text:
Bird on a briar: interpreting medieval notation, with a HIP harp arrangement
Ian Pittaway bird on a briar, bourdon, bryd one brere, Chaucer Geoffrey, early instruments, early music, Gothic harp, harp, historically informed performance, Langland William, mediaeval, medieval, medieval notation, rhythmic modes, square notation, troubadours, trouvères 27th July 2015 16th October 2022 7 Comments
The aim of this article is to arrive at a performable and historically justifiable arrangement of the problematic song, bryd one brere, c. 1290–1320. This is the oldest surviving secular love song in the English language with a complete lyric and so it is early music gold-dust, but it does have some severe holes: it is for two voices, but one voice is missing; and some of the roughly-written notation is difficult to decipher. What follows is not the only possible musical solution; but on this journey I'll take you through the process step by step, so you can decide for yourself if you're convinced. I'll also delve a little into the background of the song, arguing that it is clearly influenced by the troubadour and trouvère tradition of fin'amor – refined or perfect love. The article starts with a video performance on voice and medieval harp.
Click picture to play video – opens in new window.
bryd one brere (bird on a briar), an arrangement for medieval harp,
words in modern English, from the notation of the original manuscript.
Since the early music revival of the late 19th and early 20th century, the search has been for historical authenticity in musical performances and replicas of early instruments. Due to a great deal of research, looking at original manuscripts, music prints, contemporaneous accounts of performances and pedagogical material, close examination of musicians in iconography, and x-rays of historical instruments to find their inner construction, we have come a long way. There are still things we don't know, in particular with medieval music: the further back in time we go, the more we have to rely on conjecture and guess-work due to the holes in the evidence, particularly when it comes to performance. So the by-word for musicians playing early music has been, from the second half of the 20th century, historically informed performance, or HIP for short. This is an important and practical distinction. The idea of authenticity constrains musical creativity to the academically justifiable, never breaking past the sometimes paper-thin walls of the definitively provable performance. With instrumental medieval music, this would usually mean never playing a note, as we rarely know which instruments were intended. Historically informed performance, on the other hand, bestows a duty to refer to primary sources, to adhere where practicable [*] to historical conventions, to play copies of historical instruments, and then, informed with those tools, to be creative, and to fill in the gaps as best we can.
[*] If we adhere to historical conventions on performance regardless of practicability then we create real difficulties. For example, a concert would mean playing privately to a small audience, if any audience at all; and, according to the Elizabeth Burwell lute tutor manuscript of c. 1660–1672, lutenists "will do well to play in a wainscot room where there is no furniture[;] if you can[,] let not the company exceed the number three or four for the noise of a mouse is a hindrance to that music."
The manuscript
bryd one brere. The manuscript is now in King's College, Cambridge, MS. Muniment Roll 2 W. 32r.
(As with all pictures, click for larger view.)
The song bryd one brere was written on a papal bull, an edict of the pope. This particular bull is dated 1199, from Pope Innocent III. The music and words are written roughly, in brownish ink, and upside down compared to the bull on the front. The bull was about 100 years old by the time the song was written out, c. 1290–1320 in the Priory of Saint James, near Exeter. It may seem extraordinary that a secular song should have been written on the back of a religious document from no less a person than the pope; more extraordinary still that it should have been written on a document already of some antiquity. However, this is to see both paper and papacy from a modern perspective: paper was precious, expensive, and not to be wasted; and the papacy was in dispute in England, with several clashes between King John and the pope in recent memory, as well as papal suppression of English Catholic reform movements.
It is clear that some of the music is missing. The top line for the first voice is a 5 line stave; next there is a 4 line stave drawn for a second voice, but left blank, and under that we have the words to be followed by the written first voice and the unwritten second voice; next is another 4 line stave with the rest of the first voice part; then there is a large space before the rest of the words, with ample room for another 4 or 5 line stave for the unwritten second voice, which was not added.
It is unambiguous that the scribe intended to write another voice part. Was this a song the monk knew, written out for others to learn? Or was this his own composition? If the latter, did his inspiration fail him or his duties call him away? We have no way of knowing. It may be that the anonymous monk did not write the lower voice part because it was familiar and he was working out the polyphonic accompaniment to a song that was originally monophonic. If this is the case, it would comply with the way polyphonic voices were added to plainsong in the 13th century, with the plainsong melody invariably in the lowest voice. If this is the method the scribe used then we are left only with the descant, the accompanying voice, with the original monophonic melody to be added on the second stave later, which unfortunately never happened.
Though incomplete, in writing bryd one brere this nameless brother left us the earliest extant English secular love song, and one of the oldest surviving English secular songs of any description (Mirie it is and Sumer is icumen in being the earliest).
The bryd one brere project
Illuminated letter B in the Peterborough Psalter, 1310–20, contemporaneous with bryd one brere, showing King David playing a harp, with a vielle (medieval fiddle) and a citole.
For reasons given above, and more that will emerge, it is impossible to sing this song in a historically authentic way, but an historically informed performance is certainly possible, and the process of arriving there is the subject of this article.
In common with the vast majority of medieval music, there is no part written for an accompanying instrument, if indeed one was ever intended, though iconography regularly shows us that instruments accompanied voices. In the video above, it is played on a harp typical of those played in Europe during the 13th and 14th centuries. The number of times harps are depicted in iconography and mentioned in literature is a testament to its status, its popularity and its cultural importance by assocation with the biblical King David. The depiction of King David in the Peterborough Psalter shown on the right is a typical medieval portrayal.
No harp music from this period survives, and very little early harp music has survived in general. Enough clues exist from near contemporaneous sources to know the principles of both medieval music practice and medieval harping, so from this information it is possible to plausibly work through the ambiguities left by the bryd one brere scribe, and then to create a harp accompaniment for the song. I am indebted to Christopher Page for his book, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1987), for giving invaluable guidance on 12th and 13th century harp technique.
Many have created reconstructions of this song before me. That my solution is different to theirs, and that others' solutions are different to each other, illustrates the difficulties of the text.
Interpreting the words
There are several issues to consider in bringing this song to a performable rendering. In the late 13th and early 14th century, spelling was regional rather than standard or national, and the language of bryd one brere text indicates the East Midlands or Norfolk, presumably reflecting the origin of the scribe. Singing in Middle English means precise regional pronunciation is somewhat arguable and, in any case, the vast majority of listeners would be excluded from understanding. I'd like the words to be accessible, so I have tried to steer a middle course keeping, as far as possible, to the syllables and metre of the original words. My lyrics are an amalgam of others' translations from Middle English, with some compromises of my own to fit the notes, keep the rhythm, and retain the meaning.
Three chief issues arise: the loss in translation of Middle English word-play; interpretation of one key word, "kynd"; and the fitting of words to notes in a translation.
The original word-play is impossible to recreate in modern English. To translate the similar words "bryd"/"brid" and "biryd" literally as "bird" and "woman" destroys the poetry, but there is no aural similarity between the words in modern English and so no good solution. I decided, therefore, in verse 1, line 3, to translate "blythful biryd" not literally as "blissful woman" but as "blissful bird" to retain the thematic connection with the opening line of "bryd/brid one brere".
In verse 1, line 2, "kynd" has two possible meanings. Prosaically, it means one's nature or innate characteristics, making the line difficult to both translate and scan while keeping true to the meaning. The meaning of the whole line, "kynd is come of love, love to crave" on this reading is 'our nature, our human character, is derived from love, so we crave love'. It's unclear to me whether "come of love" implies a religious meaning, i.e. we are all made by God, who is love, or a secular meaning, i.e. it is in the human character to seek love. While it is true that a medieval writer would hardly have understood the modern distinction between the religious and the secular, there are no hints of religious sentiment anywhere else in the song, so I rendered the line primarily in the emotional and biological sense. Though the connection with being born is not explicit in the original, the word "come" as in "kynd is come of love", can mean meeting or coming together, hence I arrived at "We are born of love [i.e. our nature comes from love as two people join together], love to crave". Would "We are made from love, love to crave" encapsulate it better? I'm not sure that any modern English line would do it justice.
The second possible meaning of "kynd" or nature also throws up complications for the modern translator. In 12th century French philosophy, the idea of nature was personified as the goddess Natura, drawing on classical Greek and Roman philosophers such as Plato, in his Timaeus, and Boethius, in his Consolation of Philosophy. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) was highly influenced by French literature. In line 316 of his poem, Parliament of Fowls, Chaucer cited 12th century French theologian and poet, Alain de Lille, by name: "And right as Aleyn, in the Pleynt of Kinde" ("And as Alain, in his Complaint of Nature"). For Chaucer, Nature is God's handmaid, a goddess representing the natural world, signifying the goodness of creation, of natural and procreative love. Lines 302–315 of Parliament of Fowls follow, first in Middle English then a modern translation by A. S. Kline, the latter available in full here.
Geoffrey Chaucer as he appears in Thomas Hoccleve, The Regement of Princes, 1430-40.
And in a launde, upon an hille of floures,
Was set this noble goddesse Nature;
Of braunches were hir halles and hir boures,
Y-wrought after hir craft and hir mesure;
Ne ther nas foul that cometh of engendrure,
That they ne were prest in hir presence,
To take hir doom and yeve hir audience.
For this was on seynt Valentynes day,
Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make,
Of every kinde, that men thenke may;
And that so huge a noyse gan they make,
That erthe and see, and tree, and every lake
So ful was, that unnethe was ther space
For me to stonde, so ful was al the place.
And in a clearing on a hill of flowers
Was set this noble goddess, Nature;
Of branches were her halls and her bowers
Wrought according to her art and measure;
Nor was there any fowl she does engender
That was not seen there in her presence,
To hear her judgement, and give audience.
For this was on Saint Valentine's day,
When every fowl comes there his mate to take,
Of every species that men know, I say,
And then so huge a crowd did they make,
That earth and sea, and tree, and every lake
Was so full, that there was scarcely space
For me to stand, so full was all the place.
When Chaucer's contemporary William Langland wrote the English allegorical narrative poem, Piers Plowman, circa 1370–90, between 50 and 100 years after bryd one brere, he wrote of the goddess Natura using the capitalised Kynde, an anglicised version of its Germanic form, Gecynd. Kynde (or its other Middle English forms, kind, cinde, kiend, kint, kunde, kunda, etc.) can mean the universe, the creation, or the physical world, and so in the medieval mind this can only be thought of in religious terms, as divine creation. For William Langland, Kynde the nature goddess was simply synonymous with God the Creator: "Kynde … Þat is Þe grete God" (Piers Plowman, B.IX. 26-28).
We see, then, that the complication here is that a string of related meanings are set off by the one word, "kynd". It may mean simply, 'our nature is derived from love and so in our natural state we crave love' or, if the allusion is to the goddess Kynd or Natura, it means 'Kynd or Nature is derived from God or simply is God, who is love, and so we crave love'. These two readings are not so far apart, so my hope is that my English, "we are born of love, love to crave", comes somewhere near either meaning without semantic complications which would get in the way of the lyrical flow.
Bird on a briar … We are born of love, love to crave; blissful bird/woman, on me have pity …
Image of women, men, birds and the giving of a heart from the Romance of Alexander,
mid 14th century, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 264.
The last issue is one of syllable sounds, diction, and of fitting the words to the notes. An e on the end of a word in c. 1300 was pronounced, so in speech brere was pronounced brē-reh not breer, and crave was crā-veh not craiv. To miss the second syllable is to miss a written note, but I couldn't find a way of rendering the words faithfully while retaining the second syllable. So in the first verse, "brere" = "briar", both being two syllable words, is not a problem; but my pronunciation of "crave" is more "crave-ah" and "grave" more "grave-ah" to make it more like two syllables.
In the original text it does not always seem, at first sight, to be clear which words go with which notes. In the first two thirds of the tune, words are written underneath the tune in a generally precise way. In the final third of the tune, the scribe dispensed with that idea and wrote the rest of the words for the first verse and the next two verses in continuous script further down the page. However, as we shall soon see, the last part of the music is written in such a way as to give us a good indication of which words go with which notes.
Examining the lyric: fin'amor, the troubadours, the church, and grave-digging
This being the first surviving secular love song in English (secular in this context meaning not having a central religious theme, as secular in the modern sense of completely non-religious would have been incomprehensible to the medieval mind), we have no previous English examples with which to compare it, but there are previous songs internationally, raising some tantalising questions about the influences on bryd one brere and what may have been lost before it in English secular song. The evidence points strongly in one direction and makes the papal bull that bryd was written on highly significant.
When the troubadour tradition spread to Germany
it became the Minnesänger tradition, after the Middle
High German word for love, minne. Here we see
Minnesänger Kristan von Hamle being drawn up in
a basket, from Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift
or Manesse Codex, c. 1300-1340.
The troubadours were the poets and singers of (what is now) southern France, the trouvères their northern counterparts. From the late 11th century to the mid 14th century, they developed and promoted fin'amor, refined or perfect love, expressed in terms that, over the considerable time of their influence, became standard clichés. A typical love song would express some or all of the ideas that: the object of love is perfect, beautiful, noble, virtuous, etc.; the singer is so happy when he sees her; his life would be complete and he would be forever happy serving her; but she is unattainable. These are exactly the themes of bryd one brere. This thematic similarity cannot be coincidental: bryd was written in England during the period of troubadour/trouvère activity in France that spawned similar contemporaneous traditions in Italy, Spain, Germany, and Iberia, and it was written approximately a century after king and songwriter Richard the Lionheart, son of Eleanor of Aquitaine, had ascended the English throne.
In troubadour lyrics of this type, love and marriage are not connected. In reality, marriage was a feudal arrangement combining class, power and business. The women in such songs, the objects of love, are most often out of reach, so love remains an unrequited ideal. As troubadour/trouvère songs developed over time, the woman was rarely elevated to the level of an actual person: she was a type, category or formula, in just the manner we see in bryd one brere.
The troubadour love lyric had a profound effect on medieval Christianity. For the first millenium of Christianity, the Virgin Mary was very much a supporting player. There were beliefs about the Virgin Mary's role as the new Eve, giving birth to Jesus in order to redeem Eve's sin, with Christ as the new Adam, redeeming Adam's sin, but it was not until the 12th and 13th centuries that there was a sophisticated Mariology, a special elevated place for the Virgin reflected in patterns of worship and the liturgical calendar. The huge expansion in Mary's role was a response to the unwelcome influence of fin'amor. The Catholic Church seems to have decided that it was not possible to successfully counter the popularity and influence of troubadour/trouvère lyrics and their sensual portrayal of women, so they co-opted and spiritualised it. The new Mariology was developed particularly by Benedictine monks, promoting Mary to the point where she was often more prominent than Christ/God.
Virgin of Toulouse, Notre Dame de Grasse, 1451-1500 (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France).
An outline of the general characteristics of this new Mariology shows it to have been taken directly from troubadour song, attempting to diffuse its sensual power by applying it to the Virgin. Desire for a woman became desire for Mary; a description of a woman's perfection matched by her physical beauty was transformed into descriptions of the Virgin's physical beauty; the desire of the singer to be worthy of the virtuous woman became the desire of the believer to be worthy of virtuous Mary; just as the influence of the lady is superior and ennobling, so is Mary's influence; troubadour lyrics had the lover bound in submissive service to his lady just as a knight is bound in service to his lord, and so the church developed the idea of the believer bound in service to Mary in the manner of a knight or lover.
The remoulding of Mary in the image of fin'amor was a dramatic success, seen in all subsequent Mariological literature and song, practically established in the Catholic calendar through multiple Marian feasts by the end of the middle ages. An early English example of such Marian imagery in song is Edi beo thu heuene quene, written anonymously in a manuscript in Llanthony Priory in Gloucestershire, dated between 1265 and the late 13th century, contemporaneous with the troubadours. (A full article about Edi beo thu is available by clicking here.) A few lines from Edi are enough to demonstrate the troubadours' unmistakable influence:
There is no maid of your complexion, fair and beautiful, fresh and bright.
Sweet lady, on me have compassion and have mercy on me, your knight.
Mother, full of noble virtue, maiden so patient, lady so wise.
I am in your love now bonded, and for you is all my desire.
Typical troubadour/trouvère themes could easily have been Marianised by the monk who wrote bryd one brere, just as they were by the monk who wrote Edi: Mary could have been the object of love – perfect, beautiful, noble, virtuous, etc.; the singer would be so happy when he sees her; his life would be complete and he would be forever happy serving her; and she would be attainable through prayer. However, in bryd there is no hint of Marianisation.
Scenes of fin'amor on a carved ivory mirror case, made in Paris c. 1300-30, now in the Louvre.
The Catholic appropriation of troubadour love, diffusing it by absorbing it into Virgin worship, was a huge success in one respect, changing Catholic theology and practice for the following millennium. In another respect, Virgin worship clearly did not eclipse fin'amor love in every Catholic heart: the monk who wrote bryd one brere on the back of a papal bull evidently had the amorous tradition of fin'amor in mind, not the co-opted vision promoted by his church.
Not only is this song the earliest surviving English secular love song, it shows clear retrospective continental influence, and it includes the first extant appearance of a motif which appeared again and again in the English ballad tradition in the centuries that followed, that of the spurned or unrequited lover requesting that his/her grave be dug: "blythful biryd on me thu rewe / or greyth lef greith thu me my grave" ('blissful woman, on me have pity / or dig, love, dig thou me my grave').
To cite all the examples of this motif in the English song tradition would require an extensive article all of its own, such is its great regularly. It appears, for example, in versions of the most ubiquitous folk song of all, Barbara Allen, originally published three and a half centuries after bryd as a 17th century broadside ballad, first referred to by Samuel Pepys in his diary entry of 2nd January 1665, with new variants of the song still being heard by folk song collectors two and a half centuries later in the 1920s. The same or very similar lines appear in the hugely popular song, I once loved a lass, which first appeared as a broadside ballad in the 1670s as The Forlorn Lover. It was still collected from singers until the mid 20th century, with variants known as The False Bride, The Week Before Easter, I Courted a Wee Girl, Love is the Cause of my Mourning, The Lambs on the Green Hills, and so on. The original broadside of c. 1670 expressed the motif in typical fashion:
Oh dig me a Grave
that is wide, large, and deep,
With a root at my head,
and another at my feet:
There will I lye
and take a long sleep,
I'le bid her farewel for ever.
Interpreting the music: neumes
Medieval music notation evolved and different systems were used in different locations and at different times. The notation of German music theorist Franco of Cologne, described in his Ars Cantus Mensurabilis (The Art of Mensurable Music), written 1250–1280, was popular during the late 13th and 14th centuries, is the system used by the bryd one brere scribe, and is now known as Franconian square notation. In this system, staves of 3, 4, 5 or 6 lines were in use, 4 being the most popular. The pitch was understood by the clef, which could appear on any line. The advantage of a floating clef was that it enabled the scribe to keep the tune within the staff without the need for ledger lines on notes that would otherwise be above or below the staff. There were two clefs, either a C clef, as in bryd one brere, or an F clef, to indicate where C or F is located.
In medieval square notation, clefs were movable, using either a C clef or an F clef to indicate
the relative position of all other notes for a given piece of music. The clef is followed by 4 neumes
or note values, their duration indicated by shape. There were no bar lines or time signatures:
rhythm was indicated by the notes' relative value to each other.
Interpreting the music: rhythmic modes
The music raises some questions, as a poor pen leaves us guessing at some of the writer's musical intentions. This is of much greater significance in medieval square notation than modern music, as the shape of a neume or note indicates its value, so if the shape is difficult to discern we're left to infer its value from the musical context. It is probably this problem of a poor pen, more than any other, which has led to different interpreters of the song arriving at different musical solutions. Seeking a way to resolve this by ascertaining what the musical context might be, I turned to medieval rhythmic modes.
First we need to understand proportion. Time signatures are written at the beginning of a piece of modern music to indication the number of beats in every bar: 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, etc. Not so in medieval notation, so we have to infer the rhythmic structure from the context. Until the mid-13th century, a long (see neumes above) was always worth two breves, as in today's 2/4, 3/4 or 4/4 time signatures. A proportion of a long worth three breves – akin to today's 6/4, 6/8 or 9/8, the equivalent of making a long dotted – was considered unwriteable, ultra mensuram, beyond measure, until the work of Franco of Cologne. In his Ars cantus mensurabilis, written shortly before bryd one brere, Franco was the first (in surviving records) to accept proportion tripla, triple proportion or triple time: indeed, he considered the proportion of 3 to 1 (long to breve) to be a perfect long and 2 to 1 an imperfect long. This added an extra layer of interpretation for medieval musicians playing or singing from the page. To interpret the music, one needs to see from the overall shape of the music whether there are 3 breves to 1 long, a perfect long, or 2 breves to 1 long, an imperfect long. When reading from the page, the perfect or imperfect proportion could only be understood from the musical context.
Being written c. 1290–1320, bryd one brere falls at the very end of the musical style known as ars antiqua, ancient art, denoting music of the high middle ages, roughly from 1170 to 1310. Most significantly, this includes the Notre Dame school of polyphony, composers working from c. 1160-70 to 1250, of whom only two names survive, Léonin and Pérotin. An anonymous member of that school wrote De mensurabili musica (The measurable music) in 1260, the first to describe the six rhythmic modes. These modes were not the equivalent of a modern time signature. A modern time signature tells us is how many beats there are in a bar and therefore where the stresses are. In medieval notation, there are no bars and therefore no beats per bar: what we seek is an underlying rhythmic pulse. In church music, the mode was indicated visually by the way the notes were grouped using ligatures, indicating rhythmic accent. While the modes give an overall pulse, the rhythm could be changed for a particular phrase. Though there were six modes, in practice the first was used most often, with modes two, three and five also common. The fifth and sixth modes occured typically in only one polyphonic voice, the fifth in the lower voice and the sixth in the upper voice. The fourth mode was used rarely. They were as follows, together with rhythms in modern notation. The modern notation shows relationships between note values, not literal note values, so the first two modes could also be rendered minim crotchet and crotchet minim respectively.
All examples taken from the Florence Manuscript, c. 1250
(Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, Pluteo 29.1, folios 13v, 44v, 15r, 9v).
1st mode: 3 – 2 – 2 (3 note ligature, 2 note ligature, 2 note ligature).
2nd mode: 2 – 2 – 3
3rd mode: 1 – 3 – 3
5th mode: 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 or 3 – 3 – 3
http://earlymusicmuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/RhythmicModesMix.mp3
Rhythmic modes can be helpful in giving shape to a secular melody. It seems clear to me that bryd one brere was written in the first rhythmic mode, and seeing it this way was extremely helpful in puzzling my way through some of its written ambiguiities.
However, this method has some controversy and is not without problems. In early music debates there has been a great deal of heat over whether these modes apply only to the polyphonic ecclesiastical music for which they were explicitly intended or also to secular music of the period. In other words, it is a question of whether the rhythmic modes were only part of the musical life of the church or a reflection of music-making generally. The weakness of their global application is that some secular melodies cannot be made to fit any of the rhythmic modes. But there is no sound reason why the modes should apply in this either/or fashion, either globally or not at all. Many secular melodies, notated before clear rhythm was written, do make musical sense when a rhythmic mode is applied; and there is clear and uncontrovertable evidence for the application of rhythmic modes outside the church: for example, all 3 pieces of 2 voice textless polyphony on folio 8v-9r of the English manuscript, Harley 978, c. 1250–1275, are written in the first rhythmic mode. The question, then, is not whether they were always or never used in secular music, but whether they were sometimes used.
To me, the answer is clear and positive. The notation for bryd one brere was written on the back of a papal bull, so the scribe was clearly familiar with ecclesiastical music practice (and I have already raised the possibility that it was set out in the manner of a polyphonic piece based on plainsong). Unless we are to argue that all secular music was universally without a rhythmic pulse – an argument that is musically odd and for which there is contrary evidence – then some melodies outside the church's jurisdiction must have used some of the same rhythmic patterns used by the church. When using them, there is no reason why secular players would have conceived of them as the church's rhythms, as the church did not and could not have had a monopoly on musical rhythm. It is my judgement, therefore, that whether or not the brother who wrote out bryd one brere was making an original composition or adding to a secular song, he was using what the church thought of as the first rhythmic mode, and what a non-ecclesiastical musician may have conceived in other terms. This pulse is clearly present at the beginning of the song.
Interpreting the music: ligatures
Above we see groups of neumes close together and touching, indicating melismata, from the Miller Nichols book, containing Gregorian chant from the 10th to the 16th centuries. Below we have the same in bryd one brere, written in a much rougher fashion, at times difficult to discern.
In modern notation, quavers or shorter notes are joined by a line or ligature to group them, to help the player successfully interpret the rhythm of the music. In a similar but not identical way, neumes may be joined in groups to indicate a melisma (plural melismata), a single sung syllable lasting two or more notes. This is indicated by neumes touching, close together, or notes placed vertically joined by a line on the right side to indicate rising notes. Knowing that joined or grouped notes are sung on the same syllable is a great help for twinning words with notes of music in the lines of bryd one brere that are written at the bottom of the page, rather than directly underneath the stave.
And so, bearing all this in mind, we run into some problems of interpretation. In the first line, for example, we see the notes on the word "come", in the line "kynd is come of love". Are they intended to be 2 unsingable Fs on the same syllable, or F E F, or F E G, or F G? The latter sounds best to me, and I interpret the possible middle note rather as a line indicating an upward movement, but that this and some other scribal intentions are not entirely clear is the reason you'll hear a range of versions.
2 Fs on the same syllable,
or F E F, or F E G, or F G?
I have taken the first rhythmic mode as my fundamental key to working out the difficult to read note values, and thereby to interpret the overall shape of the melody. This is my foundation stone and what marks out my solution from most others I've heard, which tend to lack a foundational rhythmic pulse. What my solution has in common with others is that every interpretation I have heard has included some semi-breve (modern quaver) triplets in the melody: I can find no other way of retaining the metre.
So these are the principles on which I've worked, and here is my own solution to the melody in modern notation, set at the same pitch as the original manuscript.
Harp accompaniment
The next task is accompaniment. As is the norm for music of the period, no instrumentation is indicated, but there is clear and widespread evidence that singers were accompanied by instruments, including self-accompanying solo harpers. No contemporaneous harp music survives, but we do have indications of harp style, thanks to the thorough historical research of Christopher Page.
Harps at this time were strung diatonically, i.e. without a row of sharp/flat strings as on the triple harp and without the levers on modern harps to achieve sharps and flats. If the overall pitch of a song needed to be changed to suit the singer's voice, requiring some retuning, or to add occasional musica ficta (sharps or flats, which the church considered contrary to music in most cases, but which were added to modes by secular players), a harp would be retuned to the appropriate scordatura (non-standard tuning). Retuning a harp was itself a performance where the harpist showed the audience their skill. (For more on musica ficta and its role in the modes, see The mysteries of the medieval fiddle: lifting the veil on the vielle.) Another musical practice used then and lost now was to have an accompanied vocal performance of a song followed immediately by an instrumental version of the same, as I do in the video.
Harp and vielle (medieval fiddle) in the 13th century
English Psalter, Lansdowne 420,
now in the British Museum.
12th and 13th century sources indicate that either hand of a harpist could play the upper line while the other played the lower. There is a such a large degree of variety seen in iconography that it was clearly not the case that being right-handed or left-handed was a factor. One hand either doubled the vocal line or added harmonies to the vocal line. These harmonies could potentially have been either organum or a second polyphonic line. Organum was a second vocal (or instrumental) line, one form of which moved in a parallel octave, fourth or fifth. Clerical vocal organum often used parallel fifths until the close of the 13th century, so it seems reasonable to think this was also used in secular contexts, and that a harper may reproduce this. Polyphony is two or more lines of music that fit harmonically together at cadences, resolving in unisons, fifths or octaves, but which otherwise have a large degree of independence. Unlike modern music, where we have four distinct vocal ranges (soprano, alto, tenor and bass, or SATB for short), the pitch of different polyphonic voices was similar until the late middle ages, often to the extent of crossing over each other in pitch during a piece of music.
For the other hand, a harpist had three options, the first being a low drone on one note or alternating between two notes. The lower strings of a harp were known as bourdons in 13th century Anglo-Norman (the English language of those conquered by the Normans), the same or similar word for a bagpipe drone, for the unstopped low plucked string of a medieval fiddle, and for the drone pipe on a 13th century organ, indicating that the lowest harp strings were designated to play a drone underneath the melody. Otherwise, the second hand played a polyphonic second line to the first, or organum.
And so, to these principles, I arrived at my harp accompaniment for the work of an anonymous English monk around the turn of the 14th century. Since I cannot sing at the pitch of the modern notation given, derived from the manuscript, I have pitched it with my first note at g', and therefore lowered the b and b' strings a semitone to retain the correct relationship between notes.
Harper in the Luttrell Psalter, commissioned
by wealthy English landowner, Geoffrey
Luttrell of Lincolnshire, in the
first half of the 14th century.
When I play the melody instrumentally, the left hand is playing the pulse of the first rhythmic mode, long breve, as a two note bourdon drone on g and f, which would be d and c at the original pitch. In the last part of the third line and the first part of the fourth line of the lyric there are some deviations from that rhythm on the left hand, without ever deviating from that pulse. The long breve pulse continues during the sung verses.
For the first half of the verse, in the first 2 lines of the lyric, "Bird on a briar, bird, bird on a briar, / We are born of love, love to crave", the right and left hand together continue the rhythmic pulse underneath the melody, with the right hand playing a parallel fifth and parallel octave above the two note bourdon.
In the next line, the harp notes are a parallel third down from the melody on "Blissful bird, on me have", followed by a parallel fifth down on the melismatic "pity". The last line follows with the harp playing a parallel fourth down from the melody on "Or dig, love, dig", identical to a fifth up then dropped an octave. On the final musical phrase, "thou me my grave", I start a third down from the melody and fall on the harp parallel to the melody, but when the melody rises again, the harp continues to fall, ending with a harmony a fourth down from the melody, being a fifth up then dropped an octave, to comply with the dictum of medieval music that the consonant harmony on the last note of a cadence is a unison, an octave, a fourth or a fifth.
Summary and conclusion
I have followed the contemporaneous practice of a two note bourdon; some parallel fifths, fourths and thirds; and one instance of the two voices crossing over in pitch, as we sometimes find in polyphony (for example, in Pérotin's Dum siggilum, c. 1200; and Exiit sermo from the ms. Magnus Liber Organi, 13th century). Harmonising in thirds is unusual in medieval music, with two exceptions: their increased use in English music; and the constant use of parallel thirds (and sixths) in the musical form known as the gymel.
Of course, we can't possibly know whether my musical solutions were the precise intentions of the medieval monk, or whether my harp part bears any relation to an intended musical accompaniment, if any. It would therefore be disingenuous to call the arrangement authentic, but I hope I have at least shown it to be historically informed, based on known and documented performance practices, enabling me to get to an approximation of the music self-accompanying singer-harpists may have made at the turn of the 14th century.
One issue remains. It is certain that bryd one brere was intended for two voices and that the lower voice is missing, and it is highly likely that the surviving voice is polyphonic accompaniment, missing the leading voice. What might the missing primary voice have sounded like? Is it possible to construct a credible first voice? That is the subject of the article, Bird on a briar (bryd one brere): constructing the missing voice, available by clicking here.
← The bray harp: getting a buzz from early music
The Psilvery Psound of the Psaltery: a brief history →
7 thoughts on "Bird on a briar: interpreting medieval notation, with a HIP harp arrangement"
Cait Webb
Hi – just recently stumbled across your blog, which is an interesting parallel to mine! Thanks
for this interesting post, but I wonder if you can give a little more information about what is specifically said in which sources when you say "Assuming a right-handed player [of harp] 12th and 13th century sources indicate that the right hand either doubled the vocal line or added harmonies to the vocal line." I'm always on the look out for evidence for medieval harp technique. I have read the Christopher Page book but do not recall anything so specific about harp.
Ian PittawayPost author
Hello, Cait.
You have a very interesting website, which I'll read in more detail soon. You're quite right: my chief source for this article was Christopher Page, 'Voices & Instruments of the Middle Ages', who does give very specific historical references for harp technique. In the article above, I've tried to be clear where I'm relying on harp sources and where I'm surmising implications from non-harp sources. I'd struggle now to give exact page references (perhaps I should do just that in similar future articles) but I do remember my starting point was following Harp/Arpa/Harpe in the index. I hope this helps.
Norman Fry
1st August 2016 at 12:41 pm
I thought I would look at "Bryd one Brere". Starting with the music alone, I agree with you (except the ambiguous neume). Comparison with "Sumer is icumen in" raises one question. In the latter, the triplet "in" melisma (fourth word) is three diamonds, carefully penned to look equal. I take this to represent exact triplet; all other compound neumes are entirely squares. Should we interpret the square-diamond-diamond of "rewe" and "greyth" here as 2:1:1?
These verses are peculiar. In the very first line, the most obvious feature is lots of words starting "br-", and the repetition of word "brid" breaks the flow.
The line is divided by a hesitation ("caesura") into two parts ("hemistichs").
The first part is longer than the second.
The main phonetic feature is alliteration.
The alliteration occurs more in the first part than the second.
The alliteration focuses the stress onto the alliterated syllables.
… as in Beowulf! These are ancient features of Germanic poetry. In fact the first line has an excessive number of "br-"s (3+2). To the learned, it must have screamed a headline "This is alliterative/AngloSaxon/English – no continental rubbish".
The second line also has a caesura, between repeated "loue". The initial "k" or "c" gives normal 2+1 alliteration, but there is extra in the repetition of "lo-".
At this point I started using the alliteration to try to work out the rhythmic structure.
However, the alliteration is breaking down in line 3 and, although re-established ("gr-") for line 4, does not dictate the structure of the rest of the poem. Reading further I realise: the verse has reverted to syllable-stress metre (which to us is normal); it is mostly without caesurae; it had end-of-line rhymes all along; and the overall levening of alliteration would not be out of place in Taliesin or John Lennon. It's normal, not really alliterative verse after all!
So why the Germanic alliterative headline? Artists, thinkers and revolutionaries have often used misleading front pages to get past censorship. The best known works of Schiller, Monteverdi, and possibly Lenin, are examples. But surely there can't have been agents of the French-speaking Plantagenet's insisting on Germanic Englishness! It's exceedingly odd. Any ideas?
Like "Mirie it is", irregularity of metre makes it difficult to fit a regular musical rhythm, and I feel the music as written detracts from the text. In both cases I imagine the music was fitted to pre-existing verse.
This is my structuring of the first verse, using only the word-beginnings that are alliterative or close to it (even across adjacent lines), then disallowing (bracketed) consecutive alliterating syllables. The result happens also to be how I intuitively sense syllabic stress.
bry- .. bre- .. bri-. (bri) .. bre- ..
ky- .. co- .. lo-. (lo-) .. cl ..
bly- .. bir- .. me (thu) re- ..
.. gre- .. gri- .. (thu) me (my) .. g? ..
Where the manuscript is unambiguous, it places these stresses entirely on the beat. So, I would make that the rule for this verse, forcing "or" to the upbeat before "greyth". Then I would just place syllabic stress on the beat in the remaining verses.
3rd August 2016 at 4:47 pm
Hello, Norman. Thanks for taking the time. Yes, you arrive at a convincing solution to the problem of that very poor pen and the fact that the words and neumes are not always written together. Does the music as written detract from the text, as you suggest? I'm not sure. That depends, I think, on what we expect to find, and whether medieval expectations were the same as ours, musically. It may be that both 'Mirie it is' and 'bryd one brere' were written to pre-existing music – there's certainly plenty of precedence for that in other cases – but there's no evidence of that here. Personally, I think in both cases the mood of the music fits the words very well, even if the actual notes are sometimes difficult to decipher.
My best wishes.
Yes, Ian. You're right. Thank you. In both songs, the mood of the music is indeed mostly suited to the words. Now you have nudged me on it, I also think I was wrong to lump the two songs together. In "Mirie it is", equalising the duration of the first and second poetic lines, by skipping through summer and singing birds before plodding through the prospect of "weder strong", enhances the poetry. The music doesn't live up to this, but after the first line fits the words really well. In contrast, the halting alliterative wording of "Bryd one Brere", which is equally problematic and lost in this music, seems of no relevance or benefit to love poetry either. My comment about fitting music to pre-existing text was already made about "Mirie it is", and that's where I should have left it.
Hunith
5th June 2018 at 11:52 am
thank you very very much for this in-depth insight into this intriguing little piece of music. It's very enlightening, as is everything on your page! I love your harp arrangement, too – you haven't by any chance put the sheet music down, have you?
5th June 2018 at 8:55 pm
Thank you, Hunith, for your lovely words. I don't have any notation for my harp arrangment, but my description in the article of how I went about arranging it would probably result in a more or less note for note reconstruction. Above all, be creative! I'm posting an article within the next few weeks about how to arrange medieval music in an historically-attested medieval style, so you may find that helpful. It will be called Performing medieval music: turning monophony into polyphony. Part 1: instrumentation and harmony. All the best. Ian


