Amanda Brown

Hardy wrote The Darkling Thrush on New Year’s Eve, 1900. With the old century – and many of its certainties – at an end, the poem is an eloquent metaphor for Hardy’s anxieties about the new era that was dawning. The poem’s narrator pauses at the edge of a wood at the end of a bleak December day. To him, the desolate landscape seems like the dead century’s body, laid out under the vault of lowering skies. The narrator feels his isolation intensely, very aware that he is sole human being in this winter landscape:

“… all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.”

Then, unexpectedly, a bird sings. The narrator focuses with wonder on the bird and its unconcernedly lovely song. In this, Hardy suggests, there is cause for hope. As we head into the new decade, I wonder whether the natural world still offers us a song of hope. Would Hardy, were he writing today choose to end the poem differently? See what you think. I look forward to your comments and reactions.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

31 December 1900
Thomas Hardy

The next post from me will be in the first week of January, so let me offer my very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!

Dear all,

Having taken on a new role at The Reader Organisation, I will no longer have time to be your Reader-Not-Quite-In-Residence. From tomorrow, my colleague Amanda Brown will step into my slightly scuffed but sweetly smelling shoes, which is lucky for you because she’s very lovely and brilliant and will make a far better job of it than I’ve managed.

I want to say thankyou. Especially to those regular repliers who always have a kind or interesting thing to say, and who have made my short stay a pleasure. But also to those who didn’t see the point, still can’t, deleted all the emails, and would sooner visit Brian Blessed’s left armpit than visit the Books at Bibby blog: thankyou for putting up with me, and I’m sorry I didn’t win you round.

I have enjoyed all of your emails immensely: they were frequently funny, sometimes silly, occasionally outraged, but always, always appreciated!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and that 2010 exceeds even your greatest expectations. 

Mark

Christmas, we can no longer ignore or deny it, is coming. The goose is beginning to look a little on the chubby side. And I’m actually rather excited! I thought I’d begin festivities with John Betjeman and his take on Advent in 1955. Even then, he was worried that the true spirit of Christmas was turning into something far more mercantile and insincere:

We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax.

For Betjeman, the real meaning of Christmas was – understandably – a religious one. And yet, even if you don’t share his faith, there is also a kind of Christmas spirit that is both secular and sincere:

The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much.

Which reminds me of this great bit from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge tells his jovial nephew Fred to keep his ‘Merry Christmas’ and that he can’t understand what he’s so merry about: Christmas had never done him, Fred, any good…

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

Betjeman was in many ways old-fashioned, as a poet and as a man, but in the best and most charming sense of the term. I hope you enjoy his easy style and regular rhymes, which manage at the same time to be merry and mournful, pointed and poignant: rather like the man himself.

Advent 1955

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It’s dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver pale
The world seems travelling into space,
And travelling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound -
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out ‘Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.’

And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards. And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know -
They’d sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much.
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell’d go extremely well.
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax.
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
‘The time draws near the birth of Christ’.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

John Betjeman

Yesterday one of many emails I received was from Karan Evans (Bibby Distribution). Karan writes:

Perhaps for tomorrow you could mention Hans Christian Andersen who had his first book of Fairy Tales published on 1st December 1835. It is also the day Rosa Parks made her famous stance, by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in 1955 and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa believed in teaching people the importance of every individual citizen in a democracy.

A good tale would be The Phoenix Bird by Hans Christian Andersen, the story of the birth of Poetry.

It would indeed. And you can find it online here. But, thinking also about Rosa Parks, I have chosen another Andersen story, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. Like so many of his tales, this is perfect bedtime-story material: it’s simple and vivid on the surface, but reveals, as great children’s stories often do, hidden and fascinating and adult depths. The phrase ‘Oh it’s just the Emperor’s New Clothes’ has become part of our regular conversational currency – usually when talking about modern art - but this is where it was minted. To me, it stresses the importance of thinking for yourself, of not just going along with the crowd, but being brave enough to dissent from received opinion (what the philosopher John Stuart Mill called ‘the tyranny of the majority’). Because that one lone voice is rarely alone, and can soon grow into a roar…

The Emperor’s New Clothes

MANY, many years ago lived an emperor, who thought so much of new clothes that he spent all his money in order to obtain them; his only ambition was to be always well dressed. He did not care for his soldiers, and the theatre did not amuse him; the only thing, in fact, he thought anything of was to drive out and show a new suit of clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day; and as one would say of a king “He is in his cabinet,” so one could say of him, “The emperor is in his dressing-room.”

