Weeds; or, The Secret Garden

My grandma died about ten years ago, and there's very little left in her garden besides grass and plants that are considered weeds. I was startled when I came back to Canada, because I had been looking forward to seeing it again, and it was nothing like I remembered.  Only the empty beds were left. One more piece of her had disappeared while I wasn't looking.

This is Geranium molle, native to the Mediterranean and now a lush carpet covering filling what used to be the lawn around our raised vegetable beds.  The grass is pretty much gone. I didn't really notice it before the leaves started to turn red, but I think it's rather pretty. There's some buttercups in there too, and also a Galium species (cleavers or bedstraw), I can't tell which. It doesn't quite look like G. aparine but I looked through a lot of botanical literature and I can't find any closer species. It may or may not be native to North America, but it is edible in small quantities (large quantities have a mild laxative effect).

My grandma had a bed of a cultivated Galium species, sweet woodruff, next to the front walk, but it's almost entirely gone now. What little is left probably won't last much longer.

What plants are weeds and what are proper plants seems to be a matter of opinion, and of desire for the plant, and of frustration with it. Especially if it's introduced. Most of the plants left in my grandma's garden are foreign, and considered noxious or invasive weeds, undesirable - but then, the prettier plants that she cultivated and loved were introduced too. They just weren't resilient enough or suitable enough for this climate to survive after she was gone.

Rather a lot of the plants left in the garden turn out to be edible. There's also tall amaranth, and broadleaf dock, whose leaves are developing reddish spots like rust:



Dock leaves can be cooked and eaten in small quantities (large quantities can be hazardous, since they contain oxalic acid), and the leaves were described being used to wrap blocks of fresh butter in Adam Bede. The seeds can be ground and eaten, but they contain a lot of chaff and there's no way to remove it.

There's sow thistle, related to dandelion, old and bitter at this time of year but edible when the leaves are young:



There's Himalayan blackberry everywhere, of course:



It produces a fair bit of fruit on second-year canes, and I'm told the leaves can be made into tea, although I haven't tried it yet.

 Morning glory is everywhere:


It's not edible, and it strangles everything, but at least the flowers are pretty. The burdock had pretty purple flowers earlier, but they've been replaced by brown burrs:


Probably the most striking thing in the garden at this time of year is the rose bush. Its hips are edible too, and can be made into tea:


It's so huge and vigorous and exceptionally thorny that I suspect a more tender rose was grafted to it and didn't survive, especially since it's right next to the fence where my grandma had roses planted. I didn't notice what sort of flowers it had this spring or summer.

 If Mary Lennox's secret garden were real, this is what it would look like after a decade left mostly to itself. The wildest of the roses would have survived and run rampant, and the crocuses and daffodils naturalised, but most of the cultivated plants would have disappeared and the small weedy ones that slipped in unwanted volunteered to take their places, and flourished, a carpet of green in the spring, dotted with white and yellow flowers in the summer, seed heads turning brown in the fall and leaves shading to yellow, touched with red, dotted with rust, fading to brown and falling crumpled to the ground.  The plants lie dormant all winter, but finally the roots and stems spring to life again in March, as they do every year without fail.

---

For two or three minutes [Dickon] stood looking round him, while Mary watched him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than Mary had walked the first time she had found herself inside the four walls. His eyes seemed to be taking in everything—the gray trees with the gray creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches, the tangle on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with the stone seats and tall flower urns standing in them.

"I never thought I'd see this place," he said at last, in a whisper.

"Did you know about it?" asked Mary.

She had spoken aloud and he made a sign to her.

"We must talk low," he said, "or some one'll hear us an' wonder what's to do in here."

"Oh! I forgot!" said Mary, feeling frightened and putting her hand quickly against her mouth. "Did you know about the garden?" she asked again when she had recovered herself. Dickon nodded.

"Martha told me there was one as no one ever went inside," he answered. "Us used to wonder what it was like."

He stopped and looked round at the lovely gray tangle about him, and his round eyes looked queerly happy.

"Eh! the nests as'll be here come springtime," he said. "It'd be th' safest nestin' place in England. No one never comin' near an' tangles o' trees an' roses to build in. I wonder all th' birds on th' moor don't build here."

Mistress Mary put her hand on his arm again without knowing it.

"Will there be roses?" she whispered. "Can you tell? I thought perhaps they were all dead."

"Eh! No! Not them—not all of 'em!" he answered. "Look here!"

He stepped over to the nearest tree—an old, old one with gray lichen all over its bark, but upholding a curtain of tangled sprays and branches. He took a thick knife out of his Pocket and opened one of its blades.

"There's lots o' dead wood as ought to be cut out," he said. "An' there's a lot o' old wood, but it made some new last year. This here's a new bit," and he touched a shoot which looked brownish green instead of hard, dry gray. Mary touched it herself in an eager, reverent way.

"That one?" she said. "Is that one quite alive quite?"

Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth.

"It's as wick as you or me," he said; and Mary remembered that Martha had told her that "wick" meant "alive" or "lively."

"I'm glad it's wick!" she cried out in her whisper. "I want them all to be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how many wick ones there are."

She quite panted with eagerness, and Dickon was as eager as she was. They went from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Dickon carried his knife in his hand and showed her things which she thought wonderful.

