The Watersons Singing in the May

The Watersons "Hal-An-Tow"

Take no scorn to wear the horn
It was the crest when you was born
Your father's father wore it
And your father wore it too
Chorus (after each verse):
Hal-an-tow, jolly rumbalow
We were up long before the day-O
To welcome in the summer,
To welcome in the May-O
The summer is a-coming in
And winter's gone away-O

What happened to the Spaniards
That made so great a boast-O?
Why they shall eat the feathered goose
And we shall eat the roast-O

Robin Hood and Little John
Have both gone to the fair-O
And we will to the merry green wood
To hunt the buck and hare-O

God bless Aunt Mary Moyses
And all her power and might-O
And send us peace to England
Send peace by day and night-O

Happy May Day to you all!

Beltane Blessing


Oh God, bless our flocks and bearing kine;
Hate nor scath let not come near us,
Drive from us the ways of the wicked.


Keep thine eye every Monday and Tuesday
On the bearing kine and the pairing queys;
Accompany us from hill to sea,
Gather thyself the sheep and their progeny.


Every Wednesday and Thursday be with them,
Be thy gracious hand always about them;
Tend the cows down to their stalls,
Tend the sheep down to their folds!


Every Friday be thou, O Saint, at their head,
Lead the sheep from the face of the bens,
With their innocent little lambs following them,
Encompass them with God's encompassing.



Every Saturday be likewise with them,
Bring the goats in with their young,
Every kid and goat to the sea side,
And from the Rock of Aegir on high,
With cresses green about its summit.



The strength of the Triune be our shield in distress,
The strength of Christ, His peace and His Pasch,
The strength of the Spirit, Physician of health,
And of every other saint who succeeded them
And who earned the repose of the kingdom of God.


Bless ourselves and our children,
Bless every one who shall come from our loins,
Bless him whose name we bear,
Bless, O God, her from whose womb we came.




Every holiness, blessing and power,
Be yielded to us every time and every hour,
In name of the Holy Threefold above,
Father, Son, and Spirit everlasting.



Be the Cross of Christ to shield us downward,
Be the Cross of Christ to shield us upward,
Be the Cross of Christ to shield us roundward,
Accepting our Beltane blessing from us,
Accepting our Beltane blessing from us.







AM BEANNACHD BEALLTAIN


Beannaich an t-al's an crodh-laoigh;

Na leig fuath no foirne, 'n ar gaoith,

Fuadaich oirnne doigh nan daoi.


Cum do shuil gach Luan is Mart,

Air crodh-laoigh's air aighean dair;

Iomachair leinn o bheinn gu sal,

Tionail fein an treud 's an t-al.


Gach Ciadaon agus Daorn bi leo,

Biodh do lamh chaon a chaoidh 'n an coir;

Cuallaich buar d'am buabhal bho,

Cuallaich cuanal d'an cual chro.


Gach Aona bi-sa, a Naoimh, 'n an ceann,

Treoraich caoraich a aodann bheann,

Le 'n al beag ba as an deigh,

Cuartaich 'ad le cuartachd Dhe.



Gach Sathurna bith leo mar chach,

Tabhair gobhair a steach le 'n al,

Gach meann is maos gu taobh sal,

Is Lioc a h-Eigir gu h-ard,

Le biolair uaine shuas m'a barr.


Treoir na Trianailt d' ar dian's gach cas,

Treoir Chriosda le shith's le Phais,

Treoir an Spioraid, Ligh na slaint,

Is Athar priseil, Righ nan gras.


'S gach naomh eile bha nan deigh

'S a choisinn suamhnas rioghachd De.


Beannaich sinn fein agus ar cloinn,

Beannaich gach creubh a thig o'r loinn,

Beannaich am fear sin air an sloinn,

Beannaich a Dhe, an te a rug o'n bhroinn.




Gach naomhachd, beannachd agus buaidh,

Bhi 'g aomadh leinn gach am 's gach uair,

An ainm Trithinn Naomha shuas,

Athar, Mic, is Spiorad buan.


Crois Chriosd bhi d' ar dion a nuas,

Crois Chriosd bhi d' ar dion a suas,

Crios Chriosd bhi d' ar dion mu 'r cuart,

Gabhail beannachd Bealltain uainn,

Gabhail beannachd Bealltain uainn.

The month of May

The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth
to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees
bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart
that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty
deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage,
that lusty month of May.

- Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, 1485

Multitasking

Multitasking over loads the brain so it can not lay down sharp memory trails so the person has a very poor recollection of the things they just did. This is sad. I like my memories sharp with defined edges. I guess if you hate your life you can be contented doing this but its self destructive. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Take your time and do it well and enjoy your accomplishments!
-Beth Boyle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How Does Multitasking Affect Memory?


Back in the 1970s, a guy named Jerry Fodor expounded an arcane concept called the computational theory of mind (CTM). Put very crudely, it says the mind creates consciousness through information processing using its own language and rules. The theory, which Fodor has since abandoned as incomplete and psychologist Steven Pinker has taken up, isn't a metaphor, as both have pointed out time after time. It envisions the mind as actually executing information processing. The human mind is far superior to a mere computer; the very existence of computers is evidence of this.

Too late, said we in the general public. "Computation" is pretty much the same word as "computer," so we like the metaphor. It's the only way we can wrap our computers around your theory. As we came to see computers as a representation of our minds, other metaphors came hard and fast. Memory retrieval is like random-access memory (RAM) accessing a hard drive. Binary encoding of an image is like the way we translate an odor into the scent experience of a flower.

