Origin: Fire Brigades

Benjamin Franklin, an advocate of fire safety in the home, wrote an article in his Gazette suggesting: “In the first Place, as an Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure, I would advise ‘em to take care how they suffer living Coals in a full Shovel, to be carried out of one Room into another, or up or down Stairs, unless in a Warmingpan shut; for Scraps of Fire may fall into Chinks and make no Appearance until Midnight; when your Stairs being in Flames, you may be forced, (as I once was) to leap out of your Windows, and hazard your Necks to avoid being oven-roasted.”

This was sound advice from Mr. Franklin who was one of the first to suggest the need for a body of men who would be available to fight a fire, perhaps a “Club or Society of active Men belonging to each Fire Engine; whose Business is to attend all Fires with it whenever they happen.”

On a recent trip to Philadelphia and a tour around the historic district, I was pleased to see that many old buildings have retained the original fire marks of their respective insurance companies, some of which began in England and then moved to America. These new businesses were both lucrative and competitive. On acceptance of a policy, the insurance company installed their fire mark on the insured building, usually on the first floor where it could easily be seen. Originally, the fire marks were made of lead and cast in a mold with the insurance company’s number under a unique emblem. They were decorated in bright colors and sometimes included a gold leaf accent. However, from 1780 to 1800, the high cost of lead made the fire marks too expensive, so copper, tin or a mixture of metals was used. Fire marks designs varied considerably with each insurance company. The Fire Association of Philadelphia (c. 1817) displayed a hose wrapped around a pump while the Insurance Company of North America depicted an eagle and a hose.

Insurance companies organized their own fire brigades to protect their clients’ properties. The men of these brigades were chosen for their strength and disposition. They wore magnificent, colorful uniforms that easily distinguished members of one brigade from another. The men of a brigade were proud and often gregarious by nature. When an alarm sounded, each brigade set off to discover the whereabouts of the fire. If the building displayed a rival’s fire mark, the brigade not only let the property burn, but actually impeded the legitimate brigade’s attempts to douse the fire by kicking over their competitors’ leather buckets, swearing or physically fighting while the building burned to the ground.

Anyone who saw the movie Gangs of New York might remember there was just such an incident where rival firefighters literally took to fisticuffs over a fire as the building was razed to the ground.

The Mystery of Leylines

What are leylines? Are they merely ancient paths or do they hold some kind of mystical earth power? Is it true that UFOs have been seen in the sky following leylines?

Growing up as I did in the County of Essex, England, I had heard about leylines but it was not until I did research for my book Extraordinary Places…Close to London (see page 37) that I realized there are leylines in other parts of the world too. The Lines of Nazca, Peru (see photo), the Altiplano of Bolivia, and right here in the United States, we have the Great North Road on the Chaco in Arizona. These as well as other locations around the world all offer similar characteristics: long straight roads with monuments, churches, rings of stones, places of historic interest, etc. that mark the way. Often these leylines cannot be seen from ground level but can be clearly seen from the air. Why would that happen?

One of the first people to notice and document leylines in England was Alfred Watkins (1855-1935) who was an avid photographer. Watkins’ son, Allen, later wrote about his father’s discovery. “Then without any warning it all happened suddenly. His mind was flooded with a rush of images forming one coherent plan. The scales fell from his eyes and he saw that over many long years of prehistory, all trackways were in straight lines marked out by experts on a sighting system. The whole plan of The Old Straight Track stood suddenly revealed.”

Interestingly, the leylines in England do follow a straight path over terrain that could be more easily navigated by a circuitous route. This is true in other countries too where the tracks have taken a traveler up and over a mountain rather than an easier route around it. Is there some reason to keep a track straight?

Watkins never gave us an explanation for these ancient tracks that are now called leylines. Dowsing experts have followed the leylines and tell us there is subterranean water activity. To this day, pilots follow leylines as they navigate the skies, so is it so strange to think that if we have been ‘visited’ by UFOs, they would also follow the same lines? Many believe animals possess extra sensitivity to earth power and congregate at certain spots that have been deemed leylines. When something strange happens in a village, the incident is often expressed as, “…well, what do you expect, it’s on a leyline…”

An Extraordinary Cafe

There are not too many restaurants that can boast of having an authentic Roman column as part of the décor, but this is exactly what the cafe Ai Musei on Via G. Piamarta, 1 in Brescia has to offer.

At Ai Musei the column base is approximately 10 feet below ground level indicating how much the street has been elevated over the past two thousand years. The friendly staff has to maneuver their way around the column to serve customers. The cafe has a highly decorated wood paneled ceiling with beautiful hand painted rosettes in the center of each panel. There is also an elaborately hand carved wooden bar complete with the same rosette design. Besides offering the customer a variety of alcoholic drinks, there are light refreshments as well as the wonderful coffee that is usually drunk standing at the bar.

It is easy to see why the locals appear to take such unusual surroundings for granted as they stop for a coffee on their way to work, because just a short distance along Via dei Musei you’ll find the Tempio Capitolino with its four magnificent Roman columns with Ionic capitals consisting of scrolls above the shaft. A partial inscription can be seen on the top of the building.

