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The MOVE Fire

This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985 Philadelphia police fired thousands of rounds at the MOVE house, city officials approved dropping an explosive device on the roof, the resulting fire was allowed to burn, 11 people—including five children—died, and 61 homes were destroyed. Philadelphia City Council later called it a “brutal attack carried out by the City of Philadelphia on its own citizens” and acknowledged that no individual faced criminal consequences for the bombing. One timeline correction worth preserving for the BHP record: the major previous MOVE-police confrontation was August 8, 1978, about seven years before the bombing, not a year or two earlier. Officer James Ramp was killed, other police and firefighters were wounded, nine MOVE members were later convicted, and television cameras recorded police beating Delbert Africa during his arrest. The 1985 MOVE Commission later specifically criticized city planners for failing to adequately use lessons from that 1978 confrontation. And that actually strengthens the point you’re making: 1985 did not happen without precedent or institutional memory. There had already been a deadly confrontation with MOVE, years of conflict, negotiations and police involvement before Osage Avenue.

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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.

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Wikipedia

Dullahan

This article is about the Irish mythological figure. For the Thoroughbred racehorse, see Dullahan (horse).

Dullahan, the headless horseman
—Illustrated by W. H. Brooke, Croker, Fairy Legends (3rd ed., 1834).

The Dullahan (Irish: Dubhlachan; dúlachán, /ˈduːləˌhɑːn/) is a type of legendary creature in Irish folklore. He is depicted as a headless rider on a black horse, or as a coachman, who carries his own head.

Etymology

[edit]

Dullahan or Dulachan (Irish: Dubhlachan [Duḃlaċan]) referring to "hobgoblin" (generic term; cf. Dullahan described as "unseelie (wicked) fairy"[1]), literally "signifies dark, sullen person", according to the lexicographer Edward O'Reilly.[2] Dulachan and Durrachan are alternative words for this "hobgoblin", and these forms suggest etymological descent from dorr/durr "anger" or durrach "malicious" or "fierce".[2] The original Irish term contains the stem dubh, meaning "black" in Irish.[4]

Dullahan was later glossed as "dark, angry, sullen, fierce or malicious being",[a][8] encompassing both etymologies, though Thomas Crofton Croker considered the alternative etymology more dubious than the dubh "black" ("dark") etymology.[b]

The Dullahan is also called Colainn Gan Cheann, meaning "without a head" in Irish.

"Headless Coach" (Irish: Cóiste Gan Cheann)[9] or the "Soundless Coach" (literally "deaf coach", Irish: cóiste bodhar;[10][9] Hiberno-English: Coshta Bower, corrupted to "coach-a-bower")[11][12] is the name given to the vehicle driven by the Dullahan.[13]

Folk beliefs

[edit]

Description

[edit]

He is depicted as a headless horseman,[14] typically on a black horse,[19] who may carry his own head in his hand or under his arm.[20][1] The severed head has a revolting appearance, as in Croker's tale "The Headless Horseman":

...such a head no mortal ever saw before. It looked like a large cream cheese hung round with black puddings: no speck of colour enlivened the ashy paleness of the depressed features; the skin lay stretched over the unearthly surface almost like the parchment head of a drum. Two fiery eyes of prodigious circumference, with a strange and irregular motion, flashed like meteors.[21]

According to the modern storyteller Tony Locke of County Mayo, the Dullahan's mouth, full of razor-sharp teeth, forms a grin reaching the sides of the head, its "massive" eyes "constantly dart about like flies", and the flesh has acquired the "smell, colour and consistency of mouldy cheese".[22]

There are also legends and tales mentioning the "Headless Coach"[23] (also called "Coach-a-bower";[24] Irish: cóiste bodhar[10]), with the Dullahan as its presumed driver.[25][26] Cóiste Bodhar was referred to as "Soundless Coach" by Robert Lynd, who gave an account of a "silent shadow" of a coach passing by, provided by an avowed witness from Connemara.[9] However, William Butler Yeats explained that "the 'deaf coach' was so called because of its rumbling sound".[27][c] According to one witness,[d] only the silent shadow of the horse-drawn hearse, i.e., the "Soundless Coach" was seen passing by.[9]

In Croker's poem "The Death Coach", the carriage axle is made of a human spine and the wheel-spokes are constructed from thigh bones.[28] A later writer prosifying this description supplied additional details, so that the "two hollow skulls" used as lanterns on the carriage[28] are set with candles,[29] and the hammercloth made of pall material "mildew'd by damps"[28] is embellished as being chewed away by worms.[29][e]

Behaviour

[edit]

