Don’t bat your Bat Mitzvah out! Bat Around the Tramping Bark or the Barking Knight: A Legend in The Hague of early 20th Century

Don’t bat your Bat Mitzvah out! Bat Around the Tramping Bark or the Barking Knight: A Legend in The Hague of early 20th Century…

-A coming-of-age entry (!) for children (!)-

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Ever heard of a dog drinking water from tram (street car) tracks in The Hague?  This dog is a legend, and it seems that in today’s rushy and hectic life in The Hague, most people do not recall the precious memory of the dog which used to drink water from tram tracks in the early 20^th century. I mean, it is a pity that they do not know much about the history of their own city and about this heroic dog who risked its life in order to save people traveling by trams or crossing streets. The city’s history archives tell you how. The Dutch from The Hague have a very well-organized city archive where you can find an entry for the dog drinking water from tram tracks. Here is how the catalog card looks like: I copied it for you when I visited the city archive in order to see what they registered for our legendary dog.

ENTRY ITEM 3490867589493112-123/Az. 123: The dog drinking water from tram tracks in The Hague… Name: Tramping Bark…some know it by the name of Barking Tramp, some by Trampling Bark, some by the name of Barking Knight: LEGENDARY DOG BORN AND LIVED IN THE HAGUE AROUND 1900-1965. Since a dog cannot live 65 years there must have been two, three or more dogs carrying out the same mission or sharing the same fate in the mentioned period. It is believed that these dogs were relatives.

—lived in the first and partly in the second half of the 20^th century in The Hague (not known exactly in which quarters). It is not known whether there was a single dog or a number of dogs carrying the same “mission” out.

—did not belong to a special race, was simply a street dog.

—had a strange barking way, instead of barking “Bow Bow”, he used to bark “Bowww” “Bowww”. Linguists could not find out up until now, what it means to bark “Bowww”, “Bowww” instead of “Bow Bow”. According to a theory delivered quickly by a Silicon Valley scientist, this dog was a virtual dog belonging to the early World Wide Web universe. This is supposed to be the reason why it barked “Bowww.” It was a messenger. Today, there is an imaginary Web-site devoted to the memory of the “Barking Knight”: see: ? (note that we said it was imaginary).

—it was a nice dog, protected poor people and was always nice to children, particularly to 13-year-old girls,  to the old and to other fellow dogs. And to our astonishment, it used to be a vegetarian. This point is not shared by all researchers working on the history of this legend. Professor Dogmann from the University of Chicago claims that only the sacred cow rights activists believe in this nonsense. He adds that no dog can only eat green grass and survive.

—why it used to drink water from tram tracks is not clear, given the fact that it could have drunken water from elsewhere, but since he used to drink water from tram tracks he could prevent many accidents. We know how. It is scientifically proven that whenever this dog drank water from a tram track, he was able to prevent an accident. It is scientifically proven that if this dog had not drunken water at a given time, and if it had not caused a tram coming through to stop, then there would have been a crash either with a car crossing the next street the tram would pass by, or with another tram; or a man or a woman crossing the next street would have been fatally hit by a tram or by a car for they would not have even noticed that a tram was approaching…

So, the dog drank water at the right time and at the right place from the right part of the long track to which a tram would approach.

Unfortunately, the Legend was hit to death by a tram when its drunken driver did not notice that it was drinking water from the track (although there was a sign yellingly telling: “!!!!! Attention, a Barking Knight is drinking water!!!!!!!!” For, at that time, there were many signs all around the city’s tram tracks like ”A Barking Knight is drinking water”,  “dogs and rush hour historians” believe that there was not just one dog but many dogs carrying the same mission.

But even this fatal accident prevented another serious one. Scientists found out that if this one did not happen, a more serious one would have happened. It is estimated that the Barking Knight or Barking Knights or Tramping Barks must have saved 1.200.000 people from the Hague either traveling in trams or crossing streets, their lives.