Brescia is a beautiful and largely undiscovered city in Lombardy, northern Italy, only about 1 hour’s drive from Milan. Brescia, known as ”Lioness of Italy“, offers an interesting combination of modern urban development mixed with ancient monuments.

Origin: Ring a Ring of Roses

The seemingly innocent nursery rhyme, Ring a Ring of Roses portrays groups of children laughing and dancing as they hold hands and swirl around in circles. However, the nursery rhyme has a more sinister beginning.

In 1665, the Bubonic Plague so prevalent in Europe reached the shores of England, hitting the coastal areas first and then migrating into the English countryside. The transmission method was unknown but later was attributed to the fleas that used rats as their hosts. The rats arrived in the cargo ships from Europe and once the ships were docked, the rats were free to roam the City of London spreading the disease through the densely populated area.

It seemed that nobody escaped the disease noblemen fell victim to the plague along with the average man in the street. It was not until September of 1665 when the Great Fire of London destroyed the city. As the wooden houses burned to the ground, so did the rats and, for a while at least the plague was kept under control.

It was not until centuries later that the rhyme came into being. There are slight differences in the English and American versions – the American version is slightly softer in tone. Following is the English version.

Ring a Ring of Roses
The rash consisted of tiny blisters, which formed a ring similar to that of a rose
A pocket full of posies
People believed that if they held a bouquet of flowers or herbs to their nose or kept a nosegay in their pockets, it would help ward off the disease
Atishoo, atishoo
Final stages of the disease, sneezing, running eyes and nose and congestion in the lungs of victims.
All fall down
Victim has died.

In some villages, only one in four people survived the Great Plague of 1665-6. Some good came from this awful experience. London was rebuilt using brick and stone instead of wood; enterprising men came up with the idea of insurance companies and introduced a new phenomenon, their own firefighter teams. And of course we are left with our very special nursery rhyme that hopefully will continue to be sung by children for centuries to come.

More on Moel-Ty-Uchaf

Thanks to Stuart at DHADM for this link to Stonepages.com where you can look all around Moel-Ty-Uchaf using a QuickTime VR scene.

Old Mother Hubbard

With most nursery rhymes, the origin is often lost in obscurity but we know for sure the origin of Old Mother Hubbard. Sarah Catherine Martin wrote and illustrated the rhyme in 1805 after being told to by her brother-in-law, John Pollexfen Bastard to, “Go away and write one of your silly verses.”



Evidently, Sarah was a frequent visitor to Kitley Manor, the stately home of her brother-in-law Bastard who was a busy Member of Parliament. To keep her nieces and nephews occupied and out of their father’s way as he busied himself with matters of state, she amused them by writing verse. Perhaps the children were noisy or boisterous the particular day that evoked the terse response from her brother-in-law, but one thing is for sure, Old Mother Hubbard would become one of the better-known nursery rhymes in history.

The rhyme was inspired by the housekeeper at Kitley Manor who, when she retired went to live in the cottage on the estate. The cottage is now a restaurant close to Yealmpton in Devon.

Old Mother HubbardWent to the cupboard To fetch her old dog a boneBut when she got thereThe cupboard was bareAnd so the poor dog had none.

After Sarah wrote the rhyme, she took it to a friend, John Harris who typeset and printed the piece. Sarah presented it to her brother-in-law for his birthday on June 1, 1805.

Being an astute businessman and recognizing the value of the nursery rhyme, John Harris printed 10,000 first edition copies, all of which were sold.

Kitley House Hotel >>
Old Mother Hubbard Restaurant >>

Mystical Circles

High above the idyllic village of Llandrillo, set in the fertile countryside of Clwyd, North-East Wales sits the exquisite stone circle of Moel-Ty-Uchaf - the ‘high, bare hill’. Archaeologists classify moel-Ty-Uchaf as a cairn-circle; its 41 low stones surrounding a cist (or simple grave, perhaps of some prehistoric chieftain) originally covered by a mound of stones.



Unlike the enigmatic stone circles of Stonehenge or Callanish, few people come here save the occasional passing hiker en route to the heather-clad Berwyn Mountains. This is a place to sit and feel the mists of time disperse around you, revealing an age where myth and legend was part of everyday life. Yet this is no isolated monument, since the countryside of the British Isles is graced by many more examples. In fact so widespread are they that one may ask who built them, and to what purpose?



Man is believed to have first reached what is now known as the British Isles some 500,000 years ago, a time when much of the northern landscape was glacial. These first humans were ‘hunter-gatherers’, following a nomadic way of life governed by the seasonal migrations of the animals they hunted and the periodic advance and retreat of the ice. By 6,000 BC climate change had caused the glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise, isolating Britain from mainland Europe. Gradually the island inhabitants began to adopt the concept of farming originated in the Middle East, constructing permanent settlements and adopting embryonic socio-political structures to adapt to the new stability inherent in such agrarian societies. Massive communal tombs were erected and later, the first stone circles. It is believed these fulfilled a religious function, possibly linked to lunar and solar cults and may have been so shaped in mimicry of natural crop circles formed by spiral vortexes – events sure to have a profound effect on a prehistoric farmer tilling his soil.



This then was the dawn of civilization. The rest, as they say, is history and Moel-Ty-Uchaf still stands overlooking its valley – a monument to Nature itself.

CONTRIBUTED BY Robert Gladstone