Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

These ‘Recollections’ contain a lot of stories about childish ‘romantic’ love when I was growing up. This section, however, will be discussing another type of ‘love’ that I developed during my childhood– my love for literature. It especially became awakened during those three days that I stayed home sick, but it started even before then.

When I was sick with ‘Lumbago’, I just had to lie in bed for a few days. You can read more about how that happened here: Green Boil and Lumbago and Favoritism in the Classroom

I ended up going through several enlightening works of ‘literature’, such as the comic books “Beano”²¹⁹ and “Oor Wullie”. 

Slim Booklets

Back when I was about eight years old and still in Mr.s Eyres’ class, I remember being quite drawn to the slim booklets on our class bookshelf. The bookshelf was at the front of the classroom to the left of the blackboard; she would let us freely choose a book as a kind of treat.

The booklets were titled with peculiar words, and their purpose was to explain what the words meant. In particular, I remember one of these booklets called “Preposterous”, because the alliterative sound and meaning of the word fascinated me. The word in itself is a kind of ‘tongue-twister’.

This perhaps presaged my later interest in words, and can explain why I now have several old and huge Webster’s dictionaries on my bookshelf. In fact, I have a whole bookshelf devoted to numerous kinds of dictionaries I have ‘collected’ over the years.  

“The Boy with the Loaves and Fishes”

I had also read a book by Enid Blyton called “The Boy with the Loaves and Fishes”. The story is about a little boy who brought his five barley loaves and two small fishes to Jesus. Jesus blessed them, broke them, and gave them to His disciples to be distributed to the crowd of 5000.

Amazingly, Jesus manages with his ‘magic’ to feed 5000 people with just five loaves and two fishes! This was truly fantastic and a nice thing to do for the people who were really hungry. Jesus told his disciples to not lose any of the crumbs, or they would be eaten by hungry birds and rodents.

The disciples collected the crumbs, and were able to fill twelve baskets! This was also an amazing ‘trick’ to me at that time, to the point that when I felt better enough to play again, I wished that I could perform such tricks whenever I felt hungry.

After this, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw he was curing the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. When he looked up he saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we going to buy bread for these people to eat?” 

Philip answered him, “Well I don’t have enough money to buy bread for them all.”

One of his disciples, Andrew, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 

Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” 

Now it was a grassy place, so they all sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 

When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the crumbs and crusts that are left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

So they gathered them up, the crumbs and crusts left from the five barley loaves by those who had eaten, and were able to fill twelve baskets. When the people saw what he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”²²⁰

Conversations with Mom

I was intrigued by the story, but it also left me with a lot of questions. On one of those nights, my mother came to my bedroom with a hot blackcurrant toddy asking me to stop reading soon and go to sleep. I asked her all of my questions then. 

“Mum, where did Jesus learn to perform magic and do tricks? Where had he learnt to cure all those sick people?” 

“It’s not magic and tricks; magic and tricks are sometimes done by bad people like witches and sorceresses. Jesus performed miracles!”

“What’s a miracle?”

“Only Jesus and others chosen by Jesus or God can perform miracles.”

“But why don’t they perform miracles all the time, so there are no hungry and sick people in the world anymore?”

“You’re asking too many questions. You should go to sleep soon!”

“How could Jesus feed a crowd of 5000 people with just five loaves and two fishes?”

“You’re perhaps too young to understand. The story is a parable. It is not just a story; it has a deeper meaning that teaches us how to be good.”

“And what is the ‘deeper meaning’?”

“That’s why you go to Sunday School and Church. The Sunday School teachers can teach you about the parables and what they mean,” she said, slightly exasperated.

“Maybe it means that if you really believe something can happen, then it will happen,” I tried to make sense of it myself.

“I’ll turn out the light now. Give your mum a kiss and a hug. Goodnight, my dear.”  So she turned out the light and I carried on dreaming about loaves and fishes. 

It was only when I was older that I realised the story written by Enid Blyton wasn’t written by her at all, but was one of the parables in the Gospel of John.

