Reynardine's memories

[Reynardine]

I started getting interested in reincarnation after having dreams about being a Confederate soldier in February 2001. I had never really been interested in the American Civil War, so it came as a bit of a surprise to me The other past lives I remember is being a Prussian soldier who died of syphilis in 1740 (born in 1704) and of being a bosun's mate on an English ship around 1800 (born 1775, died 1801, to be exact). I've already found some friends from my past lives (including the one who gave me syphilis and the one who killed me in 1801 - but we get along perfectly today )

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I was a fifer, and I got clobbered in the very first battle, First Bull Run, on July 21, 1861, early in the morning. To make things more ironic, my unit (the 5th North Carolina Infantry) wasn't even involved in the fighting, it was a stray bullet, most likely from my own side.

I grew up in western North Carolina, on a small farm (one mule, one cow, a couple of chickens and a dog) with my parents. We weren't poor in the sense that we lacked anything, but not rich either. I was very happy though! (This is the life I remember best, by the way. I think I know every little detail of it.)

I've found my best friend from that life and the one in Prussia, but the tragedy is that he lives in Maine, and I don't have the money to go there.

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The creepiest thing I ever did was watching my own funeral back in 1861. I was sad, but not for myself, for my friends, because I knew they would mourn me. I didn't want them to mourn, though, since dying hadn't been bad at all (more like falling asleep). It really drove me crazy that I couldn't reach them...I also think I hung around them at least until the end of the war, because I also had dreams of things happening to them after my death. (They have been confirmed in part by my friend who was also my friend in that past life. We both had the same vision of a mutual friend dying...at Gettysburg, not very nice

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Mentioning Gettysburg gave me the goosebumps because my cousin, one Josiah Martin from Hillsborough, North Carolina, died there. He was a drummer boy in the 5th NC Infantry, sixteen years old, and he died because he lost his mind and ran into the enemy lines, where he was beheaded by a flying shell.
(I died at First Bull Run, two years earlier, but since I remember somethings that happened to some of my friends later I must have hung around for a little while longer...besides, my vision of Josiah's death was confirmed by a friend of mine who had also been Josiah's and my friend back then.)

I remember things that happened to my friends after my death in the American Civil War, so I must have stayed with them as a "ghost". I realized that I was dead when I saw them burying my body, but maybe I wasn't ready to leave yet. I stayed with my best friend until the end of the war (but also knew that another friend died of dysentery in a Union prison camp), but I don't know what I did after that. It took me 110 years to return, though

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n my recent past life I was born on a farm near Five Forks, Rowan County, North Carolina on February 8, 1842. My name was Jeremiah Carver. When the war broke out, I enlisted in the 5th North Carolina Infantry as a fifer. (I used to play the pennywhistle since I was about 12, so mastering the fife really was no trouble for me.) We were brought to Halifax, N. C. for training, and in June 1861 we were transferred to Manassas Junction, Virginia. I saw action for the first time during the skirmish of Blackburn's Ford, July 18, 1861, and was killed by a stray bullet in the morning of July 21, 1861, just as the First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas was beginning. I must have been killed accidentally by one of our own, since my death was never registered officially, and apparently it caused some embarrassment as well.

I remember seeing my friends burying me, and being very sad. I wanted to tell them that they didn't have to cry, that dying wasn't so bad, but I couldn't reach them. I stayed with my best friend Sandy until the end of the war, as a kind of ghost. I couldn't speak to him and I often wondered if he knew that I was there, but I wanted to know what happened to him.

I did a lot of research and was able to confirm many things from my dreams and visions. Two years ago I drew a sketch of Jeremiah and sent it to a dear friend in this life (he was Sandy once), who drew an amazing portrait from that little sketch. And a few weeks ago I found a photograph of an unidentified Confederate soldier wearing a North Carolina uniform who looks like that drawing!

This is where I found about the regiment. I did a search for the name on the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System; there were several Jeremiah Carvers, but when I read the name of the one who had belonged to the 5th NC, I felt that this had been me. I had compared the landscape from my dreams with battlefield pictures before, so I already knew that I died at Bull Run, and then I looked up the order of battle for that engagement to see if the 5th NC had been there. And yes, they were!
I have also tried to find census records, but it seems that there are none for the time in question. I suppose that many records were destroyed during or after the war...

My cousin Josiah died at Gettysburg!
He was a red-headed little boy, as freckled as a trout, and the drummer of our company.
When he died he was sixteen, a tall, lanky, far-too-thin teenager, cruel, bitter and sarcastic from what he had seen and experienced. He committed suicide by running into the enemy lines, where he was beheaded by an artillery shell.

 

[Reynardine]

Back in Prussia (I lived from 1704 to 1740, and my name was Martin Angermann), my best friend was called Christian - Christian Dannenberg, a short, lively little fellow with a head full of black curls, big brown eyes and dark skin. (His father, whom he never knew, was an Italian, probably a travelling artist, musician or puppeteer).
Nathali

I started remembering during a visit to Potsdam in 2002. I was visiting relatives in Berlin, and one day when they said that we were going to visit Potsdam, I suddenly got very excited and didn't know why. I wondered if maybe I could have lived there once, but thought it highly unlikely since I had always found Prussian history incredibly boring.
Well, anyway, we were walking through the old part of the town and my uncle explained to me that in the days of Frederick the Great the soldiers didn't live in barracks but in rented rooms in town. He told me this was why so many houses had attic rooms - those were let to the soldiers. It was an icy spring day with wet snow, but the moment he said that I had a short but intense flashback of being in one of those attic rooms on a nice and warm summer morning. I was a little taller than I am now and had mousy brown hair that I wore in a "club" (a queue wrapped with a black ribbon). I was wearing breeches, stockings, buckled shoes, a white shirt with wide sleeves and a cream-coloured waistcoat. (I could also describe every little bit of the furniture in the room, but I don't want to bore you to death!)
I had the feeling that I had just got up, and that it was Sunday. I opened the little window to let in fresh air and while I did that I looked outside to see my best friend standing in the street and waving, calling something like "Are you coming yet?"

This vision was so intense and life-like that I felt the warmth of the sun, and when it was over I thought how on earth it could have gotten so cold in such a short time! The feelings connected with that little episode - happiness and being carefree - were so intense that they brought tears to my eyes.

That night I had a dream. I was that young man again, and I was inspecting a horse that was tied to a kind of rail in a paved courtyard. I must have frightened or startled the horse somehow, since it suddenly kicked and hit me in the left side of the face. I collapsed on the ground and lost consciousness.