"They've run wild," he said, "but th' strongest ones has fair thrived on it. The delicatest ones has died out, but th' others has growed an' growed, an' spread an' spread, till they's a wonder. See here!" and he pulled down a thick gray, dry-looking branch. "A body might think this was dead wood, but I don't believe it is—down to th' root. I'll cut it low down an' see."

He knelt and with his knife cut the lifeless-looking branch through, not far above the earth.

"There!" he said exultantly. "I told thee so. There's green in that wood yet. Look at it."

Mary was down on her knees before he spoke, gazing with all her might.

"When it looks a bit greenish an' juicy like that, it's wick," he explained. "When th' inside is dry an' breaks easy, like this here piece I've cut off, it's done for. There's a big root here as all this live wood sprung out of, an' if th' old wood's cut off an' it's dug round, and took care of there'll be—" he stopped and lifted his face to look up at the climbing and hanging sprays above him—"there'll be a fountain o' roses here this summer."

 - Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, Chapter XI, 'The Nest of the Missel Thrush,' pg 128-9.

The illustrated 1911 edition of The Secret Garden is available on the Internet Archive.

Why lizards are your friend and Italian peasants love garlic, according to Erasmus

I came across an interesting bit of folklore today.  The Dutch Renaissance writer Erasmus of Rotterdam  (1466-1536) reported in his Colloquies that snakes in Italy love milk, hate garlic, and will crawl down your throat while you’re sleeping and take up residence in your stomach, but lizards are friendly to humans and will warn you about them.  It's an origin myth explaining why peasants love garlic and snakes and lizards are enemies, but I don't know if its origins are in actual folk belief, or if it's a different sort of popular story.  Or some combination of the two.  I can't find any other source for those snippets of story, but Erasmus did study in Italy so it's possible that belief existed there at one time. 

From The Whole Familiar Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, translated by Nathan Bailey, 1877, pg. 388-9, Concerning Friendship: Ephorinus and John.’

Ep. Do you know the lizard?

Jo. Why not?

Ep. There are very large green ones in Italy.  This creature is by nature friendly to mankind, and an utter enemy to serpents. […]

The husbandmen of that place related to us a wonderful strange thing for a certain truth; that the countrymen being weary sometimes, sleep in that field, and have sometimes with them a pitcher of milk, which serves both for victuals and drink; that serpents are great lovers of milk, and so it often happens that they come in their way.  But they have a remedy for that. 

Jo. Pray, what is it?

Ep. They daub the brims of the pitcher with garlic, and the smell of that drives away the serpents.

Jo. What does Horace mean, then, when he says garlic is a poison more hurtful than henbane, when you say it is an antidote against poison?

Ep. But hear a little, I have something to tell you that is worse than that.  They often creep slily into the mouth of a man that lies sleeping with his mouth open, and so wind themselves into his stomach.  

Jo. And does not a man die immediately that has entertained such a guest?

Ep. No, but lives most miserably; nor is there any remedy but to feed the man with milk, and other things that the serpent loves.  

Jo. What, no remedy against such a calamity?

Ep. Yes, to eat an abundance of garlic.

Jo. No wonder, then, mowers love garlic.

Ep. But those that are tired with heat and labour have their remedy another way; for, when they are in danger of this misfortune, very often a lizard, though but a little creature, saves a man.

Jo. How can he save him?

Ep. When he perceives a serpent lying perdue in wait for the man, he runs about upon the man’s neck and face, and never gives over till he has waked the man by tickling him, and clawing him gently with his nails; and as soon as the man wakes, and sees the lizard near him, he knows the enemy is somewhere not far off in ambuscade, and looking about seizes him.

Jo. The wonderful power of nature!

 Wonderful indeed.

The largest Italian lizard species I can find is the Italian wall lizard, Podarcus sicula - which is also the most abundant lizard species in Italy. They're up to 3.5 inches (9cm) long, so not very large.

Podarcis sicula on a dry branch near Urbino in Tuscany (Florian Prischl/Wikimedia Commons).

Podarcis sicula found in Los Angeles county.  They're very adaptable and have been introduced to part of the US and North Africa (California Herps).

 Erasmus was an interesting guy who lead a busy life; he was the illegitimate child of a priest and a woman who was possibly his housekeeper who lost his parents to the plague and was pressed into monasticism by poverty.  He later left the monastery to become a secretary, and was permanently released from his vows by the Pope, which was unusual.  He was ordained as a Catholic priest at the age of 25, although he doesn't seem to have worked as one much.  He studied at the University of Paris on a stipend and then the University of Turin and became a classical scholar and prominent Christian Humanist thinker and popular writer.

A 1523 portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, who painted him several times (Wikimedia).