Say, our minds really are like computers, we agreed. Let's see what it takes to make them crash.

It's here another computer term we filched, multitasking, made the leap from metaphor to reality. Originally coined in the mid-'60s to describe a central processing unit's (CPU) ability to carry out more than one process simultaneously, multitasking has come to describe the reality of post-dot-com life. In an ironic twist, the computer, which has served as a metaphor for the functioning of our minds, has come to manipulate our minds' functioning.

Right now you have your Web browser displaying this HuffPo page, plus you probably have your e-mail client open, a Word doc up for work and maybe iTunes on shuffle. The joke is that your computer is actually multitasking; all of these applications are running simultaneously. You, however, are not multitasking and your computer knows it. In a windowed interface, only one window can be prominent at a time, and it overlaps idling windows. Yet, a mouse click is all it takes to move from window to window, introducing different information each time.

Our brain is equipped to handle this rapid shift from window to window, but not well, and nowhere is the futility of multitasking more apparent than in its effects on memory.

The human mind can shift rapidly between tasks, on the order of a few hundred milliseconds. Recent research has uncovered supertaskers, the 2.5 percent of the population who are better than everyone else at texting and driving. But the average mind prefers something closer to a second or two between changes in input. The faster this shift, the less sense we can make of the information.

Functional imaging studies have uncovered a culprit, a kind of flabby region of the brain called the posterior lateral prefrontal cortex (pLPFC). This region, a sort of initial routing hub for information inputs, sends stimuli to their proper centers for processing and storage. It's also been shown to create a (metaphorical) bottleneck when it's bombarded by information.

As pieces of information arrive, the pLPFC puts them in a queue rather than processing them simultaneously. When intervals between information inputs are short, say around 300 milliseconds, this routing hub actually slows down. When confronted with several stimuli, it queues two for processing and ignores the rest.

In the meantime, we're still taking in information, but it's slipping past the pLPFC hub and into the striatum, which is responsible for habit learning, like driving a car or finding letters on a keyboard. Habit learning requires so little conscious thought that we tend to attribute its functions to our limbs and digits, which seem to carry out tasks on their own.

Unfortunately, things like holding a conversation and absorbing the text of an article require an entirely different type of learning, called declarative memory. This type, governed by a different region of the brain, creates coherent meaning out of words on a screen or numbers in an equation. If the pLPFC is busy processing other information, then the page we scanned, the bit of music we listened to, the question we were just asked, essentially slips past to the striatum. When we attempt to recall the information, it's not where it's supposed to be. In effect, the information came in, but it wasn't learned. It's the reason we're insulted when a person we're speaking to checks his BlackBerry while we're talking. We've entered into competition for the person's attention and, for the time being, we've lost.

Such is the curse of multitasking; we are bombarded with more information than ever before, yet we make less use of it than we ever have, too. Researchers have consistently drawn the same conclusion: multitasking is counterproductive and exhausting. Slllloooowwww dooooowwwwwn.


Josh Clark is a writer and blogger for HowStuffWorks.com. He is also co-host of the HowStuffWorks.com podcast, Stuff You Should Know, available on iTunes.

The Chimney Sweepers Glee

Then on May-day we sons of soot

Through the streets do feetly foot,

With silver garlands are so grand,

With silver garlands are so grand,

And thus we dance our saraband

With a ruttock, a cluttock,

A wallet, a satchel

O rare May-day.

We be kings and queens and duke,

Here is Lord Tye-Wig and Lady Jewkes

And hand in hand with Madam Flaskin

The great grandee Don Galligaskin

So Ladies now we bid adieu,

May May-day wever smile on you,

And thus in all our gear so fine

With Madam Montague we dine.

With a ruttock, etc�



By Dr. J. Beckwith of Norwich and words by J. Walker, 1790

Horse thieves braiding manes to mark horses for theft

The braiding of horses' manes is being used as a code to mark the animals for theft, police have said.

Following a warning from Fife Constabulary about 10 cases have been reported in the past couple of weeks.

Pc Ian Laing said: "It probably happens throughout all of Scotland. It is certainly a problem throughout England."

He urged horse owners to be on their guard and to report any braiding found on manes or other suspicious activity.

Officers said a variety of horses had been targeted in this way and it was not only expensive thoroughbreds which were coveted by the horse thieves.

Pc Laing also recommended that all horse owners register on the HorseWatch Scotland website for more local information about, and better local protection from, equine crime.

Buddy, a German shepherd

Buddy, a German shepherd, was with his owner, Ben Heinrichs, when his family's workshop caught fire. Once he and Buddy were safely outside, Heinrichs turned to the dog and said, "We need to get help." He didn't expect Buddy to actually do anything about it, of course. However, help is exactly what the shy dog brought -- in the form of an Alaska State Trooper, reports the Anchorage Daily News. The dog's heroic act was caught on the trooper's dashboard camera.

Buddy had gone off into the woods, and Heinrich assumed the pooch was hiding. In fact, Buddy had run out to the road, where he caught the attention of Alaska State Trooper Terrence Shanigan, who had been alerted by concerned neighbors when they saw a fireball erupting in the distance. Shanigan was having difficulty finding the fire due to the winding country roads. That's when Buddy suddenly appeared. On a hunch, Shanigan followed the dog and arrived on the scene just in time. He was able to talk the fire department through the difficult directions, and they put out the flames just before the fire spread to the family's home.