Review of ‘The Untethered Space’ by Carol A. Caffrey
Is it possible to find beauty and meaning in life in the aftermath of grief? How do we interact with the too present world when our inner world has fallen apart?
These questions have been explored by artists of all kinds for thousands of years – but I would argue that Carol Caffrey’s pamphlet, written during and after the deaths of all her four siblings within five years, is a beautiful, meaningful and earthy contribution to this, most human, of tasks.
The Untethered Space is a potent mix of writing: elegiac and entertaining – practical and metaphysical. It floats between the spirit and the flesh – and celebrates each. In contrast to and affirmation of the title – many of the poems explore the poet’s strong attachment and belonging to Ireland – where she was born and raised but no longer lives. That longing for a land, the missing of the family home and birth place is made more poignant by the shattering loss of those she shared it with. But there is no self-pity – rather the poet’s close observation and appreciation through deft, musical language of what life gives – the joy, the humour and the devastating significance of everything.
In ‘The Waiting Room’ Caffrey, who is also an accomplished actor, brings her understanding of timing and voice to bear in the final stanza:
“We saw what courage looked like, what grace under
pressure means. It was in that room and in your voice
when, home for the last time, you said that his words were
very hard to hear and at last allowed yourself to cry.”
An aspect of the collection that I found very significant was the political poetry – because when you make connections with suffering in yourself and those you love, you also notice it in the world and understand the grave consequences of political power-play. This is profoundly expressed in ‘Baghdad Echo’ where Caffrey deftly explores the universal outcome of violence – from the point of view of a journalist:
‘The city burns in flames, the naked prisoner in shame.
Insurgent, martyr, brother –
he remarked they bled the same.
He filed his copy in the rubble
of Dublin, Easter nineteen sixteen.”
And in between the beauty and the wide insight – there are poems that cheered me up enormously, including ‘Thoughts from the Treadmill’ in which, combining influences from the canon of history and literature, the poet cries out for salvation from the hyper-fit brigade.
“Let them take their sleek and tanned
perfection home to sterile empty fridges.
They’ll never taste of chocolate but once;
I’ll do so many times before my death.”
The collection is helpfully divided into sections described by Italian musical notation – such as Con Brio, Espressivo and Misterioso. These give the reader a sense of lift into another realm, of travelling with an intriguing and sympathetic companion. I believe readers will be glad of the time they spend in Carol Caffrey’s company – tethered briefly in her mind's space.
The Untethered Space is available from 4WORD Independent Press 4word.org – cost £5.99
Refugee Week – Creative Transformation Writing Exercise
Creative Transformation:
In this creative writing exercise we are going to be allowing ourselves to go into positive, rewarding, uplifting territory.
That doesn’t mean we deny that terrible and horrendous things are going on, and in some cases have happened to us and people and places we love.
It means that we are giving ourselves a place to go where we are in control of what happens. We can make good changes. We can meet out justice.
If we think about all the bad things happening, we feel awful if there is nothing that we can do to help make it stop. But, it is very helpful to give ourselves something in fantasy that we can’t have in reality. This helps us all to think more positively and happily about ourselves and the future.
This technique has been used in fiction from the earliest myths about the Greek gods and the ancient tales in the Arabian Nights – to Roald Dahl in his stories like The Magic Finger (in which selfish people are turned into ducks) – and changing something scary into something ridiculous in JK Rowling’s book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
In the sovereign territory of your imagination, you can make anything happen – you can make anything change. You can use a supernatural force – like the pagan gods or superheroes we have in popular culture today – or you can use prayer or magic.
Or you can just decide that this is how it is going to be.
One of the poems in my sequence Modern Mythic Metamorphoses – ‘In which the hunters mysteriously disappear’ changes the rules so that as soon as a hunter tries to shoot an endangered animal, that hunter transforms into the animal he was trying to kill. This then leads to an increase in animal numbers and an increase in forests and other wild places – and greater biodiversity. Through one little change many other good things result.
You can watch the video of this poetry sequence here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1tKwDjDrbg&feature=youtu.be
So – in this creative writing exercise - don’t worry about being realistic.
Give your imagination plenty of freedom to dream and create a better world.
Write a short description – can be prose or poetry – of a transformation.
1. Think of a situation or a person that needs to be changed.
It can be political, social, or very personal. It can be someone who lives near you or on the other side of the world. It can be an object that you think should not exist in its current form. (eg. what would happen if all mobile phones turned into tulips?)
2. Name what will be changed: ______________________________________________________________
3. Name the animal, plant, thing, situation that you will change it to:
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. Now write about the transformation and the outcome of it – how have things changed for the better – or are there some unintended consequences of your divine intervention?
Spend about 10-15 minutes getting the basics down.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sometimes a poem or piece of writing is quick and sometimes it takes a long time. Spend some more time making this work as good as you can. If you’ve enjoyed it, you can choose another situation or person who needs the creative transformation treatment.
There is no limit to what you can do – you are in charge.
If you want to share your ideas with us, that would be great! Share to the Refugee Week post on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/kateinneswriter/
or email [email protected]. I will respond in both cases.
If you have emailed me, I will ask if you would like to make your work public or not.
If you would rather not share at all – no worries – keep it as your powerful secret.
Wildflowers – folklore, literature, language
Here is the support material and the resources for my video about Wildflowers in Shropshire Folklore on the #Folk
Community Group's Facebook page and Youtube channel.
Available from 12 June, 2020 at 2:00pm BST.

Writing Exercise:
Make a virtual floral bouquet for a person you haven’t been able to see during the lockdown using Floriography. The meaning of the flowers will express how you feel about that person, your situation, their absence . . . You can write this just in the flower names arranged in a certain order – or turn it into a poem or a flash fiction piece of fewer than 200 words.
Please share your work on the #Folk facebook page – if you would like to!