 He was a professor at Cambridge at one point and complained about the lack of wine:

At the University of Cambridge, he was the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity and had the option of spending the rest of his life as an English professor. He stayed at Queens' College, Cambridge from 1510 to 1515.  His rooms were in the "I" staircase of Old Court, and he famously hated English ale and English weather. He suffered from poor health and complained that Queens' could not supply him with enough decent wine (wine was the Renaissance medicine for gallstones, from which Erasmus suffered). Until the 19th century, Queens' College used to have a corkscrew that was purported to be "Erasmus' corkscrew" which was a third of a metre long, though today the college still has what it calls "Erasmus' chair." (Wikipedia)

In the early sixteenth century, Erasmus produced a critical edition of the New Testament, including the late Greek texts and facing them a more polished Latin translation and his own notes, saying "It is only fair that Paul should address the Romans in somewhat better Latin."^[32]

Later editions of his New Testament were used by Martin Luther as a basis for his German translation, and probably also by Tyndale for the first English New Testament and by Stephanus for the English version that the translators of the King James Version based their text on.

By the 1530s, the writings of Erasmus accounted for 10 to 20 percent of all book sales in Europe.^[63]

He died suddenly from dysentery in Basel, Switzerland in 1536. 

A little bit about his Colloquies, from Wikipedia:

Colloquies is one of the many works of the “Prince of Christian Humanists”, Desiderius Erasmus. Published in 1518, the pages “…held up contemporary religious practices for examination in a more serious but still pervasively ironic tone”. […]

The Colloquies is a collection of dialogues on a wide variety of subjects. They began in the late 1490s as informal Latin exercises for Erasmus’ own pupils. In about 1522 he began to perceive the possibilities this form might hold for continuing his campaign for the gradual enlightenment and reform of all Christendom. Between that date and 1533 twelve new editions appeared, each larger and more serious than the last, until eventually some fifty individual colloquies were included ranging over such varied subjects as war, travel, religion, sleep, beggars, funerals, and literature. All of these works were in the same graceful, easy style and gentle humor that made them continually sought as schoolboy exercises and light reading for generations.

 They are humorous, and very entertaining.  I've downloaded that pdf from Google Books and will probably read more of it, unless I forget.

Book Review: Farm Rhymes

This 1905 edition is selling for $140, but you can get the ebook free (source).

Verdict: enjoyable, three out of five stars.

American poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916) had only an eighth-grade education (he graduated when he was twenty), but he was a successful newspaper reporter and a very popular poet in the 1880s and 1890s.  Farm Rhymes was first published in 1888 and the poems are quite Victorian and sentimental, but I think this collection holds up better for modern adult readers than Riley's children's poems or humorous poems do, although the latter two were more popular in his lifetime.

Farm Rhymes is a short collection of simple poems about rural life, written in either Indiana dialect (I didn't find it hard to understand, and I'm not American) or standard late nineteenth century American English. Topics include harvest, fishing, family, nostalgia for childhood, and descriptions of nature - birds and woods especially. There are black and white illustrations for each poem; only a third of the pages have text on them, and there's not a lot of text on each page. 

One of the illustrations.

 I read this book in about an hour one morning, it's really very short. My favourite poem out of the collection is 'When the frost is on the punkin.' It's fairly widely published on the internet, and seasonally appropriate.

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey cock
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence
O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries kindo' lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below the clover over-head!
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;
And your cider-makin' 's over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With their mince and apple butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too!
I don't know how to tell it but ef sich a thing could be
As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me
I'd want to 'commodate 'em all the whole-indurin' flock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

A scan of the 1901 edition of Farm Rhymes is available for free on the Internet Archive. The epub doesn't preserve the line breaks and the scanning program garbled the dialect beyond comprehension, so I read the PDF.  More of Riley's works are available for free on Project Gutenberg. 

you tread lightly on the surface of this autumn day

It's early October; the days are getting shorter, and the leaves are changing colour.  The colours here are a lot more muted than they are back east, but it's still pretty.  I had forgotten about fall, not having experienced it in so many years, and I'm rediscovering it.

The maple leaves are changing from green to yellow and brown.

Fallen leaves are collecting on the grass:

"October, crisp, misty, golden October, when the light is sweet and heavy." - Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

Halloween is definitely coming; pumpkin spice lattes are advertised outside the coffee shop in town, the drugstore is selling bags of Halloween candy, and there are pumpkins for sale on the roadside outside small farms.

They're between $8 and $15.  Too much for me.

The hardware store has fancy kale plants for sale.  You can actually eat decorative kale, but I don't think people usually do.

Purple-heart kale.

 The blue hydrangeas outside the church are turning purple with the colder weather:

Most of the landscape is still green, though:

Three cows in a neighbour's field.

Someone has grape vines growing on their fence, but the fruit and leaves only start above deer height.  I think it's kind of funny:

 The fir and cedar trees will stay green all year.  Aside from a few sweet gum or Japanese maple trees planted in parks, the only brightly coloured fall foliage you see around here is Himalayan blackberry leaves:

I'm told blackberry leaves make good tea, but I haven't tried it yet.

 The rosehips on the wild rose bushes that are everywhere along the sides of the roads and along fencelines have turned red too:

I took this photo on Eid al-Adha morning this year.  Shortly after, it started to rain hard.

Mist hangs over the fields in the early morning:

I took this photo around 6:30 am, and it was already dissipating.

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

-  'October', Robert Frost (1915)

 I found my first woolly bear.  I must have seen them as a kid, but this one is the first one I can remember:

It's the caterpillar of the Isabella Tiger Moth; I think the caterpillar is a lot more interesting than the adult moth is.  Some fuzzy caterpillars are poisonous and will sting you if you touch them, but woolly bears are harmless.  They hatch in the fall, and Wikipedia tells me that they freeze solid in the winter.  In spring they thaw out and pupate. Once it emerges from its pupa as a moth, it has only days to find a mate. Because the summer is so short in the Arctic, up north they can live through as many as fourteen winters before they eat enough to pupate.