The great city where he resided was very gay; every day many strangers from all parts of the globe arrived. One day two swindlers came to this city; they made people believe that they were weavers, and declared they could manufacture the finest cloth to be imagined. Their colours and patterns, they said, were not only exceptionally beautiful, but the clothes made of their material possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.

“That must be wonderful cloth,” thought the emperor. “If I were to be dressed in a suit made of this cloth I should be able to find out which men in my empire were unfit for their places, and I could distinguish the clever from the stupid. I must have this cloth woven for me without delay.” And he gave a large sum of money to the swindlers, in advance, that they should set to work without any loss of time. They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but they did nothing whatever on the looms. They asked for the finest silk and the most precious gold-cloth; all they got they did away with, and worked at the empty looms till late at night.

“I should very much like to know how they are getting on with the cloth,” thought the emperor. But he felt rather uneasy when he remembered that he who was not fit for his office could not see it. Personally, he was of opinion that he had nothing to fear, yet he thought it advisable to send somebody else first to see how matters stood. Everybody in the town knew what a remarkable quality the stuff possessed, and all were anxious to see how bad or stupid their neighbours were.

“I shall send my honest old minister to the weavers,” thought the emperor. “He can judge best how the stuff looks, for he is intelligent, and nobody understands his office better than he.”

The good old minister went into the room where the swindlers sat before the empty looms. “Heaven preserve us!” he thought, and opened his eyes wide, “I cannot see anything at all,” but he did not say so. Both swindlers requested him to come near, and asked him if he did not admire the exquisite pattern and the beautiful colours, pointing to the empty looms. The poor old minister tried his very best, but he could see nothing, for there was nothing to be seen. “Oh dear,” he thought, “can I be so stupid? I should never have thought so, and nobody must know it! Is it possible that I am not fit for my office? No, no, I cannot say that I was unable to see the cloth.”

“Now, have you got nothing to say?” said one of the swindlers, while he pretended to be busily weaving.

“Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful,” replied the old minister looking through his glasses. “What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.”

“We are pleased to hear that,” said the two weavers, and described to him the colours and explained the curious pattern. The old minister listened attentively, that he might relate to the emperor what they said; and so he did.

Now the swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms.

Soon afterwards the emperor sent another honest courtier to the weavers to see how they were getting on, and if the cloth was nearly finished. Like the old minister, he looked and looked but could see nothing, as there was nothing to be seen.

“Is it not a beautiful piece of cloth?” asked the two swindlers, showing and explaining the magnificent pattern, which, however, did not exist.

“I am not stupid,” said the man. “It is therefore my good appointment for which I am not fit. It is very strange, but I must not let any one know it;” and he praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. “It is very excellent,” he said to the emperor.

Everybody in the whole town talked about the precious cloth. At last the emperor wished to see it himself, while it was still on the loom. With a number of courtiers, including the two who had already been there, he went to the two clever swindlers, who now worked as hard as they could, but without using any thread.

“Is it not magnificent?” said the two old statesmen who had been there before. “Your Majesty must admire the colours and the pattern.” And then they pointed to the empty looms, for they imagined the others could see the cloth.

“What is this?” thought the emperor, “I do not see anything at all. That is terrible! Am I stupid? Am I unfit to be emperor? That would indeed be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me.”

“Really,” he said, turning to the weavers, “your cloth has our most gracious approval;” and nodding contentedly he looked at the empty loom, for he did not like to say that he saw nothing. All his attendants, who were with him, looked and looked, and although they could not see anything more than the others, they said, like the emperor, “It is very beautiful.” And all advised him to wear the new magnificent clothes at a great procession which was soon to take place. “It is magnificent, beautiful, excellent,” one heard them say; everybody seemed to be delighted, and the emperor appointed the two swindlers “Imperial Court weavers.”

The whole night previous to the day on which the procession was to take place, the swindlers pretended to work, and burned more than sixteen candles. People should see that they were busy to finish the emperor’s new suit. They pretended to take the cloth from the loom, and worked about in the air with big scissors, and sewed with needles without thread, and said at last: “The emperor’s new suit is ready now.”

The emperor and all his barons then came to the hall; the swindlers held their arms up as if they held something in their hands and said: “These are the trousers!” “This is the coat!” and “Here is the cloak!” and so on. “They are all as light as a cobweb, and one must feel as if one had nothing at all upon the body; but that is just the beauty of them.”