text:
Lifetime Achievement Award for two of South Africa's top AIDS researchers
The duo have been instrumental in advancements made in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
by Siviwe Breakfast
World-renowned South African scientist Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim. Photo: Leadership Magazine
Two South African AIDS researchers were, on Wednesday, honoured by the Institute for Human Virology (IHV) with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Service at the 19th Annual International Meeting of Top Medical Virus Researchers in USA..
Professors Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim, who are a married couple, received the award in recognition of their outstanding contributions to research about the AIDS pandemic.
They were handed the award in the presence of elite scientists at the Four Seasons Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland.
IHV's Director Dr Robert Gallo was full of praise for the duo and highlighted their contribution in advancements made in public health.
Mother City residents 'blown away' as Cape Doctor dishes out bad medicine
"To me, both of these renowned individuals have made some of the greatest contributions in the history of HIV/AIDS in public health and epidemiology relevant to prevention and care of infected people.
"I don't know any person or persons who have done more to advance the proper care of people with HIV infection or the prevention of HIV infection among a population."
They are both Professors of Epidemiology at New York's Columbia University and their current focus is preventing the spread of the virus in African women. In 2010 their research demonstrated that antiretrovirals can also prevent the sexual transmission of HIV in what was a watershed moment in the fight against the spread of the virus.
Also read: Read: Sexually transmitted diseases massively on the rise in Gauteng
They work hand-in-hand in most of their projects, with Quarraisha Abdool Karim – who has won numerous internation awards – as Associate Scientific Director of Caprisa where her husband is the Director. They are also honorary academics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
They accepted the award on behalf of the South Africans who have participated in their research.
Also read: South Africa at risk of 'black death' plague outbreak – WHO
Tags: HIV/AIDSScience

