wrote in message
ups.com...
From: (Abby Sale)
Date: 07 Nov 94 07:33:02
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
Subject: happy? change! of rules!

I note that November 11 is the Feast of Saint Martin.

I PROPOSED a TOURNAMENT to produce the highest number of songs relating
to, mentioning or with events occurring at Martinmas, St. Martin Day or
St. Martin eve.

11/11 happens to be Dostoyevski's birthday, also George Patton's! But I
don't know any songs about either. So a google produced

http://www.stmartin.org/MassTimes.htm
http://www.smpsv.com/mass.shtml
http://www.stmartinoftoursbeth.org/
[who of course have the traditional appeal of wanting their roof fixed]

But no mass specific to St. Martin.

A Life is found at
http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~eknuth/.../lifemart.html
as well as an Illustration: El Greco, "St. Martin and the Beggar", oil,
1597-99, held by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Obviously the word Martin has Latinate roots, Mars, martial, but is A. Sax
as MARTE; wonders; marvels. We have received this word via Anglo Norman
MERVAILLE; wonder; marvel, and this obviously produces 'marvelous' from a
source distinct from Martial [L], Mareschalle [OF].

An old name for Martinmass seems to be Martlemas. In an inventory printed in
Archaeologica, xxx, 17, the word 'matrons' is found and which refers to the
animal, the marten.

Ne martryn, ne sabil, y trowe, in god fay,
Was none founden in hire garnement.

//Lydgate, MS. Soc. Antiq. 134, f. 25

The playright Dekker writing in the early 1600s wrote of a MARTIALIST; a
martial man; a soldier //Dekker's Knight's Conjuring, which seems to be the
first modern use of the word.

Ecclesiastical use is similar to Mary-Mas; the annunciation.

Another old word has a similar stem~ distinct from any Latin but with
ecclesiastical adoption; MIRTHE; to rejoice. It occurs in MS. Cotton.
Vespas. D. vii - and is itself a variant of MIRTHES, [A. Sax.] tunes
//Tristrem, p. 204, and our modern adoption with same sense is 'mirth'.

"Delere licebit
Quod non edideris: nescit vox missa reverti."
-- Hor. Art Poet. 389-90

Cordially, Phil Innes



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