Eye - 01 March 2024

From On this day to A romantic tale

On this day

The ‘Science Notes’ column in the Friend of 1895 piqued Eye’s curiosity in the 1 March edition, with its note on the consequences of deep pondering.

J Edmund Clark wrote: ‘That the brain grows heavier when we think may be shown in a curious way. If a man lies down on a board very carefully balanced at the centre, and is then made to think hard, his head goes down and heels rise. This is because thinking causes an extra flow of blood to the brain, and thus withdraws it, especially, from the feet. Hence the common result of cold feet when one has to think hard.’

Writing later in his book Fear (1896), the scientist whose experiment he was describing, Angelo Mosso, said: ‘This phenomenon is constant, whatever pains the subject may take not to move… It was always a pleasant sight to my colleagues, visiting me during my researches, when they found some friend or acquaintance sleeping on the balance… it often happened that one of them would grow drowsy, and be rocked to sleep by the uniform oscillation of this scientific cradle.’

Eye discovered an article in Science News from 2014 confirming that this phenomenon is true! Scientists at the University of Reading ran a modern-day version of the experiment that verified the findings. So, next time you’re concentrating, make sure you have slippers nearby!

Big, strong and characterful

Eye was moved to receive a message from David L Saunders, of Wells-next-the-Sea Meeting, sharing memories of Donald Swann (see ‘Sing a song of Swann’, 2 February).

He writes: ‘I had the privilege of getting to know Donald after he endorsed the Easter Sunday 1985 premiere of “Gates of Greenham” in the Royal Festival Hall. His written introduction in the programme for that concert finishes with the following sentence: “If we can heal ourselves first through music, then we can begin to heal others.” Through correspondence – he had big, strong, characterful handwriting – I got to know about his non-Flanders and Swann compositions. He regularly visited the Pendle Hill Quaker Centre outside Philadelphia and put on a performance nearby of his music theatre piece: “The Mama Hu Hu”. I treasure the cassette he sent me of that performance with his brilliant piano playing…

‘The Quaker Festival Chorus was preparing a concert to celebrate his seventieth birthday in 1994 when we heard of his death, but we went ahead – the concert, “Swann’s Way”,  becoming a tribute and a celebration of his life and music.

‘Donald composed a substantial body of serious/art songs many of which figure on a precious two-CD Hyperion recording (CDA6812) entitled: Songs by Donald Swann. The Leaveners… promoted Donald’s serious music including the cantata “Brendan Ahoy” and the exquisite “Bilbo’s Last Song” the words of which were given to Donald by Tolkien’s widow at Tolkien’s funeral.

‘There are seven songs by Donald Swann in The Leaveners songbook Sing in the Spirit – I understand the Quaker bookshop has a few copies left.

‘So good to know that Donald Swann, a rare musical genius, and a Quaker, is not forgotten.’

A romantic tale

A Valentine Quaker story, first published online in 2017, did the rounds on social media last month.

‘Esther and the Heathens’ was written by Chuck Fager and appears on his website, ‘A Friendly Letter’: https://bit.ly/49lheQ4.

He tells the fictional tale of two young Friends living on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, in 1828. These Friends’ planned marriage is threatened by the unfolding drama between factions within the Meeting, each of their fathers being on opposing sides.

Chuck paints a vivid picture of how a schism that split US Quakerism translated to the personal lives of Friends in Meetings, explaining the theological tensions alongside an emotional arc.

The schism in question was that of the Hicksites and Orthodox Quakers.

Hicksites followed the liberal Quaker preacher Elias Hicks, who argued that the Inward Light is the primary focus of a person’s faith, over creed or doctrine. In his book, Quakers Living in the Lion’s Mouth, Glenn Crothers writes that Orthodox Quakers sought to ‘make the Society a more respectable body – to transform their sect into a church – by adopting mainstream Protestant orthodoxy’.

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