Floriography:
- White rose: purity, innocence, reverence, a new beginning, a fresh start.
- Red rose: love, I love you
- Deep, dark crimson rose: mourning
- Pink rose: grace, happiness, gentleness
- Yellow rose: jealousy, infidelity
- Orange rose: desire and enthusiasm
- Lavender rose: love at first sight
- Coral rose: friendship, modesty, sympathy
In a sort of silent dialogue, flowers could be used to answer “yes” or “no” questions. A “yes” answer came in the form of flowers handed over with the right hand; if the left hand was used, the answer was “no.”
Symbolic Meanings of Herbs, Flowers and Other Plants | |
Abatina | Fickleness |
Acanthus | The fine art, artifice |
Aloe | Affection, also grief |
Amaryllis | Pride |
Anemone | Forsaken, sickness |
Angelica | Inspiration |
Apple blossom | Preference |
Arborvitae | Unchanging friendship |
Aster | Symbol of Love, Daintiness |
Bachelor’s button | Single blessedness |
Sweet Basil | Good wishes |
Bay tree | Glory |
Begonia | Beware, dark thoughts |
Belledonna | Silence |
Bittersweet | Truth |
Black-eyed Susan | Justice |
Bluebell | Humility, constancy |
Borage | Bluntness, directness |
Butterfly weed | Let me go |
Camellia, pink | Longing For You |
Camellia, red | You’re a Flame in My Heart |
Camellia, white | You’re Adroable |
Candytuft | Indifference |
Carnation | Women, Love |
– Red carnation | Alas for my poor heart, my heart aches |
– White carnation | Innocence, pure love, women’s good luck gift |
– Pink carnation | I’ll never forget you |
– Striped | Refusal |
– Yellow carnation | Disdain, disappointment, rejection |
Chamomile | Patience in adversity |
Chives | Usefulness |
Chrysanthemum, red | I love you |
Chrysanthemum, yellow | Slighted love |
Chrysanthemum, white | Truth |
Clematis | Mental beauty |
Clematis, evergreen | Poverty |
Clover, white | Think of me |
Columbine | Foolishness, folly |
Columbine, purple | Resolution |
Columbine, red | Anxious, trembling |
Coreopsis | Always cheerful |
Coriander | Hidden worth/merit |
Crab blossom | Ill nature |
Crocus, spring | Youthful gladness |
Cyclamen | Resignation, diffidence |
Daffodil | Regard, Unequalled Love |
Dahlia, single | Good taste |
Daisy | Innocence, hope |
Dill | Powerful against evil |
Edelweiss | Courage, devotion |
Fennel | Flattery |
Fern | Sincerity, humility; also, magic and bonds of love |
Forget-me-not | True love memories, do not forget me |
Gardenia | Secret love |
Geranium, oak-leaved | True friendship |
Gladiolus | Remembrance |
Goldenrod | Encouragement, good fortune |
Heliotrope | Eternal love, devotion |
Hibiscus | Delicate beauty |
Holly | Foresight |
Hollyhock | Ambition |
Honeysuckle | Bonds of love |
Hyacinth | Sport, game, play |
– Blue Hyacinth | Constancy |
– Purple Hyacinth | Sorrow |
– Yellow Hyacinth | Jealousy |
– White Hyacinth | Loveliness, prayers for someone |
Hydrangea | Gratitude for being understood; frigidity and heartlessness |
Hyssop | Sacrifice, cleanliness |
Iris | A message |
Ivy | Friendship, fidelity, marriage |
Jasmine, white | Sweet love, amiability |
Jasmine, yellow | Grace and elegance |
Lady’s Slipper | Capricious beauty |
Larkspur | Lightness, levity |
Lavender | Distrust |
Lemon balm | Sympathy |
Lilac | Joy of youth |
Lily, calla | Beauty |
Lily, day | Chinese emblem for mother |
Lily-of-the-valley | Sweetness, purity, pure love |
Lotus Flower | Purity, enlightenment, self-regeneration, and rebirth |
Magnolia | Love of nature |
Marigold | Despair, grief, jealousy |
Marjoram | Joy and happiness |
Mint | Virtue |
Morning glory | Affection |
Myrtle | Good luck and love in a marriage |
Nasturtium | Patriotism |
Oak | Strength |
Oregano | Substance |
Pansy | Thoughts |
Parsley | Festivity |
Peony | Bashful, happy life |
Pine | Humility |
Poppy, red | Consolation |
Rhododendron | Danger, beware |
Rose, red | Love, I love you. |
Rose, dark crimson | Mourning |
Rose, pink | Happiness |
Rose, white | I’m worthy of you |
Rose, yellow | Jealousy, decrease of love, infidelity |
Rosemary | Remembrance |
Rue | Grace, clear vision |
Sage | Wisdom, immortality |
Salvia, blue | I think of you |
Salvia, red | Forever mine |
Savory | Spice, interest |
Snapdragon | Deception, graciousness |
Sorrel | Affection |
Southernwood | Constancy, jest |
Spearmint | Warmth of sentiment |
Speedwell | Feminine fidelity |
Sunflower, tall | Haughtiness |
Sweet pea | Delicate pleasures |
Sweet William | Gallantry |
Sweet woodruff | Humility |
Tansy | Hostile thoughts, declaring war |
Tarragon | Lasting interest |
Thyme | Courage, strength |
Tulip, red | Passion, declaration of love |
Tulip, yellow | Sunshine in your smile |
Valerian | Readiness |
Violet | Loyalty, devotion, faithfulness, modesty |
Wallflower | Faithfulness in adversity |
Willow | Sadness |
Yarrow | Everlasting love |
Zinnia | Thoughts of absent friends |

Extracts from the work of Shropshire writer – Mary Webb (1881-1927) – focussing on wildflowers:
“Flowers like the oxlip, with transparently thin petals, only faintly washed with colour, yet have a distinct and pervasive scent. Daisies are redolent of babyhood and whiteness. Wood anemones, lady's smock, bird's-foot trefoil and other frail flowers will permeate a room with their fresh breath. In some deep lane one is suddenly pierced to the heart by the sweetness of woodruff, inhabitant of hidden places, shining like a little lamp on a table of green leaves. It is like heliotrope and new-mown hay with something wholly individual as well. To stand still, letting cheek and heart be gently buffeted by the purity, is to be shriven.”
“Mauve has a delicate artificiality, something neither of earth nor heaven. It is like the temperament which can express in sheer artistic pleasure heights and depths which it can never touch. Whether it is sultry, as in lilac, or cool, as in lady's smocks, this mingling of fierce red and saintly blue has an elfin quality. Hence comes the eeriness of a field of autumn crocuses at twilight, when every folded flower is growing invisible, and doubtless there is a fairy curled up in each. Children look for the Little People in mauve flowers – Canterbury bells and hyacinths – and, though they never find them, they know them there. Mauve enchants the mind, lures it to open its amethyst door, and behold! nothing but emptiness and eldritch moonshine.”
Quotes from “The Spring of Joy – a little book of Healing” by Mary Webb
“And I thought, as I looked round the diary that it was as good a place as anybody could wish for asking to wed. The sun shone, slanting in, though it was off the dairy most of the day. The damp red quarries and the big brown steans made a deal of colour in the place and the yellow cream and butter and the piles of cheeses were as bright as buttercups and primmyroses. Jancis matched well with them, with her pretty yellow hair and her face all flushed at the sight of Gideon. She was like a rose in her pink gown. Outside the window, in the pink budded may tree, a thrush was singing.”
From “Precious Bane” by Mary Webb
“The sky blossomed in parterres of roses, frailer and brighter than the rose of the briar, and melted beneath them into lagoons greener and paler than the veins of a young beech leaf. The fairy hedges were so high, so flushed with beauty, the green airy waters ran so far back into mystery, that it seemed as if at any moment God might walk there as in a garden, delicate as a moth. Down by the stream Hazel found tall water plantains, triune of cup, standing above the ooze like candelabras, and small rough-leaved forget me nots eyeing their liquid reflections with complaisance.”
from “Gone to Earth” by Mary Webb
Thanks to the players of the #NationalLottery for making this possible through Arts For All funding
Ancient Trees – Writing prompts and Resources
Ancient Trees Resource Pack: to be used in conjunction with the video on the Facebook Folk Community Group site https://tinyurl.com/y7yps43s