The Feeding of Multitudes

This is meant to be “Boyhood Recollections”, so I can’t get embroiled, like thousands of others, in religious debate. However, without carrying out any research, some immediate comments might be proposed. Such miracles and parables belong to the world of myth, legend and folk tales.

In this context of using ‘magic’ to produce food, then Grimm’s folk tale “The Wishing-Table” (German: “Tischlein, deck dich”) springs to mind. But the whole point of parables, analogies, and metaphors is that they are meant to inform the reader by some means of comparison. 

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand what the meaning of ‘feeding the multitudes’ means. This is a theme reiterated throughout the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, and other Communist tracts. In the Bible, the ‘multitudes’ are often compared to sheep: The Bible contains many references to shepherds. In Psalm 23, David declared, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Jesus called Himself “the Good Shepherd” (John 10:11).

The writer of Hebrews called Jesus “the great Shepherd of the sheep” (Heb. 13:20).”²²¹ Neither do you need to be a rocket scientist to realise that this represents quite a patronizing attitude. The individuals in the ‘multitudes’ are demeaned – they become ‘sheep’. The popular belief is that sheep are ‘stupid’, and need to be led by a ‘superior being’ – in other words, a dictatorial ruler who ‘knows better’. 

But I’m wandering from the topic here – I was discussing ‘feeding the multitudes’ – this obviously refers to feeding them ‘intellectual’ or ‘spiritual’ ideas. The ‘crumbs’ that turned into several baskets of food can perhaps be interpreted in several ways. It could refer to the fact that nobody should be left out, or that every crumb of religious doctrine is important. 

All Men are Equal?

“All men are equal in the eyes of God,” says Christian teaching²²². But how true is this if we are all stupid ‘sheep’? Following on from the teachings of the Christian Bible, the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries stated that “All men are created equal.”²²³

Of course, there is a catch to this statement in the phrase, “All men”. The majority of the population were not considered to be ‘men’. Women were obviously not men. African slaves were not men but ‘boys’. And poor whites were not considered to be ‘free men’ either, they were not ‘free’ in the historical understanding of the word ‘free’. 

The point I was trying to make is that various religious and political ideologies offer the ‘multitudes’ equality, if only they will let themselves be ‘led’ – this is, of course, an absurd paradox.  

“Tan the Wild Dog”

So far, I have enjoyed most of the books and comics I’ve read during my sick days. Even when I didn’t wholly like them they gave me food for thought and reflection. However, my mother had ‘plans’ for me and had bought a book about a dog called “Tan – a Wild Dog”, by Thomas C. Hinkle. I really liked the story of ‘Tan’ in the beginning. But he was nothing like our dog Laddie, nor Lassie, the dog on the television series who can communicate with people by barking, tugging at their trouser legs, or just by looking at them with ‘expressive’ eyes^.224 

Tan, on the other hand, was a dog born on the American prairie. She gives birth to her puppies in a cliff-side den like a wolf. She must depend on her instincts to find food and defend herself and her puppies. The more I read the book, the more I liked ‘Tan, the wild dog’. However, things began to change when I got some way through the book. Suddenly, Tan, together with two of her three puppies was killed by wolves.

The only survivor was her namesake son, Tan, who managed to hide. Sadly, he also witnessed the horrible slaughter of his mother and siblings. When I reached this part, I immediately closed the book and started crying, and didn’t want to read the book anymore! It was too upsetting for me! 

Subconscious Child

In retrospect, I suppose the author was trying to teach some moral story that ‘life goes on’. The puppy Tan became a feral dog, as wild as those very wolves that killed his mother. He learned to fend for himself and live through dangers, being captured, escaping, and recaptured again. But at the time I read it, the lesson was too abstract for me, and I had to put off reading for some time. 

Also in retrospect, the young ‘Tan’ is perhaps the ‘subconscious child’. Even children who live protected and sheltered lives manage to conjure up all kinds of dangers in their imaginations (‘wolves’). So many children can perhaps relate to young Tan – motherless, and surrounded by ‘wolves’.

