The Wellerman

If you spend more than fifteen minutes browsing the internet, you are likely to find a video of large, bearded baritones thumping a table while singing an old sea shanty, “The Wellerman.”  It’s a catchy tune, but some of the historical references are obscure.  Obscure historical terms are my métier. 

The lyrics of “Wellerman” first lumbered into writing not in some brine-soaked 1830s logbook, but in the late twentieth century, when New Zealand folk collector Neil Colquhoun wrote down a version he heard from Frank R. Woods of Wairoa—a man who obligingly remembered the song but neglected to remember who wrote it.  This is why the song lives in that legal limbo beloved of folk music, where everything is “traditional,” nobody gets a royalty check, and copyright lawyers begin to sweat.  It might preserve scraps of an older whaling song, or it might be a comparatively modern composition with antique manners; the evidence is as thin as boarding house soup, the paper trail begins suspiciously late, and by the time anyone thought to ask, the author was either dead, fictional, or had wandered off with the sugar, tea, and rum.  As a result, Wellerman remains uncopyrighted in spirit (if not always in performance), floating serenely between the nineteenth century and TikTok, owned by everyone and no one at all.

It is not at all clear whether my quoting one version of the lyrics here is a copyright violation.  With that in mind, let me make it abundantly clear that I am NOT the author of any version of the song (most particularly the one I quote here).  If pressed, I’m not even sure if I am the author of this blog.

“Soon May the Wellerman Come” (usually just shortened to “Wellerman”) is a New Zealand folk song about the shore-whaling world of the early 1800s.  In modern pop culture it’s usually called a sea shanty, but it’s better described as a sea song/ballad (something you sing about maritime life, rather than a strict work-song timed to hauling).  In the age of sail, hauling was rarely a one-person job.  Dozens of sailors would pull together on the same line and timing mattered—everyone had to lean back and pull at the same moment.

That’s where work songs came in. A strict hauling song (a true sea shanty) has a strong, regular beat or call-and-response pattern so the crew knows exactly when to pull.  The shantyman sings a line, the crew answers, and everyone hauls on the beat.  If the timing was off, the work slowed—or someone got hurt.

So, let’s take the song a verse at a time.

There once was a ship that put to sea
The name of the ship was the Billy of Tea
The winds blew up, her bow dipped down
O blow, my bully boys, blow (Huh!)

In New Zealand, the whaling season generally began in late autumn to early winter—around May or June—and ran through spring, or roughly October.  It is therefore the 1830s, and a whaling ship with the highly improbable name “Billy o’ Tea” has put to sea in foul winter weather, crewed by what the song cheerfully calls bully boys—that is, sturdy, high-spirited sailors, with bully meaning “fine” or “excellent,” not men inclined to steal lunch money.  A billy, for those unfamiliar with antipodean slang, is a metal pot used to boil water for tea, which means the vessel’s name translates more or less to “the Teapot.”  If we take the shanty at its word, this is almost certainly a nickname rather than a christened name, as there is no historical evidence for a whaling ship formally registered under anything quite that ridiculous.

After every verse comes the chorus, but I’ll just show it this one time:

Soon may the Wellerman come
To bring us sugar and tea and rum
One day, when the tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go

The chorus shifts the scene from danger to anticipation, as the crew looks shoreward rather than seaward and pins its hopes on the arrival of the Wellerman, the supply agent associated with the Weller brothers’ New Zealand whaling network, sort of an ocean-going grocery store that sold supplies to the whaling ships.  “Soon may the Wellerman come” is less a prediction than a prayer: the men are stuck in the grim, oily business of “tonguing”—the nasty job of cutting blubber into strips for rendering—and morale depends on the promise that, once the gory work is finished, relief will arrive.  The refrain is not a hauling song but a waiting song, sung by men whose work cannot be hurried, only endured, and who know that supplies, not heroics, will decide how tolerable the season becomes.

The promised comforts—sugar, tea, and rum—were not luxuries in the modern sense but psychological necessities in an isolated, freezing, and monotonous world.  Sugar turned bitter tea drinkable, tea itself provided warmth and routine, and rum (usually diluted with water into grog) offered both calories and the temporary forgetfulness of drunken stupor.  These items were small, lightweight, and easily traded, making them ideal shipborne currency, and their mention in the chorus is telling: the crew does not dream of gold or glory, only of sweetened tea, a warm buzz, and a brief return to civilization before the next whale appears offshore.

She'd not been two weeks from shore
When down on her, a right whale bore
The captain called all hands and swore
He'd take that whale in tow (Huh!)