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Romancing with Life - an autobiography. The Flying Sikh would eventually become an Olympic medalist, as well as immortalized forever on the silver screen in this 2013 masterpiece — one of the best Hindi movies on Netflix. But due to differences of opinion between the two production teams, Anand postponed the Hindi version, thereby freeing to direct which was later highly acclaimed. Here is the list of Bollywood film torrent sites for movies that include: The Pirate Bay has all the right reasons to become one of the best Bollywood torrent sites for movies. Fortunately, you have arrived at the right place.
Rosie separates and moves in with Raju and his mom Leela Chitnis. Raju refuses and his mother leaves him. Starring: Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman, Leela Chitnis Director: Vijay Anand Writers: Vijay Anand Synopsis :After being released from prison for Forgery and Theft, multi-linguist Raju Dev Anand reflects on his life as a Guide; his meeting with the daughter of a prostitute, Rosie Waheeda Rehman , who was unhappily married to Marco Kishore Sahu and wants to take up acting and dancing as a career. Further, you can click on any name or category in the above list to see list of songs of that particular person or category. Sometimes you may find Rarbg down, thus you can read our guide on.
She is enraged at Marco and both indulge in a seriously heated discussion, which concludes with Rosie leaving the caves, and she once again wants to end her life. Meanwhile, Rosie tries to commit suicide by consuming poison. The movie is so good because of the great acting, brilliant cinematography, and excellent direction — key features of all good Bollywood movies on Netflix. Abdul Rehman's Biography : Abdul Rehman is a simple Tech savvy bloke with a neck for writing. Raju retorts by saying that she is under a misunderstanding that she has become a star on her own and it was only because of Raju's efforts that she became famous. The soundtrack is killer, too.
Its inspiring and spiritual at the same time. This electrifying Bollywood drama set in modern day India came out in 2004 and deals with the cultural differences generated by the constant advancement of technology. Average rating of songs and number of votes by visitors of HindiGeetMala. For me, its the journey of a man from a tourist guide to a spiritual Guide. From the calm, grim acceptance of On the Beach to the shrieking takeover of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the playful road trip in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World pictured , we all handle oblivion a little differently.
There are some regions where eztv is might not be available, instead you can use. Feel free to share your thoughts about our blog in the comments section below. . D Burman Da 's music. Furthermore, you can enjoy using free movie downloads feature according to your own demands. You need not to run behind the world, ones you turn to god everything else in the world will follow. I highly recommend everyone to watch this movie, at least 1 time even if you are not a movie lover.
Narayan disliked the film adaptation of his novel. It provides huge database benefit to its users. There are countries where you can conduct the task of torrenting legally. We have curated an exclusive list of uTorrent movies download sites for Hollywood movies that enable you to complete your movie torrenting needs accordingly. The same applies to torrent sites for movies that cover Hollywood and Bollywood industries. You can proudly say that Guide is a Hindi movie. Raju loses his business and the entire town turns against him.
The soundtrack was listed by Planet Bollywood as number 11 on their list of 100 Greatest Bollywood Soundtracks. This is because you can select a film torrent of your choice instantly. Undeterred by these setbacks, Raju helps Rosie embark on a singing and dancing career and Rosie becomes a star. Almost everything about this movie is perfect — the directing, the acting, the visuals, everything. Guide was also first film to win all four of the major awards Best Movie, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress at the. One more thing if you find the site down then you can try out and too.
Still, he perseveres and attempts to create opportunities for himself to pursue his dream of becoming a writer in one of the best Bollywood movies on Netflix. Finding and exploring own-self and performing deeds for others which can be remembered even after we dead should be the life goal. One of the most compelling biographical movies of the past three years, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is a very exciting entry on this list of Netflix Hindi movies. All the new directors have to learn a lot from this movie. After a child goes missing in the village and the Salgaonkar family is made the main suspect, Vijay has to protect his loved ones from the oppression of the powerful. Pageviews for each item are divided by the aggregate number of pageviews generated by the items displayed. Click on the links to see the lyrics.