There's an old bit of folklore that says that the bands of brown and black on the woolly bear can be used to predict how severe the coming winter will be, but it doesn't look like anyone's been able to demonstrate that it's accurate:

According to folk wisdom, when the brown bands on fall woolly bears are narrow, it means a harsh winter is coming. The wider the brown band, the milder the winter will be. Some towns hold annual woolly worm festivals in the fall, complete with caterpillar races and an official declaration of the woolly worm's prediction for that winter.

Are the woolly worm's bands really an accurate way to predict the winter weather? Dr. C.H. Curran, former curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, tested the woolly worms' accuracy in the 1950's. His surveys found an 80% accuracy rate for the woolly worms' weather predictions.

Other researchers have not been able to replicate the success rate of Curran's caterpillars, though.

Today, entomologists agree that woolly worms are not accurate predictors of winter weather. Many variables may contribute to changes in the caterpillar's coloration, including larval stage, food availability, temperature or moisture during development, age, and even species. (about.com)

It's getting colder and rains a fair bit, so the cats spend a lot more time indoors, or laying in the sun on afternoons when it's not raining:

Sitting in the garden reading one chilly afternoon.  He was comfortable, but eventually my hands went numb and I had to go back inside.

Gracie laying on the garden path.

Jesse sleeps on my lap all day while I read, and then follows me around the fields meowing at me to pet him.  Which I do.

Right before I took this picture he was on the other side of a blackberry bramble yowling like a lost toddler because he couldn't find me, and I had to go get him.  Silly cat.  He's sitting in a catloaf next to me on the couch right now, huffing because I'm using the laptop and he can't sit on my lap.

The skies are brilliant blue and mostly clear, but I catch some interesting clouds occasionally.  It's overcast here, most of the year.

I was reading a passage from Mahmoud Darwish today, and thought it was fitting.  This was his last work; he knew he wouldn't live much longer.  I think it's his best.

This is your autumn, opening, spreading the strong scent of exile and empty letters. So fill them with the yellow, coffee-brown, gold, and copper – nonsynonymous colors – of leaves that take their time in bidding farewell to the tree because the wind is absent today. You are so lonesome you do not think of loneliness. Because you have not bid farewell to anyone since yesterday, you do not care if your shadow “walks before you or behind you.” The air is light and the earth seems solid. And this is not one of the attributes of exile, as they said.

This is your autumn, emerging from a hot summer, from a season of global fatigue, from a seemingly endless war. An autumn that ripens the forgotten grapes on high mountains. An autumn that prepares for grand gatherings where the assembly of old gods reviews drafts of fates still being written, hammering out a truce between summer and winter. But autumn in the east is short. It passes like a quick wave from one traveler on horseback to another, as they pass each other, going in opposite directions. No one can rely on such an autumn, on dust storms, or on a temporary marriage.

As for autumn here – the autumn of a Paris returning from its long vacation – nature, tempted by rain, devotes itself to writing its lush poems with all of its skill and with the help of aging wine. A long, long autumn, like a Catholic marriage contract that does not betray its joy or misery to someone like you, a bystander. A patient autumn. An erotic embrace of light and shadow, male and female, of a sky that descends respectfully over trees disrobing with dignity, before the confusion of temptations between raining drops of light and luminous drops of water. An autumn showing off. An autumn becoming one with the beginnings of three seasons: summer’s nudity, winter’s intercourse, and spring’s youth.

And you, you tread lightly on the surface of this autumn day. You are invigorated, infatuated, and stunned: “How can anyone die on a day like this?” You do not know whether you live in autumn or whether it lives in you, even if you remember that you are in the autumn of life, where mind and heart master listening to time with a harmonious collusion of pleasure and wisdom. A noble rhythm raises the body to sense what is missing, so it is filled all the more with the beauty of cloudlessness and cloudiness. It prepares itself, like a weather station, to observe the appropriate weather conditions for a passing conversation: “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? So why don’t we meet for coffee?” The aroma of coffee has doors that lead to another journey: to friendship, love, or loss without pain. Coffee moves from the metaphorical to the tangible.

A secret rhythm leads this experience to an absolute sense of departure; to the encounter between an autumn strolling through squares with the crowd, people and doves, and your own private autumn, your inner autumn. You wonder, as someone else has: Are we what we do with time, or are we what time does with us? Finding a response does not interest you as much as slowing down time. You do not want this autumn to end, just as you do not want the poem to grow to fullness and end. You do not want to reach winter. Let autumn be your private eternity.

—	Mahmoud Darwish, ‘In the Presence of Absence,’ Chapter X, translated by Sinan Antoon (2011).

also topped with yellow peaches

Some of this is a little inappropriate, but we could all use a laugh and it involves cats, an interesting woman from history, and a Japanese folktale.

So there are pictures circulating of Japanese internet sensation Shironeko and a cat friend doing...something with...something:

(Images from Shironeko's blog, in Japanese.  I also ran the post through Google Translate).

