February 2006 Archives

Between 1954 and 58, noted author and music historian Samuel Charters spent time recording the sounds of the city for a Music of New Orleans: Volume 1 LP released by Folkways Records in 1959. In October of 1956, he made the first live recordings of Mardi Gras Indians. His recording of Red White & Blue Got The Golden Band was done by members of a number of different tribes including the 2nd Ward Hunters, Pocohantus (sic), 3rd Ward Terrors and White Eagles. Little Red White & Blues was an old-time Indian gang still referred to in many Indian song narratives today, but it is interesting to note that the singers have no clear understanding of what the name meant. . . .

Mama Roux a song with an Indian reference appeared in a 1968 single by Dr. John (Mac Rebennack) and later on his first Atco album, called Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya. The line, She was the Queen of the Little Red White & Blue, clearly alludes to the aforementioned Little Red White and Blue Tribe.

Thomas L Morgan, from the Mardi Gras Indian Influence on the Music of New Orleans, a nice article on the net, copyrighted 2002.

Mama Roux, she was the Queen
Of the Little Red, White and Blue.
Said ooh, why did you spy boy,
Prepare yourself to die boy,
Medicine man got heap strong power,
You know better than to mess with me.
(theres more but Im tired of transcribing)

Dr. John, from Mama Roux, 1968. Sadly, this is the quality of much of the anonymous information on the net.

Rex [was the krewe] known as the king of carnival. Rex was conceived primarily to celebrate the arrival of the grand duke of Russia, Alexis Alexandrovich Romanov. The dukes mistress and lover at the time, an American actress named Lydia Thompson, sang a song in a burlesque New York show Bluebeard entitled If Ever I Cease To Love You. Coincidentally, this was the dukes favorite song, so all the bands in the Rex parade were asked to play it. This song became, and still remains today, the official song of Mardi Gras. The krewe of Rex also chose the official colors of Mardi Gras in 1872 based on symbolic meaning: purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power.

found at worldweb.com. So it must be true!

My flagboy and your flagboy,
Sittin by the fire,
My flagboy told your flagboy,
I'm gonna set your flag on fire. . . .

See that guy all dressed in green
Iko! Iko! an de'
Hes not a man,
Hes a lovin machine.

The Dixie Cups, from Iko, Iko, written and recorded in May 1965.

I don't know what you've been told
But I love them project hoes.
Dooky breasts, big old thighs,
Contact lens, and big brown eyes.

The Little Rascals Brass Band, from Knock with Me, Rock with Me, recorded in 2001.

Call me diamond, call me gold
I have been bought, been sold. . . .

Oh come on, come on, dig my mine.
Oh come on, come on, kiss me,
Kiss me all along my spine.

The Incredible String Band, from Call Me Diamond, composed and sung by Mike Heron.

Every year for Carnival Time,
We make a new suit.
Red yellow green, purple or blue,
We make a new suit.
We got feathers on our crowns
That stand about eight feet high,
In every color of the rainbow,
Were beautiful, I aint lying!
Every year for Carnival Time,
We make a new suit.
We make a new suit.

from New Suit by The Wild Magnolias, first recorded in 1970.

Black, gray, and white.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The luminance of a color. Dependent on the surface characteristics of the colored object.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

All the colors that remain after excluding the achromatic colors (black, gray, and white).

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The arrangement of spectral colors to form a closed circle, with the opposite ends of the spectrum being linked by purple.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The range of colors possessed by an organism such as a butterfly, or created by a designer, for example.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The three-dimensional portrayal of colors which arises from the fact that each color can be determined by three factors (hue, saturation, and brightness).

