Eliza and the Court of Miracles

In 1885 a tall, red-headed Irishman stood on a street corner in London selling copies of the Pall Mall Gazette. His name was George Bernard Shaw and he was one of many volunteers selling a newspaper publicising a story so scandalous that the usual distributors refused to stock the paper.

The story was headlined “THE MAIDEN TRIBUTE OF MODERN BABYLON” and it told the story of how W.T. Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, had joined forces with the repentant madam of a brothel to purchase a girl of thirteen from her father. He didn't intend any harm to the child. He simply wanted to prove the truth of tales he had heard: that, in the poorer parts of London, parents sold their virgin daughters into prostitution. The response of the authorities was swift; Stead and his assistant were arrested and sentenced to terms of imprisonment for assault and child-abduction. But the scandal brought about the result Stead desired. It drew attention to the existence of child prostitution in Britain – and parliament passed an Act which raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen.

Of course, it wasn't as simple as that. The Act expressed all kinds of moral prejudices of the time – and it was the same Act that made homosexuality illegal. Ten years later, Shaw's fellow Irishman and playwright, Oscar Wilde, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour under its provisions.

Even the case of the child sold into prostitution may not have been as simple as it seems – journalists (and many others) have been known to distort and exaggerate facts in order to prove something they “know to be true.” Shaw may have come to this conclusion himself by the time he wrote Pygmalion in which the entirely willing Eliza, who shares a name with the child in the “Maiden Tribute” case, is sold to Professor Higgins by her father for five pounds. These are his “rights as a father,” Alfred Doolittle insists. Five pounds is exactly what Stead paid for the earlier Eliza.

There are numerous myths about what Shaw calls, in the Victorian phrase, “the undeserving poor.” These myths both console and terrify the better off. The idea that the poor are feckless and immoral, prepared to sell their own children at a fiver a time, suggests that charity is always misguided, equality a dream and that what is needed is containment and control.

Paris has another myth (though it isn't limited to Paris): the myth of the Court of Miracles. Colin Jones' history of Paris considers the potency of this myth in the seventeenth century. It tells of a dangerous alternative society thriving in Paris since the Middle Ages – a society of beggars and gypsies who adopted disguises – false wounds, apparent blindness – to exploit the charity of the hard-working bourgeoisie. The Court of Miracles was supposed to have its own king and laws governing this exploitation – and the so-called beggars were not poor and maimed, as they appeared, but living a life of luxurious indolence.

The myth falls apart as soon as it's examined. The beggars are supposed to be simultaneously disciplined and hard-working (as the rules of the Court of Miracles demand) and fecklessly lazy. As Colin Jones points out, the Court of Miracles never existed – though some beggars may have been fakes and liars. But the myth gave Louis XIV the excuse he wanted to round up paupers, beggars, the sick and corral them into hospitals. His main concern was making the streets safe for kings and their courtiers. As the French Revolution shows, this wasn't a complete success.

There are similar myths elsewhere. In the 18th century John Gay's The Beggar's Opera picked up the idea of the Court of Miracles and sets it in London – and Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera gave the story new, even more richly parodic life. The thieves and beggars in Gay and Brecht don't inhabit a space as large as the Court of Miracles but they still combine idleness with industrious trickery. They seem to live outside the law – but at the same time they obey a different, equally strict code. They sing and dance too – it's a fine life being a thief and a beggar.

The myth of the Court of Miracles still flourishes. There are undoubtedly crooks and con-artists among beggars and the poor – just as the rich have their tricksters, whose deceptions are coming to light with the collapse of the markets. As a story, it's a delight – the fortunate who are neither poor nor beggars revel in its freedom - but it's also a dangerous excuse for repression, and for failure to see an equal humanity in the faces of the unlucky who need help and justice.

The story W.T. Stead tells in “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” cannot help relying on the myth of the dangerous poor – the myth is too potent to avoid and the poor know it as well as the rich. His newspaper article is a rich mix – it starts with a lengthy and richly imagined account of the labyrinth in Crete and ends with the scream of a child. He insists that he doesn't oppose the freedom of the libertine rich, so long as the vulnerable poor are protected. He insists that the rich who prey on the young are his main target. Yet his account of the disorderly poor, who know just where to sell their daughters and whose profit is governed by a parody of market forces, recalls the Court of Miracles' parody of the establishment of its day.