The Shelton Oak by David Parkes – 19th century


Fairy Folk by an old gnarled tree – by Arthur Rackham
Arthur Rackham, illustrator, paid very close attention to trees in his work, glorying in their detail and character.
Examples of writing about ancient oaks, other trees, and living and seeking shelter in them:
My Side of the Mountain – by Jean Craighead George
“I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing that I am here. The house is a hemlock tree six feet in diameter, and must be as old as the mountain itself. I cam upon it last summer and dug and burned it out until I made a snug cave in the tree that I now call home.
My bed is on the right as you enter, and is made of ash slats and covered with deerskin. On the left is a small fireplace about knee high. It is of clay and stones. It has a chimney that leads the smoke out through a knothole. I chipped out three other knotholes to let fresh air in. The air coming in is bitter cold. It must be zero outside, and yet I can sit here inside my tree and write with bare hands. The fire is small, too. It doesn’t take much fire to warm this tree room.”
An extract from In the Tree House at Night – by James L Dickey
a beautiful, eerie poem in which the tree becomes a link between earthly life and the life beyond.

For complete poem:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42718/in-the-tree-house-at-night
THE OAK
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Live thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;
Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Soberer-hued
Gold again.
All his leaves
Fall’n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength.
Dendrochronology (written about the Acton Round Oak)
by Kate Innes

Mary Webb – a Shropshire writer and folklorist –
From a description of Hazel Woodus in Gone to Earth
“Her passion, no less intense, was for freedom, for the wood-track, for green places where soft feet scudded and eager eyes peered out and adventurous lives were lived up in the tree-tops, down in the moss.”
From ‘The Joy of Fragrance’ in The Spring of Joy by Mary Webb 1917
‘A little wood I know has in May among its oaks and beeches many white pillars of gean trees, each with its own air round it. At long intervals a large, soft flower wanders down, vaguely honeyed, mixing its breath with the savour of sphagnum moss, and resting among the wood-sorrel. The wood-pigeons speak of love together in their deep voices, unashamed, too sensuous to be anything but pure. Among the enchanted pillars, on the carpet of pale sorrel, with a single flower cool in the hand, one is in the very throne-room of white light. A little farther on the air is musky from the crowded minarets of the horse chestnut – white marble splashed with rose – where the bumble bee drones.’
The Mary Webb Society notes that:
“Mary Webb's love and intimate knowledge of the county permeates all her work. She had an extraordinary perception of the minutiae of nature, and it is this keen observation that gives her prose its unique quality. In her introduction to Precious Bane she writes’ Shropshire is a county where the dignity of ancient things lingers long, and I have been fortunate not only in being born and brought up in its magical atmosphere, and in having many friends in farm and cottage who, by pleasant talk and reminiscence have fired the imagination, but also in having the companionship of such a mind as was my father's- a mind stored with old tales and legends that did not come from books, and rich with an abiding love for the beauty of forest and harvest field...’ “
More information about ancient trees and tree houses:
More information about the Shelton Oak, including photographs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelton_Oak
The Ancient Tree Forum finds the Bull Oak – a boundary tree and a shelter for a bull for years
Clip from BBC programme about the eccentric occupant of the Pitchford treehouse in the 1940’s:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04bspzg
Off topic but fascinating - Pitchford Ghosts by Caroline Colthurst:
http://www.pitchfordestate.com/pitchford-ghosts
Ancient Tree Folklore Writing Prompts:
Choose any or all of these ideas to start writing about the tree as a location or as a character or its importance to you.
1. You are climbing a tree – where are you? What does it feel like? What sounds do you hear? How does it feel as you make your way up?
2. You are living in a tree house – describe that – how is it constructed and who is welcome to visit you?
3. You are living inside a hollow tree – describe your living quarters, describe how it sounds and what it feels like to live there
4. You meet the spirit of the tree – describe the spirit – how do he/she feel about your incursion into its domain? Do you have a conversation?
5. Write a fairy tale about someone who climbs a tree to escape from danger, and finds more than they expected!
6. Write a story told with the voice of the tree – perhaps the Royal Oak – or another tree that has seen incredible adventures of mice and men. Or write a story about a creatures living ‘adventurous lives’ in the treetops.
Prepared by Kate Innes – Author of ‘The Errant Hours’ and other adventures
@KateInnes2 @kateinneswriter
Digging up the Graveyard
“Once people come here, they never leave. It is the graveyard of ambition.”
When I first came to live in Shropshire, I heard this quite a lot. Now that I’ve been here nearly a quarter of a century, I see that at least some of this statement is true. Certainly I never want to leave this area and hope to live a long life amongst its hills and woods. But there is so much more to this saying than first meets the eye, or the ear. Perhaps your ambition is simply to live connected with nature amongst friendly people with relatively uncluttered roads. Or perhaps it is to live in a landscape that inspires and informs – that oozes atmosphere and ancient significance. I feel I have fulfilled both these ambitions, and even more than that - I’ve turned them into a job.
As an archaeologist and museologist, I have always enjoyed living in the past. As a writer, I particularly like to live in the medieval period, and even more particularly, I like to live in the last quarter of the thirteenth century in the Welsh Marches. Perhaps you, like me, understand that there are some locations in the world where the barrier between the present and the past is thick and strong. I’ve lived in a few of those soulless places. They usually have plenty of shopping malls. But there are other places where the boundary between present and past seems as insubstantial as gauze.

