A Welcome Inn

Certainly you are all aware that I am rather fond of bagpipes; a few of you might also gather that one of my favorite poets/essayists, yes, even novelists, is G.K. Chesterton. Well, if you wonder what you get when you combine the two, the result has been, until now, this stanza from "The Ballad of the White Horse":

As mocking such rude revelry,

The dim clan of the Gael

Came like a bad king’s burial-end,

With dismal robes that drop and rend

And demon pipes that wail—

That is to say, perhaps it wasn't the most genial of combinations. Not in Chesterton's poetry, anyway. (P'raps the verse above was just a literary way of saying, "Why don't you just tune 'em already!?" You've got to cut the man some slack on that point; he didn't live to hear SFU.)

However, Chesterton and bagpipes coexist happily, alongside Lives of the Saints, political commentary and other unpredictable apparitions on The Inn at the End of the World, a blog by a Catholic gentleman and piper out of Southern California. I stumbled across the Inn quite by accident last week and found it both comfortable and comforting. Take a look!