Stead believed his own story and undoubtedly there were cases of child abuse, then as now. He served three months in jail for abducting Eliza – the repentant brothel-keeper who helped him served six months. I don't know what happened to her after that. Stead's fame as an editor was secured until his death brought him another kind of fame – he was drowned when the Titanic went down. As for Eliza – not Shaw's Eliza but the original girl – Stead gave her to the Salvation Army for safe keeping. They eventually returned her to her parents, judging that she was not at risk from them. I don't know what happened to her after that.

Robin in Nottingham

There are mild grumbles in Nottingham about the new Robin Hood film. Nottingham can live with an Australian playing the outlaw, a newish story and even the usual dodgy accents – outsiders tend to be uncertain how Nottingham people speak. But word has got round that the character played by Russell Crowe – Robin Longstride – is a Yorkshireman.

Reviews of the new film were lukewarm. Nonetheless, Nottingham has declared that May is Robin Hood Month. There's an exhibition (costumes and set, I think) at the Castle and I've seen signs of other events in the area.

I hadn't expected the mediaeval market. I came across it on my way to Nottingham Contemporary, paying my second visit to the Uneven Geographies exhibition. While I hate shops, with few exceptions, I find it hard to resist a market and began to explore the stalls.

I watched a man making a thick leather tankard. I hadn't heard of leather tankards before but the procedure looked convincingly mediaeval. Opposite was a stall selling sausages and another offering Transylvanian glass – nothing to do with Dracula but delicate and glowing. There were stalls selling food, jewellery, carvings – all sorts of delights. It wasn't until I reached the stall selling baseball caps made of panels cut from tin-cans that my lazy, sun-soaked mind began to wonder about the label “mediaeval.” Still, the Heineken cans are a pleasing shade of green though the Coca-Cola logo might look out of place in the greenwood.

I started spotting other inconsistencies – a sausage stall, staffed by two smiling men in Robin Hood hats, was named after “King Tut” - much earlier, I think, and unremembered in mediaeval times. I know the Crusades saw returning soldiers bringing all kind of new goods to England - but would they have brought smiling Buddhas fashioned from resin? Did they eat ostrich burgers in baguettes in Sherwood Forest? I couldn't rule it out but kangaroo meat is totally implausible. Wodwos carved from wood seemed more authentic.

For a few minutes I counted inconsistencies. Then I began to delight in them. I love the Robin Hood legend but I've never insisted on historical accuracy – it's a baggy myth which is refashioned with every telling and imagining. Robin probably didn't wear tights, despite Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn and Richard Greene – and at the same time he did, because imagination makes it so.

My Robin Hood isn't Robin of Locksley, returning nobleman, but the outlaw beyond class who sees an unfair society and acts for liberty and justice. His greenwood is a place of freedom and equality – and women are equal there, because that's how I've imagined it.

I began to wonder how my Robin would be today. He might be with the migrants who live outside the law in our cities, aiming at invisibility but too often exploited. Or perhaps he'd be an eco-warrior, defending the wild places and remaining greenwood from those who exploit them for cash. Either would be a more uncomfortable Robin than any Hollywood has produced. Only the TV series of my childhood really engaged with contemporary politics.

But Nottingham's mediaeval market didn't seem entirely out of place in the Robin Hood myth. People who'd come to Nottingham for all sorts of reasons mingled at the stalls. There were Goths, political protesters, parents whose children wanted to splash in the fountain – all assembling in the Old Market Square and strolling round the stalls. They moved easily from demonstrations of weaving and wood-turning to chat with the vendors of amber, carved elephants and eco-clothing.

Myths update themselves all the time. No single version can hold them.

Iceland and the axis of evil

"The half wit does not know that gold
Makes apes of many men:
One is rich, one is poor,
There is no blame in that."

Those words, translated by W.H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor, come from 'Hávamál', also known as 'The Words of the High.' The earliest manuscript version comes from around the year 800 but the poem probably pre-dates Christianity in Iceland as the words are ascribed to the god Odin.

I've wanted to visit Iceland for many years - even before I saw pictures its mountains, plains and geysirs. The starting point was Auden and MacNeice's travel book, Letters from Iceland, which combines comedy with an underlying seriousness - Iceland is a place of sanity in a world rapidly going mad.

