Myth of the Albatross

Prior to taking Rachel Hoyt up on yet another one of her Smiley Sociology Studies, I knew almost nothing about the albatross, although the bird has long held a prominent place in my imagination.  I wasn't even sure if it was an actual, real bird or just a mythical creature.  Certainly the bird that I had cultivated in my mind's eye was the stuff of legends.  I imagined a huge, dark bird with a vast wingspan, an extremely solitary bird that flew alone over vast miles of ocean.  There was something haunting and melancholy about this bird, and yet something enchanted, as though it were a piece of medieval lore.  I had the impression that the bird's habitat was far, far south, traveling over the oceans surrounding Antarctica, far from any civilization.  Ships straying into those distant waters might spy the bird through the fog and the mist, and the sailors would be shaken to the core by the dark apparition, crossing themselves superstitiously to ward off the bad omen.

This impression of mine was generated mostly by references to the bird in popular speech.  In doing what, for me, passes for research, I learned that a Coleridge poem called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is responsible for the metaphorical and symbolical attachments that the bird has acquired.  In the poem the mariner of the title shoots the bird for some reason, and the crew of the ship forces the mariner to wear the bird around his neck, because they feel that he has cursed the crew by killing the bird.  Turns out that the bird is actually considered good luck.  It was killing the bird that turned the good omen bad.  I got the Antarctica part right, though...sort of.  In the poem the crew is lost near Antarctica and the bird arrives to lead them back on course...well, until the mariner decides to use it for target practice.

Oddly enough, I'd never heard this poem before.  The references to it had worked their way down to me fourth or fifth hand.  From the poem, the idiom of having "an albatross around you neck" came to mean having some kind of burden or curse, but by the time it got to me, people weren't even wearing the bird as a necklace anymore.  They were just talking about this heavy, burdensome bird that caused everyone sorrow.  I think this is how the bird came to loom so big in my mind.  A heavy bird that dragged you down seemed to be a bit of a paradox to me.  It grew and grew in my mind as a perpetual struggle against its own gravity, like a natural, avian version of the Spruce Goose.

The albatross actually is a large bird, and they actually do have the largest wingspan of any living bird.  They are not however, the dark, mournful creatures that I had imagined.  They look like the picture above.  They look a bit like an exotic duck.  They're kind of cute with pretty colors.  I don't know if I'd want to wear a dead one around my neck, but I'd consider keeping a live one as a pet.

This dreadful bird of my fantasy was one of the last enduring myths in my mind, destined to go the way of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.  It was cobbled together out of hearsay and snatches of fact, and stitched together with poetic conjecture.  It's funny how close I came to accuracy, only to end up missing it by miles.  I'm glad that I've now learned something about the substance of its overbearing gravity, but I'll miss that majestically ugly bird soaring over the lonely miles of open sea.  I've returned the name "albatross" to its rightful owner, and that ugly bird flies off nameless into the dim green mist.            

The Not-So-True History of Superstitions

I was thinking about superstitions yesterday, and how nonsensical and random they seem.  I figured that they must all have origin stories behind them.  Someone just doesn't wake up one morning and decide that opening umbrellas in the house is bad luck.  There has to be a historical event that set the precedent for these things.  One bad umbrella experience, and everyone from then on is forewarned that it's a bad idea.  So I thought it might be interesting, and might provide material for a post, if I looked up some of these stories.  Unfortunately, I found that most of these stories are actually pretty dull.  So I decided the hell with it; I would just make up some stories of my own.  I'm not sure what the point is, and anyone looking for actual information and enlightenment, should probably look somewhere else.    

 

                                                               WALKING UNDER A LADDER

In 1935 a shopkeeper named Henry Ferguson was on a ladder working on repairing a broken letter in his shop's sign.  As he was pounding in a nail, his hammer slipped and he smashed his thumb with it.  Preoccupied with the sudden pain, he dropped the hammer.  At that exact moment, Walter Montgomery, the manager of the local bank, was passing under the ladder.  Walter was late for an appointment, and he was in too much of a hurry to navigate around the ladder.  Just as he was checking his watch, the falling hammer hit him in the head.  He collapsed against the brick wall of the shop.  Seeing what had happened, Henry quickly climbed down from the ladder.  He stood panicking over the crumpled bank manager.  He was sure he had killed the man.  He looked about nervously.  It was early morning, and the street was deserted at that hour.  He had to act quickly.  He hoisted Mr. Montgomery's body up, and dragged it into the back of his shop.  He then locked up, and flipped the "open" sign to "closed".  He loaded Mr. Montgomery's body into the trunk of his car and drove far out into the countryside of a neighboring town, where he dropped the body deep in the woods.

