Category Archives: Literature

Arts, Literature, Scotland

Making it a big thing

HELPING HANDS

THERE’S an old Scots proverb that many in Scotland are fond of. It goes, “Mony a mickle maks a muckle”.

The spelling varies, but in essence it translates as “lots of little things make a big thing”.

A man might make a decent income by being good at many little jobs; lots of people doing a little bit to help someone adds up to that someone being helped in a big way.

And then there is the Russian version of that old saying which also expresses it subtly: “If everyone gave a thread, the poor man would have a shirt.”

Standard
Arts, France, History, Literature

The ‘billet-doux’ should return!

SHORT-SWEET LETTERS

Have you heard of a billet-doux?

During the Thirty Years’ War, when French soldiers might have slept in a different town each night, they took their chance, whenever they could, to write home.

The letters from their latest “billet” would hopefully be “sweet”. And so the term “billet-doux” was derived.

The practice carried on into peacetime, with many a young lover receiving regular letters, generally of no consequence other than the assurance of undying love.

Of course, the subject doesn’t necessarily have to be love. It might be gratitude, appreciation or wonder!

In an age when people often claim they don’t have time to write letters, might we encourage the return of the short, sweet note – the billet-doux?

Standard
Arts, Literature

A Prophetic Ray?

THE BEST REASSURANCE

LORD BYRON’S The Bride Of Abydos is a tale of frustrated love set in Turkey. There are a few lines we might take to heart even if we don’t live in a Turkish palace.

Deciding that their love will be for ever unrequited and the world will be a darker place because of that, the young man urges his beloved to rise above the sadness and be a blessing to the world:

“Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life

The evening beam that smiles the clouds away

And tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”

We might be a rainbow or even a smiling beam, but a “prophetic ray” for tomorrow? Sometimes the best reassurance we can give is the “prophecy” that there will be another day tomorrow.

Standard