Those are real peaches; they're yellow peaches and they really are as big as they look.  I'm not the only one who thinks they look like butts:

(From the comments on the original blog post.  I took screenshots of the Google translation of the page).

About five other commenters said the same thing.  Butts!  Whomever took those photos does have really great photography "put skills" (I can't think how else to phrase that), and very cooperative cats.

Someone in the comments wrote a little story about the cats and their peaches, but I have no idea what's going on:

"Bugger also topped with yellow peaches."  Indeed.  Thank you, Google Translate.  I have no idea what word it's translating as "bugger"; it doesn't look like it's any better at translating Japanese into English than it is at translating Arabic into English.

Low-acid, fragile clingstone peaches are popular in Japan, different from the varieties popular in North America and the Middle East:

Momo (Peach)

Japanese peaches are generally larger, softer and more expensive than Western peaches, and their flesh is usually white rather than yellow. Peaches are commonly eaten raw after being peeled. Japanese peaches are in season during the summer.

Peaches were introduced from China as early as the Yayoi Period (300 BC- 300 AD). Peach production in the prefectures of Yamanashi and Fukushima make up the majority of the country's total output. The peach features prominently in the Japanese folklore tale of Momotaro (The Peach Boy), which is set in Okayama Prefecture.

(From Japan Guide)

A summary of the story of Momotaro, from Wikipedia:

According to the present form of the tale (dating to the Edo period), Momotarō came to Earth inside a giant peach, which was found floating down a river by an old, childless woman who was washing clothes there. The woman and her husband discovered the child when they tried to open the peach to eat it. The child explained that he had been sent by Heaven to be their son. The couple named him Momotarō, from momo (peach) and tarō (eldest son in the family).^[1]

Years later, Momotarō left his parents to fight a band of marauding oni (demons or ogres) on a distant island. En route, Momotarō met and befriended a talking dog, monkey, and pheasant, who agreed to help him in his quest. At the island, Momotarō and his animal friends penetrated the demons' fort and beat the band of demons into surrendering. Momotarō and his new friends returned home with the demons' plundered treasure and the demon chief as a captive. Momotarō and his family lived comfortably from then on.^[1]

The whole story is in The Japanese Fairy Book (1908), written by Iwaya Sazanami, illustrated by Kakuzo Fujiyama, and translated by Yei Theodora Ozaki.  It's not very long.

Momotaro emerging from the giant peach (illustration from The Japanese Fairy Book).

Wikipedia gives a little bit of information on Yei Theodora Ozaki's life, but it's all from an introduction to one of her books:

Yei Theodora Ozaki (英子セオドラ尾崎 Eiko Seodora Ozaki^?, 1871 – December 28, 1932) was an early 20th-century translator of Japanese short stories and fairy tales. Her translations were fairly liberal but have been popular, and were reprinted several times after her death.

According to "A Biographical Sketch" by Mrs. Hugh Fraser, included in the introductory material to Warriors of old Japan, and other stories, Ozaki came from an unusual background. She was the daughter of Baron Ozaki, one of the first Japanese men to study in the West, and Bathia Catherine Morrison, daughter of William Morrison, one of their teachers. Her parents separated after five years of marriage, and her mother retained custody of their three daughters until they became teenagers. At that time, Yei was sent to live in Japan with her father, which she enjoyed. Later she refused an arranged marriage, left her father's house, and became a teacher and secretary to earn money. Over the years, she traveled back and forth between Japan and Europe, as her employment and family duties took her, and lived in places as diverse as Italy and the drafty upper floor of a Buddhist temple.

All this time, her letters were frequently misdelivered to the unrelated Japanese politician Yukio Ozaki, and his to her. In 1904, they finally met, and soon married.

Cabinet des Fées has a very thorough article about Ms. Ozaki's life and environment and their influence on her work.  It mentions Ms. Ozaki's desire to change contemporary Western ideas of Japanese culture, and particularly of Japanese women as oppressed and passive:

Ms Ozaki’s biographer Mrs Fraser tells us that one of O-Yei’s motivations for writing was to dispel misconceptions of Japan that she found in the West, and to show the “good old ideals and sentiments”[6] of Japanese culture portrayed in the old stories. We are told that one of O-Yei’s particular concerns was the perception of Japanese women in the West. She wanted to put an end to the notion of the Japanese woman as an oppressed, passive Madame Butterfly figure. Mrs Fraser records her as saying: “When I was last in England and Europe… very mistaken notions about Japan and especially about its women existed generally. I determined if possible to write so as to dispel these wrong conceptions.”[7] In this way, she was very much a woman of her time. The Meiji Period (1868-1912) was a time of great social and political change in Japan, as the country was keen to show itself as equal to the Western powers. Women led the way in this as much as men; and O-Yei herself belonged to several educational, charitable and patriotic ladies’ societies. At the same time, things were changing for women in England too. The suffragettes were to riot in 1911 and the Women’s Institute was to be founded in 1915. As a well-connected, bi-cultural woman, Yei Theodora Ozaki stood in a good position to address these contemporary issues, at the same time as she looked back to the past for inspiration.