As it turns out, Walter Montgomery had only been knocked out by the hammer, not killed.  Henry had just been in too much of a panic to confirm the man's vitality.  Walter regained consciousness hours later, long after it had grown dark out.  The nuzzling of a large grizzly bear brought him around.  His groggy eyes fluttered, but when he became aware of the bear standing over him, he shot up, wide awake.  Naturally this startled the bear, who began to viciously attack Mr. Montgomery.  It's a genuine miracle that he was able to escape with his life, but also a fairly fruitless one, as he died a few hours later.  He was spotted by a local farmer crawling out of the woods and taken to a nearby hospital.  In his dying delirium, he kept rambling on about how he had walked under a ladder and he had been transported across time and space to another dark land of ravaging monsters.  Although these were the lunatic ravings of a dying man, the legend grew from there.  The space beneath ladders came to  be considered inter-dimensional portals to unthinkable fates, and people avoided them with dread.     

                                                     
                                                      A BLACK CAT CROSSING YOUR PATH

Martha Price loved her black cat Midnight.  She was an elderly spinster and the cat was the sole companion of her twilight years.  One night she needed to fetch a jar of tomatoes from her cellar to prepare her dinner.  Pulling the chain for the light at the top of the stairs, she was dismayed to discover that the bulb had burned out.  She was forced to navigate the stairs in the dark.  Unfortunately, Midnight had made himself quite comfortable on the cellar stairs, three steps down from the landing.  Not being able to see the dark cat in the darkness of the cellar Miss Price's foot caught on the cat's flank and she tripped and tumbled down the remaining stairs.  She broke her neck and she lay dead on the cellar floor.  Midnight, momentarily perturbed by Miss Price tripping over him, simply settled back into a comfortable position and retained his post on the third step of the cellar stairs.

Three days later, Miss Price's neighbor Hiram Muller grew concerned that he hadn't seen the old woman leave her house at all, and he came by to check on her.  He searched the house, calling her name, but of course, no one answered.  Passing through the kitchen, he heard a soft meowing coming from behind the cellar door.  He opened the door and called for out for Miss Price into the darkness.  He tried the light chain, and he too found the bulb burned out.  He crept cautiously down the stairs, but his foot also caught on Midnight, who was still perched on the third step, evidently his favorite spot.  Hiram lay dead beside Miss Price with his neck broken as well.

In the end six bodies with broken necks lay in a heap at the bottom of Miss Price's cellar stairs before the feline impediment was finally removed.  Midnight let out an irritated meow at being disturbed from his spot, but he was soon pacified with a warm saucer of milk. and a can of tuna fish  From that day forward it was considered bad luck to have a black cat cross your path, especially on a dark set of stairs.  Midnight, of course, returned to his favorite spot on the third step as soon as he was done eating.

                                                                     
                                                                        BREAKING A MIRROR

There was a golden-framed mirror which had been a priceless heirloom in the Romanov family for eight generations.  Although the Romanov fortune had dwindled to a meager subsistence, they had still managed to hold onto the mirror.  In 1867, the current Romanov family lived in a simple hovel, but the mirror was still hanging on the wall in the main hallway.  The elegant mirror seemed grossly out of place in the modest home, but Elliot Romanov paused before it every day with pride as he considered his reflection and straightened his hair.  In the most darkest and humble times of his life, the mirror served to remind him of his elevated heritage.  It was the one thing that kept him from feeling like a mere commoner.    

One night Elliot's boss, Mr. Sterns, came by for dinner.  The man had actually insinuated his own invitation and insisted on coming.  He was a large, obnoxious, and imposing man who treated Elliot like a worm.  Elliot hated the man and he suffered his company all through dinner.  Mr. Sterns got uproariously drunk and he behaved worse that usual.  He grabbed Mrs. Romanov inappropriately and he hollered at the Romanov children.  But the worst affront came as he was leaving for the evening.  He stumbled as he was putting on his coat and smashed head first into the Romanov's priceless mirror, shattering it into a million pieces.  He grumbled irritably as though the Romanovs had done him a disservice in the placement of their mirror, and then he left without offering an apology.  Elliot stared at the shattered mirror, mortified. 

He vowed revenge on Mr. Sterns, but it had to be a covert and secret revenge, as he couldn't risk losing the job that provided for his family.  He proceeded to conduct a campaign of small annoyances and inconveniences in Mr. Sterns' life.  He placed a nail in Mr. Sterns' shoe when he wasn't wearing them.  He loosened the wheel of his carriage so that it came off on a muddy road.  He broke his fountain pen, causing Mr. Sterns to get an ink stain on his shirt.  Mr. Sterns never suspected that Elliot was the source of these minor grievances.  Elliot just smiled placidly at his boss's suffering.  This went on for seven years until one night when Elliot was trying to procure a wasp's nest to leave in Mr. Sterns' desk.  As Elliot dislodged the nest, a couple of the bees stung him.  Elliot didn't know until that moment that he was highly allergic to bees.  He was found dead the next morning.  Soon after, Mr. Sterns was greatly relieved when he found that his string of bad luck had finally broken.       

So there it is.  You learn something new every day.