I must have been knocked out cold for a long time, since the next thing I remembered (in the same dream) was waking up in my bed in my little attic room, with my best friend Christian (I also remembered his name in that dream) sitting beside it. He looked tired and worried, but very relieved when he saw that I was waking up!

I felt horrible, with my left eye swollen shut, two molars in my left upper jaw gone, a stitched-up wound on my left cheekbone and the rest of the left side of my face a mass of bruises. I must have looked like hell, since Christian told me that the doctor and my landlord and landlady (an elderly, childless couple I liked very much) had given me up for dead, or almost dead, thinking that I had a brain injury and wouldn't wake up again. Christian made a joke, and I had to laugh. It made my face hurt even more, but at the same time I was happy because I had such a good friend as him. (I don't think I had any other real friends in that life, since I was a bit of an outsider, shy and a little awkward, originally a converted Jew, and, horror of horrors, gay )

One or two days later I was sightseeing in Berlin. The underground I usually took to get to the city passed a station called "Zitadelle Spandau" (Spandau Citadel), and suddenly I felt I simply had to get out and have a look at that citadel. (Again, this is highly unusual since I had found that kind of military architecture very boring as well...) Even as I was walking through the gate of the fortress it hit me like a ton of bricks - I had been here before, and the accident with the horse had happened here!

I felt very peaceful, even serene, in this place, and at the same time I had the urge to explore every nook and cranny of the fortress. Some areas were closed for restoration, but I made sure I didn't miss an inch of the rest This feeling of longing, homesickness, joy etc. was especially strong in two places, but I wasn't able to find out what had happened there. Well, maybe during the next visit!
I think it was then that I remembered my name in that life - Martin Angermann.

After that I had a dream or a flashback of my death in that life (I'm not sure which of the two it was). I was lying in a bed (not mine, in a room with several beds), and again Christian was with me. There were two or three other people in the room, but I didn't know who they were, and I didn't care either.
I was only skin and bone, and I couldn't move either from weakness or because I was paralyzed. I couldn't speak and had trouble swallowing, but there was no pain. My face was covered in sores, and I wondered how Christian could stand being around me when I looked so horrible!

Suddenly I felt myself slipping away, and Christian must have felt the change, for he bent down and kissed me on the forehead. (We had never been lovers, by the way, "only" best friends.) He was crying, and I was sad not because I was dying but because Christian was so upset. Then I lost consciousness, and I suppose I died.

Back home again, I wondered what disease could have killed me in that past life. I even would have asked my doctor about the symptoms (he knows me and my strange questions ), but suddenly the English folk song "The Pills of White Mercury" popped into my head. It is about a young soldier dying of syphilis after a close encounter with a "flash girl", and I wondered if someone was trying to tell me something. I looked up syphilis in my encyclopedia and on the Internet, and the symptoms from my dream/flashbacks were all there - the sores, the paralysis, everything! I had the feeling that I had caught the disease from another man, and that I had been living in poverty during the last few years of my life.

For a long time I had no opportunity to research about this probable past life, and I didn't have any more dreams or flashbacks either. However, this year in February I won a free half-hour reading, and the lady who did it told me some things about my sailor past life and also some things about my life in Prussia. (I had only told her the years of my birth and death and that I had died of syphilis, and nothing else, because I had wanted to test her.)

She told me that I had indeed caught the disease from another man, and that he had died of it as well, shortly afterwards. She said that he had been a nobleman of sorts, and described the place where we had first met ("a room with a bare earth floor and a fire in the middle, it is somewhere near something precious - jewels or gold perhaps").
The "jewels or gold" don't make sense for me yet, but I think I used to meet him in a "special" inn where homosexual men could meet (it was a hanging offence back then, so you had to be extremely careful), and that he paid me for my services.

In those days, soldiers were only paid for the time they were on campaign or maneuver, and for the rest of the year they had to find another job. I remember working as a coachman for a wealthy family (Christian worked as a footman for the same family); it was a good job, but somehow I managed to lose it. I suppose I didn't get a new job because times had suddenly become worse, and besides Friedrich Wilhelm I (the "Soldier King") was recruiting lots and lots of new soldiers, so there probably weren't enough jobs for everyone. (All this still is a little hazy, but since this is a not-so-nice chapter of my past life, I don't really care at the moment...)

Both my friend Christian and my lover (whom I only knew as "Joachim", but I don't think that it was his real name) are my friends in this life. I found out through the pendulum and was rather surprised when I found out who "Joachim" is in this life. (I wasn't surprised about Christian because I had been "suspecting" the present-life friend in question for a long time!)

"Joachim" is an e-mail friend of mine, and a woman in this life. She sent me a picture of herself a while ago, and it was strange to see my lover's beautiful brown eyes in a strange face. But I know it's her! (By the way, she once asked me whether was male or female - she had that feeling that I was male, even though my first name is definitely female. I thought this was very interesting...)


Nathali

 

[Reynardine]

I lived in England, too - was born in 1776 and died in 1801, during a storm in the Bay of Biscay. I grew up in London and went to sea at age 15. I took part in the Battle of the Nile in 1798, where I was wounded, and around 1800/1801 I was promoted to Bosun's Mate. I died because a fellow crewmember, who was jealous of my promotion, pushed me from the rigging during a storm.
My name was Alexander Kelsoe (called Aleck), I was short and wiry and had reddish blonde hair worn in a sailor's pigtail and pale skin that turned an angry red in the sun. My eyes were green, I think.

[I'm glad I never had the scurvy, since in our days we were given lime juice every day, or at least very often - guess we have to thank Captain Cook for that
Being wounded wasn't much fun either, but it certainly wasn't as bad as the scurvy!

I certainly enjoyed being a sailor, except for the last commission, during which I died - a sloop of war, and an extremely unhappy ship. But the time I spent in the Mediterranean with Nelson's fleet was not altogether unpleasant when we weren't fighting, so I won't complain
(By the way, a few days back I recognized the name of the ship I was on back then, the HMS Bellerophon.
I've also found some people from that life; my wife Molly is a good friend now, three good friends of mine in this life were in one gun crew with me back then, and the man who killed me is a friend now, too.

