The Nine Muses: Part 1

Matriarchy versus Patriarchy (22)

Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Epoch of Weimar Beer-Belly Culture in Germany, by Hannah Höch, 1919

The Greek Nine Muses are

• Calliope (epic poetry)

• Clio (history)

• Polyhymnia (hymn)

• Euterpe (flute)

• Terpsichore (light verse and dance)

• Erato (lyric choral poetry)

• Melpomene (tragedy)

• Thalia (comedy)

• Urania (astronomy, astrology, and space)

There’s a certain similarity to the Nine Arts, which should begin with oral storytelling and ends with comics – the ninth art, according to the French. Ultimately the Muses overlap, merging into one another. Arguably, it’s a useful way the Greeks had of cataloguing and recording their inspirations from the Goddesses of the Other World.

But Science doesn’t acknowledge one Muse, never mind Nine. It would deny the premise that any Muse can be an autonomous psychic entity, with her own agenda, endowing and inspiring the artist, yet entirely separate to them. Any evidence to that effect is ignored and has no place in our supposedly enlightened world.

But the Nine Muses, those Nine Goddesses, motivated an artistic anti-war movement during World War One.

They are worth recording because currently the State seems hell-bent on starting World War Three.

UK should 'actively prepare' for WAR on British soil amid Russia, Iran and North Korea threat, ministers are warned - as new national security strategy sets out China 'challenge' . Daily Mail headline 24 June 2025

At the beginning of the Great War, most of the famous writers we know from that period sold out and are on record as covert assets of the British secret service, using their writing talents to produce pro-war propaganda. Invariably lies rather than the Truth, rather like the Mail headline above.

Only George Bernard Shaw resisted. He advised British and German soldiers that they should shoot their officers and go home.

He was punished by being cancelled, until he came to heel. Then he sold out in the most craven way possible, dining with General Haig, singing his praises and enthusiastically endorsing the war.

The State encourages similar assets today. Thus Great War historian Niall Ferguson (‘The Pity of War’) recently teamed up with a wanted war criminal to write an article for The Times urging Trump to bomb Iran.

In the era of the Great War, the Nine Muses inspired some mainly unrecognised and anonymous artists with the Truth and an anti-war attitude that is largely unrecorded and unrecognised today, because knowledge of it has been provably suppressed by the State.

Why would they do that? Because it’s the threat of a good example, of a valuable role model and inspiration for soldiers and civilians at a time of impending war. It’s a threat that the State provably still takes extremely seriously.

The anti-war attitude or movement might loosely be described as Dada or Dada-influenced, even though many of the artists I’m going to quote would never have heard of Dada. But it’s a remarkably similar mind-set. The Dada movement itself hated labelling, including its own identification. Today we might call it Punk, although even that term has passed its sell-by date. Dada arose in the course of the Great War and because of it. This movement against war was far wider than the Cabaret Voltaire in Switzerland, birthplace of Dada in 1916.

The movement’s definition is a love of Truth, a cynicism, a subversion and a need to express anger at the deliberate mass slaughter of a generation. Along with a rejection of elitism and the snobbery that still pervades the arts. They expressed themselves artistically, often unconsciously, in such a way that they didn’t end up behind bars or in front of a firing squad. The Nine Muses inspire artists, not martyrs.

Here are the artists I’ve found, some are known but many are anonymous.

CALLIOPE: POETRY

I often quote a cartoon by Reading in Punch magazine as two soldiers go over the top. One soldier says to the other, ‘I shouldn’t really be here. I don’t write poetry.’

It confirms just how far the middle-classes have made WW1 poetry a subject for A level education, rather than a challenge to the State.

But distinguished anti-war poet Sassoon did challenge the State. He made his courageous Soldier’s Statement saying the war was a corrupt and revolting lie. But because he came from a mega-rich family, their wealth and the wealth of the British Empire itself based on the Sassoons selling opium to China, he was spared the firing squad and sent to a comfortable, upper-class mental asylum instead.

Yet, powerful and brilliant as his anti-war poems are, I was far more moved by the letters home of ordinary soldiers. They often had me in tears and were the inspiration for my anti-war series Charley’s War (translated into five different languages and still selling well today in regular new editions a lifetime after it was originally published).

If a definition of poetry is to create an emotional response in the reader, then these ordinary soldiers should be remembered as poets and be included in the A level syllabus. Working class lads given the same status and remembered alongside the literary elites.

Here is such a ‘poem’. I’ve named it, ‘Bert would not like it.’ The author is unknown.

There are times out here when we would rather be gone than put up with conditions… when the Germans are bombarding and the boys get knock over one by one and can’t hit back… The boys come along crying like children and shaking like old men still the shells burst in the air… and if a man is not thinking then ‘bing’ go a bullet maybe catch that man. And when you are not fighting you are working and it just seems you will get the dirt. But never mind, dear girlie, you are far braver than us for you have to take what is given… If we go under we are gone. .. Don’t let it spoil your Christmas for it won’t do no good for Bert would not like it.’

Back in the 1980s, I put this point passionately to my next-door neighbour, a Cambridge Don with the most impeccable artistic credentials: John Bensusan-Butt, a noted landscape painter and a cousin of Lucien Pissarro who was his artistic mentor.