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

A fine difference in color hue, lighter in the case of a tint, and darker in the case of a shade.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

Colors which when combined result in white in additive mixtures and black in subtractive mixtures. In color circles the complementary colors are usually located opposite one another.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The chromatic colors differ from the achromatic colors in that a color hue (brilliance, quality, saturaton) can be perceived in them.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

On the top of the world
the birds have wings of silver

The sun shines
closer to your eyes

Every color is prayer
blowing in the sky

Jonathan Cott, quoting from On the Top of the World, a poem he wrote during a period of years which he has completely forgotten. From On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

The brain, a walnut-surfaced, gelatinous, three-pound mass of protoplasm with the consistency of an overripe avocado, is the world of our being. More accurately and truly, the universe of our being. Containing approximately 100 billion neurons or nerve cellsmore than there are stars in our galaxyit has been called by James Watson (codiscoverer of DNAs double helix) the last and greatest biological frontier and the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.

Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

I am sitting on someones knee being fed with gruel. The plate is on a grey oilcloth with a red border, the enamel white, with blue flowers on it, and reflecting the sparse light from the window. By bending by head sideways and forwards, I try out various view points. As I move my head, the reflections in the gruel plate change and form new patterns. Suddenly, I vomit over everything. That is probably my very first memory.

Ingmar Bergman, from his autobiography, The Magic Lantern. As quoted by Jonathan Cott in On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

Then something beat down and took hold of me, and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant. I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done.

Sylvia Plath, describing ECT, or electroconvulsive therapy, in The Bell Jar, 1963. As quoted by Jonathan Cott in On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

Neuroscientists have confirmed tha strong emotions, which release adrenaline, which activates the brain, make for emotionally charged memories, often called flashbulb memories. One such memory for me is of the night in December 1994 when I found myself lost in the Sahara Desert in Niger and had to spend fourteen hours alone until I was found by my partys Tuareg guides.

Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

Morris Friedell, who has Alzheimers disease . . . has written: We who have Alzheimers can appreciate clouds, leaves, flowers as we never did before.. . .

People who find themselves suffering with Alzheimers sometimes experience the freshness of life that can last for a while and, before they deteriorate to the next phase of the disease, can really be quite profound. The way it was expressed to me is that people would see the color of a beautiful flower and theyd look away and theyd see the flower again but it wouldnt be againit would be the experiencing of the initial beauty of that color and that natural form for the first time. And there is something profound about that type of experience as opposed to experiencing something for the thirtieth or fortieth or one hundredth time and have it become quite numbing and deadening. Habit sometimes smothers life. But when you experience this for the first time, it can be quite overwhelming and awesome.

Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

In an astonishing and now-famous case study entitled The Mind of a Mnemonist, [the Russian neurologist A.R.] Luria writes of a man named Shereshevskii, whom he designates S. . . .

S.s irrepressible power of synesthesia . . . compelled him to see and even taste words, numbers, and sounds. According to Luria, Presented with a tone pitched at 250 cycles per second and having an amplitute of 64 decibels, S. saw a velvet cord with fibers jutting out on all sides. The cord was tinged with a delicate, pleasant, pink-orange hue. And each word and number elicited a graphic image. In S.s own words: When I hear the word green, a green flowerpot appears; with the word red I see a man in a red shirt coing toward me.

Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

James Fernandez writes that after partaking of the eboka root, which is a hallucinogen, the initiate of the Bwiti cult escapes his corporeal reality, becomes light as a bird, sees his dead, and flies high above the crowds of those who have not had the fortune to know eboka. He goes beyond the village of the dead and passes great rivers or crossroads and sometimes changes color as he comes into contact with the great gods.

Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

In the Buddhist scriptures, [there is] a famous dialogue between a king named Milinda and the Buddhist sage Nagesena. The king asked Nagesena this . . . question: When someone is reborn, is he the same as the one who just died, or is he different Nagasena replied: He is neither the same nor different. . . . Tell me, if a man were to light a lamp, could it provide light the whole night long The king said, Yes.

Nagasena asked: Is the flame then which burns in the first watch of the night the same as the one that burns in the second . . . or the last The king said, No. Nagasena asked again, Does that mean there is one lamp in the first watch of the night, another in the second, and another in the third The king answered, No, its because of that one lamp that the light shines all night. Then Nagasena said, Rebirth is much the same: one phenomenon arises and another stops, simultaneously. So the first act of consciousness in the new existence is neither the same as the last act of consciousness in the previous existence nor is it different.

Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

Let us, however, give Mnemosyne her due. Because of her I am able to remember inspiring and rapturous communal momentsfor example, the Free Speech Movement rallies in Berkeley, California, in 1965 or the gathering in Central Park in 1980 commemorating the death of John Lennonas well as passionate and numinous personal moments. . . . It would have been insuperable for me to have forgotten lying flat on my back with arms outspread on a field filled with wooly harrow, buckwheat, and live forever overlooking the Pacific Ocean swelling against sculptured rocks in Nothern California on a glorious autumn afternoon, or many nights spent in a lake cottage in western Massachusetts watching the lakes ineffable changes as moon and clouds and stars passed by overhead and noticing the traveling lights of fireflies and tiny planes and their reflections in the water. I remember thinking: Like the flickering stars, the fireflys light leaves a memory of itself.

Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.

Walking around Berkeley at dusk last week, we saw a hydrangea that almost seemed to glow. It was an example of the Purkinje shift. The effect is named after Johannes Purkinje, a nineteenth-century Bohemian physiologist who discovered the Purkinje cell and the Purkinje fiber; Purkinje also gave blood plasma its name and was the first person to classify fingerprints. Purkinje noted the shift when looking at an Oriental rug one evening; as dusk settled, some colors appeared to grow relatively brighter. In low-light conditions, the rod receptors in your eye (scotopic sensitivity) take over from the cone receptors (photopic sensitivity). Rods and cones are most sensitive to different wavelengths of light, so as it gets darker, we perceive colors as changing in brighteness as reds and oranges grow relatively dimmer and greens and blues grow relatively brighter. . . . Unlike many optical illusions . . . the Purkinje shift is not based upon fooling the brain. It's a result of the mechanics of the eye. The eye doesn't work the same way as mental models of the eye, as telescopes or cameras. It's a slightly eerie notion; upon his discovery of the blind spot in 1668, Edme Mariotte was disturbed by the conflict between what he had just observed and Kepler's model of the eye as a natural lens. It wasn't until 1819 that scientific exploration of the blind spot really took off, both because nerves were poorly understood and because no one had a model of the eye good enough to displace Kepler's that also accounted for the blind spot and the weird way it seemed to flow into the background. Nineteenth century philosophy, of all things, began to provide this model. Schopenhauer sums it up at the beginning of On Seeing and Colors: We see nothing, save through reason.

the eloquent and apparently well-informed Steve at Snarkout.org, August 10, 2002. Thank you, dude!

If a given color is observed simultaneously in varied colored environments, it will often look different. When seen against a magenta-like background a red will appear more orange than the same red seen in front of a yellow-red background. This varying perception of one and the same color is known as simultaneous contrast.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

Colors which contain no other color. In the case of light, these are colors which are determined by one wavelength only.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

Colors obtained by artists or scientists as the basis of mixtures to obtain other colors (secondary or tertiary colors). Primary colors cannot be reduced further and are the basis of all color systems. Each system starts out with its own primary colors.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The colors in a color system which arise through mixing the primary colors.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

A glass body with triangularly arranged surfaces which can separate sunlight into its spectral colors.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

Another term for spectral colors.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The colors which become visible when sunlight is allowed to pass through a prism.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

Neutral (white) light is composed of radiation of all the wavelengths between 380 nm. and 760 nm. If a white ray of light passes through a prism, its components will be deflected to varying degrees by the process of diffraction. A band of light will become visible, possessing the colors of the rainbow and known as the spectrum. The spectrum begins with red and the long-wave end, changes through yellow and green at its medium-wave center, ending with violet at the short-wave end. This physical spectrum continues at its infrared and ultraviolet ends, although the radiation there is invisible to us.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The afterimage of a succession of optical impressions will appear as the reverse image of the fixed color. This afterimage will therefore show the complementary color, and successive contrast can thus be used to determine this color. If, for example, we first observe blue rings on a red background, and then look at a white background, we will see a complementary after-image of the previously observed arrangement of colors, namely yellow rings on a greenish background.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The colors of a system which arise through mixing secondary colors.

Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The two American linguists Brent Berlin and Paul Kay established that not all languages possess the same number of basic color names. A short word which was neither further separable nor in use as a description of a material was accepted as being a basic name. Yellow and green thus count as basic names, but not dark yellow or turquoise. Of almost one hundred different languages investigated, none had less than two nor more than eleven such basic names.

More exact evaluation reveals how the corresponding color vocabulary of a language appears to conform to a certain sequence. If a language only has two color words, these will be black (or dark) and white (or bright). Red will always be the first chromatic word to be found in addition to these two. The fourth basic name is then either green or yellow, and a language with five expressions for color exhibits the sequence black, white, red, green, and yellow. Blue appears only in sixth place, with brown seventh. Up to this point, there has been a specific hierarchy; beyond it, color vocabulary is supplemented by the quartet of violet, orange, pink, and gray in an arbitrary order.

from Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

[The term] phosphorescence . . . comes from the Greek phosphoros meaning morning star or Venus. It could also be translated literally as carrier of light. The light effect known as phosphorescence occurs when energy delivered in the form of an electron beam is captured by substances on the screen (molecules) and then released in the form of light.

The colored picture on a television screen is actually produced by three different light-absorbing and light-carrying molecules concentrated in triple rows of tiny patches each approximately 0.2 mm. in diameter. When they glow, a particular type of additive light mixinga so-called partitive mixtureis made, using the three colors red, green, and blue (RGB).

from Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.

The way the soul is with the senses and the intellect is
like a creek. When desire weeds

Grow thick, intelligence cant flow, and soul creatures
stay hidden. But sometimes

the reasonable clarity runs so strong it sweeps the clogged
stream open. No longer weeping

and frustrated, your being grows as powerful as your wantings
were before, more so. Laughing

and satisfied, the masterful flow lets creations of
the soul appear. You look

down, and its lucid dreaming. The gates made of light
swing open. You see in.

Rumi (12071273), Looking into the Creek, translated by Coleman Barks. From The Soul of Rumi, 2001.

LONDON, Jan. 12, 2006 (UPI) British biologists have discovered that ants teach each other how to get food, in the first known example of a teacher-pupil relationship in non-humans.

Nigel Franks, a biologist at the University of Bristol, says members of the ant species Temnothorax albipennis use a technique known as tandem running to teach each other how to get from the nest to a food stash.

"While it's well known that animals will mimic each other, so one animal is learning from another . . . there's sort of a two-way street in teaching that defines true teaching," he said.

A report by Franks and colleague Tom Richardson appear in the journal Nature.

In a tandem run, the lead ant only continues forward when frequently tapped on its legs and abdomen by the following ant's antennae. When a gap appears between the two, each ant adjusts its speed to close it.

The lead ant could reach the food stash four times faster when not slowed by a follower, researchers said. But the follower ant finds the food faster than when searching alone and is ultimately able to quickly run solo errands.

Copyright 2006 United Press International.

One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I havent mentioned
orange yet. Its twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES.

Frank OHara, from Why I Am Not a Painter. Thank you Ed Pramuk . . . I love this quote!

Mr. Wonka was standing all alone just inside the open gates of the factory.

And what an exraordinary little man he was!

He had a black top hat on his head.

He wore a tail coat made of a beautiful plum-colored velvet.

His trousers were bottle green.

His gloves were pearly gray.

And in one hand he carried a fine gold-topped walking cane.

Covering his chin, there was a small neat pointed black bearda goatee. And his eyeshis eyes were most marvelously bright. They seemed to be sparkling and twinkling at you all the time.

Roald Dahl, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 1964.

Mercy! Save us! yelled Mrs. Beauregarde. The girls going blue and purple all over! Even her hair is changing color! Violet, youre turning violet, Violet!

Roald Dahl, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 1964.

Theres no earthly way of knowing
Which direction they are going!
Theres no knowing where theyre rowing,
Or which way the rivers flowing!
Not a speck of light is showing,
So the danger must be growing,
For the rowers keep on rowing,
And theyre certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing. . . .