(Elizabeth Hopkinson, 'East Meets West: Yei Theodora Ozaki’s Japanese Fairy Tales,' May 2011)

Ozaki's Wikipedia page has links to online copies of her books; they're in the public domain.

 I couldn't find a whole lot of information on Japanese yellow peaches in English, but the Wall Street Journal has an article on Chinese water honey peaches, which are related:

Thai bananas are long-lived compared with China's honey peaches. Picked in the morning, the peaches are flown to Beijing or trucked to Shanghai in the afternoon; in many cases, they are selling in stores the same evening. On a recent Saturday afternoon in Yangshan's wholesale peach market, I asked a grower to find me a carton of peaches that I could take home with me to Bangkok on Monday. No peach in the market would last that long, he replied; I'd have to go with him to his orchard so he could pick me hard, green ones. He warned me that I'd be sacrificing some taste because they would be picked too early. By Tuesday, the green peaches I ended up taking home with me were so soft that I had to put them all in the refrigerator. They were still delicious.

Tang Haijun, a big honey peach grower and an industry spokesman, says another problem with Chinese peaches is that they are extraordinarily fragile. "They're so tender, if you press on one, in an hour there will be a black spot," he says. Over a lunch of local specialties (snails, pigs feet, pumpkin stems, his peaches for dessert), Mr. Tang explained that to keep away insects, he has every peach in his orchard individually wrapped with newspaper while it is ripening on the tree. All this special handling comes at a price: A honey peach sells for as much as $3 in a Shanghai or Beijing grocery store.

In the U.S., peach technology produces a very different product. "It's unfortunate that many of our peaches are bred to have superior shelf life and exterior color," says Karen Caplan, chief executive of Frieda's Inc., a Los Alamitos, Calif., high-end distributor of imported and domestic produce. "The growers don't focus on flavor. They refrigerate them in transit, put them on the shelf, and they go mealy." [...]

The best bet, then, is to eat honey peaches in China, and that's what I did with wild abandon, consuming 10 peaches, averaging half a pound each, in a single day in Yangshan. Under the tutelage of Mr. Tang, I learned that Chinese peach-eating is a very different process. First, you should gently massage the peach for several minutes, releasing the juice. When it starts feeling like a sponge, it's ready to be peeled; the skin slips off like a glove. Then you just pick it up whole and slurp away; cutting it would result in waste of the delicious juice. (The Best Peach on Earth, August 21, 2009)

 There is a bit more information on Japanese and Chinese (and other) peach cultivars and breeding programs in The Peach: Botany, Production, and Uses (Layne and Bassi, 2008, pg 168-9).  The ebook is over two hundred dollars, so hopefully nobody wants to read the redacted sections very badly.

Book Review: Memoirs of a Smuggler.

Memoirs of a Smuggler: Compiled from His Diary and Journal by John Rattenbury
(J. Harvey, London, 1837).

aMy rating: 3 of 5 stars

The ebook is available for free from Google Books (PDF or epub; the epub has a few scanning errors) or from Smugglers' Britain (html, proofread).

This is Jack Rattenbury's account of his exploits as a smuggler, mainly between France and the Devon coast, in the late 18th and early 19th century.  According to this website, a Unitarian pastor, John Smith (who was also involved in smuggling) helped him write it.

Born in 1778, Rattenbury went to sea as a fisherman at the age of nine, but soon left and took up as a privateer by the age of 15. From that point on, he was constantly pursuing and being pursued by French and Spanish vessels, and made many daring escapes - or so he tells us.

Returning home from privateering at the age of 16, Rattenbury says he

...remained at home about six months, part of which was occupied in fishing, but I found the employment very dull and tiresome after the roving life I had led; and as the smuggling trade was then plied very briskly in the neighbourhood, I determined to try my fortune in it" (pg. 11).

Rattenbury spent the next thirty years alternately smuggling, fishing, piloting, and running a public house which ultimately failed. His account is mostly a fairly dry recitation of the trips he made, places he went, and ships and cargoes he lost, but there are dramatic bits when he's chased by the preventive services and has to toss his tubs of spirits or tea overboard and hope to haul them up later, before the king's cutters or local inhabitants do and before they spoil.

Some of his anecdotes seem exaggerated for effect, as when he tells how he deserted from the Royal Navy and, in between smuggling trips, a militia sergeant found him in a pub and tried to capture him.

...in answer to his charge, I replied, “Sergeant, you are surely labouring under an error; I have done nothing that can authorize you in taking me up, or detaining me; you must certainly have mistaken me for some other person.” In this manner, I contrived to draw him into a parley; and, while it was going on, I jumped into the cellar. I then threw off my jacket and shirt, to prevent any one from holding me; and, having armed myself with a reaphook, and a knife which I had in my pocket, I threw myself into an attitude of defence at the entrance, which was a half-hatch door, the lower part of which I shut, and then declared that I would kill the first man who came near me, and that I would not be taken from the spot alive. At this, the sergeant was evidently terrified, but he said to his men, “Soldiers, do your duty, advance and seize him;” to which they replied, “Sergeant, you proposed it: take the lead, and set us an example, and we will follow.” No one, however, offered to advance, and I remained in the position which I have described, for four hours, holding them at bay (pg. 52).

