As always here at Balladeer’s Blog, Christmas time all the way through Twelfth Night are when I make blog posts about Charlemagne and his Paladins. (The figures of legend, not the historical Charlemagne.) In old traditions Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the new Holy Roman Empire by the Pope on Christmas Day, hence the reason that tales of Charlemagne are often associated with the Yuletide holiday. (In real life Charlemagne was crowned Emperor a few months later.) FOR MY FIRST CHAPTER ON CHARLEMAGNE’S PALADINS CLICK HERE
LOTHAIR AND BENES – This story takes place much earlier than most of my previously covered Tales of Charlemagne. Lothair (in real life the grandson of Charlemagne) was, according to legend, the Emperor’s oldest son. Lothair was brave and virtuous, unlike Charlemagne’s scheming and treacherous son Charlot.
Of late the Emperor was stewing over the way that Duke Benes had provided no men for Charlemagne’s most recent military campaigns against the Muslim colonialists in Spain, nor had he provided money. Neither had he acknowledged the Emperor’s authority over him by any shows of courtesy.
At first Charlemagne furiously planned to march on Duke Benes’ city of Aygremont and take the city. Then he would hang Benes, kill his son Maugris the Enchanter and burn his wife alive. Duke Naymes, one of the Emperor’s Paladins, talked Charlemagne into giving peace a chance by merely sending a hundred Paladins to Aygremont in order to convey the Emperor’s wish that he submit to an order and show his allegiance. Continue reading
The previous 49 installments of Fool Killer lore have seen the neglected folk figure in a variety of roles: 
PART FORTY-NINE: Some of the Fool Killer’s targets in the September of 1911 issue of James Larkin Pearson’s Fool-Killer publication: 
Yes, it’s another Top 20 for 2020 list! And it’s another one about failed predictions, this time from alleged psychics of long, long ago instead of the recent past. As always these bogus predictions are fun from a Flash Fiction angle.
*** The reign of the final Pope ever will come to a close in 2013. Since that is obviously wrong, these other predictions about O’Morgain’s Final Popes are wrong as well. 
Labor Day weekend is the appropriate time to post this look at neglected working class folk hero Joe Magarac. This figure was the Steel Mill equivalent of Paul Bunyan and John Henry. 
As a lame play on words since this is Labor Day season I’ll present Joe Magarac’s origin and then depict his tales as “Labors” like in The Labors of Hercules. 
PART FORTY-EIGHT: Some of the Fool Killer’s targets in the July 1911 issue of James Larkin Pearson’s publication – 
PART FORTY-SEVEN – Among the Fool Killer’s targets in the June of 1911 issue of James Larkin Pearson’s publication: 
For the most part the silly conspiracy theories about the establishment of the United States are good only for laughs. One of my favorites, however, features a speech from a mysterious figure usually associated with Freemasons, Rosicrucians and/or the Bavarian Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt. 
“They (the British) may stretch our necks on all the gibbets in the land. They may turn every rock into a scaffold, every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die!” 
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