Fur Trade, Frontiersman, Frazetta & Folk Songs

You’d be hard-pressed to find a trade more arduous than that of a fur trapper or trader. Everything from transportation to supply was difficult in the extreme. This is depicted in a compilation video of a series that recreated an 1840s fur trade trek in Canada.

Follow an eight-person volunteer team as they attempt to recreate the journey made by fur traders of the Hudson’s Bay Company during the 1840s by travelling from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay. The trip covers 800 miles (1200 kilometers) and takes the team through the heart of the Canadian wilderness.

Haven’t watched the whole thing, but what I’ve seen is worthy. And it’ll make you feel like a 21st Century softie and motivate you to go do something hard.

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InRange TV has added a Frontiersman class to its shooting competitions:

Almost anything anyone ever sees about SASS (Cowboy Action Shooting) is the modern division, using smokeless ammo and heavily modified guns with light charges for ridiculously impressive speed…but that’s only really one part of CAS, and SASS/CAS provides a very diverse range of Categories to compete in. So if your interests lie with more historical firearms, or blackpowder, or even percussion revolvers – there’s a way to do that, and enjoy the sport and the competition in the way you want to experience it. Don’t worry about those other categories, shoot your category and get good, learning how to shoot better and use historical guns along the way.

 

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Tidings from Fennario… There’s a new historical compendium of British Isles folk song history in the works.

 

 

 

Singing Up the Sun is an illustrated celebration of folk music focusing on the strange and magical stories behind over seventy traditional folk songs from the British Isles.

Folk songs dating back as far as early medieval times and from far flung regional communities passed on from generation to generation, ever shifting and evolving along the way. Folk songs about the most human of experiences; love and loves lost, unrequited or doomed. Folk songs about labour and working the land, the songs of the common people. The leaders, the inspirers, the talismanic and conversely the corrupt, the thieves, the bastards… Folk songs that tell the passing of the year – the rituals and customs – about a land rich in folkloric celebrations and Pagan festivities. Boozy sea shanties about salty sea dogs telling tall tales into their tankards of ale. Magical songs of twisted animal metamorphosis, monstrous livestock, ominous birds portents of ill-fate, cunning trickster foxes and cursed sea creatures luring and smiting. Folk songs about Gods, devils, the earth and the stars and everything in between. And of course death. Oh death…

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Frazetta Girls — the outfit run by the immortal artist’s granddaughters — is now offering up a tapestry of Winter of the Coup. FP Santa, take note.

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Celebrated my 59th birthday in fine fashion on November 6. Hours at the Range, a little guitar-pickin’ and a fine steak dinner at the Figure 8 Ranch. Craig Rullman read from Beowulf in the original Old English, which I did not know he could do. He writes on his Substack:

After dinner we retired to the porch, smoked our pipes, and watched the fire burn. I was sated, fat on great steaks, and maybe even a little full of myself after reading from Beowulf at the dinner table. It was another chance to dust off an old skill I learned in college—reading in Old English—which was taught to me by a lunatic visiting professor from the University of Minnesota. I mean that as high praise. He was excellent and cultivated a love for Beowulf and the older Norse sagas and the misty world of the ancients I have never forsworn…

I don’t claim excellence in perfect pronunciation of the Old English, but I know that I’m close enough, and to hear the old language come tumbling out—still somehow recognizable—and in good cadence, felt something like a spiritual levitation. 

Lady Marilyn gifted me a Yeti tankard featuring Jack Carr’s trademark crossed Winkler tomahawks. Because that’s how she rolls.

Happy Day Now.