A group of women then came into the pub and claimed that a boy was drowning, and Rattenbury claims that he charged through the militiamen, and because he had taken off his shirt, they couldn't catch him and he was able to jump into a boat and escape. A tall tale if I ever heard one.

At least once, Rattenbury smuggles people, in this case, four French officers who escaped from custody in England:

They came to Beer, and I concealed them in the best manner I was able, in a house near the beach, where I supplied them with such provisions as they wanted. But a vigilant inquiry was commenced; their steps were traced, and the place of their retreat discovered. The next morning, there was a special warrant out against myself and five others, who were connected with the affair, and the constables came to my house, while I was up-stairs considering how I had best act. Finding that my companions had absconded, and being captain of the boat, I immediately surrendered myself up to them. I was then taken before the magistrates, where I found the French gentlemen in custody. They were examined through the medium of an interpreter, but their replies were cautious, and they said very little that could tend to implicate me in the transaction. My turn then came; and, in reply to the questions from the bench, I briefly stated that I was engaged to take the gentlemen to Jersey, of which island I understood that they were natives. A lieutenant of the sea-fencibles being in the room, asked me if I did not know a native of Jersey from a Frenchman; to which I was going to have replied, but my attorney, who was present, said that this was a question which he had no right to prefer, and which I was not bound to answer. The magistrates then conversed together; and, after a little consultation, dismissed me, with a gentle admonition to go home, and not engage in any similar transaction for the future (pg. 51).

Rattenbury and his sons and gang of smugglers (he doesn't go into any detail in the narrative, but you can read about them here) are frequently on the wrong side of the law. Rattenbury repeatedly escapes the preventives and press-gangs and service in the Royal Navy, but he is in and out of court, is fined numerous times, and does a few stretches in prison. But no sooner is he released than he returns to smuggling and recoups his losses. Despite the frequent ups and downs of his career, it's clear that Rattenbury is a resilient and optimistic man:

I have also experienced, as may be seen in the foregoing narrative, the greatest vicissitudes, my spirits having been alternately elated by success, or depressed by misfortune; but in the midst of the whole I never yielded to despair, for hope was the pole-star which shed its cheering rays, and illuminated my path in the darkest storms of adversity (pg. 106).

When the book closes in 1836, Rattenburg is retired from smuggling, receiving a pension of a shilling a week for life from his patron Lord Rolle, and in court again.  His son, also a smuggler, is up on charges of assaulting customs officers, and Rattenburg is making jokes on the stand:

On this occasion I was cross-examined by Mr. Sergeant Bompas; and as it caused a great deal of amusement at the time, I have extracted the following passages from a newspaper, which contained an account of the trial. “I keep school at sea—fish for sole, turbot and brill; any kind of fish that comes to hook.” “Which do you catch oftenest, soles or tubs? “—” Oh, the devil a tub, (great laughter ;) there are too many picaroons going now-a-day.” You have caught a good many in your time? “—” Ah, plenty of it! I wish you and I had as much of it as we could drink.” (laughter.) “You have kept school at home, and trained up your son?”—” I have always trained him up in a regular honourable way, larnt him the creed, the Lord’s prayer, and the ten commandments.” “You don’t find there, Thou shalt not smuggle? “—” No, but I find there, Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” “Nobody smuggles now-a-day?” — “Don’t they, though!” (laughter) “So these horses at Beer cannot go above three or four miles an hour? “—” If you had not better horses, you would never get to London. I seldom ride a horse-back. If I do, I generally falls off seven or eight times in a journey.” (great laughter.)

Jack Rattenbury died in 1844 at the age of 65.

There is very little description of the methods of smuggling or political situation in this book; to understand fully what was going on, I recommend reading it along with Smugglers' Britain, which details how smuggling and the preventive services worked, and how they developed.

I found King's Cutters and Smugglers: 1700-1855 (E.K. Chatterton, London, 1912) helpful as well.  It's written in a more engaging style than Memoirs of a Smuggler and explains the background to it.  For example, King's Cutters states that it was policy for the Preventives to press-gang smugglers into the Royal Navy, due to their high level of seamanship:

Nor must we forget that those rough, rude men who ran backwards and forwards across the English Channel in cutters, yawls, luggers, and sometimes open boats, stiffened with a rich ballast of tea, tobacco, and brandy, were some of the finest seamen in the world, and certainly the most skilful fore-and-aft sailors and efficient pilots to be found anywhere on the seas which wash the coasts of the United Kingdom. They were sturdy and strong of body, courageous and enterprising of nature, who had "used" the sea all their lives. Consequently the English Government wisely determined that in all cases of an encounter with smugglers the first aim of the Preventive officers should be to capture the smugglers themselves, for they could be promptly impressed into the service of the Navy and be put to the good of the nation instead of being to the latter's disadvantage.

(Although, I'm puzzling over who constitutes the "nation."  Have smugglers been excluded from it?  Their efforts were to their own benefit and the benefit of probably the majority of the inhabitants of the British Isles in some fashion, while not being without detriment.  All sorts of people of all classes were involved in smuggling and bought smuggled products).

The steam-powered man

I was reading A Study in Scarlet while I was sick.  I went back to re-read now that I'm not feverish and I wasn't just woozy, there is some fine melodrama and over-exuberant description in this (I love Victorian writing for that).  Here's a bit I enjoyed:

"Are you a doctor?" He turned his fierce dark eyes upon me as he asked this last question.