For most women, hair is much more than a physical attribute – it's a part of who you are. We offer women the most natural looking solutions for all types of hair loss, from site specific solutions for thinnning hair to total coverage solutions for hair loss caused by alopecia or chemotherapy.
If your hair loss has left you feeling self-conscious and worried, know that you are not alone. 1 in every 4 women suffer from hair loss or thinning hair. Majority of women suffer from hair loss caused by androgentic alopecia, or genetic hair loss, but the causes range from hormones to stress to medications or illness. For females, finding the best solution for a specific cause can be difficult and often frustrating at times.
Experiencing thinning hair or hair loss of any kind also has the power to affect more than just physical appearance. Hair loss can effect a large part of a woman's identity and her self-confidence. Experiencing hair loss can cause a person to become more and more self-conscious and in some cases depressed.
Until recently, the available options for women were limited to wigs or topical treatments originally intended for male pattern baldness.
Hair grafting is a non-surgical procedure that uses a site specific method of hair integration allowing us to re-create any hair style prior to hair loss. Individually made per hair loss situation, the hair "grafts" or "systems" can match any length, color, density and even texture; ensuring a natural and virtually undetectable addition to your lifestyle.
Call our clinic to schedule a free hair loss consultation to find out if our non-surgical solutions are right for you! Call 713-838-1880, or visit www.tmhair.com for more information.


