I’ve been performing music every month at MacFarlane’s Celtic Pub in Lake Charles, Louisiana. There’s always been a good crowd, they have great food, and a cool facility. I’ve included a flier of my next performance there.
The name MacFarlane caught my attention and I did some study into Clan MacFarlane.
The Faerie Flag of the Clan MacLeod
An ancient Scottish legend adapted and retold by Rickey Pittman
One evening, the chief of the MacLeod clan walked along the windy beach on the Isle of Skye. His heart was heavy because he had recently buried his wife. Also a seer, a wise woman, prophesied that longships would soon come, full of fierce, berserk Norsemen—wild men who came only to kill, steal, and destroy. “Let them come,” he said. He fiercely whispered the clan McLeod motto: “We will hold fast!”
The wind howled, and as he looked out at the white-capped waves, he wondered if the MacLeod Maidens, known as Riders of the Sea and the Choosers of the Slain, would return with the next storm to claim the souls of more MacLeod warriors when they were in battle or on the sea.
He walked on till he came to the Faerie Hill. There, looking directly at him was the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen, with long red hair and green eyes full of mystery and meaning. She held out her hand. He took it and from that moment, he fell madly in love with her. It was truly love at first sight.
“I am Fionna, from the land of the faeries,” she said.
“I am McLeod, of the clan McLeod.” They walked together arm and arm. Then, McLeod asked her to marry him.
“I must ask permission from the King of the Faeries. Will you go with me to the Otherworld?”
McLeod knew that few who ventured into the faerie kingdom ever returned. Poets had at times journeyed there to drink of the well of inspiration, and though they had returned, they were never the same. Some had withdrawn into silence, others had gone mad. Yet, in spite of the danger, MacLeod knew he would go. “Yes,” he said. “I will go.”
They walked on in the gray and deepening twilight and stepped into the Faerie Kingdom. Beautiful music filled the air. They came to the King of the Faeries, who studied MacLeod. “You are not afraid?”
“No,” said MacLeod. “I am MacLeod, of the Isle of Skye. I have come to ask for the hand of Fionna.”
The king of the faeries nodded. “I have heard of you, MacLeod. You are known to be a brave warrior and generous man. But the answer is no.”
“You don’t understand, my king. I cannot live without her.”
“Nor I without him,” Fionna said.
The king said softly, “Then come here and live with her forever.”
MacLeod almost blurted out his true feelings—that he would do anything, agree to anything, if he could only be bound to Fionna. But then he remembered his clan—the many septs and families depending on his leadership, his guidance, and his protection. “I must return. Many depend on me. I must think of them.”
“You are indeed a noble chieftan,” the king said. “Return then, but Fionna must stay.”
“Why?” McLeod asked.
“Because you are only mortal and you will break her heart. She loves you too much. She could not bear to watch you age and die.”
Fionna wept. The king of the faeries waved his hand and the music stopped. He looked into the bold, blazing eyes of MacLeod.
“I will allow you to hand-fast on one condition. She can only stay with you a year and a day. Then she must return. Do you agree? If not, you may leave with my blessing, but you will never see Fionna again.”
“We agree,” Fionna and MacLeod said together.
“This is my wedding present to you.” The king motioned to an faerie who handed MacLeod a beautiful gold-embroidered cloak. “This cloak will one day be a great blessing to you and a symbol of your clan.”
Fionna and MacLeod returned and lived happily together at Dunvegan Castle. Fionna gave birth to a son, and MacLeod had never been happier.
A year and a day later, MacLeod was walking in the evening with Fionna, who carried their son. Fionna had worn her wedding cloak. Stopping on a footbridge near the Faerie Hill where they had first met, Fionna looked into the distance and said, “It is time for me to return, my husband.”
MacLeod was stunned. In his months of happiness, he had forgotten their vow.
“No,” MacLeod said. “Stay as a mortal. Grow old with me and our son.”
Fionna said, “I must return, my love. The Faerie Kingdom is calling me, and that music is greater than even my love for you.”
As tears streamed down her face, she handed their child to MacLeod. “Take care of our son. Promise me you’ll never let him cry. As he grows, tell him about his mother, and about how much she loves him. Goodbye, my husband.” Then she turned and ran to the Faerie Hill and vanished in the twilight.
Five years later, their son became ill. As he shivered with fever, he cried softly. MacLeod was beside himself. He stretched himself on the floor and wept until he fell asleep.
That night in the Faerie Kingdom, Fionna heard her son crying and it broke her heart. She appeared by his bedside, held him and comforted him. She whispered magical words, kissed his forehead, and laid the gold-embroidered cloak across him.