Children often have quite ‘traumatic’ lives, either real or supposed. This might concern abusive parents and teachers, or other children who bully them – or even the ‘struggle’ to be popular and successful. Thus, many children feel they can never quite live up to the expectations of those around them, and feel like ‘outcasts’ (like Tan). 

Of course, like Shadow the Sheepdog, and other ‘dog’ stories – the dog often has a ‘boy owner’; in Tan it is Jim, while in Enid Blyton’s Shadow the Sheepdog, it is Johnny. Most boys (and girls) want a ‘pet’ when they reach a certain age. So the book also appeals for this reason. In conclusion, although I liked Hinkle’s book (initially) more than Blyton’s Shadow the Sheep-dog, I have to admit that Blyton is the more skilled story-teller.

I’ll be talking more about Shadow the Sheepdog in this link.

Criticisms

 As mentioned, I do not intend to write an academic article here, as that is not the purpose of these “Recollections”. Nevertheless, I felt like it was impossible to side-step Blyton’s novel without making some comments. The reader can read the full novel, as it is online (see footnote). I will return to ‘reactionary’ Children’s authors (see below).

But I’m not going to let Enid off the hook so lightly without some concluding remarks here. There are several articles online such as, “Enid Blyton may have been a Nazi sympathiser” (see footnote). But as mentioned, I do not intend to make an in-depth analysis here of Blyton, her books and political views. Perhaps I am being a little hard on Enid. Perhaps I am being a little hard on Adolf Hitler? This is meant rhetorically.

Adolf Hitler didn’t invent racism or anti-Semitism: “Persecution of Jews has a history of at least two millennia, the late-19th and early-20th century witnessed a high-water mark in hatred against Jews, especially in western Christian societies.”

But we were not focused on anti-Semitism but hate and racism against the Roma people. As mentioned above in a footnote under Adolf Hitler, and the Nuremberg Laws, the Romani were classified as “enemies of the race-based state”.  As many as 500,000 Romani were killed by the Germans and their collaborators. 

Racism During and After the War

The British and Americans, and other nations that fought against the Nazis, like to inhale the pure air of the ‘high moral ground’ as opposed the putrid fumes that ooze out of ‘stinking swamp of Nazi ideas.’ However, this is just so much wishful thinking, so-called, we are ‘holier-than-thou’. But how ‘holy’ were the Europeans with regard to the Romani people (and the Jews). Let’s take a case, such as the treatment of the Roma (Romani) people by the Norwegian government in the interwar period:

“During this historical period ‘race-hygiene’ issues were discussed in society at large and at governmental levels. Social-Darwinist ideas were prevalent at the time and permeated thinking regarding humans and society. According to this ideology only the ‘strongest’ should have the right to procreate and thus convey their genetic material to future generations. A consequence of this thinking was that the government actively restricted certain social and ethnic groups from having children.

The Storting passed the Sterilization Law (Steriliseringsloven) in 1934; the Law institutionalised the practice of the sterilization of travellers (tatere), the mentally handicapped, psychiatric patients, homosexuals and epileptics. Racist ideology also characterised Norwegian immigration policies of the period. During the period 1927 – 1956 gypsies were prohibited from entering the country, and Jewish immigration was also limited to a small number of refugees during the interwar period.”²³⁴

In other words, racism was widespread amongst the peoples and governments of interwar Europe, and documented in the laws and regulations of the various countries. The German Nazis were guilty of putting theory into practice on a scale that the world had not witnessed before. 

Despite the fact that Britain defeated the ‘evil’ German Nazis and were able to uphold the ideas of freedom, democracy, tolerance, and so on, this was just a facade. Britain continued to be a racist nation after defeating the ‘evil’ racist Germans. In fact, ideas amongst the population were not that much different as those held by the German Nazis. Thus, discrimination of Jews, Gypsies, Irish, Africans, homosexuals, women, and so on, was the order of the day.