“Indeed!” said all the courtiers; but they could not see anything, for there was nothing to be seen.

“Does it please your Majesty now to graciously undress,” said the swindlers, “that we may assist your Majesty in putting on the new suit before the large looking-glass?”

The emperor undressed, and the swindlers pretended to put the new suit upon him, one piece after another; and the emperor looked at himself in the glass from every side.

“How well they look! How well they fit!” said all. “What a beautiful pattern! What fine colours! That is a magnificent suit of clothes!”

The master of the ceremonies announced that the bearers of the canopy, which was to be carried in the procession, were ready.

“I am ready,” said the emperor. “Does not my suit fit me marvellously?” Then he turned once more to the looking-glass, that people should think he admired his garments.

The chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stretched their hands to the ground as if they lifted up a train, and pretended to hold something in their hands; they did not like people to know that they could not see anything.

The emperor marched in the procession under the beautiful canopy, and all who saw him in the street and out of the windows exclaimed: “Indeed, the emperor’s new suit is incomparable! What a long train he has! How well it fits him!” Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing, for then he would have been unfit for his office or too stupid. Never emperor’s clothes were more admired.

“But he has nothing on at all,” said a little child at last. “Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child,” said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. “But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, “Now I must bear up to the end.” And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.

– THE END –

Yes, today is the day of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland (and Greece, Romania and Russia, apparently). Last week I put out a call for suitably Scottish suggestions and got a good response so thank you. I’ve decided to do a kind of McMedley. This first poem, which I really like, was sent by Nicola Powell, Depot Manager for Bibby Distribution, who says it was a favourite from her childhood. See how much you can decipher without looking at the ‘meanings of unusual words’ list below. Now, just what is a Puddock?

The Puddock

A Puddock sat by the lochan’s brim,
An’ he thocht there was never a puddock like him.
He sat on his hurdies, he waggled his legs,
An’ cockit his heid as he glowered throu’ the seggs
The bigsy wee cratur’ was feelin’ that prood,
He gapit his mou’ an’ he croakit oot lood
“Gin ye’d a’ like tae see a richt puddock,” quo’ he,
“Ye’ll never, I’ll sweer, get a better nor me.
I’ve fem’lies an’ wives an’ a weel-plenished hame,
Wi’ drink for my thrapple an’ meat for my wame.
The lasses aye thocht me a fine strappin’ chiel,
An’ I ken I’m a rale bonny singer as weel.
I’m nae gaun tae blaw, but the truth I maun tell-
I believe I’m the verra MacPuddock himsel’.”

A heron was hungry an’ needin’ tae sup,
Sae he nabbit th’ puddock and gollup’t him up;
Syne ‘runkled his feathers: “A peer thing,” quo’ he,
“But-puddocks is nae as fat as they eesed tae be.”

 J. M. Caie

Meaning of unusual words:

puddock = frog
hurdies = buttocks
seggs = yellow iris
gapit = gaped open
gin = if
thrapple = throat
wame = stomach
chiel = child
blaw = boast
nabbit = grabbed
syne = afterwards
peer = poor

Three recommended reads, now, kindly sent in by Joe McLeod (Bibby Offshore):

The Christian Watt papers, edited by David Fraser. ‘It’s a diary by a 19th century woman from my hometown of Fraserburgh. She was from fisher folk and suffered multiple bereavements of her husband and several sons lost at sea. She then suffered long periods of mental illness and was sectioned. She was well educated and the diaries came as a way of therapy. There has been a stage play made from the book. Grim, yes, but despite what she went through, she survived to 90+ years and the story is heart-stirring stuff. Written in the local Doric language so “ye micht nae ken fit she’s spikin’ aboot”.’

Hotel World by Ali Smith. ‘Spooky goings-on in an Edinburgh hotel. Ali is from Inverness.’

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. ‘It’s part of a series of books which are regarded as classics in this part of the world and was required reading when I was at school. He’s long deid.’

Irvine Welsh fan Calum Williamson, Business Manger for Bibby Factors Scotland, has chosen this powerful speech from Trainspotting. The novel, a modern Scottish classic, was made into a Danny Boyle film in 1996 which helped launch the career of Ewan McGregor. Some swearing in this, and as Calum warns it might be a bit strong for some people, so please don’t read if you’re going to get cross (and certainly don’t watch the film!).

from Trainspotting

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.

Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends.

Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got heroin?

Irvine Welsh 

Wow. Well, after that I think we need an injection (ahem) of silliness. Luckily, Gerry McKenna from Bibby Ship Management has sent me this. After three… one, two, three!

Donald, Where’s Yer Troosers?

Just got in from the Isle of Skye
I’m not very big and I’m awfully shy
The ladies shout as I go by
Donald where’s your troosers?

Chorus:

Let the winds blow high,
Let the winds blow low,
Down the street in my kilt I go
And all the ladies say hello
Donald where’s your troosers?

A lady took me to a ball
And it was slippery in the hall
I was afraid that I would fall
‘Cause I didn’t have on my troosers

Chorus

They’d like to wed me everyone
Just let them catch me if they can
You canna put the brakes on a highland man
Who doesn’t like wearing troosers.

Chorus

To wear the kilt is my delight,
It isn’t wrong, I know it’s right.
The highlanders would get afright
If they saw me in my troosers.

Chorus

Well I caught a cold and me nose was raw
I had no handkerchief at all
So I hiked up my kilt and I gave it a blow,
Now you can’t do that with troosers.

Chorus

When the Tay Railway Bridge - spanning the Firth of Tay between Dundee and Wormit - collapsed during a storm in 1879 while a train was crossing it, more than seventy people lost their lives. Almost as famous as the incident, however, is the spectacularly bad poem written to commemorate it by William Topaz McGonagall, which has become recognised as an unintentional comic masterpiece. It is recommended by Mark Brown, Client Manager for Bibby Factors Scotland, who gets it spot on when he describes McGonagall’s poetry as “perversely enjoyable”. Sometimes, all you can do is laugh, especially when he quite seriously tries to rhyme ‘Edinburgh’ with ‘felt no sorrow’…

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

‘Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say -
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and…

No! No more! I’m afraid that’s all I can bear. You can read the full version, if you dare, and a very interesting account of the Tay Bridge Disaster, here.

In 1783 the Scotsman James Boswell convinced his larger-than-life English friend Samuel Johnson (writer and compiler of the first English Dictionary [played by Robbie Coltrane in that episode of Blackadder the Third]) to accompany him on a tour through the highlands and western islands of Scotland. Here are a few extracts from the journal Boswell kept of their journey…

Thursday, 26th August
In the afternoon, we drove over the very heath where Macbeth met the witches, according to tradition. Dr Johnson again solemnly repeated
    ’”How far is’t called to Fores? What are these,
    So wither’d, and so wild in their attire
    That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth.
    And yet are on’t “‘

He repeated a good deal more of Macbeth. His recitation was grand and affecting, and, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, had no more tone than it should have: it was the better for it. He then parodied the ‘All-hail’ of the witches to Macbeth, addressing himself to me. I had purchased some land called Dalblair; and, as in Scotland it is customary to distinguish landed men by the name of their estates, I had thus two titles, Dalblair and Young Auchinleck. So my friend, in imitation of

      All hail Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!

condescended to amuse himself with uttering

      All hail Dalblair! hail to thee, Laird of Auchinleck!

We got to Fores at night, and found an admirable inn, in which Dr Johnson was pleased to meet with a landlord who styled himself ‘Wine-Cooper, from London’.

Monday, 30th August
When we had advanced a good way by the side of Lochness, I perceived a little hut, with an old looking woman at the door of it. I thought here might be a scene that would amuse Dr Johnson: so I mentioned it to him. ‘Let’s go in,’ said he. We dismounted, and we and our guides entered the hut. It was a wretched little hovel of earth only, I think, and for a window had only a small hole, which was stopped with a piece of turf, that was taken out occasionally to let in light. In the middle of the room or space which we entered, was a fire of peat, the smoke going out at a hole in the roof. She had a pot upon it, with goat’s flesh, boiling. There was at one end under the same roof, but divided by a kind of partition made of wattles, a pen or fold in which we saw a good many kids.