In the Marches, we can easily reach back across centuries. We sense it in the shiver down the spine in a darkened church, or the overwhelming feeling of presence when we walk alone down an ancient hollow way, or stand near one of the many veteran oak or yew trees. There is the sudden and uncanny knowledge of the many footfalls that went before us, still echoing. For me this happens particularly in medieval monuments, but I know others who feel the same about prehistoric or even Victorian locations. The Marches has plenty of history thrills for all persuasions. But for now let’s look at the late thirteenth century. Let me try to explain the attraction.
It was a time when the charismatic and peripatetic King Edward the First (later to be known as the Hammer of the Scots) travelled through this landscape repeatedly in his attempt to subdue the Welsh and appease the powerful Marcher Lords.
It was a time of conflict with the tenacious Welsh Princes - Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Rhys ap Maredudd, and Madog ap Llewelyn, who refused to be cowed, who kept harassing the Anglo-Normans with hit and run raids and ancient guerrilla tactics. Their bands of Welsh infantry were armed with scramasax knives and spears, weapons for close quarter fighting. They harried the English interlopers who were intent on taking their land and their stock.
It was a time when the second-most powerful man in the kingdom was a Shropshire lad, Chancellor Robert Burnell, one of the greatest legislators of all time who lovingly crenellated his natal home of Acton Burnell.

‘The Graveyard of Ambition’ seems a rather negative label. However, it is not without its useful aspects. As a former archaeologist, I tend to view graveyards in a slightly more positive light than most people. I’ve spent some time excavating them, and I understand that they hold a huge amount of information - about the economy, the environment, the social hierarchy, and religious beliefs in the past. Yes, there are plenty of dead, decaying bodies, but they are very interesting dead bodies. The older they are the more interesting, in my view. And if one must see the Welsh March as a graveyard, it is certainly one of the most intriguing graveyards in Britain. The boundary that meanders between Wales and England, in eddies and oxbows of territory disputed for thousands of years, is essentially a boundary of topography, between highland and lowland economies and cultures. It was a contested area long before the medieval period, as the Iron Age hill-forts that dominate this area of outstanding natural beauty attest.

After the Norman Conquest, William divided the borderlands between his most-trusted men, making them the Earls of Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford, and tasking them with containing and subduing the Welsh. They put into action a huge building programme to proclaim their mastery of the territory in a way that would also withstand fierce Welsh raids. As a result the Welsh March has the densest concentration of motte and bailey castles in all of Britain.
The March of Wales, was, to a large degree, independent of both the English Monarchy and the Principality of Wales, reflecting the need for chiefs and inhabitants who could live self-sufficiently in a place where violence was commonplace, and each church had a tower that also acted as a keep. It was a frontier land in every sense, run by ruthless, ambitious Barons beholden to no one, who fought amongst themselves as well as with the English and Welsh, and competed, sometimes fatally, for business, trade, wealth, land and status.
It begins to become obvious that the green and leafy peacefulness we experience today covers a bloody and fascinating history. We can go down a layer or two, under the castles of the Marcher Lords, into the substrate, and find the stone that makes this landscape so unique. An area of extraordinary geological variation, with stones from almost every period in the earth’s history and every compass point on the planet, that through its chemical content makes micro-habitats, rich soils, harsh hills, great varieties of flora, that provided resources for tools and medicine, dye and cloth.
It was an area of danger and riches, but riches we may not recognise as such today. If we examine the economy of the Marches, we find that the wealth of the merchants and magnates came from the biggest export of the time, the one product that made England powerful – wool. And not just any old wool. The wool from Shropshire and Herefordshire sheep was deemed to be of the very highest quality and commanded a premium price.

Why was it so good? The sedimentary rock laid down in the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods over 400 million years ago, made up of trillions of sea creatures inhabiting that temperate sea, contributed important nutrients to the soil that resulted in the ‘smooth green miles of turf’ remarked on by AE Housman (Last Poems1922), leading to the wealth of wool. And if we were to dig down into the graveyard of Saint Laurence’s Church in Ludlow, we would find the ashes of that same AE Housman, buried by a cherry tree.
Dig down deeper in that churchyard and we could find a man who had reason to thank that turf. Laurence of Ludlow (de Lodelow) was one of the greatest merchants of the medieval age, son of Nicholas, brother of John, brother-in-law of Isabel – a family who had the equivalent of a multi-million business based on the trade in wool. Like all good millionaires, they were not shy of splashing their money around. Undoubtedly they would have richly endowed St Laurence’s church in Ludlow for the good of their wealth-encumbered souls.
But their main acquisition we can see today is the manor of Stokesay (then ‘Stoke de Say’), which Laurence bought in cash from the Verdun family in 1281 and expanded considerably. It is one of the best-preserved fortified manor houses in the country, retaining both its integrity and its atmosphere. No, it is not a true castle, despite being called such. That was an important distinction. Stokesay had little military or defensive purpose. Laurence and his family had to show that they posed no threat to the power of the Marcher Lords, although the manor clearly shows their ambition to live the life of a landed lord.

But Laurence was more than an upstart merchant of the Marches, he was highly influential at court, advising the King about the wool trade with the continent. Laurence and his brother John were lynchpins in the export trade to Flanders, by turns both an ally and an enemy of England. In the year 1294, in which my latest novel begins, Laurence and John of Ludlow were at the height of their wealth and influence. Across the channel, King Edward’s Duchy of Gascony (southwest France) had been seized by the French King Philip IV, known as ‘The Fair’ (fair in appearance, not in behavior).
Edward needed to fund and raise an army to cross the sea and defeat the French. But this was harder than it used to be. Many of the Marcher Lords and Earls, as well as the knights who owed him service, refused to fight overseas. In a tight fix, he sent two brutal officers into Wales and the Marches to conscript men to serve in Gascony. The Welsh had been rebelling against the overbearing rule by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy intermittently for many years. This conscription was the final straw. When the Welsh men were mustered at Shrewsbury Castle to be sent to France, they rose up and killed the man who had conscripted them. Then, in a coordinated action, they attacked and burnt Castles across a huge area including Caernarfon, Denbigh, Ruthin, and Castell y Bere.
King Edward was now fighting wars on two fronts. And he had less money than ever.
The Ludlows advised King Edward to raise cash by tripling the customs rate on wool exports. The wool producers were outraged, as they were now going to bear the burden of financing the military operations in France and Wales. John and Laurence were sent by the King to accompany a fleet of ships loaded with wool and £25,000 worth of silver, a bribe for Edward’s continental allies in and around Flanders. He desperately needed their help to defeat the French. But a storm hit the fleet on the 26th November 1294, and several of the ships were wrecked, including the one bearing Laurence and John. Laurence’s body was found, washed up on the Suffolk coast. It was transported back to Ludlow for burial in St Laurence’s Church.