Looks like Kenya Moore hasn't run out of shade when it comes to her nemesis Phaedra Parks.
She really needs to mind her own business. Homegirl is always in a fake relationship for a storyline. Let's not.
Doesn't she need to locate Matt to serve him that restraining order? What kills me is how Kenya and the rest of them like to sit around and throw shade at Phaedra like their lives aren't messy too.
Kenya throws the weakest shade.
Kenya, and this is the reason why a good descent loving man will never want her.
Why is this bish still on the show?
If she had her own business for once, she wouldn't need to keep speaking on others all the time.
Kenya truly sounds like an idiot here. Is she really that ignorant to make this all about looks? Regardless, Apollo is a convicted felon and currently serving time in prison, again. He's not a win for any woman. So he's a downgrade for his fiancee. But I guess throwing shade is more important than common sense.
Kenya is one of the worst things that could have happened to RHOA. Before she came, the show was real. She brought all her fake boyfriends and foolishness to the show, while Porsha brought all her ratchet behavior and it's been trash since.
I think she need to worry about her own life and stay out of Phaedra. It's like she is obsessed with her. The OG coming back so maybe I will start to watch again.
She's the most annoying person on RHOA.


text:
Q: Canceling the start of an activity after the start was triggered by context.startActivity( newActivity ) I am using a 3rd-party activity (ForeignActivity) which as a result starts an activity (MyActivity) that I specify. To know what activity has to be started in the end, I am passing an intent to it:
Intent activityToStart = new Intent();
activityToStart.setClass( currentContext, MyActivity.class );

However, sometimes I come to a case that I do not want MyActivity to be started (even I passed the activityToStart intent to it). Let's say that during ForeignActivity execution some internal state of the app changes and the starting of MyActivity is not needed anymore.
ForeignActivity starts the MyActivity by:
currentContext.startActivity( activityToStart )

Is there a way, how to cancel starting of MyActivity after it was triggered? E.g. is it possible to modify/override some method inside MyActivity which is responsible for deciding whether activity should be started or not?

A: Try the following
Maintain a some boolean variable namely as "need_to_stop".Assign true or false based on your logic for stopping the activity
Inside the onCreate of the activity (Which you want to start /after start you want to stop)
check the boolean value then call finish() method

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{

  //Check for the boolean value
  if(need_to_stop) finish;
  //Continue your other process

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Cities in the future will contain a complex mesh of interconnected, heterogeneous technological systems. Technology will continue to evolve, and the data-reading and writing capabilities of cities will only increase, but mess and complexity will still be the background context. The focus of the emergent field of Urban Interaction Design is public space and the relationships between people – with and through technology. The currency of these interactions is data. Making sense of this data, and making it meaningful, transparent, useful and enjoyable is a challenge for interaction design.
The | City | Data | Future | exhibition speculates about the possible futures that city inhabitants might experience. This exhibition is a culmination of the work that has been carried out over the two-year duration of the UrbanIxD project, in particular the work of the Summer School held in 2013.
Alongside the exhibition, taking place in Venice at the Telecom Italia Future Centre, there will be a one-day symposium to encourage debate and discussion around the themes of the exhibition, and of the UrbanIxD project itself.
We are seeking submissions that address the exhibition and UrbanIxD project themes in novel and inspiring ways, drawing on original work. We hope that the symposium will encourage debate around the key research challenges for the future of the new domain of Urban Interaction Design. This domain seeks to place people at the centre of design for interactive products and services in the urban environment.
Design, Interaction Design, Architecture, Urban Design & Planning, Media Architecture, New Media Art, Sociology, Anthropology & other related fields.
These can be academic or research based works putting forward critical or speculative viewpoints about interactions in hybrid urban space.
These can be practice based works that encourage speculation about interactions in hybrid urban space.
For poster submissions, please send an abstract of 2 pages max. If accepted you will produce a printed poster to bring and display at the symposium.
All accepted work will be published by the UrbanIxD project and made available online. It is the intention of the project to collaborate with selected authors towards a special edition of a relevant academic journal.