The next morning, MacLeod was overjoyed to find his son well. Then he spotted his wife’s cloak on the bed.
“Where did you get this?” MacLeod asked.
“Mother left it. She said it has magical powers. She said, ‘I give it to the MacLeod clan forever. You may use the cloak only three times. Wave it in the air and the Faerie Kingdom will come to your aid. Guard it well. If anyone but a MacLeod ever touches it, it will turn to dust and vanish.’ ”
The cloak became known as the Faerie Flag and was the most treasured possession of the MacLeod clan. The MacCrimmons, the clan pipers for the MacLeods for thirteen generations, wrote many songs about the beautiful Lady McLeod and her magical faerie cloak.
Years later, Macleod took the cloak with him on a Crusade to the Holy Land. The cloak was tied to a flagpole and became the banner of his knights and it led them to many victories.
Once, a hermit sheltered MacLeod in a cave. The hermit warned MacLeod that an evil spirit would appear in the form of a beautiful woman. The she-devil would attempt to kill him and take Fionna’s cloak. That same evening, a woman did appear while he was sleeping and tried to strangle him. MacLeod stabbed her with his dagger. Before she died, she revealed the names of the future MacLeod clan chieftains.
When MacLeod returned home, he locked the cloak in a box. Since then, the clan has only used two of the three magical promises—once in a battle when they were outnumbered, and once in time of plague and famine.
In World War II, MacLeod pilots carried pictures of the Faerie Flag in their wallets for protection. Not one of those pilots was lost in the war.
A portion of the cloak still exists, displayed in a room of Dunvegan Castle. The fragile, faded yellow silk cloth rests in a glass case, looking as if it’s ready to crumble into dust if touched by human hands. Sometimes late at night, the ghostly, beautiful music of a piper can be heard coming from that room.
The Faerie Flag remains a symbol of the clan MacLeod and a reminder of an ancient promise given by the mysterious folk of the faerie kingdom.
I had not been a Christian long when I enrolled in the two-year study at White’s Ferry Road School of Preaching, the churches of Christ version of a seminary. There, I was immersed in intense Biblical studies, reading, Christian apologetics, historical facts, and memory work designed to mold me into a Church of Christ (Campbellite) evangelist.
I learned much more than I intended in this fine school and I’ll always be grateful for my instructors’ rigorous instruction that made the scriptures come alive as together we absorbed the sparks and breathed the inspired air. Though some of my fellow students held on to the King James version, and some gravitated to the New American Standard version, the instructors and the majority of the students in WFRSOP used the 1901 American Standard Version. I purchased my hardback Bible and had it leather-bound by a man in West Monroe who specialized in binding Bibles. My name was embossed in gold leaf on the cover. With the same Bible pictured here below my essay title, I began my journey through the Old and New Testaments.
I still remember the excitement, the epiphanies, and the serendipities of those early days of Bible study and I read this Bible every day of my early preacher life from cover to cover numerous times and even memorized several books of the Bible and many long passages. In the years that followed, I read several other translations from start to finish– Moffatt, New International Version, New American Standard, Revised Standard, New Revised Standard, the Living Bible, the King James version, and the New King James version. Though I enjoyed and gained insights from these versions, the version that really held my heart was this ragged American Standard.
While this version in its heyday was popular with a few congregations, schools, and Biblical scholars, it was never popular with the masses. Yet, it was the Bible of my spiritual beginning and the Bible of my current spiritual awakening. I’m looking at this same Bible again tonight, studying the marked, notated, and highlighted verses, with some loose pages in the middle, and I’ll continue my journey.
It is disheartening to see and hear our national leaders’ desire to turn America into a socialist state. Some are so historically and politically ignorant that they actually praise communist leaders and countries. Below is an article I wrote that was published in Dec. 1983 in Voice of Freedom, a monthly publication devoted the Cause of Religious Freedom and our American way of life. This is a true account from an interview I conducted in 1983.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune,–Francis Bacon
If a government official armed with a machine gun came to your house and said, “Your children must leave immediately to come and live at the state school,”–what would you do? Many think it could never happen. Unfortunately, it happens frequently in some communist. countries.
For example, Emilia, a Christian now living in South Florida, was once tending to the afternoon farm chores at their small home on the Isle of Pines, Cuba. Two government officials camped and took away her two small boys. She was told the boys would be provided a quality education at the expense of the government. The parents could even come and visit them anytime they wished.
However, the quality education meant living on two meager meals a day, with one change of clothes a week, military training, and subjection to abuse. The curriculum was communist indoctrination. The boys spent half of their day in such classes and the other half working in the fields. Yes, this was of course free.