Nathali

 

[Reynardine]

When I was in the Civil War, we had a measles epidemic in camp. I didn't get the measles myself, but I had a very painful throat infection (my throat, ears, insides of my mouth and even my tongue hurt, and I was very weak for a few days). As I lay in my tent one evening, together with two friends who were very badly ill with the measles, I heard my best friend Sandy singing "Lorena" outside. It made me feel so much better, and I fell asleep listening to Sandy singing, like a child that is being sung to sleep.

This post and discussion is continued in the thread Music

I had a flashback of one of the Marines teaching my friends and me a song - called "The Cuckoo's Nest". I looked it up on the Internet and found that there is really a song called "The Cuckoo's Nest". I didn't "hear" all the words of the song in that flashback, but some of the words in the lyrics I found on the Internet sounded familiar...

I also remember that we often teased the Marines (called "Lobsters" because of their red coats), so I was surprised that one of them would teach us such a cool song
That Marine also taught us a marching song, a variant of "Pretty Peggy-O". (Girl meets infantry captain, captain falls in love with girl, girl mocks and scorns him, especially in front of his soldiers, captain dies of a broken heart. Sniff. )

 

[Reynardine]

I thought I had posted all my memories, but last night I realized that I had forgotten yet another one. It was a memory of being bled and of receiving a mercury (eew) treatment for my syphilis.

I'm in a room whose walls are whitewashed in the upper part and covered with wood in the lower part. I'm sitting at a heavy wooden table (oak, by the look of it), and facing me are an older and a young man. They must be a doctor and his assistant or maybe apprentice. I'm sitting in my shirt, my right sleeve rolled up, and a leather strap tied around my upper arm. My elbow is on the table, and the young man is holding my wrist. I think he is going to push down my hand to make it rest on the table, so that he has free access to the vein. There is a white porcelain bowl on the table which he is going to use for the blood, and I think, "wow, porcelain, that guy must have a lot of money". (Porcelain was very expensive in those days, I think - people with less money used wooden bowls and, I think, pewter plates.)
I can see my forearm clearly - it is strong, tanned and its inside is covered with tiny white scars like cuts. They can't be from other bloodlettings, since you cut parallel to the vein then, and they are horizontal. They also seem more superficial, but I have no idea where they came from.

In the second part of the flashback, I'm in the same room, still sitting at the table. Someone (the younger man, I think) hands me a wooden cup with a strange-looking grayish-brown mixture and tells me I have to keep it in my mouth for a while. He puts a wooden bucket between my feet, and I wonder why - well, I'm going to learn soon!
I dutifully take that stuff in my mouth, but it's hard to keep it in there, since the taste is absolutely disgusting! It's a somewhat metallic, acrid taste, and it almost makes me throw up. Suddenly, a lot of saliva collects in my mouth and I'm afraid I could swallow that horrible stuff. Then I'm violently sick into that bucket, and I feel terribly embarrassed because of it. I decide it's the first and last time that I'll have a syphilis treatment!

I looked up 18th century syphilis treatment on the internet and read that in those days you were given a mixture of mercury and vegetable oil (mercury is heavier than water, but maybe it floats on vegetable oil or mixes with it - I don't know). You had to keep it in your mouth until you started salivating; this was thought to draw the "bad humours" out of your body.
I had already known from the song "The Pills of White Mercury" that mercury was used for syphilis treatment, but I had always thought that you had to swallow it, and that it was given to you in solid form. This was completely new for me, and I was glad that it confirmed my flashback!



Nathali

 

[Reynardine]

Two of the deaths I remember (being hanged in the Eighty Years' War and being shot in the American Civil War) happened in slow motion as well - I was watching it from "outside" (especially the hanging), and it seemed to be happening to someone else. There was no pain or fear at all. This is also true for the two other deaths, but everything seemed to happen at normal speed then.
I clearly remember my last thoughts during those "slow-motion" deaths: In the American Civil War one it was, "God, how blue the sky is - it's going to be a hot day", and when I was hanged, "I wish I could stop my legs from twitching. I must look SO stupid!" Famous last words, eh?

This post and discussion is continued in the thread Slow motion

When I died of syphilis in Potsdam/Prussia in 1740 my best friend was with me, and he kissed me on the forehead when he felt that I was slipping away. I couldn't speak because the disease had destroyed my vocal cords, but I remember thinking, "How brave of him, I must look horrible and disgusting..." Then I simply closed my eyes and must have died - it was quite like falling asleep. No slow motion this time, maybe since death didn't come so suddenly and unexpectedly this time, and I was ready to go.

This post and discussion is continued in the thread Slow motion

 

[Reynardine]

As I was driving home tonight, letting my mind wander, I got some impressions about Kempe -

1. When he danced, Will Kempe sometimes played a tambourine as well.
2. He had reddish brown hair (dark chestnut) and a full baritone voice, and he was slim but getting a little round about the middle when W. S. got to know him.
3. When things weren't going his way (in other words, on a daily basis ) he would stalk out of the room in a huff and disappear into his favourite pub to sulk until it either pleased him to return or until someone went there and told him to come back or there would be trouble.

P. S. Could it be that Kempe was left-handed?

I just leafed through a book about herbs, and when I saw facsimiles of pages from Elizabethan herbals, I got "that feeling" again. It seems that, whoever I was in that time, I had something to do with apothecaries - maybe my father was one, or I was apprenticed to one. (I don't think I finished my apprenticeship, though.)

Today I had a very funny experience (it's still lasting). All day I've been having the impression that I'm wearing an Elizabethan man's clothing...I mean, I can feel them on my body (especially on my legs), and then, when I look down and see jeans and a sweatshirt, it seems all "wrong" and strange.
The person who wears those clothes seems to be a young man (late 20s or early 30s). They seem to be rather elegant clothes, probably Sunday ones, in slate grey and dark blue with light yellow or cream-coloured trimmings. Nothing too fancy, just elegant in a discreet way.
It's a very weird feeling, but it certainly beats feeling the bullet that killed you or the hangman's noose round your neck all day
This is what usually happens to me, I remember a past-life death and feel whatever killed me all day...

I think Will Kempe had a daughter, a stern, tall, black-haired woman with a Spanish name (I think her mother was Spanish, that's why). The name may have been Josefina or Guillermina - I tend to think it was Guillermina. He didn't see his daughter very often when she was a child, but they resumed the contact after her mother had died, and finally they lived together in a small house in London, where Will Kempe died of a stroke in his mid to early 60s.

I remember not getting along with Richard Burbage - somehow I never could keep my big mouth shut when he was around and had to tease or provoke him.