The Chronicles of the time were usually written by monks. Monks were big wool producers and, therefore, not fans of the Ludlow family. They wrote with smug satisfaction about the fate of these enormously wealthy and unscrupulous men, reporting of Laurence that ‘Because he sinned against the wool-growers, he was swallowed by the waves in a ship full of wool.’
Of John’s body we hear nothing, but his widow, Isobel, does not stay silent. She appears frequently in the medieval archive of Shrewsbury, where she kept a large townhouse backing onto the river.
Dig down into the records of this strategic town and we discover that after she was widowed so suddenly, Isobel took on the name of her first husband, Borrey, and began trading independently. This was highly unusual. It would have been normal for her to be known as ‘Isobel, once wife of John of Lodelowe’. Isobel Borrey is also recorded as a burgess of the town (the only woman in Shrewsbury to be so named). She was obviously a seasoned businesswoman and took advantage of one of the laws created by Chancellor Robert Burnell that was passed at the Acton Burnell Parliament in 1283, the Statute Merchant. This law was supposed to facilitate the administration and collection of loans by making it possible to record loans only in certain towns. Shrewsbury was one, Hereford another.
Isabel Borrey made more than thirty large loans in her own name after John’s death. She also financed a rebellion against the rightful bailiffs of Shrewsbury in 1303, and installed her own chosen men. She then sued the burgesses for the damages that occurred during the reprisals against her during the rebellion. A woman of guts, energy, ambition and determination, and for a writer, a wonderful character to bring back to life again.
The Ludlows weren’t the only high profile casualties of the unrest in the late 13th century.
If we travel down from Ludlow, at the mid point of the 257 km Welsh English border, to Gloucester at its most southern point – we are in the place where a knight of King Edward’s household was arrested in September 1295, and taken to London to be tried for treason. Sir Thomas Turberville was the first man to be executed for spying in England. And what an execution it was. There was pageantry and there was cruelty in equal measure, as this was a nobleman who had been a trusted servant of the King. But in the chaotic war for Gascony, Turberville’s loyalty was sorely tested. He was taken hostage and, for his freedom and that of his sons, he made a deal with King Philip (the not so fair) of France to pass on information about the English defences.

Sir Thomas de Turberville was part of a Norman family given land in Glamorgan and Dorset. His treachery and death became the subject of a popular anti-French ballad at the time. Much later, the de Turberville family in Dorset became notorious for another reason, when Thomas Hardy immortalized one of their louche sons in his novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Enough of the famous and infamous. The millions of ordinary people, ignored by history, are just as important, although one must delve differently to find them. Their traces remain in the shadows of ridge and furrow ploughed across the fields, the remains of pottery thrown out of badger setts. They may have been tied to the land in small villages, but they were also connected to towns, markets, and the great centres of pilgrimage by the well-trodden roads that still exist today. It was the labour of the ordinary people that built the churches, it was their feet that wore down the threshold stones, their sharpened arrows that left grooves in the doorways, their candles, lit in chantry chapels, that willed the souls of this volatile region through Purgatory to Heaven.
On the surface, this land certainly pleases the eye. It has hills and valleys of extraordinary beauty, views of distant mountains, sunken tracks roofed by trees, forested banks covered in bluebells and orchids, the colours of heather, of autumn trees and spring flowers. Church towers rise benevolently through the landscape. The ruins of castles welcome and also repel with their harsh promise of romance.

But go down a layer, or two, and there are stones and iron, bones and blood. There is ambition and feuding, love and greed, treason and artistry. It is these things that excite the imagination of a writer, that keep my heart racing to finish a story about a little known time in this very particular place. A place of many parts: ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, and paradise. It is no accident that so many artists and entrepreneurs have chosen to live here, and never to leave.
Our ambitions are alive and well in the Marches.
Kate’s second medieval novel set in the Marches, All the Winding World, (sequel to The Errant Hours) was published in June 2018.