Willie Wonka, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, 1964.

Abbot Sugers theory of light . . . argued that man could come to a closer understanding of the light of God through the light of material objects in the physical world. This accounts for Sugers interest in magnificent liturgical vessels of gold and silver and also for the extraordinary set of stained-glass windows with which he adorned the radiating chapels of the chevert of St. Denis. He understood that stained glass had three basic properties: it was a bearer of holy images, an intrinsically rich material resembling precious stones, and a mystery, because it glowed without fire.

Robert Branner, from Gothic Architecture, 1965.

Like a dark star
That wants to hide,
You must, pretty lady,
Stay from my side,
And always on others
Rest those eyes
So no one discovers
What between us lies.

Der von Krenberc (fl. ca. 1150), from the Krenberger, Der tunkel stern. From the anthology Lyrics of the Middle Ages, edited by James J. Wilhelm, 1990.

White as a lily, redder than a rose,
More splendid than a ruby oriental,
Your beauty I regard; no equal shows
White as a lily, redder than a rose.

Guillaume de Machaut (c. 12951377), master musician of the middle ages, from the rondeaux Blanche com lys, plus que rose vermeille. From the anthology Lyrics of the Middle Ages, edited by James J. Wilhelm, 1990.

When Diana with lamp of glass
Arises in the evening skies
Soft and glowly pinkly as
Her brothers fires round her die,
Zephyrs gentle breezes often
Force the clouds on high to soften,
Then steal away. . . .

Anonymous, from the poem Dum Diana vitrea, part of the Carmina Burana, a collection of poems written down in the late thirteenth century which resurfaced in the early 1800s in Bavaria, not far from Munich. From the anthology Lyrics of the Middle Ages, edited by James J. Wilhelm, 1990.

Diana is the moon.

The madder rootdried and ground into dyers powderwas carried by Phoenician traders and mentioned in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Greek historian-wanderer Herodotus noted that it produced the striking vermilion shades on the goatskin cloaks of Libyas most elegant women. The Bible refers to madder as puah, which some scholars believe was also a lullaby sound used to calm crying infants. To the Romans, it was rubia, which has endured as its scientific name. Pliny the Elder believed the most bountiful madder flourished in gardens near Rome.

Genus Rubia, family Rubiaceae, order Rubiales. The linguistic lineage fans out in many direction: ruby, rubric, rubella.

Brian Murphy, from The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet, 2005.

Madder is the most widespread natural source of reds, but it is not the only one. Perhaps the most unexpected rivals throughout history have been bugs.

The best known is cochineal, a scale insect that lives on certain species of cacti in Central and South America. Native inhabitants as far back as 1000 B.C. knew how to extract bluish red dye from the dried remains of the female cochineal, collected when she was swollen with eggs. Spanish traders in the 1500s introduced the so-called scarlet grain to Europe. Some cacti were transplanted to places such as the Canary Islands and Java. Cochineal is still widely used as a food coloring.

Another red dye comes from an insect that infests oak trees and other plants in southern Europe and the Middle East. The scarlet obtained from the dried shells of the female shield louse was used by dyers in ancient Rome. Cochineal almost completely eneded the dyers interest in these insects in the 1600s.

A red also can be obtained from the bodies of the gum-lac scale insects from China, south Asia, and parts of Africa. The same bug is also a sourceof the resin used in shellac.

Red purple dyestuffs with unreliable staying power include red ocher from soil rich in iron oxide; henna; the purple lichen archil; and Brazilwood trees.

There are hundreds of natural sources for other colors with varying degrees of fastness and durability. Some of those used in carpet production include:

Yellow: weld, pomegranate, chamomile, onion skin

Blue: indigo

Brown: walnut

Black: acorn cups, oak bark

Primary colors are mixed to create greens, oranges, and other shades.

Brian Murphy, from The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet, 2005.