I also remember that we spent some time in a barn somewher in the country. It must have been when the theatres were closed because of the plague and the theatre companies went on tour. I have several memories of that barn - it was raining most of the time, so it was cold, wet and clammy. It must have been March or April, but I don't know exactly.
I have several memories of this barn; it seems we spent a week or so there - maybe because of the bad weather?

We had lots of arguments during that time...small wonder, it was towards the end of the tour and we were holed up in that, errr, less-than-perfect accomodation. We must have had a bad case of cabin fever!

Another memory is about playing in an inn (Cross Keys Inn in London feels very, very familiar - I've never been there in this life, but I came across the name somewhere and thought, "yes, that's it!!!")
I don't know what we played, but the people liked it a lot, and the landlord was so happy that we had attracted so many customers that he gave all the players free drinks. Well, you can guess the rest

Last weekend I read "Two Gentlemen from Verona" and remembered another thing. We are rehearsing one of the scenes with Launce and Speed, and somehow the guy who plays Speed (his first name is Tom, I think, and he is about 19 years old) always manages to make me laugh. In the end we only need to look at each other to start laughing again, and I get one of the countless "Oh-grow-up" looks from WS

Last night I was at a concert at our church, the music (vocal music from different eras) was very nice, and there was one piece that gave me a shock. I had a flashback of being in a Gothic-looking church built of grey granite, not a
cathedral, more like a large parish church somewhere in London. You can't see the vault of the ceiling because it's closed off with light-coloured wood - beech, perhaps, or maple? The church has stained-glass windows in red, grey and blue, rather light, and the pictures probably are the usual Biblical scenes etc. The church is built in a cross shape, and I know that there's a thick, squat tower over the place where the "arms" of the cross meet the "stem". (Sorry, my knowledge of architecture really stinks! )

I "looked around" in my mind and saw that the church had oak pews that were black with age, there was a grey granite (?) stone altar looking as squat as the church's tower. The altar was covered with a fine white linnen cloth lined with expensive-looking fine lace, and there was a large, dark wooden crucifix and a candle on it. A small choir (about 10 people at the most) stood to the left side of the altar. The floor was covered with grey, rather irregular flagstones.
I was sitting in the front pew, with my daughter Guillermina at my right and Tom Sly at my left side, and we're all wearing black. That was the point when I realized that I was remembering my wife's funeral! Guillermina sits as straight as a ramrod, pale and thin, and only her continuous blinking betrays her feelings. She is holding something green in her lap - a rosemary wreath? - and in her right hand is a white linnen handkerchief.
My hands are folded in my lap, and Tom has put his right hand on my arm, just above the elbow. I feel as if my whole world is in pieces at my feet, and I also feel guilty because my own daughter is sitting beside me like a stranger...I realize that she must be missing her mother a lot, and I don't know how to comfort her...

Nathali

 

[Reynardine]

The Anabaptist "Kingdom" in Münster of 1535

A few days ago I was listening to a CD with songs from the Antwerps Liedboek (Antwerp Songbook) of 1544. One of the songs is called "Vanden storm van Munster", and it tells the story of the siege of Münster and the end of the Anabaptist "Kingdom" there in 1535.

As I was listening to the song, I suddenly saw myself as a fair-haired, 17-year-old boy behind a makeshift barricade on the marketplace in Münster. There was some rubble to my right and a dark-haired, bearded man in a kind of dark robe to my right, and there were about 50 to 60 people behind that barricade with me.
The attackers, Dutch mercenaries commanded by the former Bishop of Münster, were somewhere in front of us; I couldn't see them in that flashback, but I knew they were there.

There were stone splinters flying all around because the besiegers fired cannon into the city, and one of these splinters must have hit me - I suddenly felt a sharp, hot pain above and in my right eye. The pain and shock was too much for me, it seems, because I suddenly started screaming and throwing stones at the attackers.

The next thing I remember was being held from behind by the dark-haired man, who kept saying "It's alright, boy...it's alright". I think I had stopped screaming but was still struggling.
Then everything goes black for a while, and I find myself lying on my back in a grassy field that feels slightly wet, as if it had rained a short while before. Someone is holding me down while someone else washes my face and my eye - one of them must be the dark-haired man because I can hear his voice. I realize that I must have lost my right eye because it hurts so much, and the dark-haired man sounds concerned.
But I lose consciousness again, and the next time I wake up I'm lying in a two-wheeled cart with straw in the bottom, together with four or five others who are so badly injured that they're unable to walk. I have quite a high fever, and my eye and cheekbone hurt terribly. The thin blanket or old cloak I've been given isn't warm enough by far, but I'm too miserable to care. In fact, I wish I had died with the others...

I thought about that flashback for a long time (it was very intense, and my eye hurt for two days afterwards), and when I did that, one thought suddenly flashed through my mind: The dark-haired man must have been Heinrich Krechting, brother of one of the Anabaptist leaders! He and a handful of men made a desperate attempt to fight off the attackers when the city was stormed, and because of that and because he had known him well, the Bishop of Münster let Krechting and some of those that were with him go free. I must have been one of them, one of the lucky few that survived the massacre...

 

[Reynardine]

Flemish PL in the Eighty Years' War

A while ago I posted a memory of being captured by the enemy and hanged in what I took to be the English Civil War - the clothes and weapons looked as if they were from the 1640s. I didn't do any further research, though, since I keep having memories of two other lives almost daily, and that keeps me busy enough

A few weeks ago I had another memory of that life, one that made me realise that it was the Eighty Years' War I was remembering and not the English Civil War, and that I was a Geuse, a kind of Flemish guerilla.
It was a memory of myself and maybe five others (there may have been more of us in other places) lying hidden behind some bushes (gorse?), and watching a troop of the enemy retreating. They must have been Spaniards, from their looks and their clothes. A slim young Spaniard, so young that his "moustache" was still fluffy, walked into view, I lifted my musket, fired, and, terrible as this sounds, was deeply satisfied to have caught him directly in the chest.

That memory shocked me very much, and I was pretty shaken for the rest of the day, but a good friend suggested apologising to that Spaniard's "spirit" - I did that, and it seemed to help after a while. I was very relieved but forgot about it again.