A Dullahan appears as a mounted horseman or a coachman[26] driving a horse-drawn carriage out of graveyards.[6] The rumour of a Dullahan's appearance often develops near a graveyard or a charnel vault where a wicked aristocrat is reputed to be buried.[6]

He arrives, driving the death coach, at the doorstep of a person whose death is approaching.[12] According to Croker, the appearance of the "Headless Coach" foreshadows imminent death or misfortune.[31] In "Hanlon's Mill", Michael (Mick) Noonan is returning from his trip to a shoemaker at Ballyduff, Co. Cork, and during his journey, he sees a black coach drawn by six headless black horses, driven by a headless coachman clad in black. The next morning, Mick receives news from the huntsman that Master Wrixon of Ballygibblin had a fit and died.[32]

Croker reports that in one legend, a Headless Coach would run back and forth from Castle Hyde[f] to a glen/valley[g] beyond the village of Ballyhooly, in County Cork.[h][31] Nearby in the town of Doneraile,[i] it was said that the coach would visit the houses in succession, and whichever occupant dared to open the door would be splashed with a basin of blood by the coachman.[31]

There are rumours that golden objects can force the Dullahan to disappear.[33][better source needed]

Sight

[edit]

A modern commentator stated that the Dullahan has the ability to see with the severed head and can "use it to scan the countryside for mortals about to die".[1]

In contrast, the headless coach in the tale "The Harvest Dinner" is described as a "blind (thief)",[34] and Croker assumed he lacks sight.[35]

Whip

[edit]

The Dullahan allegedly uses a human spine as a whip according to a number of 21st century commentators.[36][22][40][j]

The headless coachman merely bears a "long whip" in Croker's tale "The Harvest Dinner", with which he lashes the horses so furiously, he almost strikes a witness blind in an eye (the would-be-victim regarded it as deliberate assault).[34] Croker deduced that the headless creature, as a way of habit, attempts to destroy his witness's eye[42] or eyes with his whip, reasoning that the coachman's wrath turns to the onlooker because he lacks the ability to look due to his headlessness.[k][35]

Folk tales

[edit]

Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1828) contained a section on "The Dullahan" devoted to the lore of headless beings.[43]

The tale "The Good Woman" recounts a peasant's encounter with a cloaked female who turns out to be a Dullahan. A peasant named Larry Dodd, a resident of "White Knight's Country" at the foot the Galtee Mountains (Galtymore),[l] travels to Cashel where he buys a nag, intending to sell it at Kildorrery fair that June evening.[46] He offers a ride to a cloaked female, and when he grabs her to exact a kiss as payment for the ride, he discovers her to be a Dullahan. After losing consciousness, in the church ruins he finds a wheel of torture set with severed heads (skulls) and headless Dullahans, both men and women and nobles and commoners of various occupations. Larry is offered a drink, and when he is about to compliment it, his head is severed mid-sentence. His head reverts when he regains his senses. He loses his horse to the Dullahans.[47][m]

See also

[edit]

Explanatory notes

[edit]
  1. ^ O'Hanlon's book drew from Croker. See Frank Kinahan's remark (though it concerns the appropriation material regarding the merrow).[5]
  2. ^ Croker felt that the "this etymology [by O'Reilly] may be questioned, as dubh "black" is a "component of the word".[4]
  3. ^ Cf. Charles Welsh, who repeats the blood basin splashing told by Croker, adds that the coach "rumbles to your door".[13]
  4. ^ Lynd's informant was from Connemara, County Galway.
  5. ^ And the upholstery covering the wagon becomes "dried human skin", for example, in Jim Zub's comic novel Wayward 4 (2017).[30]
  6. ^ About 2 miles north-west of Fermoy.
  7. ^ "Glana Fauna".
  8. ^ Fermoy is on the Blackwater, as is Killavullen, and Ballyhooly is about midpoint in between.
  9. ^ 4 miles west of Ballygibblin, 7 miles north-north-west of Killavullen (the Mill).
  10. ^ Dullahan using human spine as whip occurs in fantasy fiction writer Craig Shaw Gardner's novelization Leprechauns (1999).[41]
  11. ^ The coachman is called a "blind thief" in the tale, which corroborates the notion he cannot see.
  12. ^ The Mountains span from County Limerick to County Tipperary, but the White Knight's estate here was probably to the south, in County Cork. In 1643, the then White Knight (prob. John Fitzgibbon, 9th White Knight) lived at Kilbehenny Castle in the southern shadow of Galtymore,[44] John Oge Fitzgibbon, 10th White Knight was known by alias "John the White Knight of Mitchelstown, County Cork"."[45]
  13. ^ The epilogue tells of Larry getting a tongue-lashing from his wife Nancy Gollagher after his absence the whole night. Larry wisecracks that the headless woman should be called a "Good Woman" (as given in the title) in comparison, for she lacks the ability to verbally abuse him so.[48] It is further explained that a "Good Woman" referred to a saint or devoted woman martyred by decapitation, but this got corrupted to a standing joke that a woman without a head (and therefore can only remain silent) is therefore a "Good woman".[49][50]