Yes, the parents were allow to see the boys whenever “they” [i.e.,the government] wished. But she soon found that they did not want her to come very often. So, she saw her boys less frequently, finding that the procedure to obtain permission was growing more difficult and humiliating. Her heart broke as she watched her boys grow thin, She listened in horror to their whispered stories of life in the school. Soon, the oldest son was transferred to the military base for training and has not been seen since, Emilia hope his bodies not lost in the jungles of Africa. She hopes to find out some day.
I wish this story were imaginary. It is not, In order to further the progress of the Revolution, Castro has organized state schools throughout Cuba, where the government requires children to live and obtain their “education.” By creating these schools, Castro hopes to insure the success of his communist cause. It must certainly must be his effort to weaken the traditional and Christian family.
While no child in a communist land has the rights and safety grand to our children in the West, the oppression of the children of believers seems to be frequent and brutal. Cuba is not the only nation guilty of such an outrage, Each of the communist nations has its favorite methods of dealing with believing parents and their children.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn devotes many pages in his three volumes of the Gulag Archipelago to the plight of children in the Soviet Union. He reveals that government officials frequently threaten to inflict harm upon the families of believers and dissidents. Those who persist in holding to their convictions or practices are brought before a court, declared to be unfit parents, and stripped of their parental rights for life. The child is taken from them and sent to an atheistic orphanage, a state camp type of school, or even a labor camp for children. The communists feel that Christian indoctrination is subversive and damaging to the socialistic development of the child. It is considered a crime to even take a child under 16 years of age to religious services.
A child that enters into the communist alternatives to the Christian Holme enters a world frequently filled with immorality, abuse, drugs, alcohol, gangs, and violence. This shocking transfer can’t do anything but have a negative effect upon the soul of s sensitive child. Job spoke of those who “pluck the fatherless from the breast” (24:9) . . . . It was a sad day for Emilia when she watched her two boys drive off in the government truck on that dusty road on the Isle of Pines.
THEY TOOK THE BABY AWAY – A poem by Rickey Pittman
They took the baby
Like I heard that they would do,
But in our land of freedom,
It doesn’t happen to you,
It happens very frequently,
To saints in other lands,
The Devil does it easily,
It seems by Communist hands.
Children in a Christian home,
Who go to church and pray,
They will take to an orphan,
Take them far away.
They never will return you know,
Those years were all they had,
Now prayer and God must lead them,
For they’ll never have their dad.
With no Bible now to teach them,
No songs of Jesus’ love,
Just hate and rage and sadness,
And life without a God.
Here we have no penalty,
For teaching Jesus’ way, T
Here there is no persecution,
For teaching kids to pray.
Oh, please, dear God, forgive me,
For coward that I am,
I don’t know if I could take it,
To see children lose their dad,
The price of faith must cost us,
But what cost mine I ask?
And why are these my burden,
These kids that lose their dad.
Having had a lifetime interest in Native Americans, and having just read The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard, I learned many things about the Apache Indians that I wanted to share in this post. The little details are indications of Leonard’s research and knowledge. Here are some things about the Apache Indians of the Southwest that I learned:
There are several other insights into the Apache, so if you’re interested, I suggest you find the writings of Leonard!
In years past, in addition to reading all the books and novels of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, I’ve read the wonderful novel by Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago and have viewed the movie with the same title several times. I’ve also read Pasternak’s book of poetry, Poems of Dr. Zhivago. I also have performed in my music show “Lara’s Theme,” which became the song “Somewhere My Love.” This writer made an unforgettable impression on me and made me realize how horrible life was during the days of the Communist Revolution and the Communist government in Russia. Have you seen the movie or read the novel? Here’s a quote that I think relates to our topic of moral relativism. Let me know what you think. In context, Yuri returns from his work early and finds his house with his wife and child freezing. He marches out and starts tearing down a fence for fuel, but is discovered by his half-brother who is a communist official/commissioner. Here are the commissioner’s thoughts:
“I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the Party is beneath the dignity of any man. And the Party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city.”
I like there above quote because of the growing interest and commitment to socialism and communism. This is a frightening and disturbing trend. It is also an indication of how illiterate the general public is about history, the fate and condition of socialist and communistic countries, the great books written by those who suffered under communism. A move to socialism and communism would spell certain destruction of our nation.
Many seem to determine America as we know it. It brings to mind another quote from Dr. Zhivago: “My task—the Party’s task—was to organize defeat. From defeat would spring the Revolution…and the Revolution would be
Perhaps colleges should require literature and history courses on the writings of Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, and other samizdat authors. An honest student who reads these troubling works will be permanently affected and will see through the tactics and
Here is an event I’ll be attending in June. If you are in driving distance, I’d love to meet you and talk with you. This will be a great show!
