Puritans were afire for God, and passionate people. None of my ancestors prosecuted anyone as a witch (now my husband's, they were another story....and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!) Anyone who could raise 12 living children in the semi-wilderness has got to have some pretty powerful stuff going for them....

Is your antipathy to the Puritans for the British Roundheads alone, or for all of them? Or is it just directed at their punitive policies, intolerance of other faiths, and rigid Sabbatarianism (and they weren't too fond of bear-baiting, dog and cock-fighting, round the clock drunkenness either, so I guess you think they were kill-joys too)? I am appalled by many of their cruelties, but you've posted before on some of their virtues (couldn't find an old piece of yours in the blog about them that I liked).

I am curious what you meant. I was kind of a Royalist enthusiast in carefree youth, now more of a somber Puritan matron in middle age....I am not trying to start an argument, just interested in others' views on this, as there are things to love and hate about both ends of the spectrum.

Time to go and read a real book on paper with pages (instead of ebooks, articles on line, or audiobooks)....Maybe that one on the Puritan family...

Incidentally, printed out the marvellous quote about the alibi and posted it on the fridge for the edification of the young...and to kick us old fogeys somewhere....