Dr Johnson was curious to know where she slept. I asked one of the guides, who questioned her in Erse. She answered with a tone of emotion, saying (as he told us) she was afraid we wanted to go to bed to her. This coquetry, or whatever it may be called, of so wretched a being, was truly ludicrous. Dr Johnson and I afterwards were merry upon it. I said, it was he who alarmed the poor woman’s virtue. ‘No, sir,’ said he, ’she’ll say, ‘”There came a wicked young fellow, a wild dog, who I believe would have ravished me, had there not been with him a grave old gentleman, who repressed him: but when he gets out of the sight of his tutor, I’ll warrant you he’ll spare no woman he meets, young or old.”‘ ‘No, sir,’ I replied, ’she’ll say, “There was a terrible ruffian who would have forced me, had it not been for a civil decent young man who, I take it, was an angel sent from heaven to protect me.”‘

The woman’s name was Fraser; so was her husband’s. He was a man of eighty. Mr Fraser of Balnain allows him to live in this hut, and keep sixty goats, for taking care of his woods, where he then was. They had five children, the eldest only thirteen. Two were gone to Inverness to buy meal; the rest were looking after the goats. This contented family had four stacks of barley, twenty-four sheaves in each. They had a few fowls. We were informed that they lived all the spring without meal, upon milk and curds and whey alone. What they get for their goats, kids, and fowls, maintains them during the rest of the year.

She asked us to sit down and take a dram. I saw one chair. She said she was as happy as any woman in Scotland. She could hardly speak any English except a few detached words. Dr Johnson was pleased at seeing, for the first time, such a state of human life. She asked for snuff. It is her luxury, and she uses a great deal. We had none; but gave her six pence a piece. She then brought out her whisky bottle. I tasted it; as did Joseph and our guides: so I gave her sixpence more. She sent us away with many prayers in Erse.

Wednesday, 1st September
A red coat of the 15th regiment, whether officer, or only serjeant, I could not be sure, came to the house, in his way to the mountains to shoot deer, which it seems the Laird of Glenmorison does not hinder any body to do. Few, indeed, can do them harm. We had him to breakfast with us. We got away about eight. M’Queen walked some miles to give us a convoy. He had, in 1745, joined the Highland army at Fort Augustus, and continued in it till after the battle of Culloden. As he narrated the particulars of that ill-advised, but brave attempt, I could not refrain from tears. There is a certain association of ideas in my mind upon that subject, by which I am strongly affected. The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe; will stir my blood, and fill me with a mixture of melancholy and respect for courage; with pity for an unfortunate and superstitious regard for antiquity, and thoughtless inclination for war; in short, with a crowd of sensations with which sober rationality has nothing to do.

We passed through Glensheal, with prodigious mountains on each side. We saw where the battle was fought in the year 1719; Dr Johnson owned he was now in a scene of as wild nature as he could see; but he corrected me sometimes in my inaccurate observations. ‘There,’ said I, ‘is a mountain like a cone.’ JOHNSON: ‘No, sir. It would be called so in a book; and when a man comes to look at it, he sees it is not so. It is indeed pointed at the top; but one side of it is larger than the other.’ Another mountain I called immense. JOHNSON: ‘No; it is no more than a considerable protuberance!’

James Boswell

Which leads us nicely to the final destination of our tour. This poem is by the Edinburgh-born novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894), author of Kinapped, Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I hope you like it, and that your St. Andrew’s Day, whether saintly or sinful, above or below Hadrian’s bricks and mortar, is a brilliant one.

In the Highlands

IN the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
      And the young fair maidens
      Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
And for ever in the hill-recesses
      Her more lovely music
      Broods and dies–

O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
      And the low green meadows
      Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
      Lo, the valley hollow
      Lamp-bestarr’d!

O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
      Through the trance of silence,
      Quiet breath!
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
      Only winds and rivers,
      Life and death.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) said simple things in strange ways and so made them seem fabulous. The first few lines of this, ‘The Windhover’, one of his best known poems, are almost a tongue-twister. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what in the name of Christ (ho ho) he’s trying to say: I’ve written a summary below, but for now just have fun reading it aloud!

The Windhover

(to Christ our Lord)

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
   dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
   Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
   As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
   Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
   Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
   Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

To summarise, in case it proves impenetrable on a first reading, Hopkins describes seeing a falcon (‘morning’s minion’, the ‘dauphin’ or crown-prince of daylight) drawn by the dawn’s dappled light and hovering high and steady in the air, as if gallantly riding an unseen horse. Then, suddenly, the falcon performs an impressive sweep and glide, whereupon “Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here / Buckle!” – that is, all of these individual attributes melt and merge into the same thing: a kind of lovely, dangerous fire.