The second verse brings the song abruptly back to business.  Barely “two weeks from shore,” the lookout spots a right whale, the very species whalers most wanted, and the captain immediately commits to the chase.  The verse compresses into a few lines what was, in reality, a carefully choreographed plan of attack: boats lowered, gear readied, orders shouted, and every man was suddenly alert.  There is nothing romantic here—this is a calculated decision driven by economics.  A right whale meant oil, baleen, wages, and justification for the risks already taken by sailing out in winter seas.

Baleen—often misleadingly called whalebone—was the plastic of the nineteenth century, a tough, flexible form of keratin that grew in comb-like plates from the upper jaws of baleen whales such as the right whale.  Light, resilient, and springy, it could be cut, shaped, and bent, making it indispensable for corset stays, hoop skirts, umbrella ribs, buggy whips, and countless everyday goods in an age before synthetics.  By the mid-1800s, high-quality baleen could fetch several dollars per pound—a substantial sum at the time—and on a single large whale the baleen alone might exceed the value of the oil rendered from its blubber.  That economic reality explains why a cry of “right whale!” instantly transformed a cold, miserable season into a moment of grim opportunity: the whale was not just meat and oil, but a floating cargo of the era’s most versatile industrial material.

The choice of a right whale is historically correct.  Right whales were slow-moving, migrated close to shore during the New Zealand winter, and—crucially—tended to float when killed, making them “right” from a whaler’s brutally practical point of view.  For shore-based stations and near-coastal ships, they were ideal prey: large enough to be worth the effort, predictable enough to plan around, and valuable enough to sustain an entire season.  The verse’s casual tone masks a grim reality—once the whale is sighted, the season’s waiting ends, and the real danger begins.   (If this distresses you, it might be comforting to know that no nation currently hunts right whales, they are protected by several international treaties.)

Before the boat had hit the water
The whale's tail came up and caught her
All hands to the side, harpooned and fought her
When she dived down low (Huh!)

This verse cheerfully dispenses with suspense and dives straight into catastrophe: the boats are dropped, the men pull hard, and almost immediately the whale reminds everyone who is in charge by bringing its tail down like an airborne barn door.  In song logic, this happens in about three seconds, which neatly skips the screaming, rowing, and horror that usually preceded such moments.  Historically, this is perfectly plausible—whales did smash boats, flip them, stove them in, and occasionally scatter sailors like loose cutlery—but the verse presents it with the impending horror of a twister approaching a trailer park.  One moment the crew is confident, the next they are airborne, wet, and reconsidering their career choices.  It’s a harsh reminder that in whaling narratives, the whale always gets to land the first punch.

No line was cut, no whale was freed
The Captain's mind was not of greed
But he belonged to the whaleman's creed
She took that ship in tow (Huh!)

The following verse is where the song leaves history and dives into heroic nonsense: despite danger, exhaustion, and every sensible instinct screaming otherwise, no line is cut and the captain absolutely refuses to quit.  In real whaling, cutting the line was a standard survival technique, not an act of cowardice—better to lose a whale than a boat, a crew, or one’s internal organs—but folk songs are written by survivors, not by safety officers.  Here the captain becomes a symbol of stubborn resolve, the sort of man who would rather be dragged to the ends of the earth than admit defeat, while the crew loyally clings on and hopes the line holds.  It’s less a documentary moment than a moral lesson delivered at sea: true grit is measured not by good judgment, but by how long you can ignore it before something expensive breaks.

For forty days, or even more
The line went slack, then tight once more
All boats were lost, there were only four
But still that whale did go (Huh!)

The next verse totally abandons history altogether and plunges into the realm of epic exaggeration, announcing that the struggle lasted “forty days or even more,” which is roughly thirty-nine days longer than any whale, crew, rope, or ship could reasonably tolerate.  Real hunts took hours, sometimes a very bad day, but never a biblical testing period complete with slack lines, taut lines, and the gradual disappearance of boats.  This is folk-song timekeeping at its finest, where endurance replaces chronology and suffering is measured in round numbers.  By the end of the verse the ship is somehow still afloat, most of its boats are gone, and everyone involved has achieved legendary status simply by not drowning—proof that when sailors tell stories, duration expands in direct proportion to discomfort and distance from the nearest bottle of rum.

As far as I've heard, the fight's still on
The line's not cut and the whale's not gone
The Wellerman makes his regular call
To encourage the Captain, crew, and all (Huh!)

The final verse cheerfully waves goodbye to time, logic, and maritime accounting, insisting that the fight is somehow still going on while the Wellerman continues to show up on schedule like a dependable delivery service in the middle of an ongoing disaster.  At this point the whale has become less an animal than a plot device, eternally towing the ship while supplies arrive as if nothing unusual were happening.  Historically, this is nonsense, but narratively, it’s perfect.  The verse turns the whole affair into folklore, where the real struggle is no longer with the whale but with boredom, hunger, and the faint hope that someone will eventually bring tea, sugar, and rum before the song itself finally runs out of breath.

By this point, you are probably comparing Wellerman to Moby-Dick—and it is hard not to.  The song is set in the whaling world of the 1830s, while Melville published his novel in 1851.  Was the song written first?  Probably not, though the evidence is thin enough that no one can prove it either way.  The one certainty is this: listening to Wellerman requires far less of your life than reading Moby-Dick.

Coffee Cans, Pickup Trucks, and the Slow March of Shrinkflation

When I was growing up in Texas, every family had a pickup truck.  Long before I ever had a driver’s license, I knew how to handle “three on the tree,” and I knew that the lug nuts on the driver’s side of Dodge pickups had reverse threads.  I also knew that the glove compartment held a flashlight, and I knew that under the seat you could find a lug wrench, a bumper jack, and—wedged into the seat springs—a coffee can containing a roll of toilet paper.

To be completely honest, that can also contained a handful of napkins and a couple of books of matches.  Every truck had that coffee can.  When my wife and I bought an old ’63 Ford pickup back in 1973, it came with such a can already under the seat.  Hell, the automakers should have made it standard equipment.

So, when my boys—What’s-His-Name and The-Other-One—recently each bought themselves a new pickup, I thought I would send them the essential equipment needed for any proper truck.  Not jumper cables.  Not a tire gauge.  That coffee can.  The rest they can figure out for themselves.

It turns out I can’t.  They don’t make that coffee can anymore!

If we go back to the late 1800s, coffee was sold in whatever quantity you wanted.  The clerk would pull the beans from a wooden barrel, scooping out a pound, and pouring them into a sack.  Some stores roasted and ground the beans for you, or you could take them home and roast them yourself (usually badly).

In 1890, John Arbuckle began selling pre-roasted coffee—Arbuckle’s Ariosa—in paper bags.  It didn’t take long for competitors to follow suit and begin roasting coffee commercially.  There was, however, a problem:  Once roasted, coffee beans immediately begin to lose flavor when exposed to air.

Hills Bros. solved that problem around 1900 by selling coffee in vacuum-sealed one-pound steel cans.  This innovation is widely credited as the beginning of modern coffee packaging and paved the way for the standard one pound can that dominated American grocery shelves for most of the 20th century.  (If you are wondering, Arbuckle—once the largest coffee company in the world—continued selling coffee in paper bags and was eventually eclipsed by competitors.  History is cruel that way.)

And that’s how things stayed for roughly seventy years.  You bought coffee in one-, two-, or three-pound cans, opened them with a key, and when the coffee was gone, the can went to work holding nails, loose change, toy soldiers, marbles, or a roll of toilet paper destined for truck duty.  It is no exaggeration to say there may have been people who drank coffee primarily to acquire that steel can.

Once opened, of course, the freshness of the coffee began an immediate and irreversible decline.  There was no factory-supplied reseal.  People improvised with wax paper, folded cardboard, saucers, rubber bands, or simply left the can open and hoped for the best.  Freshness was… aspirational.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, coffee companies began including free snap-on plastic lids to reseal the cans—an idea most prominently associated with Maxwell House and quickly copied by Folgers and everyone else.  Even now, I would wager that one of those plastic lids is lurking in your kitchen junk drawer.

Then came the inflationary 1970s, when the price of everything rose sharply.  By the end of the decade, the price of coffee had increased by roughly 40 percent, and the bean counters at the coffee companies began to worry.  Would consumers balk at higher prices? Would sticker shock kill sales?

The answer was no.  Coffee is what economists call an inelastic good.  If you are dependent on caffeine, you will buy your morning cup of coffee even if it requires selling your children to pharmaceutical companies for product testing.  Cigarettes, coffee, insulin, and water are all inelastic goods—the quantity demanded doesn’t change much when prices rise.  Consumers might change brands, but they don’t quit.

So… Instead of raising prices too visibly, coffee companies made the one pound can just a little smaller.  Sixteen ounces quietly became fourteen and a half.  Keep the can looking familiar, make it slightly thinner, and hope no one notices.

