Practise Bits: Cimmeria
November 10, 2011 in Articles
I blame Conan the Barbarian for the mess I am in with three religious fanatics about to skewer me. If not for the movie, I would not have become interested in Robert Howard’s books. If not for reading of Conan of Cimmeria, I would not have become fascinated…
“All right class, turn your papers in.” A gentle groan drifted up from the eighth grade class for Mr. Landsdale was famously tough, and yet just. He was not ‘fair’ as he had told us the first day, that being a flexible standard, but he upheld justice. So we respected, loved, hated, and feared him in equal parts.
He quirked a grin, shoved his hair back over the balding patch, and without more ado walked to our left to begin collecting tests at the front of each row of desks. With many frowns, we handed papers over shoulders, and on up to their eventual and probable doom.
I quickly grasped my copy of Conan the King from under my desktop, and began to read quickly. Perhaps, I would have time for two pages…
Five pages later, I realized the class was utterly silent, and I looked up from my softcover novel held in my lap to see Mr. Landsdale patiently standing about two feet to my front and left.
“Uh.” I gulped, trying to be honest, and dignified, and get out of trouble at the same time. Unfortunately, nothing suitable to that task came to mind.
He held out an open hand, and waited until I put the book in his hand. Then I waited for the denunciation, the attack on mindless drivel, the ….
“Conan was according to Mr. Robert Howard, his chronicler, from Cimmeria. Now most of you probably think Cimmeria is like Middle Earth, a made up land.” Mr. Landsdale had begun his procession to the front of the classroom, and I felt cool sweat evaporating from my skin. “You would be wrong on two counts. For Middle Earth is based on Europe before Noah’s Flood, and Cimmeria is the ancient name of a place where Florence Nightingale first revolutionized…?”
He looked, and we searched our memories.
“Nursing.” I blurted out, and then remembered to raise my hand. Mr. Landsdale remonstrated with my lack of courtesy as he called it with a raised eyebrow, and then nodded.
“Indeed…and where?”
“Uh, Crimea…the poem about the Ride of the…uh…” Chauncy had raised his hand, and he was known to be one of the smarter fellows in the class.
“Yes, the Crimea, where the Ride of the Light Brigade went down to a horrid sort of fame enshrined in poesy. Class, the Crimea is merely the modern name for Cimmeria…”
And there it began with a good teacher, and a student more absorbed in escaping the present into the past. I should also mention that I was a verser. An Ipad with a leak, some strange golden fluid, a spark and I left my world of the early twenty-first century for this world of the nineteen fifties.
In truth, I liked it better here. Things were cleaner, and the attitude more optimistic. And since that Kid with a Stick, that verser, had explained what and where I was, and how to use magic to age myself to keep up with my classmates, I rather enjoyed life in another time and past, but I still found myself hankering to travel deeper into the mists of legend. And now, Mr. Landsdale had taught me that legend had a basis in fact, well, I was soon hooked.
The next book I bought with spell found money was ‘A History of the Ancient World’. I still read Robert Howard, but I had a new love.
M. J. Young said on November 11, 2011
Hmmm…that kid with a stick has never really had much interest in controlling his apparent age, but it’s easy enough to let that one slide.
I’m confused by your word challenge. To my mind, “just” and “fair” both mean “equitable”, that is, that there is equality on the balance, that the punishment fits the crime, the reward is equal to the sacrifice. I’m not certain from your throwaway which of those two words you think doesn’t mean that, or whether neither of them mean that, or what it or they mean instead, so I’m pursuing it.
–M. J. Young
Tadeusz said on November 11, 2011
I’m not sure myself. I was taught as a kid…
Let’s look at it this way…the world may not be fair, but it is just.
I guess fair is more subjective, more personal. Its not fair that a young kid lost his mother due to a drunk with a car, but it is just. You cannot go to God and say ‘that was not just’.
This is something I need to clarify myself.
M. J. Young said on November 13, 2011
Do me a favor, if you get a chance, and start this in the Off Topic forum, so we can talk about it without having to track down this article every time.
Thanks.
–M. J. Young