Today, as I was driving and thinking of nothing special, I could suddenly hear the words "de Witte Leeuw" spoken in my head. I don't speak Dutch in this life, but I knew it meant "the white lion" - I had no idea what that could mean. At first I was really puzzled because the events took place in 1612/1613, and in my Will Kempe life I had died in 1603. But then those bits I remember from the Geuse life came to my mind again, and I started calculating...I had always felt that I was hanged in 1642 or 1643, and that I was between 28 and 32 at the time. So maybe 1612/1613 was the year I was born in that lifetime, that would fit!

This post and discussion is continued in the thread Flemish PL in the Eighty Years' War

 

[Reynardine]

I think my friend Jasper (my best friend through several lives) and I both took part in a battle at a place called Calloy (now Kallo) on the Schelde. I found a song on the CD called "Den Geusen Haes-Op Uyt Calloy" ("The Geuses' Flight from Calloy"), and the name of the place Calloy sent shivers down my spine and made me want to go and visit that place. I didn't bother to read the liner notes the first few times, then I finally looked up what they said about the song...there was a battle in 1637 (which would be in my "time frame"), which the Dutch apparently lost.
I didn't speak about that to Jasper's present incarnation, since she finds the idea of reincarnation extremely scary and doesn't want to speak about it, but I copied the CD and gave it to her, and guess which song she said she likes best?

I think my first name was Adriaen, my surname may have been Pauwels, and my mind keeps insisting my "middle name" was Brandiszoon. Having such a kind of "middle name" meaning "son of..." was quite common back then, I think.

When Jasper's present incarnation and I went hiking in a fen/national park near here, I really stopped in my tracks once because the landscape resembled the one I was hanged in so much, except the trees were gnarled oaks there...the marshy bits in the Netherlands probably looked like that 400 years ago

Ah, before I forget - I have the feeling I may have been Dutch and not Flemish

Seeing that scenery did bring up some intense emotions, especially embarrassment - my last conscious thought was "I wish I could stop kicking, that must look pretty stupid!". I didn't feel any pain or fear, I was sort of seeing things from outside, as if all this was happening to someone else, and it really annoyed me that I couldn't keep my feet and legs still...Well, so much for "famous last words"!

I don't think I had much of a family in that life, at least I can't remember one. Maybe they were all dead at that time...

The landscape I remember was all marshy and not used for farming, though there may have been a few sheep and perhaps cows around. Of course, they probably drained the land in later centuries and turned it into fields -that has happened around here, too.
"Flat grassland" is a good description of what I remember, there really weren't many trees around. I hope it took them a good long while to find one that was suitable for disposing of me

I did find "Brand" on that website, and it said it was an abbreviation of Hildebrand. It says the name was usually used in Friesland, but maybe my father was from there, who knows...or his parents just had a soft spot for exotic names
Unfortunately, none of the photos of Sint Niklaas I found looked familiar, but maybe they're too modern. I didn't grow up in a city anyway, but in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The inn was next to it (to the right if you faced the door), but it wasn't a village inn, more like a waystation for travellers. The innkeeper was a woman of about 30 named something like Anneke; she wasn't pretty in a feminine way, but rather good-looking in an androgynous way (if that makes sense). She always seemed sad, though she was very kind to my brother and me. Hmm, maybe it was her inn that was called "De Witte Leeuw", and she lost her husband or fiancee when the ship sank and thus named the inn after the ship...I'll have to think about that!

This post and discussion is continued in the thread Flemish PL in the Eighty Years' War

 

[Reynardine]

I've just had another funny memory and thought I'd put it here instead of the Anabaptist thread


A few weeks after the Krechtings, my "foster" family, and I had arrived in Münster, another batch of newcomers came, this time from the Netherlands. Among them was Jan van Leyden's younger brother Antonius, who looked like a burlier, shorter version of his brother with black hair. When the two brothers greeted each other, I learned that Jan van Leyden called his brother Teunis, which, I guess is the short form of "Antonius".


Anyway, another few days or weeks later Jan asked my "foster father" Heinrich Krechting and me to help plan a mock procession, and of course Teunis was there as well. Jan started calling his brother "Teuntje" (the short form of "Antonia", I think), and then he told me how he and his brother had often put on plays while Jan still was an innkeeper in Leyden. Teunis was still young and beardless then, so he had to play the women's roles - apparently he was so convincing that a drunken bargeman or fisherman thought he really was a girl, and got a bit too friendly. In the end, Teunis lifted up his skirts and asked the other man if he liked what he saw, and Jan said he had never seen anyone else sober up so quickly


That was about the last time I experienced Jan van Leyden as the friendly, polite and sometimes impish young man that he was - only a short time later he slipped into the madness that caused his downfall and that of the rest of us. Funnily enough, even before I knew that I'm a recycled Münster Anabaptist, I've always felt like defending Jan van Leyden when someone said something bad about him. I always had to bite my tongue because I wanted to say "Yes, he was a bloodthirsty madman in the end, but he wasn't always like that", even though I never knew why I wanted to say that...


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Funny memories

 

[Reynardine]

I do remember having been treated for illnesses or injuries in past lives, at least in two of them. In the Napoleonic Wars I was a British sailor who suffered lots of burns during the Battle of the Nile, when our ship, the Bellerophon, caught fire, but I wasn't really treated for them since the ship's surgeon thought I would die anyway. That was probably my luck, since nobody touched the burns or put anything on them, maybe that's why they didn't become infected.


In my Elizabethan life I had lower back problems from my mid- thirties on, brought on by trying to lift something that was too heavy for me. The fact that I earned my living as a clown and morris dancer at the theatre perhaps didn't help my back much either When it got bad, my wife put an ointment on it that smelled strongly of camphor and made the skin feel warm afterwards. When I sprained my hip once during dancing, my former apprentice put something similar on it, only it didn't smell as strongly. I had been given poppy or mandrake juice against the pain before, so I was a bit muddled and don't quite remember...


I also suffered from migraines in that life, and took mandrake or poppy when it was really insufferable. Fortunately, that only happened once or twice, the other times it went away if I lay down in a dark room for a while.


In my Anabaptist life I lost my eye and must have been treated for that as well, but I don't remember, the first weeks after I was injured were completely gone from my memory.