Racism in Jokes

Of course, I was only a young boy during this period. But I was nevertheless aware of this (in retrospect), as our schoolboy discriminatory jokes were about Jews, Africans, homosexuals, prostitutes, Irish, and so on. We had no jokes about the Nazis, only about the Italian fascists, such as, “How many gears does an Italian tank have?” Answer: 1 forward gear and 99 in reverse! Jokes about Jews and Scots were later ‘translated’ into jokes about Pakistanis.

Of course, jokes about Scots (by the English) are usually ‘good natured’; thus the thriftiness of Scots is usually joked about in a good natured way. Of course, the Scots are not the only ‘thrifty’ people; the Germans make jokes about the ‘Swabians’ which could be easily translated into ‘Scottish jokes’ such as:

“Who invented copper wire? Two Swabians who bent over at the same time to pick up a penny!”²³⁵

The point here is that this ‘thriftiness’ or ‘miserliness’ regarding Scots is joked about in a good humoured way. Translated into jokes about Jews and Pakistanis the humour turns ‘nasty’ and prejudicial. Of course, I could search for such jokes on the Internet – but I can imagine that most of these have been ‘censored’ by Big Brother, so I will just have to rely on my schoolboy memories:

“Did you hear about the traffic accident in London when many were killed?”

“No, what happened?”

“A party of Jews were walking along next to the tram line in London, when someone dropped a penny between the tram lines. All the Jews scrambled to pick up the penny, and were killed by the oncoming tram.”

Ha ha! Very funny (not). 

A Boy was Having Sex with a Girl on a Railway Track

Similar nasty jokes were also told at school about Pakistanis (but later on during the 1960s). Jokes about African Americans (‘negroes’) were often about their uncontrollable animal-like sexual urges. Some of these jokes involved the characters ‘Rastus and Liza.’ One such joke involved Rastus and Liza having sex between the rail tracks. I found the joke on the Internet, but now ‘sanitized’:

The train driver spots them and starts hooting but they ignore it. He applies brakes so hard and the train stops just a few yards away from the couple. Driver jumps from the engine and walks to the boy who just finished and is standing up and zipping up his pants. The driver shouts out to the boy “Do u realize that if I had not seen u, this would have been ur last f…!!!

Boy -‘Listen dude, you were coming, She was coming and I was coming, then I realised only you have brakes.’²³⁶

Of course, the original racist joke has to be told by the adopting the imagined vernacular of simple black people in the southern states. I can remember my friend ‘John’ was quite skilled at using the ‘imagined vernacular’ – which is the core of the joke, in the sense that one is talking about simple people that have only animal urges. 

Jokes in General

Jokes about homosexuals usually involved anal sex. My friend ‘John’ had attended a ‘boys’ only’ private school where homosexuality was rife. Thus, jokes were of the kind, ‘form a circle’ (uttered with a homophobic lisp). Of course, this book is about “Boyhood Recollections”, so I can’t be more explicit here.

Jokes about prostitutes usually focused on venereal disease and various perversions. My friend Kevin had a brother and father that worked in the merchant navy, so he had an endless source of jokes, some of which are too vulgar to include in my “Boyhood Recollections”. Besides, this really belongs to “Recollections II”, as this was when I was a teenager and had moved south.  

However, I mention all this here as such jokes told by boys represent an undercurrent culture. It is often closer to social reality than the ideas expressed by constitutions, school curricula, and the agendas of progressive political parties.

Racists, Christian fundamentalists, Paedophiles, Drug Addicts and Transphobics

To make another ‘brief’ conclusion, I didn’t read many books as a child. On the other hand, later in life I taught children’s literature, and unlike many of my teaching colleagues, I am not that impressed by children’s ‘literature’. I don’t want to write a long ‘article’ here, as this is not the main focus of these ‘Recollections’ – but the fact remains that much of children’s literature is very poor (in my view).

Authors are often racist (Blyton and Dahl), or ‘sermonizing’ Christians, such as Astrid Lindgren and C. S. Lewis; or to paint a worse picture, they are drug addicts and paedophiles, such as Lewis Carroll.²³⁷²³⁸ Of course, we should not forget the ‘colonial’ racist children’s literature of the past, such as Robinson Crusoe and many others. I will not leave out all the numerous racist boys’ comics either – I could carry on here making a long list.