TIP! If you want a home mortgage, you need to get started well in advance. If you're thinking about getting a new home, your finances need to be in tip top shape.
Do not become over-stressed when shopping for a home mortgage. If you have been feeling this way, it would be best for you to seek a bit more information. The tips laid out below can help you to select a good mortgage company. Find out more by reading this advice.
TIP! Getting a mortgage will be easier if you have kept the same job for a long time. Many lenders expect to see work history of two years or more in order to grant a loan approval.
If you want to accurately estimate your potential monthly mortgage payment, consider loan pre-approval. You should compare different loan providers to find the best interest rates possible. Once you find out this information, you can easily calculate monthly payments.
TIP! Now is the time to try refinancing your home even if you are upside down on the mortgage. The HARP program has been re-written to allow people that own homes get that home refinanced no matter what their financial situation is.
If you are denied a loan, don't give up. Just move on and apply for the next mortgage with another lender. Each lender is quite different on the criteria for loan approval. This means that it can make sense to apply at several places to get optimal results.
TIP! Don't go charging up a storm while you are waiting for your mortgage to close. Before the mortgage is final, lenders like to check credit scores again, and if they see a lot going on, they may reconsider.
Think about hiring a consultant for help with the mortgage process. They will help you get a great rate. They will also make sure that all of the terms of your loan are fair.
TIP! In order to get a mortgage you need to be able to make a down payment. Although zero down payment mortgages were available in the past, most mortgage companies make it a requirement.
You should be aware of the taxes on the home you want to buy. Before signing a contract, you should know how much the property taxes are going to cost you. Avoid being unpleasantly surprised with a higher than expected tax bill because your property is assessed at a much higher value.
TIP! If you are denied a loan, don't give up. Instead, apply with a different lender.
Before you make any decision on refinancing, make sure you understand the total cost. The items included should state closing costs and all fees involved that you must pay. While most companies are forthcoming up front about everything they will be collecting, some may hide charges that you won't know about until it's too late.
TIP! Think about hiring a consultant for help with the mortgage process. A consultant knows all the ins and outs of home mortgages and can assist you in getting the best rates and terms.
Talk to your friends for mortgage advice. It may be that you can get good advice about the pitfalls to avoid. They may have a negative experience they learned from. You'll learn more the more people you listen to.
TIP! Look into the home's property tax history. This is important because it will effect your monthly payment amounts since most property taxes are taken from escrow.
Go to a few different places before figuring out who you want to get a mortgage from. Ask loved ones for recommendations, plus check out their fees and rates on their websites. You can choose the best one as soon as you learn more about them.
TIP! Consider making extra payments every now and then. The additional payment is going to go towards the principal you're working with.
Having reliable information at your fingertips can make all the difference when selecting a reputable mortgage financier. Now you don't have to feel your way blindly through the mortgage process. Stay self-assured in your decision to apply for a home mortgage and make sure you know all of the options available to you!


text:
It looks as though you're in the United States. Would you like to go to the US website?
CLASSICS CHILDREN'S CLASSICS MYSTERY & SUPERNATURAL WORLD LITERATURE POETRY SPECIAL EDITIONS LIBRARY COLLECTION COLLECTOR'S EDITIONS DIGITAL EDITIONS EDUCATION BOX SETS
Top Ten Bestsellers New for 2021
Order Form (Schools) Order Form (Excel) Order Form (Acrobat)
CONTACT PURCHASE BOOKSHOPS
In January 2021, we publish four seminal works by George Orwell: his fictions, 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', and his documentary writings, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', and 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. Sally Minogue offers some introductory remarks.
George Orwell is a chronicler of the past, a reporter of the present, and a seer into the future; but even he could not have predicted a year in which his name, work and ideas have been drawn on so often. 'Orwellian': that epithet has been applied to the America of Trump's fake news, to a Europe in which many citizens have had to print a certificate of permission in order to go out in the street, to a world where free movement can be suddenly halted, passports no longer guarantee entry into another country, or even your own, and the State everywhere has taken measures of control over its peoples unprecedented outside wartime. In this new virus-haunted world we all came to rely on meeting each other through digital images on a flat screen, and previously private domestic spaces were open for all and sundry to see on social media. The books on the bookshelves behind talking heads were examined and cruelly satirised. We were only a step away from the telescreen being 'on' all the time, and certainly we composed our faces carefully for Zoom encounters, either to disguise any signs of incipient derangement from the keen gaze of fellow employees and employers, or to reassure our nearest and dearest we were still well, still inherently ourselves.
'Orwellian' is itself a sort of misnomer; as Dorian Lynskey says in his self-styled 'Biography of George Orwell's 1984', ' the word Orwellian has turned the author's own name into a capacious synonym for everything he hated and feared'.[1] Most of the things people deem Orwellian in the modern world are drawn from ideas in his final novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: the alteration of the past (Winston Smith's job in The Ministry of Truth), the loss of individual liberty (it is 'reasonably certain' that the simple act of writing a diary 'would be punished by death'), the dominance of technological surveillance (telescreens), the possibility of external control of the mind as well as the body (Room 101), all stem from Orwell's vividly imagined totalitarian state in which Big Brother rules supreme. Animal Farm too embodies that vision, in a more strictly allegorical way, and thus one which we can immediately understand and internalise. Even those who have never read this political 'fairy story' will recognise the memorable irony of 'All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others'. The innocent creatures of Animal Farm, who start with such high ideals, eventually divide into the rulers and the ruled, in a way that seems more poignant because they are animals. Even in the final chapter, after years of harder and harder work, 'the animals never gave up hope. More, they never lost, even for an instant, their sense of honour and privilege in being members of Animal Farm. … if they worked hard, at least they worked for themselves. No creature among them went upon two legs. No creature called any other creature "Master". All animals were equal.' It is soon after this that the pigs get up on their hind legs, whips in hand, and the new slogan, 'some animals are more equal than others', is written on the barn wall. As the pigs turn inexorably into humans, so we measure their gradual corruption, and in Swiftian manner the writer's sharp eye is turned from the page to ourselves.
It is the imaginative power of these fictions which has fixed them in reader's minds. In Animal Farm we see the puzzled creatures, who have become individual characters for us, trying to adapt to this new contradictory commandment, and we could weep for them. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is through the experience of the central protagonist, Winston Smith, that we understand the horrors of the world he inhabits. At the same time this inventiveness and engagement of the reader's empathy are also in the service of the powerful ideas Orwell wants to put across. Central to these is his warning of the potential all-consuming power of the state over the individual and the inherent corruptibility of any ideology which is enforced without consent. This still speaks significantly to a contemporary readership. Yet the totalitarianism that Orwell saw as such a major threat to liberty in the 1940s, embodied in Communist (USSR) and Fascist (Germany and Italy) authoritarian states, has arguably receded from rather than encroached on the West in the seventy years since his death. Orwell was certainly aware of China as a prime example of totalitarianism, but the more local Communism that he had experienced himself in Europe was what he drew on principally in his dystopian fictions. The collapse of the USSR might look like a counter-example to his vision, as indeed might China's embrace of the capitalist market. What resonates more now from his powerful warning against totalitarianism is the way in which the citizens of liberal democracies have colluded in their own fate. We carry our own telescreens with us, and see them as an extension of our personal liberty rather than a threat to it. We have somehow allowed the notion of a 'post-truth' world to creep into our consciousness though most of us still adhere to the possibility of objective truths, accurate news, and actual facts. At the same time most of those of us who live in a liberal democracy still prize its institutions and its central values; authoritarian ideologies remain a present threat to those, and so Orwell's fearful vision remains fresh.
One of his shorthand ways of demonstrating that threat in terms of individual freedom of thought is through Winston's capitulation to his torturer O'Brien, which comes when he loses his hold on the unalterability of the equation '2+2=4'. For Orwell, it was still the case, in the non-fictional world, that 'two and two have to make four when you are, for example, drawing the blueprint of an aeroplane' ('The Prevention of Literature', 1946). But in his essay 'Looking Back on the Spanish War', his experience of propaganda during that war had also shown him how easily truth could be subverted and 'facts' manipulated, to the point that 'it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world'. In turn this allows the possibility of a world in which 'If the Leader says of such and such a thing, "it never happened" – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs... '. This was Orwell writing in 1943 – the year before President-elect Joe Biden was born. I think we all hope that Joe Biden is a '2+2=4' kind of guy. In the same way, we hope that the pig-dimension of the human personality can still be eclipsed by the solid virtue of a noble Boxer. Orwell's fictions are warnings rather than predictions; they allow us to see, as he said of Nineteen Eighty-Four, what could happen, not what necessarily would. Armed with this imaginative knowledge, we can be forewarned to prevent it.
Orwell's essays are gems of prose, and they explore many of the same ideas as the fiction; we have included in each of the three volumes a number of the essays relevant to each text, so that readers can easily refer to them. But it is not surprising that it is initially his fictions, the fabulist Animal Farm and the futurist Nineteen Eighty-Four, that have seized readers ever since these works were first published. Animal Farm has never been out of print, and is a regular text in schools; Nineteen Eighty-Four has found its way into all sorts of cultural forms. Both have been translated into many languages, testament to their ability to cross cultures. There is a malleability in these works; in spite of their appearing to be firmly founded in a historical and political moment, they keep reinventing themselves across time, culture, language and politics. Thus, though we have given a clear account in our introductions of the particular history in which they are founded in order to help the reader locate them, we also urge readers to roam beyond that context and read these as fictions in their own right, for our moment, but also for other moments.
The two non-fiction works, published in one volume, speak to us today in a different way. I said that Orwell looks to the past as well as the present and the future, and in these two works, one of memoir (Down and Out in Paris and London) and one of what we would now call investigative journalism (The Road to Wigan Pier), he places himself in a long tradition of writing about the lives of the least fortunate in society which developed strongly in the nineteenth century. Orwell himself saw Down and Out as an expiation of the guilt of his former self, old Etonian, member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, one of the privileged wielding power over the less privileged. Orwell is always interesting when talking about class. In Down and Out he investigates class differences by wrenching himself deliberately out of his own class into what we would now call the underclass, living amongst the lowest manual workers (a plongeur – a washer of dishes) in the kitchen world of Paris, and taking himself into a further level of deprivation in London by becoming a tramp. Then he writes up his experiences. In The Road to Wigan Pier, he approaches the working-class world overtly as a journalist and social investigator, but even here he plunges himself into the experience of that world, living amongst those he is writing about. Temporary as this may be, he gets his hands dirty, and learns what it is like to walk bent double along a deep mine-shaft before you ever start work on the coal-face. He doesn't attempt the coal-face itself; as he readily admits, a few weeks as a miner would have killed him. But even his brief experience shines through in the writing, as does his respect for the hard life of any manual worker.
Here Orwell plugs into that tradition of excavating lives that have previously been hidden. He is always aware that he comes from outside those lives; but he can make the effort to understand them by inhabiting them, however briefly. And here again, he speaks to us still. We find ourselves once more in a time in which there is great social deprivation, when food banks are needed by the employed as well as the unemployed, when widespread homelessness is a fact of life. Ours is an age of greater affluence, ostensibly, than the late 1920s/ 1930s when Orwell was reporting. His word-pictures might seem like black and white photographs, social documents of a harder time.[2] But the reality of deprivation in the present is exactly the same as the reality of deprivation in that past. Orwell sets out what is the 'indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all':
Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn't leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done. ('Looking Back on the Spanish War')
Too many people at present do not have that 'indispensable minimum'.
In recent weeks I have been dreaming of libraries. It is a leap from not enough bread on the table, to the importance of libraries. But Orwell was aware of the interdependence of the two. The libraries I have been dreaming of range from the very first library I knew, the mobile library that came to my village, bringing to my mother, and later to me, a world of knowledge in the small span of a van, to the idyllic Oxford interiors of the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera – privileged as Orwell's Eton. But never mind where the books are to be found, it is the books themselves that matter. Orwell had a profound understanding of the power of writing, of the way words can leap from the flat page straight into the minds of readers. His books perform that act of transmigration and imaginative transformation like no other. As the world of 1984 recognised, there is nothing more subversive than words on a page:
Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib … he dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was a decisive act.
We make the same decisive act when we read; these works more than most command our attention.
[1] Dorian Lynskey, The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell's 1984, Picador, London, 2019, xiv
[2] The first edition of The Road to Wigan Pier was illustrated with black and white photographs.
Previous/Next Posts
Chills at Christmas
A consideration of spooky tales for the festive season by David Stuart Davies ...
The Plays of Oscar Wilde
'The Importance of Being Earnest' and 'Lady Windermere's Fan' are the two most popular of a quartet ...
Copyright © Wordsworth Editions 2021 All Rights Reserved
Developed by WK360


