I began writing this in December 2011
Prior to 2012, I read a short piece in the The Boston Globe by James Carroll entitled, 'The harsh truth of the city on a Hill'. I never knew very much about the Puritans but reading this article turned out to be both an eye opener and a stimulus to learn more.
Carroll describes John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as a rigid theocrat, who excused/justified the violence against the native North American people by saying "God hath cleared our title to this place. In contradistinction, Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, was our first proponent of separation of church and state. In addition, he learned to speak the language of the native peoples and spent time with them.
The European Puritans after sailing to American remained Europeans albeit newly positioned in the North American
wilderness. And as James Carroll states "Yes, Winthrop and company were
leaving behind Europe's savage religious violence; during the same
period, in the Thirty Years War and the brewing English Civil War,
nearly 9 million Protestants and Catholics would kill each other. "
After reading Carroll's article I realized I wanted to know more about the Puritans. His article mentioned Perry Miller as a great historian of Puritanism. I bought a copy of Miller's book 'Errand into the Wilderness' published in 1956.
Reading Miller's book was slow going for someone trained as a biologist. Lots of terms and concepts I'd not really ever used; many seemed to be related to Calvinism and were reprocessed through New England's transplanted divines from Europe.
One of the terms I came across was anagram. I used to play a game called Anagrams as a child. In that childhood game all of the letters of the alphabet were produced on small black squares, one letter on each small square. All of the letters were turned down so only the back of each little square could be seen. Then, one would select seven black squares, turn them over to see the letters and then try to make a word out of those letters. The game would proceed with each person in turn taking new letters to replace the ones used. The process was repeated until all of the letters were used.
The anagrams I found in Puritan writings were different. For example, the first anagram I found was in Latin: Paradisus hostem? This translates to, Does Heaven Have An Enemy?
Jeffrey A Hammond in Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture wrote in regard to anagrams "When applied to elegy, such devices as puns, acrostics, and anagrams were thought to be considerably more than mere ornament. Puritans saw them as extensions of the deceased’s textual legibility, and the verbal ingenuity required to discover them was equated with the spiritual insight demanded by proper mourning."
"It was the anagram, the unscrambled message latent in the deceased’s name, that became the signature formal device of New England’s elegies." See THE AMERICAN PURITAN ELEGY by Jeffrey A Hammond in Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture.
Anagrams, supposedly, were used to find the hidden or mystical meaning in names. I wondered what hidden meaning might be present in my last name. I entered my last name into the Internet Anagram Server http://wordsmith.org/anagram/ and obtained a list of word sequences with each word sequence composed of the nine letters, each one only used once.
This resulted in 39 different combinations of words.
39 found. Displaying all:
Engage Hog
A Eggnog Eh
A Eggnog He
Age Egg Hon
Age Eh Gong
Age He Gong
Gage Hen Go
Gage En Hog
Nae Egg Hog
Gag Gee Hon
Gag Gene Ho
Gag Gene Oh
Gag Nee Hog
Gag Gone Eh
Gag Gone He
Gag Ego Hen
Gang Gee Ho
Gang Gee Oh
Gang Ego Eh
Gang Ego He
Hag Gene Go
Hag Egg One
Hag Egg Eon
Hang Gee Go
Nag Gee Hog
Nag Egg Hoe
Ago Egg Hen
Ha Gee Gong
Ha Egg Gone
Ah Gee Gong
Ah Egg Gone
A Egg Hen Go
A Egg En Hog
Gag Eh En Go
Gag He En Go
Ha Egg En Go
Ah Egg En Go
An Egg Eh Go
An Egg He Go
Where is the hidden or mystical meaning? Perhaps a comma carefully placed would help some combinations.
Ah, Egg Gone
The remainder seem to need more than punctuation.
So, I tried rearranging the words:
Eh? gong age.
Go hag gene!
Eh, gag en go.
Gee, go hang.
Engage Hog?
A eggnog he.
Not much here that rearrangement can help except for 'A eggnog he'. Hmmmmm. No verb. I don't think I qualify as an eggnog but I do like an eggnog made with rum, now and then.
What do I really think of such manipulations. Fun, but without any real significance. The Puritans did believe in these manipulations or found solace in them on the death of someone dear.
I do admire the audacity and the mind of one Puritan, Roger Williams. He escaped from Massachusetts and possibly torture by either the Puritans in Massachusetts or by the English if the Puritans sent him back to England. He made his way to what eventually became Rhode Island. Unlike the other Puritans, Roger Williams got along with the Native Americans. He ultimately bought land from the native Americans and set up a truly free state (Rhode Island) and incorporated his wonderful idea to separate church and state.
I do recommend the book Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M Barry published in Jan 2012.
More later.
