Ash Wednesday

Have you seen many 'dirty' foreheads today? Christians of the western liturgical churches are having ashes rubbed on their foreheads in the sign of the cross. Why?

Our online reference collection of 587 titles in Credo makes it a cinch to find the answer.

A search for 'ash wednesday' retrieved 235 entries. The left side bar tells you the number of entry types- 69 articles, 52 definitions, 51 events, 32 persons, etc. I wondered how there could be persons referred to by searching for 'ash wednesday'. Skimming through the results, they are poets, authors, actors, politicians, and clergymen who wrote or did something relating to Ash Wednesday.

The children's rhyme "Ring Around the Rosy...ashes, ashes, we all fall down" has been dancing in my head this Ash Wednesday. The poem has nothing to do with the day but it still is sticking in my thoughts. I wondered if Credo Reference would have a literary reference? A straight search for the phrase turned up a wealth of sources but the search engine had pulled individual words from the phrase rather than the whole phrase. A second search with the phrase in quotes only turned up two references. Neither were as informative as Wikipedia, which has 20 footnotes and 5 Reference books cited.

Sometimes you have to use the wild web to get the answer. Just make sure they note their sources!

-kss


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