References

[edit]

Citations

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c Haughton (2012), p. 54.
  2. ^ a b Edward O'Reilly (by private communication[3]) cited by Croker.[4]
  3. ^ Croker (1834), II: 240.
  4. ^ a b c Croker (1828), II: 98.
  5. ^ Kinahan, F. (1983). "Armchair Folklore: Yeats and the Textual Sources of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry". Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature. 83C: 265. JSTOR 25506103. Much of what Yeats had to call on might be classed as armchair folklore: Croker describes the merrow, Kennedy borrows from Croker but adds an anecdote, O'Hanlon goes back to Croker and then adds a touch of his own.
  6. ^ a b c d O'Hanlon, John (1893). "Legend of Murrisk". The Poetical Works of Lageniensis [pseud.] Dublin: James Duffy. pp. 218–221, n 4, n7 and n8.
  7. ^ a b Campbell, Josianne Leah (2016). "Death Coach". In Fee, Christopher R.; Webb, Jeffrey B. (eds.). American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore: an Encyclopedia of American Folklore. Dublin: ABC-CLIO. pp. 285–296. ISBN 9781610695688.
  8. ^ O'Hanlon (1893),[6] also quoted by Josianne Leah Campbell (2016).[7]
  9. ^ a b c d Lynd, Robert (1912) [1909]. Home Life in Ireland (3 ed.). A. C. McClurg. p. 67.
  10. ^ a b Doyle, James J. [Séamas Ó Dubhghaill] [in Irish] (February 1922). "Irish Popular Traditions". The Irish Monthly. 51 (584): 78.
  11. ^ Croker (1828), 2: 136.
  12. ^ a b Haughton (2012), p. 63, historian, cited by Josianne Leah Campbell (2016).[7]
  13. ^ a b Welsh, Charles (1904). "Irish Fairy and Folk Tales". In McCarthy, Justin; Welsh, Charles (eds.). Irish Literature. Vol. 3. Maurice Francis Egan; Douglas Hyde; Lady Gregory; James Jeffrey Roche (assoc. ed.). Chicago: DeBower-Elliot Company. pp. xxix–xx.
  14. ^ Croker (1828), II: 98. §The Dullhan, "The Headless Horseman", p. 146
  15. ^ Croker (1828), II: 107.
  16. ^ Croker (1828), II: 150–151.
  17. ^ Addison, Joseph (6 July 1711). "Untitled [Ghost Story]". The Spectator. 2 (110): 108.
  18. ^ Handley, Sasha (2016) [2007]. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth Century England. Routledge. p. 116. ISBN 9781317315254.
  19. ^ Haughton (2012), p. 54 generalizes on colour of the horseman's steed. Whereas Croker's story "Hanlon's Mill" features a "black coach drawn by six black horses".[15] Croker's annotation also quotes an account of a "spirit.. in the shape of a black horse without a head", from The Spectator,[16][17] but this was actually a fabricated ghost story by Joseph Addison, set near the (English) manor of the fictitious Sir Roger de Coverley.[18]
  20. ^ Yeats, William Butler, ed. (1892). "The Solitary Fairies: 6. The Dullahan". Irish Fairy Tales. London: T. Fisher Unwin. p. 229.
  21. ^ Croker (1828), II: 143.
  22. ^ a b Locke, Tony, ed. (2014). Mayo Folk Tales. The History Press. Dullahan. ISBN 9780750961141.
  23. ^ a b Croker (1828), II: 109.
  24. ^ Croker (1828), II: 136.
  25. ^ Croker's section on The Dullahan includes the tale "Hanlon's Mill", and in the postscript Croker states the "Headless Coach" is a "general superstition".[23]
  26. ^ a b O'Hanlon's poem "Legend of Murrisk" describes the Coach-a-bower on the move, and its driver is explicitly called "Dullahan" in a subsequent stanza.[6]
  27. ^ Gregory, Augusta (1920). Yeats, Wililam Butler (notes) (ed.). Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 284, n17.
  28. ^ a b c Croker (1828), II: 133–134.
  29. ^ a b White, Carolyn (2001) [1985]. Ballyvourney Collection (Irish songs) (4 ed.). Mercier Press. p. 67. ISBN 9781856350099.
  30. ^ Zub, Jim (2017). Wayward. Vol. 4 Threads and Portents. Illustrated by Steve Cummings; John Rauch. Image Comics. ISBN 9781534303133.
  31. ^ a b c Croker (1828), 2: 109.
  32. ^ Croker (1828), 2: 106–108.
  33. ^ "Hidden Ireland | The Dullahan". irelandseye.com. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
  34. ^ a b Croker (1828), II: 126.
  35. ^ a b Croker (1828), II: 136–137.
  36. ^ Haughton (2012), pp. 54–55.
  37. ^ Ray, Brian (2010). "Tim Burton and the Idea of Fairy Tales". In Greenhill, Pauline; Matrix, Sidney Eve (eds.). Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity. University Press of Colorado. p. 207. ISBN 9780874217827.
  38. ^ Yeats, William Butler, ed. (2003). "The Solitary Fairies: The Banshee". Irish Fairy and Folk Tales. Paul Muldoon (foreword). Random House Publishing Group. p. 118. ISBN 9780812968552.
  39. ^ Yeats, William Butler, ed. (1888). "The Solitary Fairies: The Banshee". Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. London: Walter Scott. p. 108.
  40. ^ Brian Ray's essay claims that "W. B. Yeats mentions.. the dullahan.. brandishing a whip made from a human spine",[37] however, the source Ray cites, Yeats (2003), p. 118[38] (= Yeats (1888), p. 108[39] fails to mention whip or spine.
  41. ^ Gardner, Craig Shaw (1999). Leprechauns. Hallmark Entertainment Books. p. 41. ISBN 9781575665351.
  42. ^ Haughton (2012), p. 55.
  43. ^ Croker (1828), Section "The Dullahan". Chapters "The Good Woman"; "Hanlon's Mill"; "The Harvest Dinner"; "The Death Coach"; "The Headless Horsemann" II: 85–152
  44. ^ Flynn, Paul J. (1926). The Book of the Galtees and the Golden Vein: A Border History of Tipperary, Limerick & Cork. Hodges, Figgis & Company. p. 116.
  45. ^ Graves, James, ed. (1881). Unpublished Geraldine documents: From the Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland. Vol. 4. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Sons. p. 67.
  46. ^ Croker (1828), II: 85–87.
  47. ^ Croker (1828), II: 87–96.
  48. ^ Croker (1828), II: 97–98.
  49. ^ Croker (1828), II: 100.
  50. ^ Brady, John Henry (1839). "bug, bugbear". Clavis Calendaria; Or, A Compendious Analysis of the Calendar. London: Henry Washbourne. p. 317.