But, he claims in the last stanza, there is no wonder in such beauty: it’s everywhere. Even a plodding plough shines as it cuts through the earth (“sillion”); and even unpromising “blue-bleak embers” can fall, break open, and reveal a burning gold-vermillion centre. That’s a very basic summary – not to mention the allusions Hopkins is making to Christ, as his dedication implies – but it’s the language that really makes this poem fly.

“The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”

Who thought bird-watching could be so exciting?!

Last week NASA announced that its mission to smash a rocket into a large crater at the lunar south pole, hoping to kick up ice, had been a success. There’s water on the Moon. And not just a bit: “significant amounts”. Scientists who studied the data say instruments trained on the impact plume saw “copious quantities” of water-ice and water vapour.

Last week also, Stephen Vorley from Bibby Offshore sent me a poem, ‘Space’, written by his ten-year-old daughter, Maria, and for which she was awarded a Certificate of Merit by Young Writers. (Congratulations to Maria!) Beneath its humour and fun rhymes, I love the curiosity, the sense of trying to work out your own position in the universe (‘Space is a place where there is a human race / There is a girl who lives in the human race’). And, as her Dad points out, Mars sounds particularly attractive…

Thinking of a poem to link these two things together – and thinking too of Carl Sagan’s spine-tingling line, “We are how the universe comes to know itself” – I can do no better than Ted Hughes’s ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’. Enjoy it, and if you have time, leave a comment and tell me your own thoughts.

Space

Space is a place where there is a human race
There is a girl who lives in the human race
She has a pace
She leaves a trace
But I am always on her case

Mars has lots of stars  
And has lots of bars
When you look at the stars
You might think it is Mars

Pluto is a planet
Which is made of granite
Mercury is also made of granite
So are all the other planets

Maria Vorley

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark
and the clank of a bucket –
And you listening.
A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there,
looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath –
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.

‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’

The moon has stepped back like an artist
gazing amazed at a work

That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes

Prompted by the Auden limerick in last week’s email, John Stephens from Bibby Factors Slough sent me this. He says it may jog a few sober memories… 

‘Twas an evening in November, as I very well remember,
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride.
But my knees were all a flutter and I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Yes, I lay there in the gutter thinking thoughts I could not utter,
When a colleen passing by did softly say:
“You can tell a man who boozes, by the company he chooses” -
And the pig got up and slowly walked away!

Original lyrics by Benjamin Hapgood Burt

I don’t know about you, but seeing old photographs, while often funny and sometimes fascinating, always makes me feel sad. My Grandad as a ten-year-old boy, his whole life undecided, a look of profound mischief on his early, unworn face… My Mum’s twenty-first birthday party, lots of laughing, everything somehow more simple… Holiday snaps from childhood… Even quite recent, digital images. How much things change in just a few years.

Photography is a way of trying to stop time, to cheat the universe and trap a moment, like butterfly-hunters preserving their specimens in formaldehyde. It’s a King Canute-like protest against the in-coming tide of forever. But photographs themselves only emphasize how life hasn’t frozen, but has carried on, is getting further and further away from that  moment every second, minute, year…

Such is the subject of today’s poem, a favourite of mine, by Philip Larkin, another favourite of mine. In it, the speaker is finally, after much asking, allowed to look at the photograph album of ’a young lady’…

Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album

At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose –
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) –
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I’d say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall’s-Distemper boards,

But shows the cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being you; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won’t call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you’d spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

Philip Larkin

To mark Remembrance Day, this poem has been recommended by another Mark: Mark Brown from Bibby Factors Scotland. It is ’Dulce et Decorum Est’ by the poet-soldier Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918). Mark calls it ‘undoubtedly the greatest poem of the First World War’. I agree. It was also one of the first poems I did at school that really made me take notice and realise that poetry wasn’t all the silly-flowery-girly-love nonsense I had previously suspected it to be. Owen’s brutally realistic depiction of a gas attack on a group of soldiers already ‘blood-shod’ and ‘drunk with fatigue’ has lost none of its power nearly a hundred years later.

And yet, for all its vivid horror, this is a poem in which I take much pleasure: pleasure in the sense of something well done and fittingly achieved. From out of the chaos and death and destruction, Owen created something ordered, something lasting, something worthwhile. There was no reason in what was happening, so he at least made it rhyme: he made it into music, and so, in some small way, made it more bearable.

(The Latin line ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ comes from the Roman poet Horace and translates as: ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’. It was well known and often quoted at the time. ‘Five-Nines’ were 5.9 calibre explosive shells.)

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen