LibriVox, calling all Bards

[kitkalas]

I just came across an amazing resource on iTunes, while hoping to find audio versions of various legends. LibriVox (www.librivox.org) holds as it's professed goal no less than to record all public domain works into freely available audio.

I especially liked Chapters 1 & 2 of A Popular History of Ireland, as they cover the ancient races and Druid society.

There's Robin Hood, Arthur, the Faerie Queene, mountains of poetry, Peter Pan, and the Mabinogion is expected to get through the review and recording process by November.

In the past, I've always regarded books as primary, and audiobooks as a secondary source for folks without enough time to properly read. Listening to Druidcast and browsing around here, I see it differently. Listening to the performance of Lady Ragnell just once on Druidcast, I was able to recount it to my wife more or less intact. That's something profound. This project is restoring the works of the public domain, for all intents and purposes, to the oral tradition of transmission. It is knowledge once in print now being passed on freely through volunteer voice performance. They have a list of works yet to be performed a mile long, and need volunteers. And, to be blunt, you're Bards. Although the tales, poems and histories waiting in line are admittedly a bit set in stone, they are begging for inspired delivery. The dead printed words require good resuscitation, and I believe the Bards were born for this task.

Once more unto to the breach, and all that...

Josh

[kitkalas]

Project Gutenberg has lots of public domain works that have not yet been read for LibriVox - several Irish mythologies, epics, histories and fairy stories, 'Tales from Scottish Ballads', some of the Andrew Lang fairy tale collections, a few very old texts on witches (Salem and England, mostly), and an interesting 1897 herbal with lots of colloquial info by W. T. Fernie, M.D., just for starters.

"The Hawthorn is also named Whitethorn, from the whiteness of its rind; and Quickset from its growing in a hedge as a "quick" or living shrub, when contrasted with a paling of dead wood. An old English name for the buds of the Hawthorn when just expanding, was Ladies' Meat; and in Sussex it is called the Bread and Cheese tree. In many parts of England charms or incantations are [247] employed to prevent a thorn from festering in the flesh, as:--

Happy the man that Christ was born,
He was crowned with a thorn,
He was pierced through the skin
For to let the poison in;
But His five wounds, so they say,
Closed before He passed away;
In with healing, out with thorn!
Happy man that Christ was born.

...also...

"Silverweed tea is excellent to relieve cramps of the belly; and compresses, wrung out of a hot decoction of the herb, may at the same time be helpfully applied over the seat of the cramps. A potent Anglo-Saxon charm against crampy bellyache was to wear a gold ring with a Dolphin engraved on it, and bearing in Greek the mystic words:--"Theos keleuei mee keneoon ponois," "_God forbids the pains of colic_." This acted doubtless by mental suggestion, as in the cure of warts."

...and further...

"Parkinson says "if it be [617] pat into the nose, assuredly it will stay the bleeding of it," which mast be the' effect of action according to similars. Or if using Yarrow in the same way as a love charm, the following lines were repeated:--

"Green arrow! green arrow!
You bear a white blow;
If my love love me
My nose will bleed now."


...I'm just sayin'.

Josh