April 17th, 2011
by DickH
On the morning of April 17 (a Wednesday), the companies of the Sixth Regiment marched to the Massachusetts State House where the old muskets carried by the troops were replaced with new rifled muskets and each man was issued “an overcoat, flannel shirt, drawers, and a pair of stockings.” Governor Andrew then presented the regiment with its official flag and made a speech. At 7 pm, the regiment marched to “the Worcester depot” with large crowds lining the route. Thousands of people gathered in Worcester to watch the train carrying the regiment pass through on its overnight trip towards New York City.
The Daily Courier on April 17 reported on the regiment’s activities in Boston and contained this observation:
“THE FEELING IN LOWELL – Never has there been a time in the history of this city when there has been such a unity of feeling among all classes as exists at the present. All party distinctions seem to be buried, and all are united in a determination to do their part in sustaining the Union, the Constitution and the Laws. Now and then an isolated individual will attempt to speak against the universal sentiment, but the words of indignation, the frown and the hint soon silence all such. Lowell has a great interest at stake in maintaining the Government, and has with unprecedented alacrity, already sent forth two hundred of her young men – a portion of her bone and sinew – to protect it, and holds in reserve many times that number, should future exigencies arise to demand their service”.
History, Lowell | 
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April 17th, 2011
by DickH
“Where the placid Eastern and Merrimack Canals join and take a steep tumble down into the river.” — by Tony Sampas
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April 17th, 2011
by PaulM
Gone, baby, gone — and the dirt middle of the playing field has been smoothed and raked and cleaned of debris from the snow-dump hills of winter.
History, Lowell | 1 Comment »
April 17th, 2011
by PaulM
Here’s a spring poem that was written by my Andover friend Steve Perrin, one of the founding members of the Poets’ Lab that met at Andover’s Memorial Library between 1976 and 1978. Other writers who attended included Ken Skulski, Cynthia Ward, Alice Davis, E.F.Weisslitz, Eric Linder, Wayne Nalbandian, and Tom Mofford (among many others). The Poets’ Lab evolved from a workshop that met upstairs in the Andover public library every other Wednesday evening to a group that offered poetry readings in libraries in Lawrence, Haverhill, Salem N.H., North Andover, Dracut, Lowell, and other places. Along the way the group re-named itself the Merrimack Valley Poets, and disbanded in 1978.—PM
.
The First Warm Night
.
The first warm night in April,
Sweating in my winter bed,
I woke in the dark
And knew Spring had come.
Forsythia sprayed from every fissure
Of my defrosting brain.
.
—Stephen G. Perrin (c) 1976
Culture, Greater Lowell, History, Lowell, Poetry | No Comments »
April 17th, 2011
by Marie
On this day – April 17, 1397- Geoffrey Chaucer told the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) as when the pilgrimage to Canterbury as told in the “Tale” actually starts.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories within a frame story, between 1387 and 1400. It is the story of a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury (England). The pilgrims, who come from all layers of society, tell stories to each other to kill time while they travel to Canterbury. If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back. He never finished his enormous project. Scholars are uncertain about the order of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer wrote his works, The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several handwritten manuscripts.
To celebrate National Poetry Month and in homage to this month of April itself, here are the opening lines of The Prologue to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in the olde English with a modern translation:
Here bygynneth the Book
of the tales of Caunterbury
|
Here begins the Book
of the Tales of Canterbury |
1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
9: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. |
When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.
And specially from every shire’s end
Of England they to Canterbury wend,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek
Who helped them when they lay so ill and weal. |
Culture, History, Poetry | 1 Comment »
April 17th, 2011
by Marie
MassMoments reminds us that on this day April 17, 1893 – Lucy Larcom – author, newspaper writer, poet, Lowell mill girl – died in Boston. In her autobiography “A New England Girlhood” – Larcom captured an element of the “Lowell Experiment” seen through the eyes of that Yankee mill girl toiling in the early more idealistic days when ”Lowell had a high reputation for good order, morality, piety, and all that was dear to the old-fashioned New Englander’s heart.”
…in 1893, Lucy Larcom died. A popular poet during her lifetime, she would be forgotten today except for a work of prose that she wrote in 1889. Her autobiography, A New England Girlhood, tells the story of her early childhood in the coastal village of Beverly and her move to Lowell, the mill town on the Merrimack River, where she lived and worked for more than a decade. She was a regular contributor to the Lowell Offering. The magazine was published by a group of “mill girls,” as the young women who made up the great majority of workers in Massachusetts textile factories were called. Larcom’s reputation as a poet soon faded, but A New England Girlhood remains an American classic.
Read the full Lucy Larcom article
here at MassMoments.com.
Culture, Education, Greater Lowell, History, Lowell, Poetry | No Comments »
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