The Polymathic Geographer Trivia Quiz

Answer: Scotland

The Second Jacobite Rebellion took place in Scotland in 1745. Charles Edward Stuart's attempt to reclaim the throne of Great Britain, lost by King James II in 1688, met with initial success, but his fortunes waned during the march to London to oust King George II.

"The Skye Boat Song" is a wistful Highland song written by Sir Harold Boulton (1859-1935), well after Charles' final defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Bonny Prince Charlie, as he was known to his followers, fled after the battle. With a large price on his head, legend has it that he ignominiously managed to escape to Skye, and thence to France, dressed as Flora McDonald's maid. The dream of restoring the Catholic Stuarts to the throne of Great Britain was over, and Charles died disgraced and disinherited in Italy in 1788; he lived considerably longer than many of the Highland clansmen whom he seduced to his cause, led to defeat and, in the end, abandoned to their fates.

Answer: France

The quote is from Eric Bogle's fine anti-war song "The Green Fields of France", best performed, in my opinion, by the Eddie and Finbar Furey, the well-known Irish folk band. It was inspired by Bogle's visit to one of the great WWI cemeteries in Northern France. It concludes:

"But here in this graveyard, it's still No-Man's Land,
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand,
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation, who were butchered and damned".

It's hard to listen to it without getting a lump in the throat.

Answer: Ecuador

From the poem "Romance", by W J Turner.

Chimborazo and Cotopaxi are both volcanoes, the former being one of the world's highest, and the latter one of its most beautiful volcanoes, right up there with Mt Fuji in Japan. G'wan, have a look:

http://www.planetecuador.net/images/cotopaxi.jpg

Answer: Burma

From Rudyard Kipling's "Mandalay", in which a British soldier, repatriated to a cold and dreary London after his service abroad, pines for his former life in Burma and the beautiful Burmese girl he left behind.

Kipling's poem referred to the Kyaikthanlan Pagoda; the view from there is reputed to be the most beautiful in Myanmar.

Answer: India

Born in Kashmir in the eleventh century, Bilhani (sometimes known as Chauras) remains popular in India to this day. This fragment is from "Black Marigolds" a part of the "Chauraspanchasika", translated by E Powys Mathers.

Many of you will remember it from John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row", where Doc read it aloud to the company during one of the wildest parties that Cannery Row had seen. They must have had extremely erudite tom-wallagers in Monterey...

Answer: Persia

From Edward FitzGerald's First Edition translation of the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam". A 12th-century Persian poet, philosopher, scientist and tent-maker, Khayyam's philosophy seems to be largely along the lines of "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." No problems with that, Omar!

Answer: Canada

A little more obscure, this one. It comes from "The Spell of the Yukon" by Robert Service.

Robert Service was a Scot who fell in love with the North of Canada, and much of his poetry reflects this; he is sometimes called "The Kipling of The North".

Answer: England

After the Norman conquest in 1066, most "English" literature was written in either French or Latin. Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", written in the 14th century, was probably the first well-known work to be written in English (well, Middle English, at least!)

There are thirty pilgrims travelling to Canterbury. To pass the time, the innkeeper suggests that each pilgrim tell two stories on the way to Canterbury, then two more on the way back. Chaucer uses this device to weave together a number of disparate short stories, which range in style and taste from chivalric and courtly to downright bawdy. The tales expose certain aspects of various professions or vocations which Chaucer felt were rotten or corrupt at the time.

The lines above are the opening lines of the General Prologue to the Tales, in which Chaucer sets the scene and introduces his characters.

Answer: All of these

From "How the Elephant Got Its Trunk", one of the "Just-So Stories" of Rudyard Kipling.

From the clues given, it could be any of the 4 countries. The Limpopo either borders or runs through all of them. The wait-a-bit thorn (so called, because if you get entangled in it, you ain't going anywhere!) is endemic all over Southern Africa.

As for crocodiles, the Limpopo rises in South Africa, where it is known as the Krokodil River, and gets worse as it makes its way to its mouth on the Indian Ocean in Mozambique. The Limpopo forms the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe and the African version of the "wetbacks", fleeing Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe across the river to South Africa, would grimly be able to tell the Elephant's Child what the Crocodile has for dinner: they are not known as the "river sentries" for nothing.

Answer: Australia

Another excellent Eric Bogle anti-war song. It describes the Gallipoli landings in WWI, and how the ANZACs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corp) were cut to ribbons by Turkish forces as they landed on the heavily-defended coast.

"How well I remember that terrible day,
When our blood stained the sand and the water,
And how in that Hell they called Suvla Bay,
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter."

ANZAC Day (April 25th) remains of special significance in both Australia and New Zealand. The campaign also has much significance for Turks - General Kemal, commander of the Turkish forces at Gallipoli, subsequently became known and revered by his people as Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern state of Turkey.

Although British, French, New Zealand, Indian and Turkish troops all fought at Gallipoli, the clues to the nationality of this particular young soldier are given in the last two lines of the quotation.