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Old-time medicine

 

[Reynardine]

I've just realised that there was one thing I always knew without ever having heard about it, and, typically for me, it's something rude - namely how to do the Elizabethan gesture of "biting one's thumb", the equivalent to the modern "finger" or "Agincourt Salute" I also had a memory of my wife, who was a Sephardic Jew I had met in Italy while spending about a year there as a young man, making different varieties of meatballs. That memory made me wonder, since I couldn't recall meatballs being common in Elizabethan London, but then I read that they were typical for Sephardic cuisine...I probably walked around with a huge grin on my face for the rest of the day


In a similar way, a student of mine, who was a friend back in the Elizabethan life, and the son of a Sephardi woman, says "el Dío" instead of "Díos" when she speaks Spanish, the way the Sephardim did because they felt "Díos" was plural and thus wrong, because there only was one God. My student even gives the same reason! She has never read or heard anything about Spanish Jews, and I don't know what her views on reincarnation are, but it makes me smile each time...


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Knowing things that you never knew

 

[Reynardine]

Remembering a song in Spanish/Sephardic memories


A while ago I started remembering a song I learned from my Spanish-speaking wife in my Elizabethan life. As I mentioned elsewhere, she and her family were Spanish Jews who had been able to stay a bit longer because they converted to Catholicism, but when the Inquisition started persecuting the "conversos" as well, they fled to Siena in northern Italy. I met her when a friend and I spent a year or so in Siena in our late twenties, and she returned to London with me, where we were happily married until her death eighteen years later.


Anyway, my wife taught our daughter a little ditty her own father had made up for her when she was little, to help her learn the numbers. He used the tune of the Spanish song "La Tricotea", whose lyrics are a wild mixture of all Romance languages and a healthy dose of "Jabberwocky"-style nonsense words (but I think it's fun to sing ).


At first I only remembered the gist of it, but during the last few weeks I've been able to remember the first few lines.


The lines I remember are:


El rey moro se levantó temprano,


Llamó a su criado


Que le traiga la vela.


Una vela, vuestra merced,


un pan dulce blanquitín...


(The Moorish king rose early,


called for his servant


to bring him the candle.


A candle, Your Honour,


a sweet white bread...)


"Blanquitín" isn't an official word, but it's clearly derived from "blanco" (white), and a kind of diminutive. It probably implies that the bread is not only white but very fine and dainty...


In each of the following lines the number of things the Moorish king wanted was increased by one, i.e. he wanted two of the next thing, three of the following and so on...During each repetition of the song, a verse was added, much like in the English "Rattling Bog".

 

[Reynardine]

Memories of the Alhambra


It all began when I visited the Alhambra two years ago. I enjoyed walking through it so much, and I nearly started to cry when they were closing and I had to leave...There were many places in it that gave me a strange feeling of familiarity, above all the highest watchtower and the ruins of the Nasrid palaces, but also the ruins of houses in the Alcazaba, the military part of the Alhambra (on the right in the first picture on the page).


As usual, it took me quite a while to "connect the dots", and it was only a few months later that I had the first memories. I remembered having been a Moorish soldier, probably named Yussuf, whose mother or grandmother had been an African slave. I still looked rather African, and my skin became very dark in summer, but nobody seemed to mind, even though I was the only one. I don't know what rank I had, maybe something equivalent to the modern rank of Sergeant, since I can remember training the young recruits and I think I had some authority.


I remember that we used to do a kind of sword dance in our free time, it was a slow one with measured movements, but you stil had to be rather precise if you didn't want to cut or bruise your opponent's hands when clashing swords. It's hard to describe, but it looked like a slow-motion sword duel with ritualised movements, and I think shields were used in it as well. We probably hit our shields with our scimitars at one point of the dance, perhaps at the beginning (???)...


I found an Andalusian Moorish tune called "Lamma Bada" that reminds me of the music for our sword dance; unfortunately I only have it as an MP3 and can't attach it. But if anyone is interested, PM me and I can email it!


We had lots of horses at the Alhambra; they would probably be considered as coarse and ugly by today's standards, but they were strong, clever and hardy. Most of them were greys or chestnuts with white spots on their foreheads, and I think the greys were all born black (grey horses can be born either black or chestnut-coloured).


There was one grey horse we called "Storm", who was rather difficult, but he had taken a liking to me and was rather nice when I was around. That probably was because I used to bribe him with stale bread and apples Another horse I remember was a chestnut called Caliph, a favourite of my young friend, of whom I'll talk later. Caliph was friendlier than Storm, and a few years younger and rather playful. We sometimes used to race them against each other when we had some free time or were ordered to exercise the horses; that was one duty we loved to do!


As for my young friend, he was a Christian orphan whose original name may have been Rodrigo or Miguel; I don't know how he ended up on the Alhambra, but somehow he did, and was raised by Maryam, an older woman in charge of the sick and the orphans, who may have been a Christian in her youth as well. Maryam and I were friends in a Platonic way; we often used to joke that we were like two old, barren mules since neither of us had produced any offspring...We often used to sit in the shade of a tree, eat pomegranates and talk about things when we had time...


My young friend was raised by Maryam as well, and when he was old enough and declared that he wanted to be a soldier, he came into my charge. By that time he had been given an Arabian name which I don't remember, since he was usually addressed by his nickname "Rumi" (spelling?), which means "Christian" or "Byzantine" in Arabic. He was teased a lot at first, but managed to earn everyone's respect by being a good fighter and sword dancer. He got into a few scuffles as a teenager as well, but I usually pretended not to notice, since I thought the lads had to fight it out for themselves. Of course I would have taken action if it had become serious, but it never did...


I met Rumi a few times when he was little and still in Maryam's charge, and I remember how fascinated he was by my skin colour. He realised it wasn't going to rub off when he got older, though


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Memories of the Alhambra

 

[Reynardine]

Well, since you wanted to hear more, here we go...Alhambra Story Time


One night while keeping watch on the Torre de la Vela with Rumi, we had a kind of "father-son" talk. I'd noticed that Rumi had taken a liking to a certain girl, and decided it was time to tell him about the birds and the bees Well, not quite that, he already knew how that worked, but I asked him if he liked the girl, if he was planning to marry her and so on. I had never been married or in love either (I guess I was kind of asexual, like I am in this life, and perfectly happy on my own), but he still wanted to ask me for advice. Of course I was deeply honoured and tried to help him as well as I could. We rather enjoyed keeping watch at night, as it was relatively quiet, there was little to do save look out for fires and unusual sounds and sights, and it was our "talk time".