–you can visit the commemorative stone for this dog wherever you can imagine that it should be in The Hague. It is an imaginary stone that appears there where you think it should be…visit the stone on the Web:  ?  (note that we said it was imaginary)…

ENTRY ITEM 3490867589493112-123/Az. 123 CONTINUES AS CHAPTER II

There are numerous religious sects that worship this legend. Some Christians sects claim that the “Trampling Bark” was SIMPLY a Messiah (”savior”) IN A SENSE: It embodied the notion of an innocent, divine or semi-divine being who sacrificed himself to save us from the consequences of our own sins and our sinfully negligent existence! By drinking water he brought purity and clearness of water to our lives. See the religious icon of one of the leading sects worshipping the Barking Knight below, which symbolizes the sacrifice of The Barking Knight and railway crossroads:

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Jewish sects denied to take “The Barking Knight” as a Jewish Moshiach and claimed that it was not a great political leader descended from King David (Jeremiah 23:5). They claim that animals could not be political leaders; and the life and services of the Barking Knight  covered only a partial aspect of the city of The Hague. The dog could not be “moshiach ben David” (moshiach, son of David) since a dog could not be well-versed in Jewish law, and observant of its commandments (Isaiah 11:2-5) (given the fact that dogs commit adultery all the time, some ask rhetorically: ”Where the hell do you think the word ‘bitch’ come from?”)  They claim further that the dog could not be a charismatic leader either, inspiring others to follow his example (although the Barking Knight seems to have been smart enough to inspire many other dogs to follow his example). They ask rhetorically (and sarcastically): “How can a dog be a great judge, who makes righteous decisions (Jeremiah 33:15)”? But above all, they claimed, Moshiach had to be a human being, not a god, demi-god or other supernatural being like this dog used to be. But some progressive Jewish Rabbis gave another interpretation to all and claimed that no verse in the Talmud suggested that Moshiach should be a human being. And that no verse meant no verse! “Don’t you be a fool, you unorthodox rat!” was the reply from the previously mentioned interpreters.

But whether and why on earth the Barking Knight used to be so good to 13 years old girls still remains a mystery; and if this is true there must be a Jewish heritage issue at stake here. We know that girls celebrate their Bat Mitzvahs at age 13, along with boys. Is the Barking Knight a coming-of-age dog? Perhaps by planning to become a future subject-matter of a debate around the eligibility of animals as Mesiah, the dog wanted to point out that children too could be Mesiah.   Children are not supposed to be great judges and they are reportedly not so much well-versed (except Baby Jesus who was smart enough to use three of his fingers to make this deficit up!) Still normal children who do not care about the posture of their fingers may not be able to make righteous decisions for, in conflict situations, they go: “You goddam milk sucker!  Get your three fingers out of my sight and go ‘the most preferred four-letter-word’ yourself!” But perhaps the Barking Knight already knew that some children easily learn how to cross their fingers when they have to tell a lie.

Some Islamic-oriented sects believed that there was something strange with the fact that this dog barked every so often as follows: (”Olam Ha/ww-Ba/www) which let a progressive Imam venture to say that this dog was the living characterization of the command of peaceful co-existence of all people. (Isaiah 2:4): Hatred, intolerance and war would cease to exist. The reaction came not so late by an Ismaili philosopher: “Don scribble around on Koran here und there or I’ll make a bloody Kotex from your yucky face.”

Animist oriented people think that this dog was a clear symbol that the laws of nature would change, so that predatory beasts will no longer seek prey, and agriculture will bring forth supernatural abundance (you can find this also in Isaiah 11:6-11:9).

Buddhists and Others, however, say that these statements are merely an allegory for peace and prosperity.

AND Animal protection groups claimed that all this was complete KULTURKAMPF BULLSHIT and one should take care of vagabond dogs in metropolitan areas, protect these poor animals from TRAFFIC accidents and give them shelter. They claim that instead of waiting for Moshiach or Messiah or whatever, we should move our ass to make a better world for us and other creatures living on earth.  BUT: A philosopher (Sofia Hill FROM HARDWHACK UNIVERSITY ON THE WEB) made a subtle point against these animal activists in her most frequently cited article called “Rethinking Anew on Counter-De-reconstructing Anti-Legends, Hey Brother No One Can Debar You” in 7 HARDW SupNat. J. 1 (in: bow.bow.bow.hardwsome.edu, search under ‘not only’): She reads: ”not only a messy world (this is a world that needs Moshiach) but also a world which is too good to be true is a world that deserves Moshiach.”

ANIMAL ACTIVISTS WERE REPORTED TO HAVE ANSWERED: “SO WHAT?”

—please write to the City Archive if you want to know more about this entry. If you know more than what has been already said, please keep it to yourself.

Below is an artistic depiction of the Barking Knight in the Museum of  Erroneously Contemporary Art in The Hague:

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_{“The Barking Knight ”…a century old legend}

_{in the heart of the Hague…}

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DRAWING BY THE HAGUE’S RENOWN ARTIST

VAN DOGGEREL