1. From today's Irish Times Business (!) Section, in an article about collecting vinyl: "Not many people have heard about a new Scottish band called Belle and Sebastian who only formed two years ago and have never troubled the charts or _Top of the Pops_ but because they're deemed 'artistically significant' by music journalists and the _cognoscenti_, Belle and Sebastian's debut album two years ago, called _TIger Milk_, of which only 500 copies were pressed up, is now passing hands for more than œ200. From œ15 to œ200 in two years, you could be naming your own price in 10 years time." The Irish Times Entertainment section also gave IYFS a very good review when it came out. But I'm not forgetting that the Sports Section tipped Dun Belle recently (which seemed to me to be a message to the _cognoscenti_), leading to a depletion of my disposable income that week. 2. Runegg <Runegg@aol.com wrote

Here's a short Yeats poem.. Poor Willie, spent his whole life trapped in unrequited love for Maud Gonne... I hope there were "others", as he says, or else he doomed himself.

A Deep-Sworn Vow

Others because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;

Yes, there were quite a few "others". The first seems to have been Olivia Shakespear, when Yeats was 31. According to Samuel Levenson's biography of Maud Gonne, "Olivia was everything a man could want in a woman. But Yeats's nervous excitement was so great during her first two visits that he was impotent". He felt it was "best to sit over out tea and talk". (Maybe he had been indulging in that "temperance tea" that Mr Hopkins of this list found so enervating). Anyway, as Yeats put it, "My nervousness did not return again and we had many happy days." So that's alright then, although he did remain obsessed with Maud and I have a hunch that it was not quite unrequited. Martin C. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . Listen, this is pish, I think I'll leave -----------------------------------------------------------------------