This kind of thievery—I mean marketing—is called, “shrinkflation”.  Candy bars, cereal boxes, laundry detergent, toilet paper rolls, potato chips—you name it—we got less of it for the same price.  Almost overnight, the half-gallon tub of ice cream was replaced by the 1.5-quart tub.  This is also when advertisers discovered phrases like “convenient size” and “portion control.” (The latter roughly translates to, “we want credit for your self-restraint.”)

The truly ironic part is that coffee wasn’t actually getting more expensive in real terms.  While inflation raised prices, it also raised wages.  Measured in hours worked, coffee became cheaper.  In 1970, a minimum-wage worker needed about 28 minutes of labor to buy a pound of coffee.  In 1980, it took only about 20 minutes.  Shrinkflation was deployed to fight the perception of higher prices, not the reality.

Shrinkflation didn’t stop, of course.  By the mid-1980s, the can had shrunk again, to about 13 ounces, accompanied by cheerful announcements about “packaging efficiency” and “improved roasting.” While roasting technology has improved over the last half-century, those improvements are about consistency and cost control, not about taste.

By the early 1990s, rising steel prices doomed the classic can altogether.  In its place came the 11.5-ounce plastic “Aromaseal” container.  To disguise the smaller size, the plastic was molded with deep finger dents—because who doesn’t remember how impossible it was to pick up a one-pound metal coffee can?

Within a decade, coffee began appearing in “canisters,” meaning cardboard tubes marketed as environmentally friendly.  They are not.  The interior of those canisters is lined with a metallicized aluminum-polymer barrier bonded with industrial adhesive.  They are no more recyclable than the plastic containers they replaced.

Nor is the latest incarnation any better.  Coffee is now commonly sold in 10-ounce foil bags.  It took 130 years, but we’ve come full circle: we’re back to buying coffee in bags, just like John Arbuckle sold.  The difference is that Arbuckle’s bags were paper, while modern “foil bags” are laminated composites—plastic films, metallicized aluminum layers, inner plastic sealants, inks, and adhesives that are chemically bonded

together.  After a century in a landfill, all they’ll get is dirty.

I have a modest proposal.  Let’s go back to the steel one-pound coffee can.  When I eventually tire of using it to store nuts and bolts, I can recycle it—because nothing is more recyclable than steel.  Yes, it will cost more than a 10-ounce bag of coffee.  I don’t mind.

And you don’t even have to give me a plastic lid.  I still have one.

So when my boys ask why their brand-new pickups don’t have that coffee can under the seat, I’m tempted to tell them it’s because modern trucks are more “efficient.”  Lighter.  Streamlined.  Optimized.  All the words we use when something useful quietly disappears.  They’ve got heated seats, backup cameras, and dashboards that look like flight simulators, but they don’t have a place for a roll of toilet paper and a book of matches.  Progress, I suppose.

Should Enema U Football Drop Down a Division?

Every year around this time, as another Enema U football season limps toward its inevitable “rebuilding phase,” a strange idea bubbles up in the minds of Aggie fans everywhere:  Would it make more sense for Enema U to drop down a football division?

Spoiler Alert!  We probably should and we definitely won’t.

For those unfamiliar with the alphabet soup of football:

• FBS stands for the Football Bowl Subdivision: the top tier of college football, where teams dream of playing in fancy bowl games but often just dream of not losing by 50.  Enema U is currently in the FBS.

• FCS stands for the Football Championship Subdivision: the slightly smaller pond where schools can actually win games and compete for actual championships, a concept most Enema U fans have only read about in dusty history books or have seen in documentaries featuring teams not wearing crimson.

•  NIL, or Name, Image, and Likeness: the set of legal rights that now allows college athletes to earn money from endorsements, appearances, and other commercial uses of their personal identity while still retaining their eligibility.  In some cases, they are paid more than the faculty.

Whenever the suggestion of dropping a division is floated, certain reactions follow:  Boosters faint!  Administrators gasp!  And someone inevitably shouts, “We can’t drop divisions!  We beat Fresno State during the Carter administration!”

And yet, here we are—still asking the question… Because deep down inside, in the quiet recesses of the desiccated Aggie heart, we all know something uncomfortable:  Enema U football has almost no actual history of being good at the FBS level.

There.  I said it.  Let the hate mail begin.  As usual, I’ll grade it and return it.

A Brief History of Enema U Football (or, The Desert Is Dry and So Is Our Win Column).  Since Dwight Eisenhower was president, Enema U has had:

• Only two bowl game victories (2017 and 2022, courtesy of Coach Jerry Kill, who must have made a deal with the football gods).

• A 57-year streak without a bowl appearance.

• Multiple seasons that can only be described as “character-building,” “challenging,” or “legally classified as cruel and unusual.”

Let’s put that another way (other than those miraculous wins under Coach Jerry Kill), the last time Enema U won a bowl game, most of today’s students’ grandparents had not yet met.  That’s not hyperbole, I did the math.

Every few years, a new coach arrives and announces a “rebuilding year”—a phrase traditionally uttered by programs that once had something worth rebuilding.  But rebuilding only makes sense when you actually once had a building.  Enema U football, on the other hand, has spent decades rebuilding the same house, using the same bent nails and hoping this time the roof doesn’t fall in.

Are we really “rebuilding”?  Sure, but only in the sense that Sisyphus was rebuilding every time he rolled the boulder back up the hill.

And like Sisyphus, it is unlikely that we are ever going to get that boulder all the way up the hill.  This state simply can’t afford it.  If you look at the top twenty FBS schools, they have something in common:  a large tax base.  For the top twenty schools, there are an average of 1.2 million taxpayers for each FBS school in that state, but for New Mexico, there are only 470,000.  Sadly, the average income in those states is higher than in New Mexico, too.  (To be fair, both Louisiana and Alabama are at the bottom of both categories, too, but let’s face it—those two states are batshit crazy.)

What would happen if the school dropped a division to FCS?  Let’s talk logic, a substance rarely found in college athletics but one we should at least attempt to apply.

Coverage: Please stop laughing at us!  As a FBS team, we make the news when someone makes a joke, such as in 1992 when Sports Illustrated put us on their cover as the worst football team in America. 

But as a FCS team, national coverage would go up, which sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true.  ESPN, desperate for content, loves FCS playoff teams.  And local media loves winners, so Enema U would get real coverage during playoff runs, respect for being competitive, and lot fewer late-night punchlines

Recruiting Base: The desert does not overflow with talent.  Texas produces hundreds of FBS-caliber players every year and California produces even more.  New Mexico produces…somewhere between 8 and 12, and the majority of those sign up at other schools (usually out of state).  Right now, we recruit potential athletes by politely whispering, “Would you like to come to Enema U, lose 8 or 9 games, and spend Thanksgiving being flattened by Auburn for money?”

But in the FCS world?  Suddenly Enema U looks like a recruiting giant, a beacon of opportunity with actual scholarships and a stadium larger than a high school.  We’d finally be the shiny object, not the afterthought.  Our sales pitch to potential players is, “Want to win? Want to be in the playoffs? Want to play meaningful football in November?”

Suddenly, the average 2-star or lower 3-star kid says, “Oh! That sounds like an actual football experience and not a physics demonstration on impact force.”  Transfers also take FCS contenders seriously—especially QBs and skill players looking for tape.

Facilities: Competitive in FCS, modest in FBS.  Aggie Memorial Stadium is respectable, but the support infrastructure—weight rooms, nutrition programs, athletic budgets, and NIL funds—are all on the modest end of the FBS spectrum.  In the FCS, we’d look like a well-resourced, big-time program.  Everything that kills Enema U in FBS becomes a comparative advantage in FCS

Actual Winning: A foreign concept.  In FBS, we measure victory by losing by fewer than three touchdowns or holding an opponent to under 50!  If we were to drop to FCS, Enema U could regularly and consistently win games, making the playoffs most seasons. 

An Enema U team with its current defensive talent, its current offensive flashes, and a slightly simplified system, would likely finish in the top 16–20 teams nationally, putting them squarely in the playoff bracket.  Aggie fans seeing a postseason bracket would faint dead away.

Financial Reality: FCS is cheaper to play.  Enema U football, like the vast majority of college football teams, currently regularly loses money—not because of mismanagement, but because the economics of being a small FBS school in the middle of the desert are inherently ridiculous.

An FBS program requires 85 scholarships, higher-paid coaches, higher travel costs, and higher costs of damn near everything.  By comparison, an FCS program requires only 63 scholarships, fewer assistants, and smaller travel budgets.

Let’s talk about those scholarships for a minute.  Currently, Enema U awards 85 scholarships for a team of 105 players.  We can’t tell how many of those went to players from New Mexico, but in the entire roster, there are only six students from this state.  Let’s be generous and say that 6% of those 85 scholarships went to students from this state.  We have to do some fancy modeling which would take too long to explain, but I guesstimate that if we went to the FCS, 35% of the scholarships would go to New Mexico residents.

In the FCS, Enema U would spend less, lose less, and face fewer teams that treat us like tackling dummies wearing maroon.

So Why Don’t We Do It?  There are several “minor” reasons, such as image and prestige.  Universities hate moving down in division because it feels like giving up.  Among university presidents, regents, and donors—none of them want to answer the question, “Why aren’t you big-time anymore?”

Never mind that we never really were big-time.  Prestige is powerful—especially administrative prestige.  And no university president was ever hired away by a larger university for taking a school down a division.  Since most upper-level administrative jobs are filled following a costly national search, the only reason that most of our recent upper management hires came to the Harvard on the Rio Grande was to polish their resumes and continue moving upward, no administration is likely to admit reality.

But the REAL REASON Enema U will never drop a division is that we can’t afford it.  Even a bad FBS team gets:

• Payouts from being clobbered by SEC schools (blood games)
• TV revenue from Conference USA
• A trickle of College Football Playoff money
• Attention and scheduling opportunities that FCS schools never see

It’s an odd business model, but for a university, LOSING in FBS pays better than winning in FCS.  Once again, I don’t have the space here to show my financial modeling, but by my calculations, while our operating costs would drop dramatically, if Enema U dropped to FCS, the school would lose roughly $4 to $5.5 million per year by dropping to FCS.

The president of the NCAA gets paid over $3 million a year and runs an organization of 600 employees where the average pay is over $150,000 a year.  I guarantee you that chief among their concerns is setting up a system where small schools can’t afford to economize. 

Even if Enema U went 8–3 and made the playoffs.  Even if the fans were happier.  Even if players were safer.  Even if the games were more fun.

Financially, it’s not remotely close.  FBS is a money classification, not a competitive sport classification.

The Black Paintings

Recently, Artnet headlined a story about the “dark paintings” of Goya.  Since I’m obsessed with Goya, I eagerly read the article, only to be disappointed because they only addressed two of the fourteen paintings.  This blog post corrects that egregious error.

The “Black Paintings” is a series of fourteen paintings created by Goya between roughly 1819 and 1823.  They were not painted on canvas originally, but directly on the walls of his private house—a rural villa outside Madrid called Quinta del Sordo (“House of the Deaf Man”).   Goya never intended them for public display (in fact, he never intended for them to be seen at all): they were deeply personal, private, almost confessional. 

Fifty years after his death (around 1873-1874), the murals were removed—rather clumsily—from the walls, were mounted on canvas, and were eventually donated to the Spanish state.  Today they are housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Because of their dark palette, somber mood, grotesque images, and bleak emotional tone, they became known as the “Black Paintings”.

Goya was born in 1746 and had a long, successful career as a court painter, portraitist, and official artist for Spanish royalty.   After the long period of political upheaval in Spain and personal upheaval in Goya’s life—which included war, social turmoil, repression under absolutist rule, the death of his wife, betrayal of liberal hopes—Goya grew increasingly disillusioned.  His optimism faded and was replaced by deep cynicism and a bleak view of humanity.   An artist famous for his satire became increasingly angry and depressed.

In 1819, he bought the rural villa, Quinta del Sordo.  His growing isolation, physical decline, deafness, and emotional despair seem to have catalyzed a radical shift in his art.  The Black Paintings arose out of that isolation—uncommissioned, spontaneous, and deeply personal.  Goya was no longer constrained by having to fulfill courtly commissions, by bowing to public taste, or by valuing opinions of fellow artists.  He painted for himself, trying to exorcise the monsters from within.

The Black Paintings are radically different from the bright, elegant portraits and classical commissions that made Goya famous.  Instead, these paintings are bleak, raw, expressionistic, terrifying images painted with mostly black or dark earth tones—like ochres and grays—minimal color, dramatic use of light and shadow, with an often murky or ambiguous background, giving the viewer the feeling of viewing a nightmare.

Unlike Goya’s usual works, the brushwork uses broad expressive, sometimes thick impasto or even spatula work; with less refined portraiture and more raw distortions, the paintings seem precursors to the later works of Expressionism of the 20^th Century.

It’s easy to see why the Artnet article didn’t attempt to cover all of Goya’s Black Paintings.  Beyond the practical need to keep a short piece from swelling into a full book chapter, the subjects themselves are a minefield: madness, death, despair, horror, fear, cruelty, the savagery of war, betrayal, superstition, rural terrors, demonic apparitions, and grotesque monsters.  Many of the scenes resist any comfortable interpretation, drifting somewhere between half-remembered myth and raw, bone-deep loneliness.

