Wednesday, 15 May 2013

In England's green and pleasant land


The village green

I’m just back from a trip into the future.  Time travel made easy….a train journey to Kent where everything is about two weeks ahead of us, two weeks greener, more in leaf and flower.
A typical English village, a village green, a pub, and a church with a peal of bells, an alien sound to the Scottish ear accustomed to the solitary tone of the Presbyterian summons, yet so pleasing when carried on the warm, evening air. A church with a Norman arch and gargoyles and an ancient yew, what could be more English?
 Unfamiliar yet comfortably familiar to anyone who has read a book through the countless celebrations of English village life from Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and H.E. Bates’ Larkin family to poets such as Clare, Gray, and Hardy.  
 Strange how you only know a place or a time from someone else’s description.

Pink Wood Sorrel
The bluebell woods, English bluebells, wild hyacinths, not the Scottish harebell, were out in profusion.  Ours haven’t a petal to be seen yet. Wood sorrel and ransomes were in bloom and, along the edge of a stream, high up, I saw great clumps of mistletoe but,alas, no golden sickle was to hand.




















Feeling all druidical, we went to Hastings to see the slaying of the Jack in the Green.  A modern take on the old folk custom of releasing the spirit of summer from the Jack, the winter form of the Green Man   After much celebration, the Jack is carried to the dais accompanied by drummers beating out a crescendo and, after the dancers have encircled him, he is slain and the leaves distributed to the crowd so summer can begin     All great fun. but maybe an undercurrent of the Rite of Spring and a more demanding sacrifice in the long ago times.



Jack in the Green
Slaying the Jack




The Morris Men
 Titania & Oberon?




Welcoming the summer, fertility,  warmth and greenery is a universal theme throughout the northern climes.
Mistletoe, morris-men and maypoles.   We're all pagans underneath and it is so much more fun!