I highly recommend the poet study Beowulf and other Old English poems before attempting work in this form. All of my examples are in Modern English, since that is the language I write in, and I presume it is the language my readers write in as well. I have included resources at the end of the article for those who want to know more about the form and/or hear Old English poetry read aloud. Finally, I should add that I am somewhat new to this form myself, so if any heads wiser than mine find themselves here, I would appreciate comments, corrections and suggestions.

Alliteration

Old English poetry is alliterative, which means that it follows a system of alliteration which binds its verses together and creates a distinctive sound (Baker 119). However, Old English alliteration does not simply make use of the first syllable in each word. Rather, it makes use of the dominant syllable in each word...

According to The Open Source Initiative, "Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in." In lay terms, open source software is community-collaborative, which makes the code stronger and safer. Because of this, it's usually either free to individual users or much lower in cost than closed source products like Microsoft Windows, Office or FrontPage.

I wholeheartedly support open source software and the philosophy of community-collaborative development, software or otherwise, which is why my writing and my web site are open source driven. I recommend the following products:

Written by Sean P.O. MacCath-Moran

We LOVE to can food at our house! It's a rare and wonderful treat to be able to pull items from our seasonal harvest off the shelf to find them tasting as fresh as the day they came off the vine. It fills us with pride and joy to give out Yule gifts of our berry and fruit jams or to serve guests sauce we put up over the summer using nothing but vegetables and spices grown in our own garden. Best of all, canning is easy to do and costs very little to get started!

All that being said, there is a dark side to canning. If you mess up, you can grow nasty, nasty things in your canning that have unpleasant effects. Botulism, for example, is a very powerful toxin - just one microgram is lethal to humans, blocking nerve function and leading to respiratory and musculoskeletal paralysis. So, on that cheery thought, let me stress that sanitation is key in successful canning as is good planning and preparation. It's also important...

A Note to prospective plagiarists: If you're reading this paper in hopes of trying to pass it off as your own, then you should understand a couple of things in advance. First, your instructor knows how well or how poorly you write, because it's your instructor's job to know. So if you try to pass this paper off as your own, your instructor will become suspicious and will probably search the Internet for key phrases in the paper, since that's where most plagiarists steal their information from these days. You can't change this paper enough to thwart that kind of search without writing it from scratch, so you might as well do your homework to begin with and save yourself the failing grade, the course dismissal or the expulsion you would receive for academic dishonesty. Second, I taught college English for five years, and I actively support the efforts of other instructors to uncover and punish instances of academic dishonesty, so if your instructor contacts me with regard...

Dale Gadens of the Orion Community Drummers accompanied me as I sang the traditional Irish Gaelic folk song "Caide Sin Don Té Sin?" at the Wildacres 2010 Talent Show.

Video Copyright Sandy Mabery, All Rights Reserved.

A montage of my performance with Sarana VerLin at the Plymouth Art Feast in 2008.

Video Copyright Sarana VerLin, All Rights Reserved.

The C.S. MacCath web site redesign is underway. This is a major reorganization for the purpose of making the information here more accessible to visitors, so please don't count on pages being exactly where they were before, since much of the content has been consolidated and/or moved. If you're looking for something in particular, try the web site menu structure first. When in doubt, however, the search box on the home page can help you find what you need.

I've found a terrific effort at standardized bodhrán notation at www.nardozza.com/bodhran. Clearly the developer of this method had some knowledge of standard percussion notation and brought that knowledge to the bodhrán. I'm copying the .jpg made available on his site to this page in the event his site goes down, but I encourage you to visit his page for more information about the method.

In order to make use of this article you should:

1.Know what a reel is
2.Be able to read drumming notation

The Exercise

Below you'll find a four-on-the-floor beat ornamented with snare, high tom and closed hi-hat. Swing this when you play it.

My friend Nigel Dailey, founder of the Druidic Dawn web site, has put my campfire rendition of "The Circle Is Cast" to video. The result is a beautiful montage of Canadian and Welsh scenery set to my voice. I think the video is better than the audio (*grin*), but you can decide for yourself what you think.

Video Copyright Nigel Dailey, All Rights Reserved.

I checked out my favorite djembe information site to see if any standardized methods for djembe notation could be found. There are a few, but of course I favor those that most resemble standard percussion notatation. You can download the lot of them in the PDF I created of the information I found, which is listed below.

Tiriba is a northeastern African rhythm I learned while taking djembe classes in Ann Arbor during the early spring of 2007. The files listed below contain the djembe parts for that rhythm and are included here with permission from the instructor of that class. Please be advised that these sound files are low-quality.

The Basics

Posture for Right-Handed Players

Sit upright in a chair that has no arms. Plant both of your feet on the floor such that your left leg supports the underside of the drum and your right foot is free to keep time with the rhythm of the music. Tuck the drum between your left upper arm and ribcage such that your body holds it steady and not your left hand. Keep your upper body reasonably still, except for your left hand, right hand, right wrist and right forearm, which should remain loose while you play.

Striking the Drum

Strike the drum with the stick in a 45-degree angle, moving from a position parallel to the floor to a position perpendicular to the floor. Strike the drum with the stick firmly and quickly, in a snapping or bouncing motion, such that you use the momentum of the stick to better articulate strokes.

Striking the Rim

For Reels:
Move the drum away from your body and strike the rim of the drum on the...

This is the video taken of my summer bodhrán workshop, available here courtesy of Druidic Dawn.

These exercises are intermediate in level; you should be able to keep time on a kit and read standard drumming notation to make use of them.

About ten years ago, I bought a pennywhistle for ten bucks at some Irish gift store in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario. When I took it home and tried to play it, my beloved cat Spot jumped up onto my desk and tried desperately to rescue me from it by swatting it out of my hands. This happened every time I played the thing, so eventually I gave up and went on to other pursuits.

But I never forgot how much I loved the way the instrument sounded, and through a confluence of personal realizations I won't bore you with here, I decided I needed another, better pennywhistle. So I bought a custom-made instrument from a flute-maker in Florida.

It still smells of wood smoke (and clove, strangely) and has a sweet, clear throat. I have decided to call it Spot, after my dear...

Here are two djembe parts for Dibon as practiced by the Orion Community Drummers in 2009. Please be advised that these sound files are low-quality.

Here are the dununba parts for Sorsonet, as practiced by the Orion Community Drummers in 2009. Please be advised that these sound files are low-quality.

...arrived yesterday via international post. In other news, I am considering a web site redesign as a prelude to my pending PhD studies. This web site is a useful, functional thing for a writer with musical proclivities, but the theme is intentionally somewhat whimsical, and there's a great deal of dated information here organized somewhat loosely. I also don't know how I feel about the 'talking on the Internet' paradigm of my journal entries either, though it might be fun to journal my academic progress through the PhD. We'll see... For the foreseeable future though, things will remain as they are.

"A Path Without Bones" is now available in Eternal Haunted Summer.

Today I received informal/e-mail acceptance to the University of Aberdeen for my PhD, with promises of paperwork to follow.

Short Fiction:
"The Longest Road in the Universe" in Murky Depths, January 2009
"The Ruin of Beltany Ring" in Witches & Pagans, September 2009

Poetry:
"The Harper" in A Time To... Volume 3: The Best of The Lorelei Signal 2008, July 2009 (Reprint)
"Godtouched" in Witches and Pagans, September 2009

Sequential Tart published a review of both Clockwork Phoenix anthologies today, with a mixed reaction to both. Of "Akhila, Divided" the reviewer writes:

CS MacCath's "Ahkila Divided" tells of a living bomb that is captured by her potential victims. It seems like a slice of a much broader story; I would have liked a little more information on the nature of Ahkila and the augments, and felt frustrated by the lack of information. Even so, what we do get is enough to appreciate the moral of the tale, how we can be both a victim and a perpetrator in war.

This isn't the first time a reviewer has asked for more of this world. I've mentioned myself that the story could be expanded into a standalone novel about the war between the Augments and Organics. I'm working in another universe right now, polishing up that sequel to "The Longest Road in the Universe". But in fairness to my reviewers...

I am delighted to report that my short story, "Akhila, Divided", which appeared in Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, has received Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois.

I am proud of this story and grateful to have been published in such an incredible anthology. Congratulations to my fellow Honorable Mentionees from CP, who are listed on Mike Allen's LiveJournal, and congratulations to Mike Allen himself, who edited the work.

I might add that I've been buying and reading this anthology for as long as I can remember, so having been mentioned in it is a big, big deal for me.