The Iceland Auden and MacNeice visited was a relatively poor country. Since I've wanted to go there, it has seemed too expensive. Every so often I leaf through a travel brochure or visit tourist websites and then the prices deter me. I don't want a weekend break - I want to see Iceland properly and learn enough of the language to get by, but that's far too expensive.

Britain's relationship with Iceland has been awkward. I remember the antagonisms of the Cod Wars, especially the third Cod War in which Iceland claimed that its unilateral extension to its coastal waters was an attempt to stop overfishing. Iceland may have had a point as the seas have certainly been overfished since then, but Icelanders were portrayed in the press as unpleasant, violent people trying to grab territory from poor British fishermen.

Later the image changed - the Icelanders were cool, sophisticated people wandering through trendy Reykjavik and swimming in the Blue Lagoon. I was never quite convinced by that. I had, at least, glanced at a copy of a novel by Halldór Laxness and the Icelandic people he described didn't seem quite like that.

I hadn't noticed the rise of Icelandic banks. I don't worry too much about where my money is held, so long as the bank operates efficiently. I know I ought to take more trouble about ethical accounts but I've been defeated by the effort entailed in switching to the Co-op, though I do have an ISA with Triodos. The safety of money seems a matter of luck and quite beyond my control - if it vanishes, I'll have to do without it.

The crash in Iceland took me by surprise and the ripples shook me. I hadn't realised Icelandic companies owned so much - or, it turned out, owned less than nothing. The assets seem to be cancelled out by liabilities and the government has stopped trading on the stock exchange and presided over the closure of the banks.

Poor Iceland - it seems that the country is in debt to the rest of the world. That debt amounts to £116,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And Gordon Brown is threatening to sue for British assets.

I don't know how one country sues another. I don't know how Iceland is supposed to pay the rest of the world for the money lost by its banks. I can see that there's an argument about where the money should be, just as there was with Lehman Brothers. Lehman was accused of sending money out of Britain to privilege debtors in the United States - but Lehman is old news now.

I'm slightly shocked to find that the British government is using anti-terrorism legislation against Iceland. At 10.00 this morning, Gordon Brown enacted a Statutory Instrument under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. It was called the Landsbanksi Freezing Order 2001 and it came into force 10 minutes later - one hour and fifty minutes before it was laid before Parliament. The Home Office website is clear on the purposes of the Act. It was introduced to "cut off terrorist funding" and improve security. It was even meant to aid European co-operation. And it was introduced in response to the shock of 9/11, without the detailed debate and analysis that would be usual.


It may be necessary to act quickly on funds. But we were told that this law, like so many others, was introduced to keep us safe from terrorists - to prevent another 9/11. Has Iceland suddenly joined the Axis of Evil?


I find I'm impressed by the behaviour of ordinary Icelanders, as reported on the BBC. And there's something moving about the behaviour of the Icelandic rock star, Bubbi Morthens, who convened and performed at a free concert opposite the parliament building, asking people to stand together. Bubbi Morthens has lost money too. He spoke of a "new reality" and the possibility of a "new dawn". The language is too vague for me to be sure about what he means - there could be implications I've missed. But this does seem a time for people to stand together and face reality - and to think about how society must change. I just hope that what emerges is a more just and kinder society.


Meanwhile, here's Bubbi Morthens performing in Copenhagen (mostly in English) in 2007.

When I was much younger, I occasionally took part in Reclaim the Night marches. One of the favourite chants was "However we dress, wherever we go,/ Yes means yes and no means no." It was a simple message but objectors frequently assured me that life wasn't as simple as that because women didn't actually say what they meant. Some added that women didn't know what they wanted anyway. At the extreme end of the anti-feminist brigade were the men who would declare that women liked being raped and that Reclaim the Night marchers were angry and soured because they hadn't been.

I've been reminded of those attitudes by some of the responses to the result of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty. As the politicans campaigned and debates took place, almost everyone assumed the Irish would vote Yes to the new Treaty. It was only on the eve of poll that I noted a little doubt in the commentators' voices. Then the Irish voted No. The majority was between 7 and 8 %. so there wasn't any room for doubt. Or so I thought.