Okay, before we look at the paintings, there are several things you should know in advance.  First, if you click on a picture, you should be able to see a larger image.  Second, Goya did not name any of the paintings—the names were added later by “experts” who knew no more about what the paintings meant than you or I.  And last and most importantly, there is no official interpretation of any of the paintings, if you think I’m wrong in my interpretations, you may be right.  Remember, I’m just a poor dumb ‘ol country boy.

Saturn Devouring His Son.  Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son is the sort of painting you get when an 18th-century Enlightenment intellectual decides he’s officially done with optimism.  Saturn, the mythological Titan who ate his children to avoid being overthrown, is shown here mid-snack with all the grace and charm of a man on a diet caught raiding the fridge at 3 a.m.  His eyes bulge with the intensity of someone who knows this is wrong but also knows he’s too far in to stop.  The chiaroscuro is dramatic, the horror is palpable, and Saturn himself looks like a crossover between a cave troll and a man discovering—too late—that his meal is undercooked.

Art historians often interpret this as Goya meditating on the violence of political power, but one suspects Goya was also muttering “This is what ruling Spain feels like” under his breath.  The savagery is so unfiltered that the painting doubles as a warning label for aspiring tyrants: govern carefully, or you’ll wind up looking like this.  Saturn’s child, meanwhile, has the resigned limpness of someone who didn’t expect to be eaten on a weekday.

Let’s be honest: this painting is the undisputed grandfather of modern horror imagery.  Every metal album cover, every nightmare-fueled canvas, every movie monster that looks like it hasn’t slept since the Reign of Terror owes a debt to Goya’s decision to take classical mythology and strip it of every comforting illusion.  The result is one of the most viscerally unsettling depictions of paternal instinct in all of art—so disturbing that even the Prado hangs it with the air of, “Yes, it’s here.  No, we’re not discussing it further.”

Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat).  This work is basically a corporate retreat gone to hell—literally.  A giant sinister goat presides over a group of witches who look like they came for snacks but stayed for the existential dread.  Everyone in the crowd has the hunched, fatigued posture of people who have spent far too long listening to a PowerPoint presentation about eternal damnation.  The goat, meanwhile, radiates the smug energy of a manager who knows he’s untouchable.

The whole scene is a magnificent mashup of superstition, satire, and “this meeting could have been avoided entirely if Spain weren’t spiritually exhausted.” Goya turns a satanic ritual into a painfully accurate depiction of any large bureaucratic gathering.

On the other hand, it might just be a faculty meeting.

Leocadia.  Leocadia stands wearing what can only be described as the 1820s version of “I’m exhausted, don’t test me.”  Her dark dress and mournful pose give the impression that she has not only buried someone recently, but also her patience, her hopes, and possibly several disappointing men.  She leans against a mound that may be a grave or may simply be an emotional metaphor Goya painted to avoid answering questions.

Her expression captures the mood of a woman who has seen too much, knows too much, and will absolutely spill the tea if pushed.  It’s one of the quieter Black Paintings, but its atmosphere is so thick you could spread it on toast.

Two Old Men.  Here we meet two elderly gentlemen locked in the eternal struggle of one man who wants to talk and another who desperately regrets being within earshot.  The shouting old man appears convinced he is delivering profound wisdom; his companion’s expression suggests he is hearing the same story for the 400th time and is actively planning a murder.

Goya renders the scene with the bone-deep understanding of someone who has been cornered at a party by a talker and never forgot the trauma.  The mood is grim, but also quietly hilarious in its accuracy.

Two Old Men Eating Soup.  This is the culinary sequel nobody requested.  One old man leans over his bowl with the ravenous intensity of someone who hasn’t eaten since Napoleon invaded; the other appears to be staring at the soup as if contemplating the futility of human existence.  Together, they turn a simple meal into a meditation on mortality, discomfort, and whatever was in that broth.

It is one of the most unintentionally funny of the Black Paintings — an unfiltered snapshot of what every cafeteria looks like ten minutes before closing.  Personally, I think the second man is waiting for the poison to work and spare him from the garrulous stories of the first man.

Atropos (The Fates).  The three mythological Fates drift through the air like a morbid girl group touring with themes of destiny, doom, and questionable fashion choices.  One holds scissors to cut the thread of life; another clutches a scroll; a third looks bored, possibly because she’s seen this same tragedy play out repeatedly since the dawn of time.