I think Maryam worked as a nurse or nanny for the Abencerrajes family, a noble family who lived on the Alhambra and served as courtiers and councellors of the king (Boabdil's father? I saw a painting of Boabdil as a boy that looks very familiar, but maybe he just reminds me of a boy we knew back then...if not, that would be too ironic!). The head of the family was a tall, strong man in his early thirties, but we soldiers joked that he must still be afraid of Maryam, who had put him across her knee and sent him to bed without a dessert when he was a boy - and a very naughty one at that


There was a small boy called Ibrahim, son of one of the craftsmen that lived in the Alcazaba, who hated his name because he said it was an "old man's name" but never found a suitable abbreviation or pet name, so he grudgingly accepted it. He was a bright, curious and intelligent boy with a great outlook to the future, but sadly he drowned at ten or eleven while playing and fooling around in a river outside the walls with some other boys. The oldest boy of the group always thought himself responsible for Ibrahim's death and was about to kill himself out of grief, but Ibrahim's mother comforted him and even nursed him when he became ill, telling him that it was nobody's fault but simply fate or bad luck; she grieved terribly as well but still found the energy to comfort the other boy, which I found amazing!


I think I know Ibrahim in this life, and I know for sure who Rumi is, a dear friend with whom I've shared many lives. It's very nice to know that we don't lose people forever...


P.S. After having those memories I finally realised why the last verse of the Spanish folk song "Tres Morillas" ("Three Little Moorish Girls") always made me cry and was hard to stand, even though I love the song...The verse is:


Díjeles: "Quién sois, señoras,


De mi vida robadores?"


"Cristianas que eramos moras en Jaén,


Aixa, Fatima y Marién."


(I said to them: "Who are you ladies,


Stealers of my life?"


"Christians who used to be Moors in Jaén,


Aixa, Fatima and Marién.")


I think neither Rumi nor I lived to see the defeat and expulsion, but still...we probably wouldn't have liked the idea much!


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Memories of the Alhambra

 

[Reynardine]

I remember my father in two lives; in my Elizabethan life he was cold and distant and thought the world of my older half-brother Richard, but didn't care much for me. I did have a kind of "father figure", though, a man named Richard Tarleton whom I met when I was twenty, and who taught me to dance, act and fence He was an extremely talented fencer, despite being short and having a slightly crooked back, but I was never any good at it, no matter how often we practiced. I was very fond of him, and the day he died was a very sad one. It took me a long time to realise that he was really dead, even as I was sitting beside his corpse...


It sounds funny, but Tarleton may have been the other father I remember in a previous life, my Anabaptist one. It took me a long time to connect the dots, but there's a certain similarity between him and Dierick, my father in that life. He was from Antwerpen, a linnen weaver by trade, and had planned to move to Bremen, perhaps because he thought there was more work there, or maybe he was just getting bored in Antwerpen. On his journey he rested once in the little town of Schöppingen near Münster, where he met my mother - well, let's just say he never did go to Bremen


One special memory I have of Father is celebrating Epiphany with the family of his friend Heinrich Krechting. It was common in the Netherlands and the Münsterland to bake a cake with a bean inside, and whoever had the bean in their slice was called the "Bean King", a kind of Lord of Misrule. The Bean King was often given a paper crown, and he could nominate other guests as his Queen, Fool and so on, if he felt like it. The Epiphany celebrations I remember were all loud and rowdy, but a lot of fun


One year, the year before my parents were executed for being Anabaptists, is the one I remember especially. Heinrich Krechting's brother Johann found the bean in his cake, so he was dutifully crowned as Bean King, and he nominated Father as his Fool. Heinrich put his black fur-lined clerk's gown round his brother's shoulders to "make him look like a king, farmer that he is" (Johann was a kind of "gentleman farmer" and bred horses), and toasts were brought out to the new "king" and his "fool". I think someone gave him a wooden spoon as a "sceptre" as well, and things got very silly...ironically, only a short time later we would all follow another fake king, the "tailor king" Jan van Leyden....


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Remembering Father

 

[Reynardine]

Whenmy apprentice Tom was dangerously ill with scarlet fever and nothing the doctor did seemed to help, so Ramona asked me if I would mind if she tried a ritual of her people. I told her we had nothing to lose, so she might as well do it, and while she got everything ready I went to the conduit to fetch water, thinking that she didn't need me around anyway. As I walked past the open door of Tom's room I saw her drawing circles and loops into the air over Tom's head, heart and possibly right hand, while muttering something I couldn't understand because she spoke so quietly. You suggested that perhaps she was drawing the tefilim on Tom to protect him, and I thought that idea made a lot of sense; however I came across a very interesting website yesterday, and the "pasar la mano" ritual described on it sounds exactly like what Ramona did! Reading about it made me remember that she, too, had salt in her hand while performing the ritual, and I remembered why she had asked me to fetch water; when she was finished she put the salt into a bowl of water and poured it it away - not onto the street like we did all our used water, since she said some unsuspecting person "might take the evil with him" by accidentally stepping into the water, but into the little stream behind our house, since it flowed through nothing but fields and we knew that it flowed into the Thames and, thus, into the sea.


The saying "let it go where eggs are eaten without salt" sounds familiar, too, only I think Ramona said it in a different context, one I don't remember...


It's a pity that they don't say anything about the egg ritual you told me about (putting an egg under a sick person's bed and then taking it outside to step on it), but I'm sure she did that, too, as the person who was Tom (now a friend of mine) said she remembers that, too, and she remembers having feverish dreams about a giant egg, probably brought on by Ramona performing the ritual...


Oh yes, I really thought myself fortunate to be so accepted into the Sephardic community, but as you said, it was a different time and place and the London Sephardim had to mingle with the Gentiles since officially they "weren't there", and it would have been suspicious if they'd kept among themselves, especially after the Rodrigo Lopez affair, which triggered a kind of paranoia that lasted for quite a while but fortunately didn't escalate.


I suppose I would never have known that there were other Sephardim beside my wife in London if I hadn't accidentally discovered that Augustine was circumcised one day at the theatre; he always found an excuse to change after all the others had left, but that day I discovered that I had lost the signet ring Ramona's father had given me - it was too small for my finger, so I wore it on a chain around my neck - and so I returned to the tiring-room to look for it, and literally bumped into Augustine changing from the dress he'd worn (he had played a woman's role that day) into his everyday clothes. He snapped at me, daring me to betray him to the authorities, but I told him I wasn't going to do that; at the time I still thought he was arrogant and slightly snobbish since he always kept a distance from the others, but I still couldn't have revealed his secret to anyone, since he would have been punished very cruelly then, and I didn't wish that on anyone. Little did I know that he was just being extremely careful, not letting another person come close enough to him because he was afraid they'd find out!


