"Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow"
Dec 8– “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow” (1821) by Thomas De Quincey
Summary: There are three sorrows to go with the three fates.
Commentary: My favorite part of this is the implication that sending kids away to boarding school will kill them:
The rules of Eton require that a boy on the foundation should be there twelve years: he is superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know.
Other than that, the part about lifting children to face the stars after birth sounds like Disney may have cribbed it for The Lion King but I would assume many cultures have a similar ritual.
The Three Ladies are interesting, and De Quincey is a pretty clean writer. He apparently wrote a memoir about drug addiction that was quite popular. I added him to the to read list. Maybe next year.
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