Setting aside all the insignificant stuff, like indissolubility of marriage and Communion, Popes and potential heresy and schism, let’s keep our eyes focused on what really matters.
Today, 19 September, is…
Talk Like A Pirate Day.
If you do nothing else, please use the exclamation “YARRRR!” (aka “ARRRR!”) at least 5 times before bedtime.
Helpful words:
- bilge
- scurvy
- matey
- scupper
- grog
- “Which it’s…” [fill in the blank – cf. Preserved Killick (not a pirate but… hey!)]
This has been a public service announcement.
It will be easy to discuss what is going on in the Church while working in words like “bilge” and “scurvy.”
Aye me harties, Captain Z has given us permission to speak :
I still be a Catholic first and a pirate second , mate, (but not a second mate), so it “Shivers me timbers” any time I hears one of our crew utter , “Dead men tell no tales,”: Strap that scalawag to the yardarm I says, and give him a better view ’til he understands the meaning of the Communion of Saints.
Pirates can get to Heaven too Jack – just ask Dismas (aye, they aint “dead“, and they do tell tales and they’re just waitin’ to intercede for us). Weren’t it just yesterday that we were hearing ’bout how we can’t serve both God and lucre at once ? Arrr! Beware of the trachery of the devil – that lawless marauder who is always on the prowl and will attack us from under cover – often when we’re marooned and most vulnerable. Always keep a rosary in your bandolier.
When we comes to our senses, our dead reckoning will set us back on course to parley with Jesus who invites us to sail the high seas with Him – who survived the mutiny of practically his entire crew, that He might go to the gibbet for each one of us. With Him, we’re sure to vanquish.
I remember me own day at sea – a day when the wind had died down to a whisper, and the sails drooped like the morale of a man about to walk the plank. All went quiet, and I pondered a moment, Him who ordered the sea and the wind to be silent, and to “Be still.” And all my former thoughts became jetsam, as I perceived the voice of a guardian Angel urging this old salt on, with the words, “Forget the pieces of eight and plot a course for peace of mind!”
And I did take up that Thomas A Kempis’ Imitation of Christ to read from a favourite chapter of mine:
yarrrr, me heartes, yo ho ho, and God be praisin’ Saint Olaf Haraldsson !!!
Today at Mass, we will be praying the “Arrrr Father”
No doubt, followed by the Glarry Be.
The Chicken
How rich and varied pirate lingo must have been, when you think of all the varied nations and tongues sailing, and mixing it up in ports (think of all the languages St. Peter Claver, whose feast was ten days ago, worked with, via interpreters and learning what he could of essential vocabularies!), and on the high sea (crews mixed by recruitment, rescue, capture) – seafaring lino in general, come to that. (Jan de Hartog’s novel, Captain Jan: a Story of Ocean Tugboats, gives a striking linguistic portrait of Captain Siemonov, as does Karl ?apek’s War with the Newts of Captain van Toch – as Melville’s Moby Dick did before them, in its picture of the varied crew members.)
If St. Godric of Finchale was indeed a pirate (or even simply a sea captain) before becoming a hermit, he probably picked up some lively 11th-12th-c. sea-going lingo – though none of it shows up in English songs taught him by the Virgin and St. Nicholas.
A pirate joke a friend’s nephew shared: What’s a pirate’s favorite letter? R? You might think so, but it’s the C! ;)
To fulfill the obligation of my annual link to the patron saint of the Talk Like A Pirate Feast Day:
https://youtu.be/yC_PR7YWQOc