The Holy Grail . . . [is] one of the most enigmatic creations of the Middle Ages; a thing of such supreme power and importance that only the bravest and most chivalrous should attempt the search. For what, though There is no shortage of theories about the Grail, possibly from the Old French word graal, meaning dish or salver, but many other derivations are suggested. Its most commonly described as the vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper and later used to collect his sweat and blood during his final hours. Others describe it as something akin to the Holy Spirit and able to bestow wisdom and revelation. Perhaps, as some suggest, it is not an object at all, but unshakable faith in sanctity and its power. The Grail, in other words, could be all things to all seekers.

Brian Murphy, from The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet, 2005.

We were playing, as the Tea Set, out at an RAF base . . . when, lo and behold, we found that, extraordinarily, there was another band called the Tea Set booked to appear. . . . We rapidly had to come up with an alternative. Syd [Barrett] produced, with little further ado, the name the Pink Floyd Sound, using the first names of two venerable blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. . . . It was very much Syds idea. And it stuck.

Nick Mason, from Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, 2004. Now we know.

Just how far back into the past the history of playing cards goes, no one can say with certainty. But . . . Mr. Stewart Culin, Director of the Brooklyn Museum . . . believes that both chess and cards are derived fom the divinatory use of the arrow, and that they represent the two principal methods of arrow divination. The basis of the divinatory systems from which games have arisen is the classification of all things according to the Four Directions. This method is universal among all primitive peoples in Asia and America. In order to classify objects and events which did not in themselves reveal their proper assignment, resort was had to magic. Our present games are the suvivals of these magical processes.

Catherine Perry Hargrave, from A History of Playing Cards, first published in 1930, and still published unabridged by Dover.

Playing cards existed in China in or before the twelfth century, were introduced into Europe from China in the thirteenth century and were spread quickly from Europe over the civilized world. Certain Chinese cards which have come down to the present time were imitated from Chinese paper notes which bore pictorial symbols of their value. These pictures furnished the suit marks of the Chinese pack, and, copied again in Europe, without knowledge of their true significance, gave rise to the suits of coins, clubs, swords and cups of the eary European game.

Stewart Culin, quoted in A History of Playing Cards by Catherine Perry Hargrave, 1930.

There are . . . painted cards of the early fifteenth century which first show the suit signs of Coeurs, Carreaux, Trfles, and Piques which are characteristic of the French cards of to-day. The suit signs of the old tarots had been Cups, Swords, Coins, and Batons; the French suit signs are supposed to have been introduced by a famous knight, tienne Vignoles, or Lahire, as he is called. He is said to have invented the game of piquet, which was the game of knights and chivalry, in contrast to the old game . . . chess, the game of war. Lahire is said to have had the help of his friend, tienee Chevalier, who was secretary to the king and a clever draughtsman and who may have been responsible for the new designs. The suit of Coeurs denotes the church; Carreaux, the arrowheads or diamonds, are symbolic of the vassals, from whom the archers and bowmen were drawn; Trfles, or clover (clubs) signifies the husbandmen, and Piques, or points of lances (spades), the knights themselves.

Catherine Perry Hargrave, from A History of Playing Cards, first published in 1930, and still published unabridged by Dover.

In 1329, in the register of the Chambre des Comptes of Charles VI of France, there is an entry of the royal treasurer of moneys paind one Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three games of cards in gold and diverse colours, ornamented with many devices, for the diversion of our lord, the King. Seventeen of these strange old painted cards survive in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. They are atouts from a pack of tarots, as the early European game of cards was called. . . . In a tarot series, in addition to the customary fifty-two cards, there are four cavaliers or mounted valets besides the twenty-two high cards. These last are supposed to have been taken from an Egyptian book of hieroglyphics containing the principles of an ancient mystic philosophy in a series of emblem and symbolic figures.

Catherine Perry Hargrave, from A History of Playing Cards, first published in 1930, and still published unabridged by Dover.

Negroes in purple and fine linen, and slaves in rags and chains. . . .
Pimps, imps, shrimps, and all sorts of dirty fellows;
White men with black wives, et vice-versa too,
A progeny of all colorsan infernal motley crew!

from Have you ever been in New Orleans, a disparaging ballad of the late 1820s. Found in The American Nation, by John A. Garraty, 1975.