In the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty of your lord,  I was in London, yes, the one in England.  ‘And just what were you doing there, Bill?'  you ask.    I went to visit the queen like in all the nursery pomes.  Well, no actually the queen ignored me entirely.  I was there to sing with our local symphony chorus at Westminster Abbey.   We sang Mendelssohn’s Oratorio, Elijah.  (An oratorio is like an opera in which nothing happens except a whole gang of throats sing at you for a really long time.)  Anyway we were damn good. And some people even bought tickets; how about that!

I am not telling you about it to brag.  (though I enjoy a bit of puffery now and then)  I am telling you cause I learned about Elijah and his contest with the high pondoos of rival gods.  There were plenty of rivals in those days. My favorite, Baal, was there along with a fleet of forrest gods and mountain deities.      It seems the land was thirsty and barren of crops and they were on molding hay rations for a while.  So for the main event, Elijah holds an ox burning contest  to see whose god is chief god. They gathered, the pondoos gathered, to pray for rain but none of them got any action.  So Elijah prayed again, harder, then sent a little boy up a tree or a mountain for report.     Well, that little boy squinted his eyes hard as he could but reports, “There is nothing.”  That goes on for several verses but then he says, “A little cloud ariseth now.”    Well as you can imagine Elijah gets all excited and settles for the little cloud and claims he won the contest.   At least that is the way I remember the oratorio.  A lot of great music but a crappy story.  Don't blame Mendelssohn,  the story is by a god.  

Now if had written the thing, Elijah would have Merlin on hand for the job.   And Merlin wouldn't go about muttering at the sky or even bother to char up their last scrawny ox.  Merlin would simply pass his arm (either one) about  and WHAMO, thunder, lightning, FLASH FLOOD TIME!  Well, yes, whatever crops were on hand get drowned and so does everyone except Noah and his remaining livestock, a pair of fleas.  Too bad but Elijah didn’t specify how much rain he wanted so he and his twin sister Sara Palin get drowned along with every damn thing ‘cept as I told above, the Noah family.  For the finale, Merlin swims away, amused.     

So one can learn a lot from high-toned culture, I did.