We became quite good friends after that; it was a pity that it hadn't happened before! The fear of difference you mentioned must have been related to the fear of being discovered that Augustine, Lorenzo and all the others had - I can imagine that it is a thing you don't miss from that life!

 

[Reynardine]

I used to get my daughter a treat whenever someone advertised hot pippins (apples) or similar delights. My wife always jokingly accused me of spoiling her, but I couldn't help loving her very much...She was an almost exact copy of her mother, which was funny, and sometimes even a bit spooky. Of course our apprentice Tom wasn't neglected either, and my wife also got a treat!


For one of my friends back then, the clown/entertainer and innkeeper Richard Tarleton, "New oysters, new oysters new" was the magical word that would wake him even from the deepest slumber He loved oysters very much even though they were poor people's food back then; his lady friend Margaret always cooked them for him, and he used to say that she must have a secret ingredient that made them taste so good. (I never liked them, I preferred a kipper or nice smoked mackerel instead, at least until I ate a kipper that had gone off, and spent a lot of time in the privy for a day or two )

 

[Reynardine]

I have some rather vague memories of attending grammar school in London in the 1560s; in those days you went to petty school from five to seven, where you learned reading, writing and basic maths, and, if you were lucky and your parents could afford it, you went on to grammar school until you were about 14. I don't remember much about the building, but I remember that the teacher sat in front, behind a tall desk, wearing a black robe and a close-fitting cap, and the pupils sat in front of him on small stools, holding their books and writing stuff on their knees.


He was strict but fair, and we liked him very much. Since my father was so cold and indifferent towards me (he thought the world of my older half-brother Richard, but I was just the unfortunate by-product of his second marriage) I stayed after school for as long as our teacher would let me, sweeping the classroom, tidying things up and so on, as I wasn't missed at home anyway and our teacher always had a kind word or two for me.


I remember that he sometimes brought small, sweet cakes to school and promised a cake to each boy who could decline a Latin noun or conjugate a Latin verb without faults, or who could recite a passage from the Greek or Latin author we were reading correctly. This definitely made learning more fun!


My favourite subjects were Latin and Cosmography; I always loved learning about different countries, especially about the sea monsters and dog-headed people and so on that were still featured in the travel books of the time. After all, the world wasn't so completely known yet, and many of those books were full of travellers' tall tales. Nevertheless, they were very interesting and fun to read! I don't remember if we had astronomy as a seperate subject, or if we briefly touched it in connection with cosmography, but I think I enjoyed that, too - and rhetorics, which was a great help later in life, when I became a player at a theatre!


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Education and past lives

 

[Reynardine]

Renaissance Italy and music


In the life I remember best, I lived in London, I was born in 1555 and my name was Will Kempe. My father had wanted me to become a bricklayer, but I hated it, and after my master threw me out I came across the clown, dancer, actor and show fencer Richard "Dick" Tarleton, who let me work in his inn at first. But after a while he started training me as an actor because he noticed that I was really interested in it.


After some years I became a member of an acting troupe called "Leicester's Men", while Tarleton remained in the "Queen's Men" he'd always belonged to. I have no idea why I changed to Leicester's Men. But I don't think that was because there was trouble or an argument.


Anyway, in 1581 or 1582 the Earl of Leicester's teenage nephew Robert Sidney travelled to the continent as many fashionable young men did back then, and he was to spend some time (about a year) with a noble family in Siena. I think the head of that noble family had been to England as a boy, and got to know the Earl of Leicester, so that was why Robert went to Siena. But again, I'm not really sure about that.


Well, young Robert asked if he could take his two favourite actors from his uncle's company with him, and Leicester allowed it. So my friend Tom Poope and I got to travel to Italy, and we enjoyed it immensely.


We met a commedia dell'arte company and found them a lot of fun; in fact, we got some ideas for later jigs (short funny, often bawdy little plays at the end of the big play) from them. Both Tom and I had gone to grammar school, so we spoke Latin with everyone at first, but quickly picked up some Italian. Tom was better at it than I was, though; I had no trouble with the words as such but could never get the hang of the grammar. I must have sounded quite funny at times, but somehow I got along!


There was a time when young Robert preferred hunting, sightseeing and God knows what else with the members of the Sienese noble family and didn't need Tom and me to entertain him; at first we went sightseeing as well, rented horses and went for a ride, and so on. But then the weather became rather nasty and relatively cold, so we didn't often go out and soon became a little bored. So Tom decided to ask the family's fencing master to give him some lessons, and I approached the castrato singer who lived in their household and served both as an entertainer and a singing tutor to help me improve my singing. We thought those lessons would be useful to us in the future ,and besides it was much better than sitting in our room all day and staring out of the window.


The castrato was a very friendly fellow named Giancarlo Andretti, and he was about 25 at the time; he had a very dry sense of humour, and at first I rarely noticed when he was joking. But I got used to it after a while Giancarlo was very tall and lanky, and his arms and legs were extremely long, as was apparently typical for castrati. He had a beautiful voice that was very hard to describe, and a quite impressive vocal range. His speaking voice was a silvery tenor that didn't sound unusual; only when you looked at him you noticed there was something "wrong" with him.


Giancarlo was quite content with his lot; he said he loved music and singing so much that he had never regretted making such a sacrifice. He also joked he didn't mind not having to shave in the morning, since he wasn't exactly a morning person, and that meant he could sleep a little longer


He had had the smallpox shortly after his operation, and the illness had left some deep scars on his cheeks. I think he told me that the doctor had shaved his head while he was ill, to "draw out the bad humours" or something similar, and he had hated that very much...


Giancarlo loved cheese, especially sheep's milk cheese, but he took great care in not eating too much at once, so he wouldn't become as fat as some of his brethren, and he also took long walks for that purpose. Some of the things he taught me were very helpful, though he kept insisting that I was the most untalented pupil I'd ever had. I simply couldn't remember to articulate clearly, no matter how Giancarlo reminded me of that.


I heard him sing a few times; I think one of the songs he sang was an old French one called "Que faire s'amour me laisse". It dates from the beginning of the 16th century and apparently was very popular, as I've found out, so it could be...


It was in Siena that I met my future wife Ramona, a Spanish Jew whose family had fled the Inquisition when she was little. They were officially converted at the time, but they still adhered to their old faith, and the Inquisition had decided to stamp the "conversos" out for good as well, so they decided to flee. In typical Will fashion, I literally bumped into her as she came back from the market, and upset her shopping basket...