Suddenly there was a string of European spokesmen (and all but one I heard were men) talking on TV and radio and to any journalists who would listen, explaining that no didn't really mean no but something else entirely. "It's not about Europe or the Lisbon treaty," one French speaker explained. "It's about the voters' attitude to the Irish government." He went on to explain that the result could therefore be disregarded or, if necessary, the Irish people could be asked to vote again and again - until they got it "right."

I don't know why the Irish people voted as they did, although they seem to have had access to a great range of relevant information, including the text of the Treaty. But their reasons for voting No don't matter. If, in an election, I chose to vote for a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party because he used my favourite brand of toothpaste, my motivation might be regarded as strange. But no-one would have the right to take my vote and re-assign it to the Green Party candidate on the grounds that the Green Party had more sensible policies. As long as I am eligible to vote, my vote should be counted. And it's not for anyone else to re-assign my vote on the grounds that I should have voted in a different way.

The Irish referendum can have only one result. The Lisbon Treaty cannot be adopted. The current rules of the European Community require all member states to endorse major changes. The Irish constitution as interpreted by the highest courts in Ireland declares that such major changes to national sovereignty can be decided only in a referendum. Spokesmen can condemn the Irish people as stupid and ungrateful (I have heard such epithets) but the pro-Europeans who use such terms betray the best ideals of the European Union. If it is to succeed, the European Union must respect the views of all nations involved. It mustn't become a community of bullies and it certainly mustn't ignore legal and democratic requirements.

Pro-Europeans should be encouraging a proper debate on what Europe is for and how it is run. A British referendum would have provided a good opportunity to explore all manner of anxieties, from the question of sovereignty to anxieties about fraudulent use of expenses. But although Britain was promised a referendum on the constitution, we were assured none was necessary for the Lisbon Treaty. Sometimes being a British voter feels like being a woman in Britain before women got the vote. I could almost hear government spokesmen saying, "Don't bother your pretty little head about that, my dear."

There are big issues to discuss about Europe and everyone should be encouraged to think them through. When the constitution was debated - and rejected in France and the Netherlands - I learnt about issues that weren't discussed in the British press, so far as I could see. There were debates on the possible effects of a free market in Labour - would it kill off the minimum wage? And questions were raised about the role of the European Central Bank, which was to have the status of a nation and a right of veto over legislation.

Being pro-European isn't a coherent political position on its own. Pro-Europeans have to say what kind of Europe they support, how it will be achieved and how the dangers of a united Europe can be avoided. A united Europe may be dangerous. While it could have the strength to stand up to other super-powers, world super-powers have often been a force for bad.

For a few days it seemed as though the Irish vote might be disregarded or that Ireland would be sidelined by other countries. Then the Czech president said that the Irish vote must be respected and the Treaty could not be ratified.

I don't know what happens next. But a sensible, thoughtful and well-informed debate on Europe is overdue. If we need a new Treaty or Constitution, we'd better all think and vote on it - and accept what the voters in each nation say, even if we don't agree.

Le mouton noir par jolie mome
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Note: Computer problems and lack of time prevented me assembling the range of links I would have liked for this post.

"like a dead man"

Just at the moment, I'm unable to post as frequently as I would wish. But I ask anyone visiting my blog to read Mark Haddon's article in today's Observer in full. He's writing about the treatment of refugees in Britain. I thought I knew enough about this subject, but his account of human beings denied life-saving medical treatment, parents and children forbidden from meeting, and brutal deportation procedures makes me feel sick and angry. And that's before I think of human beings who have been raped and tortured condemned to destitution in Britain. They are punished because they believed Britain's favourite myth of itself - that Britain cares about freedom and democracy, and defends the oppressed and persecuted.

Refugee Week starts tomorrow. There are events all over the United Kingdom. It's a good opportunity to find out the truth behind the headlines. You can find local events on-line - and there may be programmes in public libraries.

The picture shows Yarl's Wood Detention centre. In the last year for which figures are available, 1,160 children were imprisoned there. They had not committed any crime. 116 were imprisoned for more than 28 days. Because they are asylum seekers, they aren't protected by the same laws as the rest of us.

The video below illustrates one contribution made by asylum seekers to this country: the Amadeus Quartet plays Beethoven (part of the 16th string quartet).