www.kateinneswriter.com / @kateinnes2
A Tempest for our times
I do hope that all my readers are staying well. I imagine that, like me, many of you are feeling hemmed in by the worries and restrictions of this time. Hopefully this post will provide a bit of distraction – and some brain fodder.
Good Reads for Strange Times number four:
‘Hag-seed’ by Margaret Atwood
Published in 2016 by Hogarth Shakespeare and in paperback by Vintage
301 pages
This is a retelling of ‘The Tempest’ by Shakespeare.
I hope that doesn't put you off. All my teenage children now hate Shakespeare due to a combination of school exams and a well-meaning mum, convinced that they would love the plays in the end, who took them to one too many. If Shakespeare has not been to your taste up till now, I’d urge you to try this version. It’s definitely different!
In 2016, to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of the Bard, several wonderful writers were commissioned to select one of his plays and reimagine it for our time. Margaret Atwood's version of ‘The Tempest’ is the only one I've read, so far. I’ll pop the list at the end (sourced from Wikipedia) - in case you'd like to try another one of them. I quite fancy the retelling of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ - after whose main character I was named in 1968.
Back to Hag-seed. You may know that the title is one of the insulting names given to Caliban - the monster-like servant of Prospero - the magician at the heart of the story of The Tempest. Caliban is treated badly by everyone, and blamed when this treatment leads to his offending behaviour. It is mainly but not exclusively with Caliban that Margaret Atwood's sympathies lie. And that is why in this version, her version of the play, ‘The Tempest’ is being produced by a usurped artistic director who has ended up working in a Canadian prison on an Education through Theatre project.
Rereading it, I found that by page two I'd already come across the word 'lock-down'. The inmates of the Burgess Correctional Institution are, like us, temporarily restricted in their movements, but not in their minds. They have already done MacBeth and Julius Caesar. They’ve explored the dramatic possibilities of murder and ambition. But this year, their director insists on the play of 'The Tempest' – the tale of the usurped ruler of Milan who is left for dead on an island, but whose enemies are brought within his grasp. And so it is within the play that is performed within the story of the play. Margaret Atwood enjoys messing about with these feedback loops with her incisive, driven, witty prose.
It's an addictive, sly interweaving of a character-driven modern novel with the legendary, supernatural, revenge drama, peppered with the convincing and bizarre details that Atwood creates to spark her inventions into life. It’s got her trademark nose for corruption and the worst parts of human nature, with the eventual, almost inevitable, practical acceptance of love and forgiveness. It’s got her surgical gaze at political power play - told from a victim’s point of view who is allowed to reverse his role.
I found that one of the most enjoyable aspects of the book was the rapping versions of Shakespearean verse. She pulls off these leaps from what we might think of as high to low culture with such a light, adept touch that we realise there is actually no yawning chasm between them. Here’s a little example from the prisoner ‘SnakeEye’ who is playing Antonio (the usurping brother of Prospero):
. . .
“He was stuck in his book, doin’ his magic,
Wavin’ his wand around and all that shit,
I took what I like, and that was fine,
Whatever I wanted, it was mine,
I got so used to it.
But he didn’t look, he was slack, didn’t watch his back,
What a fool, not cool, laid out the temptation,
I was bossin’ around the whole Milan nation,
He didn’t see what I took, it turned me into a crook,
Turned me into his evil twin, I went the way of sin,
Only way I could win.
So I went to the King, the Naples King,
He wanted control of that Milan thing,
So we made a deal,
He’d help me steal it, I’d pay him back,
And we grabbed my Bro, that Pros-per-o,
In the dead of night,
We paid off his guards so they didn’t put up a fight . . . “
Atwood’s humour and humanity shine from the story like a lighthouse on a rocky island. Hag-seed is a quick and engrossing read - that equally rewards rereading. I hope you enjoy it.
Other Hogarth Press Shakespeare reinterpretations:
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson – a retelling of The Winter's Tale
Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson – an interpretation of The Merchant of Venice
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler – a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood – a re-imagining of The Tempest
Macbeth by Jo Nesbø – a retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth
Dunbar by Edward St Aubyn – which re-tells the story of King Lear
New Boy by Tracy Chevalier – a re-imagining of Othello
Additionally, Gillian Flynn is working on a re-telling of Hamlet, due for release in 2021
A light in the darkness
A week of isolation (in the broadest sense, as I am sharing the property with 3 teenagers, a dog, 4 chickens - and even, occasionally, my doctor husband) is already done and gone, and I wonder how you are finding it? I've been surprised at how quickly this new way of living has started to feel normal. I look at films and ads on tv of people milling about in groups, hugging and kissing, and wonder why they are taking so few precautions. Shouldn’t they be more wary? Where on earth are their masks and gloves?!
I think about going out to get provisions and a great weariness overwhelms me. It's so demanding and stressful negotiating public spaces. Better to stay at home and, hopefully, harm no one.
I suppose it is one of the great abilities of our species that we so quickly adapt to new circumstances and environments. And that is a good way into thinking about my next book recommendation to you - 'Bearmouth' by Liz Hyder. Published in 2019 by Pushkin Press.
In the spirit of full disclosure, Liz is a writer friend of mine. I remember the moment, sitting in her front room, when she told me about her nearly finished YA book set in a fictionalised Victorian mine. At the time I thought "what a fabulous title!"
Now, six months after its publication, I can tell you that the content more than matches the cover.
The main character is one of the young mine workers, Newt, and the story is told in Newt's unique voice and language, (which takes only two or three pages to get used to - especially if you have a phonetic speller in your household, as I do). The men, boys and (secret) girls in the mine are all subject to the most rigid form of isolation. Newt hasn't seen daylight since the age of four. The workers are exploited, and kept ignorant of their rights. The masters exert their authority ruthlessly, with tiny rewards and a twisted form of religion.
Sounds dark - and it is, literally and figuratively. But there is so much humanity in Bearmouth - as we also see at this dark time in our own society. People help each other, even at risk of their own death. People give hope to each other, and like the rare candles in the dark of the mine, strength, compassion and love shine out in the darkness. The mine is a microcosm of society, and the plot shows how courage and vision can change even the most entrenched evil.
I read Bearmouth in one sitting, on a plane on my way to see my dad in the US (and doesn't that feel like another era already?) I was utterly immersed in a story that flows like water through an underground cave system, carrying you on to the inevitable waterfall of freedom. Forgive me the poetic licence, please. What I am trying to say is that 'Bearmouth' will grab you and not let you go - taking you through the darkest places and then, so satisfyingly, into starlight.
Although marketed as a Young Adult novel, and shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Books of the Year 2020, 'Bearmouth' is a great adult read too.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Hopefully not a thousand and one nights in lockdown
Distraction. It can be good, it can be bad.
We probably all know a bit about distraction on social media. When I've spent too long scrolling through Twitter or Facebook, I often feel sheepish. A bit ashamed. 'Shouldn't you be spending ALL your time in constructive pursuits?' I demand of myself.
We can be pretty harsh on ourselves.
But it is something that eats away at concentration, and I would like to do it less and get the scales of my time better balanced.
Then there is the good kind of distraction. At the moment, I don't want to think about the possibility of members of my family who work in the NHS becoming ill. If I think about it too much, I might frighten the children with my anxiety. And to distract myself from thinking about that, I read, I write, I research, I watch films. I look out at the world. There is so much to think about.
Good distraction leads the mind away from mithering over hurts or potential disasters. A toddler who is about to lose their temper about a fallen ice cream can often be placated with a balloon, and in the same way, our monkey mind can sometimes be redirected from destructive ruminating by something new, exciting and shiny.
My third recommendation for a good read for this extraordinary time is 'One Thousand and One Arabian Nights' written by Geraldine McCaughrean (Oxford Story Collections edition). I think everyone knows a little bit about 'The Arabian Nights'. I only knew the bare bones before getting hold of this version and taking it on a holiday in a camper van through Norway (not the most appropriate context!). What I was not prepared for was the humour, the modernity, the cunning, the poetry, and the beauty of the stories, embedded in the embracing arc of revenge and love rendered so movingly by Geraldine McCaughrean.
This is often marketed as children's fiction - Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba, Ala al-Din and his wonderful lamp (and this version is suitable for children) - but 'The Arabian Nights' is more than just those disneyfied tales. It is a collection of stories for all ages, that have their origin in the oral tradition of Asia and the Middle East, when the long, dark nights of the desert could be made more enjoyable by sharing tales and music around a fire.
These tales were written down perhaps as early as the 8th century AD, and certainly by medieval times, but the original, oral tales are much older - stretching in time and place to the great dynasties of India and Persia - with Arabian tales added later. There are lots of adventures and burlesques, but also more subtle tales of tricks, thieves, fables, scolds - all giving an insight into the abiding human condition. (The erotica is omitted from this edition - you may be disappointed to hear - but there are many other versions to choose from.)
At the heart of the tale is the clever story teller, Shahrazad, who must distract her husband, King Shahryar, every night with a new story. He is determined to exact revenge on women in general for his first wife's betrayal and infidelity, ('Woman's love is as long as the hairs on a chicken's egg' he tells her. If any writers amongst you require simile or metaphor inspiration, it is here in abundance) by beheading a new wife every morning. Shahrazad is his thousandth bride. Scholars have explained her away as a frame for a collection of Arabian tales - a bit like The Decameron or the semi-legendary events around the creation of 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley.
But Shahrazad is not consigned to being merely a wooden frame for the tales in this version. She is a quick-thinking woman of foresight, bravery, resourcefulness and passion. She knows the power of story to distract and redirect. Her strength is in her ability to create new worlds for her psychopathic husband to inhabit every night, worlds in which he doesn't have to be revengeful and angry. Where he can see all sides of an event, rather than just one point of view. Where he can become someone else.
The stories she marshals to keep the King from ordering her death are very entertaining. But her management of her husband's moods and insecurities is a master class in the best kind of manipulation. I suppose her ability to fall in love with a serial killer could be a mark against Shahrazad, but as she converts him to reasonable behaviour in the end, and it is a story not real life, I think we ought to let her off.
I wonder if the creator of the story of Shahrazad was a woman. I really appreciate the way Geraldine McCaughrean, the contemporary storyteller, has explored her inner thoughts and her relationship with her younger sister. But whoever it was, they have brought Shahrazad and her rich store of tales to life for countless listeners and readers from all genders, ages and nationalities, for thousands of years.
So I hope you enjoy her tales and embrace the distraction, at least for a while.
Reading through Lockdown
Who knows when our lives will feel 'normal' again? I suspect that there are certain things we will never, ever take for granted in the future. A drink with friends - a hug with an older relative - a trip to a beautiful art gallery or museum - travelling to visit family. It's good to be reminded that these things are wonderful, important, nurturing - and fragile.
I believe that all the writing courses I was due to run early this year will have to be cancelled. The talks and presentations to various groups as well. I hope to keep writing, but the opportunity to concentrate is elusive. However, there is something I can do (besides write books and keep my three teenagers from consuming all the food in the house in one day). I'm going to try to suggest a good book every week for the next little while, hoping that reading them provides consolation and distraction.
Books give you a place to go when you have to stay put. They are escape hatches into another reality. They are secret gardens to hide in. They are forests in which you can lose your way and your worries - at least temporarily. These will all be books I've read, and some will be particularly suitable for a time of isolation.
Book Number One: The Siege - by Helen Dunmore. Setting: Leningrad in WW2 Published: 2001 This book blew me away when I first read it. The quality of the writing, the intensity of the situation and the believable characters made it one of my all time favourite books.
The subject matter is grim. Leningrad was starved. The people lived through bitter cold, famine and brutality. But the outcome is an uplifting, unforgettable narrative about family, love, commitment and true grit. The tenderness with which each relationship is detailed, and the way Helen Dunmore expresses the appreciation of small objects of comfort make this a very memorable and important read for these times.
I highly recommend this book, and I also recommend you order it from your local independent book shop - which will be able, most likely, to send it to you. There are always audio book options and ebooks too.
This book may help us to see that our lock down is quite luxurious by comparison. Perspective and context is everything! I hope you enjoy it. I hope you stay well in the midst of this frightening pandemic. I wish you strength.
Bad Guys Make Good Plots

Recently I was asked to contribute a guest post to the fabulous 'History Girls' Blog. This is a group of best-selling writers of historical content, fiction, non-fiction, for children and adults. Needless to say, I was delighted to be part of it, and here is the blog I wrote - about the necessity of a good villain.
A story needs a villain – someone to get the action going and make the protagonist look heroic. This is as true for historical fiction as it is for any other kind. We love to shiver at their evilness and then gloat as they get their comeuppance. And history certainly has plenty of real villains to choose from for the historical novelist. It is jam-packed with good material for bad guys.
In All the Winding World, my latest medieval novel set in the late 13th century during the Anglo-French War, one particular historical character galloped into the plot displaying all the necessary qualifications. Rich, cruel, self-centred, eccentric, creepy, sadistic – Robert II Count of Artois had it all. Including a gory and well-deserved demise.
You’ve probably never heard of him. Neither had I. Born in 1250 AD, he was the son of Count Robert I and Matilda of Brabant – and nephew of the sainted King Louis IX of France. However, the piety of his uncle had not rubbed off. Count Robert II was a hedonist with the means to satisfy all his many and varied desires. At birth he had inherited the wealthy territory of Artois on the border between France and Flanders, as his father was already dead when he was born.
Over the course of his early life, he became a ruthless and talented military leader, taking part in many of the wars that were prevalent in the 13th century. He married three times and had several mistresses. This was not unusual, as women were highly likely to die in childbirth. So, based on this brief biography, perhaps you could say that he was a typical aristocrat of the time.

But his choice of pets was a real giveaway that he was villain material. The Count of Artois was known to keep a pet wolf, which he allowed to hunt across his lands, eating the herds of the local peasants (hopefully not the peasants themselves). He had a large castle and walled park at Hesdin (now Vieil Hesdin) in Boulogne North East France stretching over eight hundred hectares, which he filled with the most extraordinary attractions. The Count was said to enjoy practical jokes, and his park was designed to freak people out in many imaginative ways. If you’d like to know what it might have looked like, a detail of a painting can be viewed on this website: http://www.medievalcodes.ca/2015/04/the-marvels-of-hesdin.html
We often think that medieval people had little in the way of what we would call ‘technology’. But this was not so. As well as real exotic animals, Hesdin housed automata – skillfully constructed mechanical beings that moved, ‘spoke’ and frightened the guests. In a later set of accounts, these were described as including a talking mechanical owl, caged birds that spat water, and waving monkeys covered in badger fur. I can think of several horror films featuring this kind of thing.

The park also provided numerous ways of being dunked in water and covered in soot or flour. All designed apparently to amuse, if not the victim, then certainly the Count. The engineers who made these marvels would have employed devices used in both agriculture and the military, and their inventions were to have a profound impact on William Caxton, the first man to run a printing press in England when he visited it in the 15th century.
But I digress. If a story has a villain, it follows that he must get his just deserts. It happened to the Count a few years after the action of my novel, but it was worth waiting for.
Robert, along with the cream of the French aristocracy, rode into Flanders in July 1302, to teach the region a lesson. After two years of brutal occupation and unrest, the people of Flanders had revolted against the French rule in May 1302 and killed many Frenchmen in Bruges. King Philip IV sent in 8,000 men to quell the uprising and put Count Robert II of Artois in charge. But when the two armies met outside the town of Kortrijk (Courtrai) on the 11th July in what came to be know as the ‘Battle of the Golden Spurs’, all did not go as the French had planned.
The French cavalry proved to be no match for the Flemish infantry and their pike formation. In the end, three hundred noblemen of France were slaughtered by the yeomanry of Flanders. In revenge for French cruelty, they took few if any knights prisoner, counter to the usual practice of holding nobles for ransom. Count Robert was one of those to be killed, in a most satisfying and humiliating way.