I used this for video and photography. I love it and have yet to regret making the investment in a professional camera..
For its price point, this point and shoot camera has produce amazing video results and is absolutely fantastic if you want to do clear 1080p video on a budget.
In the world of digital video calling there is no better way to make a great first impression than with a HD webcam. After reading reviews, I purchased the Logitech c930e and have been very pleased with how it portrays me in any video call setting.
There is no better camera than the one you have on you. I use my iPhone 5S for everything but scheduled video shoots. Incredible quality for both video and photos.
I purchased this microphone for creating tutorials, hosting Skype videos and doing screen casts. It's not as overkill as my podcast equipment when I just need a quality audio track. It has all sorts of pattern options so you can record for nearly any needs.
I purchased this microphone back in 2004. It had been nearly 10 years since I used it and then I started hosting the church marketing podcast. It produces such an amazing sounds that I am constantly being messaged asking, "what microphone do you use?" This is it!
I absolutely love my Firebox. It has great versatility for inputs and outputs, midi adaptors and connects via firewire 400. I use the original unit which is currently not available. The link below takes you to the v2 model.
If you want to know what separates amateur audio from professional, a big part of the difference is a tube preamp. The Presonus TubePre (original) is an amazing value for authentic tube warmth.
The number one technical that I see repeatedly with podcasts and Skype interviews is not using a pop filter. You ruin your audio track whenever you don't use a pop filter. Spend all the money you want on a mic, if you don't have a pop filter you're not doing it right.
The links provided on this page are affiliates and as an affiliate I will receive a small commission based upon final sale price. There is no added cost to you, the purchaser.


text:
More Voices From Leavenworth
by Chris Bodenner
Contra Geraghty, the Kansas City Star reports:
An informal survey Thursday on the streets of Leavenworth found reactions ranging from confidence that the Army would continue to keep the community safe, to concerns that the city would be visited by new dangers and its name become synonymous with terrorist incarceration.
"The question that comes to my mind is how secure it will be," said Timothy Swan, the owner of Alpha Geek Computers in downtown Leavenworth.
Anita Maynard, owner of the Queen's Pantry shop, feared the transfer of prisoners might too strongly reinforce Leavenworth's image as simply a prison town at the expense of its other attributes such as being home to a college for mid-career Army officers.
Dianne Hawkins, a homemaker married to a soldier, said she had confidence that if the detainees came, the Army could keep things safe.
But that security question was key for Brendan Sheehan, who runs a bicycle shop in Leavenworth. If he were assured that the town would stay safe, Sheehan said he could imagine an economic boon. "That's that many more workers here in town," he said. "That could mean more customers."


Is there anything lovelier than the sweet smell of strawberries? No!!! While you can make these cupcakes with any kind of berry you like, there is something very special about the strawberry that instantly transports you into that Summer vibe, even when Summer is over!


Salt Lake Figure Skating has many adult skating members and we want you to join us too. Whether you are learning to skate as an adult or returning to skating, we welcome you. Salt Lake Figure Skating has hosted the U.S. Figure Skating Adult Championships twice and look forward to hosting this exciting competition again. Please check back often as we updated this page.


Product categories of Aluminum Tripolyphosphate Series, we are specialized manufacturers from China, Zinc Phosphate, Zinc Phosphate Zpa suppliers/factory, wholesale high-quality products of Zinc Phosphate In Chemicals R & D and manufacturing, we have the perfect after-sales service and technical support. Look forward to your cooperation!
Packing unit 25kg Poly Propylene bag & 500kg Poly Propylene bag,Any size customers want.
Ship and steel structures .Electronic materials.
Except this,we also provide Zinc Phosphate In Chemicals.


text:
Home > Kurt Schwitters
German artist Kurt Schwitters was born in Hanover in 1887. He studied art at the Dresden Academy, alongside fellow students George Grosz and Otto Dix. In 1909, Schwitter returned to his hometown of Hanover to begin his art career as a post-impressionist. His first exhibition took place in 1911 in Hanover. Schwitters experimented in a wide variety of media and disciplines throughout his career, including constructivism, surrealism, dadaism, typography, painting, sound, poetry and sculpture. His most famous artworks were his series of collages, called the Merz Pictures, created from rubbish he had found on the streets and printed media, creating harmonious and sentimental arrangements.
Schwitters collaborated with other artists to create his merzbau creations, which began with one object. Other artists then added further objects, creating a constantly changing work of art. Schwitters kept comprehensive records of all of his work in folders at his family home in Hanover, but tragically, a World War II bombing destroyed everything. He died aged 60 in Kendal in 1948. Many post modern artists now cite Schwitters as an inspiration to their work; including Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg and Arman. An entire wall of the Merzbarn can now be found in the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle, England.
Most Recent First Oldest First A-Z Z-A
I. Mappe Des Merzverlages, Hannover Kurt Schwitters Alice Adam Ltd. Kurt Schwitters Alice Adam Ltd.
Lithograph And Collage Kurt Schwitters Alice Adam Ltd. Kurt Schwitters Alice Adam Ltd.
Galleries who deal in prints from Kurt Schwitters
Modest Cuixart


The Trim Doctor is two tools in one; a cartridge case length trimmer that produces exacting cuts and short cases, and a case disassembly tool. A threaded adjustment gauge in the Trim Doctor holds shells in alignment to produce a clean and crimpable edge. The Trim Doctor is designed to remove 1/4" at a time - about the same as a full fold crimp. Two full cuts on a 10ga case will produce a 2 7/8".


"Megan's unconventional work experience and path of life has put her on the road to entrepreneurship.
Currently, she lives in Los Angeles attending the University of Southern California; Annenberg School of Communication pursuing a graduate degree in Communication Management. Megan received her bachelor's degree in Psychology from Villanova University close to where she grew up in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She began her career in the aerospace industry at Precision Castparts Corp (PCC), working in a variety of functions including Sales, HR, Production Control and Talent Acquisition in Philadelphia and Portland, OR.


text:
ACCEPTED

#### According to
The Catalogue of Life, 3rd January 2011

#### Published in
in Vánky, Shivas & Athipunyakom, Mycol. Balcanica 3(2-3): 111 (2006)

#### Original name
Sporisorium trispicatae R.G. Shivas, Vánky & Athip., 2006

### Remarks
null

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The Stack's Bowers Galleries Official Auction of the Whitman Coin & Collectibles Spring Expo gathered collectors from all over the country to Baltimore's Inner Harbor for the first of three exciting Expo auctions in 2019. This event met with resounding success, with over $10.3 million in United States coins sold out of $20,848,000 in overall prices realized. Headlined by the Fairmont, Greenway, and Twin Leaf collections, the Stack's Bowers Galleries sale included impressive material from every corner of the Red Book and beyond. By the close of the final session, more than 4,200 lots of coins and exonumia had been placed into new collections.


Press release: Future Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new works by Spiros Hadjidjanos. For his latest exhibition at the Future Gallery, Spiros Hadjidjanos explores the relationship between the collective acceleration of the cultural and technological evolutions. His experience of this shift in relation to his own trajectory and memory drives the investigation.


text:
Q: PDF document hyperlink javascript to alter parent window URI I have an HTML web page (the parent) that contains a hyperlink.  When clicked, it opens a new window and displays another HTML document (the child):
 Open Child

Inside the child document are several links that are constructed like this:
 Make Parent Go Somewhere

So the effect is that you can click on a link in the child window, it will cause the parent window to go to that new uri, and then close itself.  This works wonderfully.
I'd like to do that same thing with a PDF as the child document.  I can embed hyperlinks in the PDF just fine, or even embed Javascript:
  13 0 obj
  <<
  /Type /Action
  /S /JavaScript /JS
    (opener.window.location.href="/somewhere.html";)
  >>
 endobj

The Javascript gets triggered nicely, but the object "opener" is not defined.  (ReferenceError: opener is not defined 1: Link:Mouse Up) Is what I'm looking to do even possible?  What would be the object I would use to access the opening window's uri?
PS:  If it's a problem, I do have some control over the user's target environment.  I can specify that they use Acrobat Reader, and even a later version of it.