The painting is beautifully bleak, showing humanity’s helplessness in the cosmic bureaucracy.  Even the prisoner floating with them looks like he’s thinking, “Of course this is happening today.”

Fight with Cudgels.  Two men whack each other with massive clubs while slowly sinking into the earth—an image so apt that modern viewers tend to assume it’s metaphorical even though it wasn’t meant to be.  Their furious expressions suggest they would rather drown than stop hitting one another, which is exactly what they are achieving.

It’s the perfect visual summary of political conflict, Facebook arguments, and 90% of human history.  I think of this painting every time I see a presidential debate.

Men Reading.  This gathering of grim-faced readers looks like a committee attempting to understand a disastrous government report.  Their collective expression is one of dawning horror mixed with a bureaucratic obligation to pretend they understand what they’re reading.

One man leans forward, as if hoping that reading the document again will make it make sense.  Spoiler: it won’t.

Art historians usually assume that the men are politicians reading a newspaper article about themselves.  That would explain the growing look of dismay.

Women Laughing.  Two women mock a third figure (likely a foolish man), and they do it with the unrestrained delight of friends who have gathered specifically for the purpose of mocking someone.  Their laughter is sharp enough to peel paint, and Goya captures the moment with uncanny psychological realism.

It’s the 19th-century version of a viral meme roasting someone who had it coming.

Many art historians believe the painting deals with masturbation, an idea that tells us much more about the art historians than the painting. 

Procession of the Holy Office.  Imagine a religious procession where every participant has realized, halfway through, that their shoes are too small and the sun is too hot.  No one looks happy to be there; even the devout appear to be reconsidering their life choices.

Goya turns what should be a pious parade into a study of exhaustion, discomfort, and the eternal human ability to look deeply annoyed in public.

Goya lost all illusions about the Church after Napoleon invanded Spain.  While the peasants of Spain openly rebelled, the church hierarchy of Spain eagerly accepted the presence of French troops. 

Pilgrimage to San Isidro.  This crowd resembles a 3 a.m. festival gathering: dazed, off balance, somewhat intoxicated, and not entirely sure why they are walking.  The faces range from blissful delirium to confused dread—a perfect snapshot of religious mania or a music festival, depending on your preference.

If you’ve ever left a concert while dehydrated and spiritually uncertain, you’ve lived this painting. 

Judith and Holofernes.  To understand the painting, you must know biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, basically the ancient world’s most dramatic lesson in “don’t underestimate a determined woman.”

Holofernes, an Assyrian general with more ego than sense, besieges Judith’s town.  Judith, a brilliant widow with excellent hair and zero patience, decides she’s had enough.  She sashays into his camp pretending to flirt, and Holofernes — thinking this is going to be the best night of his life — gets so drunk he can’t stand up.  Judith then calmly picks up his own sword, solves the military crisis by removing his head, and strolls back home with it in a bag like she’s returning from the world’s strangest farmer’s market.  The Assyrian army panics, Judith becomes a hero, and Holofernes becomes a cautionary tale about mixing alcohol, arrogance, and underestimating your date.

In the painting, Judith stands triumphantly after decapitating Holofernes, but Goya — classy man that he is—leaves the gore offstage.  Instead, we get Judith holding a sword like someone who has just finished an unpleasant household task, and her maid looking on with the weary expression of a woman who has helped Judith dispose of bodies before.

This is the biblical story retold by someone who has zero interest in glamour and every interest in moral ambiguity.

Asmodea (Asmodeus).  Two airborne figures drift over a barren landscape, pointing toward something ominous.  They look like confused tourists who have taken a wrong turn on a flying bus.  Below them, villagers panic because—well, wouldn’t you?

The painting is eerie, dreamlike, and slightly comedic: hellish dread mixed with mild directional confusion.   This is probably a good time to remind you that Goya did not intend for these paintings to be seen by the public, that he did not name them, nor ever explain them. 

To me, the mountain in the background resembles Gibraltar.  During the Peninsular War while the French had invaded Spain, many Spaniards sought asylum in British Gibraltar.  In the background, we can see the troops of Napoleon.

The Dog.  A tiny dog pokes its head above a vast slope of emptiness, staring upward with the expression of someone who has absolutely no idea what is happening but is certain it isn’t good.  It’s the perfect depiction of anxiety, vulnerability, and the universal canine hope that someone will eventually bring snacks.

Critics have written volumes on its emotional depth; is the dog sinking in quicksand, is the dog looking skyward for divine intervention, does the looming sky intensify the dogs feeling of isolation….

No one knows.  The dog himself probably just wanted attention.