Here’s my Seminole War costume!
I’ve just finished a reading of this fine novel. I view it as one of the most intriguing novels I’ve read
1. Though in some ways it may be built upon the Gothic tradition, Southern Gothic is a distinctly American genre.
2. Characters often are deeply flawed, damaged, disturbing, disturbed, deranged, delusional or diseased mentally, dangerous; and/or deformed in some way. A deep, inner life is usually lacking, and they may be broken in body or soul.
3. Plots are built around or at least using the macabre, bizarre, the unusual, the grotesque–things that make us cringe.
4. The humor is a dark humor. Sometimes a mocking humor that attacks our clichés and habits of life.
5. Southern Gothic explores social issues and reveals aspects of Southern culture.
The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature says this about Southern Gothic: Southern Gothic is a mode or genre prevalent in literature from the early 19th century to this day. Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.
Only Charlottehas these characteristics. Here are my observations generally about this novel:
1. This novel, like the author’s other novels, are all set in the post-Civil War South. She writes with honesty, avoiding the stereotypes commonly used to portray the South. There’s no effort in her writing to please the politically correct police. She captures a very real historical world and leads the reader into it, where we discover the idioms, the secrets, customs, events, and the arcane mysteries of the Old South. Through her descriptions of the plants and flowers and places, I felt I entered the gardens, the streets of New Orleans, and the cemeteries and as he ministered to people, I understood better the challenges facing Gilbert, Lenore’s brother and physician.
2. Poole’s diction (word choice) is amazing and used skillfully. I think this is a book that should have a reader’s guide with words and phrases listed and defined that may be new to the reader.
3. Conflict and suspense are abundant and unrelenting that should keep the reader turning pages to the very end of the 446 page novel, indicating that we are reading a very skilled novelist. As revealed by the opening epigraph, the novel’s structure and plot are influenced by Shakespeare’sThe Winter’s Tale. The novel’s opening line, “Draw the shadows, and the shapes will appear” is a brilliant opening and this line is repeated through the story. This is a mystery and is so well constructed that though the reader will speculate what will happen next, but the author will continue lead to surprising twists and complications.
4. The author uses narrative to relate her tale, through the voice of Lenore. Using narrative this skillfully is a difficult task for any novelist to accomplish, but Poole uses it well and manages to both “show and tell” in a way that holds our interest and attention.
5. This is a novel that reveals the struggles attending attraction and love. Gilbert falls for Charlotte and the reader is cheering for them to be together. For him, there is only Charlotte. The novel reveals how jealousy, the desire to exercise power and control over another, the pain of betrayal, and the cost of love can be painfully real.
Here is the MLA entry for a Works Cited:
Poole-Carter, Rosemary. Only Charlotte. Top Publications Ltd. Plano, Texas, 2018.
I remember in college how a writing instructor directed me to rewrite a submission and change it from third to first person. He said, “You will learn something from this exercise.” He was correct, and since then, when I’ve had the opportunity, I’ve rewritten other pieces in the same way. I was amazed at how Matthiessen could so capture the distinct voices and minds of Lucius in Lost Man’s River and the voice and mind of Watson himself in Bone by Bone.
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen is a National Book Award Winner. This author of at least eight novels has in my mind created a Florida fiction masterpiece and a fantastic rendering of the legend of E. J. Watson. Shadow Country is actually a compilation of three novels: Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone. I have read Killing Mister Watson twice, and I just finished reading the following two novels. The novels are written in three distinct time frames and from three distinct points of view.
In Shadow Country, readers will find numerous reviews that praise the writing of Matthiessen–many more than I can mention in this short review. I can say that he is a writer whose other works (even if they are not about Florida) I want to read. The strengths of his writing and prose are his gifts of dialogue that capture the idioms and speech of Florida ethnic groups. He reveals numerous and interesting historical and geographical details. In his writing, the reader can discover the landscape and history of South Florida. Plants, animals, long-lost forgotten communities, customs, laws, social mores, storms, and the pioneers who settled South Florida are encountered in an unforgettable way.
To me, the most haunting fact of all is that the real E. J. Watson is a historically significant person. These novels reveal the conflicts Watson created and how people responded to Watson (and people like him), and how one’s responses to his violence (perceived, imagined, or actual), his manipulations, successes and possible benefits influenced their world.
If you are a writer who wants to see good writing, to discover numerous well-turned phrases and to encounter a little known world of South Florida, this is a collection you need to read.