Back in the 1980s, I put this point passionately to my next-door neighbour, who had the most impeccable artistic credentials: John Bensusan-Butt, a Cambridge Don, noted landscape painter and cousin of Lucien Pissarro.

‘No,’ my neighbour replied equally forcefully, ‘they can’t be considered poetry because they weren’t intended as poetry.’

Thus the elites maintain their vice-like grip on the arts.

But Dada would recognise ‘Bert would not like it’ as poetry. Marcel Duchamp, the driving force of Dada, said that "the word art etymologically means to do", that art means activity of any kind, and that it is our society that creates "purely artificial" distinctions of being an artist.

And so would the Muse. Calliope means 'beautiful-voiced'). She is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice.

The eloquence of ‘Bert would not like it’ is beyond question, even if it was unintentional.

CLIO : HISTORY. Mr George, my history teacher at my college, declared that it was the officers who called Ypres, ‘Wipers’. According to Mr George, the ordinary rank and file didn’t come up with such humorous names because they were too stupid to make them up.

I will prove he is wrong.

‘The Wipers Times’ – a trench newspaper – was written and published by officers and it’s insufferably boring. I seriously considered it as a potential source when I was researching Charley’s War and rejected it. It was deadly. There is none of the Truth, the humour, wit and bawdiness that is to be found in the songs and jokes of the ordinary soldiers. There is no way such songs were written by officers and The Wipers Times is the evidence for it. It was dramatized for BBC TV in 2013 by Oxford-educated Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye. Hislop is extremely witty elsewhere, but his Muse had definitely left the building when he wrote The Wipers Times. I assume he felt kinship with the officer elites and that’s why he wrote it. But it was also dire. It was as flat as a pancake.

By comparison, here is a beautiful and tragic song about Wipers sung by ordinary soldiers in the trenches. The song is set to the tune of "Sing Me to Sleep".

Far, far from Wipers I long to be

Where German snipers can’t get at me

Damp is my dug-out

Cold are my feet

Waiting for whizz-bangs

To send me to sleep

Clio's name is derived from the Greek "to make famous" or "to celebrate"

Those ordinary soldiers who sang ‘Far far from Wipers’ need to be celebrated, not sneered at by snobbish History teachers.

George joins the long list of modern History authors, including Niall Ferguson, who have betrayed the ordinary soldiers of the Great War by denying the Truth.

Known as the Revisionists, obeying the State, they have knowingly twisted the Truth in so many provable ways that extend beyond the reach of this post.

There are three honourable History author exceptions: Adam Hochschild (To End All Wars). And the game changing Hidden History and Prolonging the Agony by Docherty and Macgregor. Despite the State’s provable attempts to suppress them, they are a huge and critical success.

All three exceptions were driven by Clio, the History Muse.

POLYHYMNIA: HYMN

Two hymns were the seditious basis for the WW1 song, Fred Karno’s Army.

Fred Karno was the king of slapstick, the mentor of Charlie Chaplin. And Ragtime – referred to below – was the rock’n’ roll of its days. Teenaged British soldiers in the trenches loved Ragtime because it was hot and sexy. Predictably, their parents hated it. Modern history authors ignore the importance of Ragtime in the Great War – it’s never mentioned. Who cares what music the cannon-fodder were into? Instead, they’re far too busy justifying mass murder by the State.

Here’s the lyrics.

We are Fred Karno’s army,
The Ragtime infantry.
We cannot fight, we cannot shoot,
What bloody use are we?
And when we get to Berlin
We’ll hear the Kaiser say,
Hoch, hoch! Mein Gott, what a bloody rotten lot,
Are the Ragtime infantry.

It was actually sung to the tunes of at least two Church hymns!

Onwards Christian Soldiers and the Church’s One Foundation.

Here are the lyrics of Foundation so you may see how they fit.

The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is his new creation,
By water and the word;
From Heav'n he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.

Fred Karno’s Army was sung sotto voce at Church parade, probably at the back, where the miscreants couldn’t be spotted.

Like kids singing ‘While shepherds washed their socks by night’ during Christmas carols.

There’s no way officers would have devised or encouraged such a challenge to authority. Any soldier caught singing it would have been on a charge.

So it’s a provable tribute to the courage and wit of ordinary soldiers that created them

Another song that would have been sung at Church parade was:

What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer

This was also seditiously and courageously adapted by the ordinary soldiers as follows:

When this lousy war is over, no more soldiering for me,
When I get my civvy clothes on, oh how happy I shall be.
No more church parades on Sunday, no more putting in for leave,
I will miss the Sergeant-Major,
How he’ll miss me, how he’ll grieve.

There are ruder versions. I seem to recall hearing one in the theatre version of Oh, What A Lovely War. Revived for the centenary years, the play was hugely successful, especially with young people, despite the State’s desperate attempts to trash it as ‘irrelevant’.

Pure Dada.

Pure Punk.

Pure Muse.

Next week I’ll look at the following three Muses and how they inspired our forefathers to stick two fingers up to a murderous authority.