General and cited references

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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.

Wikipedia

Dullahan

The Dullahan (Irish: Dubhlachan; dúlachán, ) is a type of legendary creature in Irish folklore. He is depicted as a headless rider on a black horse, or as a coachman, who carries his own head.

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Wikipedia

Dullahan (horse)

Dullahan (February 8, 2009 – October 20, 2013) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse. As a two-year-old he recorded his first win in the Grade I Breeders' Futurity Stakes. In early 2012, he won the Blue Grass Stakes, finished third in the Kentucky Derby and was the beaten favorite for the Belmont Stakes. Later in the season, he defeated older horses in the Pacific Classic. He was euthanized of a ruptured colon on October 20, 2013, at Winstar Farm in Versailles, Kentucky.

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Wikipedia

Death coach

The death coach is part of the folklore of Northwestern Europe. It is particularly strong in Ireland where it is known as the cóiste bodhar (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkoːʃtʲə ˈbˠəuɾˠ]), also meaning "silent coach", but can also be found in stories from British and American culture. It is usually depicted as a black coach being driven or led by a dullahan.

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Durarara!!

Durarara!! (デュラララ!!), shortened to DRRR!! in some official materials, is a Japanese light novel series written by Ryohgo Narita, with illustrations by Suzuhito Yasuda. Durarara!! tells the story of a dullahan working as an underworld courier in Ikebukuro, an internet-based anonymous gang called the Dollars, and the chaos that unfolds around the most dangerous people in Ikebukuro. The series ran for thirteen volumes, published by ASCII Media Works under their Dengeki Bunko imprint. A sequel series, titled Durarara!! SH set two years after the events of the original series, started in 2014. A manga adaptation of the same name, first illustrated by Akiyo Satorigi and later by Aogiri, has been serialized in Square Enix's shōnen manga magazine Monthly GFantasy since July 2009. A 24-episode anime television series adaptation was broadcast from January to June 2010. It was followed by a 36-episode second season, titled Durarara!!×2, broadcast from January 2015 to March 2016.

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TOPIC OF THE DAY

Greenwood / Black Wall Street

Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.

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TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE DAY

Which heavyweight champion was known as the “Brown Bomber”?

Joe Louis.