Present Time

But the point I’m trying to make here is that for a sympathetic child in the 1950s, there was little wholesome fruit on the tree of children’s literature. Undoubtedly, things have improved today (2022); but even today, there is much that can be criticized without going into details.   

I don’t want to enter into the recent debate concerning about J. K. Rowling’s transphobia.²³⁹ Neither do I want to enter into a discussion of Rowling’s reactionary nostalgia for a past without ethnic problems and the ‘loss of Empire’. But even the naive reader should be able to see a parallel to Trump’s ‘yearning for the past’.

In fact, this has become a large industry in both Britain and the U.S. – that is, reconstructions of the ‘glorious past’ in fiction and film. But enough said – I don’t intend to critique the works of  the inane Rowling – I have other things I want to do with my life – so will pass this baton on to another :-).

Neither do I intend to critique the works of Lewis Carroll, or comment on him as a person. However, I have added some comments below regarding the racist children’s author Roald Dahl. I respect the fact that Dahl can have his own opinions. I might have even liked Roald if I had happened to meet him in person. But being a children’s author should bear a certainly ethical and moral responsibility.   

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²¹⁹ The “Beano” is a British anthology comic magazine created by Scottish publishing company DC Thomson. Its first issue was published on 30 July 1938.

²²⁰ https://biblehub.com/john/6-14.htm Read: 6 May 2022.

²²¹ https://eu.thegleaner.com/story/news/2021/03/19/jackson-sheep-need-shepherd-lead-them/4741615001/ Read 16 March 2022.

²²² The Book of Genesis reminds us that when God created the world, God created humanity “in the Divine Image.” The soul imbued within each of us is equally divine and pure. The Jewish sages teach that this common ancestry reminds us we are all equal and worthy of the same dignity and respect. https://eu.elpasotimes.com/story/opinion/2020/06/26/we-all-special-and-equal-eyes-god-column/3263955001/  Read 16 March 2022.

²²³ This is part of the sentence in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson penned in 1776 during the beginning of the American Revolution that reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal Read 16 March 2022.

²²⁴ Lassie is a fictional female Rough Collie dog and is featured in a short story by Eric Knight that was later expanded to a full-length novel called Lassie Come-Home. (…) In 1954, the long-running Emmy-winning television series Lassie debuted and, over the next 19 years, a succession of Pal’s descendants appeared on the series. Edited from the following website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassie Read 6 May 2022.

²³¹ Blyton, Enid. Shadow the Sheepdog. Available online: https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20190515

²³² https://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-enid-blyton-may-have-been-a-nazi-sympathiser-1330720 Read 7 May 2022. See also: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/revealed-enid-blyton-and-the-hitler-appeasers-countryhouse-dinner-1856180.html

²³³ “Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust” William I. Brustein and Ryan D. King.  International Political Science Review (2004), Vol 25, No. 1, 35–53.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0192512104038166 Read: 8 May 2022.

²³⁴ Democracy and the Welfare State: the Nordic Nations Since 1800 by Larsson, Thomas, Ingvaldsen, Siri, Overgaard Pedersen, Erik (2009). Translated by Ian Harkness.  https://www.worldcat.org/title/democracy-and-the-welfare-state-the-nordic-nations-since-1800/oclc/436645270

²³⁵ https://www.dw.com/en/those-frugal-germans/a-16398388 Read: 8 May 2020.

²³⁶ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/evj8ey/a_boy_was_having_sex_with_a_girl_on_a_railway/ Read: 9 May 2022.

²³⁷ https://news.artnet.com/art-world/was-lewis-carroll-a-pedophile-his-photographs-suggest-so-237222 Read: 8 May 2022.

²³⁸ https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19254839 Read: 8 May 2022.

²³⁹ https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/jk-rowling-once-again-accused-of-transphobia-on-twitter-7672809/ Read 8 May 2022.