My third Christmastide reflection on that beautiful carol, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, focusses upon its second verse’s first two lines:
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny
Rod of Jesse is a strange expression, and originates in the mysterious writings of Isaiah the prophet:
My second Christmastide reflection on that beautiful carol, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, focusses upon its third and fourth lines:
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Sir Walter Scott based his 1831 Castle Dangerous on Douglas Castle, Lanarkshire. Once the fortified home of the powerful Earls of Douglas and then a seventeenth and eighteenth-century mansion. Coal mining in the 1930s damaged the foundations and it was demolished before the end of that decade, this forlorn tower its only surviving monument.
In 1611, Johannes Kepler first proposed that the most efficient way to stack cannon balls was in a pyramid. This method was used to stop them from rolling around a ship's deck. To prevent the bottom layer from moving under the other balls, a metal plate was made from brass (to prevent rusting) with round indentations, called (for reasons unknown) a 'monkey'.