 "Yes; I am," I answered.

"Then put your hand here," he said, with a smile, motioning with his manacled wrists towards his chest.

 I did so; and became at once conscious of an extraordinary throbbing and commotion which was going on inside. The walls of his chest seemed to thrill and quiver as a frail building would do inside when some powerful engine was at work. In the silence of the room I could hear a dull humming and buzzing noise which proceeded from the same source.

 "Why," I cried, "you have an aortic aneurism!"

 "That's what they call it," he said, placidly. "I went to a Doctor last week about it, and he told me that it is bound to burst before many days passed. It has been getting worse for years. I got it from over-exposure and under-feeding among the Salt Lake Mountains."

Very vivid and dramatic, but I’m quite certain that’s not how aortic aneurysms work.  They would be so much easier to detect if you could just listen for the telltale humming and buzzing outside the patient's body.  A theory that makes more sense than 'aneurysm': the throbbing and quivering chest walls of the man who just confessed to murder give away what he really is: an early automaton, powered by a tiny steam engine.  He only pretends to tell all and then expire;  he'll escape in the night, his revenge accomplished, and slip back into the wilds of Nevada.

It's not so far-fetched.  Automata were a popular curiosity in the Victorian era; the word 'android' was rare but in use in the second half of the nineteenth century (it's in the 1879 OED and evidenced as early as 1863 in an American patent for a mechanical walking toy shaped like miniature human - which it also refers to as an automaton); there were contemporary stories about steam-powered automata in the American West even before A Study in Scarlet was written.

Edward S. Ellis published his story - which later became a novel - "The Huge Hunter, or the Steam Man of the Prairies" in the dime magazine American Novels.  

In it, the teenage little person Johnny Brainerd invents a ten-foot tall steam-powered man; the concept basically is that he's a steam engine on legs instead of on tracks.  Brainerd harnesses the steam-powered man to a wagon and takes a party of men out west, where they search for gold, kill a lot of Native Americans, and make it back home safe and wealthy.

Cover of "The Steam Man of the Prairies" 1868 (Wiki)

It was the first of the Victorian and Edwardian 'Edisonade' sub- genre of proto-science fiction stories of brilliant inventors and their inventions, which appeared mostly as dime novels aimed at boys.  The term 'Edisonade' is modern, coined by John Clute and Peter Nicholls in their Encyclopedia of  Science Fiction and defined by them as follows:

As used here the term ‘edisonade' - derived from Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) in the same way that ‘Robinsonade' is derived from Robinson Crusoe - can be understood to describe any story which features a young US male inventor hero who uses his ingenuity to extricate himself from tight spots and who, by so doing, saves himself from foreign oppressors. (Wiki)

He further clarifies the definition to include defense of nation:

It is an Edisonade, a paradigm kind of science fiction in which a brave young inventor creates a tool or a weapon (or both) that enables him to save the girl and his nation (America) and the world from some menace, whether it be foreigners or evil scientists or aliens; and gets the girl; and gets rich. (same source as previous).

In the case of  'The Steam Man of the Prairies,' Native Americans are the othered group seen as posing a threat to white America and set up as an obstacle in between the protagonist and his goals.

  The interest in fictional inventions was spurred by real ones, which were not as successful but no less fantastical.  In March of 1868, only five months before Ellis' story appeared, Zadoc P. Dederick and Isaac Grass, both of New Jersey, patented their steam carriage.  The pistons of the steam engine (or any other motor) propelled a complex system of levers which produced a walking motion in a humanoid robot, which pulled the carriage - as best I can make out. The patent seems to have been scanned and is quite garbled, but you can read it here.

Dederick's steam-powered man, photo from the patent (Wiki)

The original prototype cost $2000 (about $32,487 in modern US dollars); plans were made to construct it for only $300, but were abandoned.

It wasn't the last of its kind; Canadian George Moore invented another steam-powered man in 1893.  This time the prototype was a man of tin-plated iron sheet with an internal petrol-burning steam engine, legs operated by the pistons and a lever system; it walked in a circle at the end of a beam, attached at its waist.

Engravings show the mechanism clothed in a suit of armour, steam venting through a cigar between its lips and out its helmet.  

Prof. George Moore's 1893 steam man, from contemporary newspaper illustrations (source).

Moore exhibited his steam man around the United States; the engine was supposed to be able to turn at 3000 rpm, but while some reports claimed that the walking (very hot) tin man could not be held back by two men, others claimed that it could only manage half of one horsepower.  (In comparison, a basic gas-powered lawn mower with a 140cc engine manages three to four horsepower).  However, it seems to have been abandoned, as were Moore's plans for another iron man, which would be powerful enough to pull a wagon containing up to ten musicians in the streets.

It is not true that automata are a modern or a uniquely European or American phenomenon; they've existed for a very long time, in ancient Greece, the Abbasid Empire, ancient and early modern China, Renaissance Europe, and Edo period Japan, which traditions the Victorians drew on.  The Wikipedia entry, in this case, is quite good and cites plenty of useful sources.

Timeline of automata and related inventions in The Robot: The Life Story of a Technology