A: HTML and PDF don't use the same object model.  None the less, it's possible to get HTML and PDF JS to talk to one another:
Getting notified when the user clicks a link in an embedded PDF

A: One easy way of achieving your goal is to create a PDF hyperlink with href="javascript:myfunction()", and defining myfunction() in your HTML web page. The resulting HTML file would be something like:

<object data="myfunction.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="100%" height="100%">
</object>

And your hyperlink PDF object would be:
<</Type /Action /S /URI /URI (javascript:myfunction\(\))>>

Inside myfunction() you will be able to use the HTML object model as usual.


text:
Everyday Money
Target Just Launched a Huge Sale to Compete With Amazon Prime Day. Here Are the Best Deals
By Martha C. White
Updated: July 16, 2019 11:14 AM ET | Originally published: July 15, 2019
https://money.com/target-deals-sale-amazon-prime-day-2019/
A Target store located in south San Francisco bay area
Andrei Stanescu—Getty Images
The best Amazon Prime Day deals aren't limited to items being discounted just on Amazon. For the past couple of years, major competing retailers have jumped on the "Black Friday in July" bandwagon with amazing deals of their own as clapbacks to Prime Day. Shoppers have been able to get laptop deals, phone deals, video game deals — you name it.
Walmart is never shy about competing with Amazon, and it is having a massive sale running from July 14 through July 17, effectively eclipsing Prime Day. (FYI, if you're still wondering when Amazon Prime Day 2019 is, it's July 15 and 16 — that's Monday and Tuesday of this week.)
Big-box retail's other heavyweight, Target, also announced a sale event it's calling "Target Deal Days" that (by no small coincidence) falls on July 15 and 16. So, what kind of "Prime Day" best deals can we expect from Target Deal Days?
Target says that shoppers can get "deals on hundreds of thousands of items on Target.com — from furniture and apparel to must-have kitchen appliances." On July 15, Target introduced a one-day discount of 40% on "select furniture and indoor rugs," as well as discounts on big names in home goods and kitchenware like Instant Pots, Kitchen Aid, Shark, Dyson, and Hoover.
On Tuesday, July 16, shoppers can get up to 30% off stuff in a huge number of categories, including home goods from "exclusive home brands," "select small appliances, cookware and floorcare," apparel categories including swimwear and "select sandals," along with "top toy brands and select sporting goods," Cat & Jack kids' uniforms for kids, and Evenflo car seats and strollers.
Last year, Target's Prime Day-adjacent sale included the Google Home — a competitor of Amazon's Echo smart speaker — for just $99, $30 off the regular price, and the Google Home Mini — Google's version of Amazon's Echo Dot — marked down from $49 to $34. Target also did a category-wide 25% off kitchenware for one day only, which brought the price of the six-quart Instant Pot LUX and accessory bundle down to $59.99, and lowered the price of the bestselling Instant Pot DUO60 to $74.96.
Below are some examples of the best deals we've seen during the Target Deal Days sale. Some of the prices were available only on Monday, July 15, while many deals just launched and are live through Tuesday, July 16, including 25% off toys, 20% off movies, and 50% off some home goods. Oh, and Target points out that you don't have to have an Amazon Prime membership — or any kind of membership — to get these deals.
KitchenAid Professional 5 Qt Mixer: $279.99 (down from $399.99)
Courtesy of Target
Instant Pot Duo 8QT: $69.95 (down from $129.95)
Nerf Fortnite RL Super Soaker: $11.19 (down from $15.99)
Nerf Fortnite Super Soaker Target
Barbie Chelsea Tiki Hut Playset: $14.91 (down from $19.89)
Schwinn Deelite 20" Kids' Bike: $97.49 (down from $129.99)
Evenflo Vive Travel System with Embrace Infant Car Seat: $115.19 (down from $149.99)
Hearth & Hand with Magnolia Appetizer Spoon Set: $7.49 (down from $14.99)
Calphalon Precision Control Slow Cooker: $49.99 (down from $159.99)
Calphalon Precision Control 10 Cup Coffee Maker: $49.99 (down from $129.99)
Ninja Smart Screen Blender DUO: $99.99 (down from $162.99)
Whirlpool 25 Bottle Wine Fridge: $149.99 (down from $199.99)
Dyson Slim Ball Animal Vacuum: $229.99 (down from $349.99)
Hoover Wind Tunnel 2 Whole House Vacuum:$89.99 (down from $149.99)
Skyline Furniture Custom Upholstered Arm Chair: $257.99 (down from $429.99)
Skyline Furniture Bedroom Velvet Tufted Bench: $191.99 (down from $319.99)
Compton Rug (3-Foot Round): $19.19 (down from $31.99)
Made by Design Memory Foam Bed Pillow: $7.50 (down from $15)
Google Home Smart Speaker: $69 or 2 for $99 (down from $99 each)
JLab Neon Wired On-Ear Headphones: $14.99 (down from $19.99)
We've included affiliate links into this article. Click here to learn what those are.


text:
Former Patriots nose tackle Wilfork joins Texans
The Oakland Raiders have released Matt Schaub less than one year after acquiring him
Cornerback Chykie Brown and offensive lineman John Jerry are returning to the New York Giants.
HOUSTON – Longtime New England nose tackle Vince Wilfork has signed with the Houston Texans.
Wilfork announced the decision on Twitter on Monday, then the Texans confirmed the signing. The 33-year-old has spent his entire 11-year career with the Patriots.
Now he'll join a Houston unit led by Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt and that features last year's No. 1 overall pick Jadeveon Clowney, who was injured for most of 2014.
The 6-foot-2, 325-pound Wilfork started all 16 games for the Patriots last year and had 53 tackles, two for a losses, and an interception, according to the Texans. He was a locker room leader in New England, as well.
In his tweet Wilfork, a five-time Pro Bowler, thanked the Kraft family and the Patriots, and said the coaching staff in Houston has "made this new exciting transition feel like home to us."
Said Patriots coach Bill Belichick: "He is the best defensive linemen I ever coached, an all-time great Patriot whose place on our team will be missed, but whose remarkable career as a Patriot will be remembered forever."
Houston also signed wide receiver Cecil Shorts III, who was with Jacksonville. He led the Jaguars with 53 catches last season for 577 yards. A four-year veteran has been Jacksonville's leading receiver over that span.
The Texans release long-time star receiver Andre Johnson, who signed with Indianapolis.
Titans sign CB Perrish Cox: The Tennessee Titans have agreed to terms with cornerback Perrish Cox.
Cox said Saturday via text message to The Associated Press that he had reached a three-year deal with Tennessee. The Titans made it official Monday, but the team did not release terms of the deal.
Cox, a four-year veteran from Oklahoma State, is coming off his best season. He started 14 games and had five interceptions for the San Francisco 49ers.
The 28-year-od Cox has played 57 career regular-season games with the Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks and 49ers. The former fifth-round draft pick is 6 feet tall and weighs 190 pounds.
Raiders release QB Matt Schaub: The Oakland Raiders have released Matt Schaub less than one year after acquiring him to be their starting quarterback.
Schaub was beaten out for the starting job by rookie Derek Carr last year and was released Monday just days after Oakland signed Christian Ponder as a backup.
Schaub threw just 10 passes in his one season with the Raiders with two interceptions. His biggest contribution came when he took over the holding duties from punter Marquette King.
The Raiders traded a sixth-round pick to Houston for Schaub last March and paid him $8 million for his season on the bench. The move to cut him saves Oakland $5.5 million on the salary cap.
Patriots sign TE Chandler: The New England Patriots signed free agent Scott Chandler on Monday, bolstering an already strong tight end corps.
Chandler, 29, has played in 75 games with 35 starts in his seven pro seasons. He spent the last five years with the Bills and also has been with San Diego and Dallas.
The 6-foot-7, 260-pound Chandler has 182 receptions for 2,120 yards and 17 touchdowns during his career. Last season, he made 47 catches for 497 yards and three touchdowns.
He'll complement All-Pro Rob Gronkowski, the NFL Comeback Player of the Year in 2014, at the position.
Panthers sign S Kurt Coleman: The Panthers have announced they've signed former Kansas City Chiefs safety Kurt Coleman to a two-year contract.
Financial terms of the deal Monday were not released.
The 5-foot-11, 200-pound Coleman has started 32 games during his five-year NFL career, including three last season with the Chiefs registering 37 tackles and three interceptions. He was a regular starter for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2011 and 2012. He has 258 career tackles and 10 interceptions for his career.
The 26-year-old Coleman is expected to challenge veteran safety Roman Harper for a starting job.
Coleman's best statistical season came in 2011 with the Eagles when he had 78 tackles and a career-high five interceptions.
Panthers general manager Dave Gettleman previously said upgrading the secondary was one of team's priorities this offseason.
Giants sign CB Brown, OL Jerry: Cornerback Chykie Brown and offensive lineman John Jerry are returning to the New York Giants.
The Giants announced the signings Monday after confirming late last week that the two had agreed to terms. Contract terms were not immediately available.
Signed as a free agent last season, Jerry started all 16 games at right guard. The move gives the Giants depth, with tackles Will Beatty and Justin Pugh returning along with guard Weston Richburg, who is moving to center, and guard Geoff Schwartz, who missed most of last season with a foot injury. New York also signed Canadian lineman Brett Jones.
Jerry has started 49 consecutive games in the NFL. He is entering his sixth season.
Brown was picked up off waivers from Baltimore in November and played in eight games, starting the last four. A fifth-round draft choice by the Ravens in 2011, he played 3 1 / 2seasons in Baltimore before his release.
Cowboys add Brinkley, Gachkar: The Cowboys have signed linebackers Jasper Brinkley and Andrew Gachkar after losing a couple of starters in free agency.
Brinkley spent five of his first six years with Minnesota after the Vikings drafted him in the fifth round in 2009. He played in 48 games, with 19 starts, over four seasons.
The 29-year-old Brinkley's best season came in 2012, with 100 tackles while starting 15 of 16 games. He was in Arizona in 2013 before returning to Minnesota last season.
Gachkar, who also plays on special teams, played 63 games in four seasons after San Diego drafted him in the seventh round in 2011.
The Cowboys hope to re-sign Rolando McClain after Justin Durant signed with Atlanta and Bruce Carter went to Tampa Bay.