Robert of Artois was surrounded and struck down from his horse by an extraordinarily big and strong Cistercian lay brother, Willem van Saeftinghe. According to some tales, bleeding from many wounds, Robert begged for his life, but the Flemish refused to spare him, claiming that ‘they did not understand French.’
This is what the Annals of Ghent had to say about the matter:
“. . . the art of war, the flower of knighthood, with horses and chargers of the finest, fell before the weavers, fullers and the common folk and foot soldiers of Flanders . . . the beauty and strength of that great French army was turned into a dung-pit, and the glory of the French made dung and worms.”
‘Good riddance!’ one can almost hear the fed-up peasants of Artois cry.
(All images Public Domain)
The Cartography of Leaving
It was early December 2018, and I was in Shrewsbury Library filling a rare empty half-hour between appointments. I often gravitate to a particular reading room in that library - covered in graffitied wood from its days as a boys school. Giving in to my fondness for ancient cultures, I chose a book of medieval art and sat down to browse through its pages.
Close to the beginning of the book I found a map of Europe. I looked at it carefully, and the longer I looked at it the more I saw the print of the UK on the coast of France and the other countries along the Channel - and their imprint on us. Geologists have long known that the two land masses were very recently (at least in geological time) connected.
Having trained as an archaeologist, I understand that our island has been host to many groups of people, some coming for peaceful trade, others for violent colonisation. Since we became bipedal, humans have always travelled, always immigrated and emigrated. Borders, even watery ones, are human constructs that cannot prevent natural processes. Work on DNA from ancient populations confirms that people in the UK were diverse long ago, as they are now. This is a strength we have benefited from for millennia. Our technology, commerce, music, art, literature, language - all have been enriched by it.
The longer I looked at the map on that December day, the more the sadness I feel about Brexit became imbedded in the undulations of our coast. It reminded me of the way a long-worn ring leaves an indent on the finger. Or the way hands, used to being held, must curl in on themselves in the absence of the other. This poem is the result, and now is published in the New European magazine, in a week when the members of parliament are set to make decisions that will determine the nature of our borders for many years.
But the fact of our common bedrock remains. We will always be connected, no matter what some self-interested, power-hungry politicians would have us believe.


The Historical Novel Society reviews ‘All the Winding World’
All the Winding World
WRITTEN BY KATE INNES REVIEW BY MISTY URBAN
Innes brings her poetic sensibilities to bear in this lovely sequel to The Errant Hours, set ten years later. Illesa is married to Sir Richard Brunel, has borne three children and lost one, and is happily settled at their small manor farm in Shropshire when King Edward’s call for war to regain the lost Duchy of Aquitaine summons Richard, despite his maimed leg and missing eye, back to the battlefield. French treachery lands Richard in a Bordeaux prison, and Illesa launches a dangerous scheme to trade a priceless clerical garment for her beloved’s life. Helping her are Gaspar, a witty traveling player carrying a fatal secret, and Azalais of Dax, a skilled trobairitz (female troubadour) trained in the songs of courtly love. Innes’s accurate details and descriptions of the furnishings and landscape of life in late 13th-century England and France are a pleasure to revel in. She conveys the richly textured sense of a world bloody with war and other hazards, clocked by the rhythms of the natural seasons and Church time, and saturated with that strain of medieval Christian piety peculiar to Western Europe. Though the plot is satisfyingly suspenseful as Illesa drags herself and her friends into the arms of their enemies, the most vivid character is the setting, the buildings and cities that come alive with all their strange accoutrements: priests and Templars, precious books and costly clothing, pet weasels and cunning tax collectors. Innes’s poetry makes an appearance in the songs sung by Azalais, an enigmatic character who deserves her own book. This skillful crafting of and immersion in a brutal, beautiful, breathing world rife with treachery, disease, and dangers unseen will enchant readers new to the period and delight those who know it well.Details
PUBLISHER
Mindforest PressPUBLISHED
2018PERIOD
Early Medieval (to 1337)CENTURY
13th CenturyReview
APPEARED IN
HNR Issue 86 (November 2018)Countryfile – Highlights of Shropshire – follow in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims
Archaeologist and author Kate Innes shares her pick of the best places to visit in Shropshire – and reveals how you can follow in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims
One of the most famous of all medieval stories is about travel, but perhaps you, like me, have always considered the Canterbury pilgrims to be the exception rather than the rule. Surely it was far too slow and tiring to go beyond the parish boundaries before the invention of the internal combustion engine? But it turns out that the Middle Ages was a very mobile time, and, although difficult and sometimes dangerous, travel was common and undertaken by every class of person. Horses, mules and donkeys helped. Water travel was often quicker than overland. A journey might even have provided a welcome break from the drudgery of home, as long as there was food, drink and a bed along the way. The inns, taverns and monasteries along the major routes would certainly make sure that there was – for a price. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the most travelled areas of Medieval Britain was the Welsh Marches, an area now famous for its peace and tranquility; a great get-away from hectic urban living. A bit of research into its turbulent and bloody history reveals a fascinating interlacing of routes that can still be followed today. As a writer of historical fiction set in medieval times, I’ve trodden these paths, and these are just a few of my recommendations for an encounter with the Medieval Marches.- Walk: Acton Burnell, Shropshire
- Britain's treasure map: our guide on where and how to hunt for treasure
A ship leaves port – the launch of ‘All the Winding World’
At the very beginning of writing 'All the Winding World', I knew there would be maritime elements in the story. So I popped down to my old University town, Southampton. I didn't rate Southampton much when I was a student, but now that I'm fifty, I found it was delightful to explore the old town and the docks area, and to have the chance to rediscover all the things I had forgotten from countless lectures: the types of ships that were used in medieval times, the products traded, the building of the town walls because of French attack. etc.
Medieval Southampton before the harbour was enclosed
Waiting for ‘All the Winding World’
Poetic Encounters #1 – A guest post by Andrew Howe – Visual Artist
Poetic encounters #1 Kate Innes
20MAR


Ceremonial Trees / Bound with fluttering string / Tokens of faint hope (Andrew Howe 2017)

High vantage over / River Severn’s lush meadows / Buzzard soars above (Andrew Howe 2017)
“…at the edge of places we don’t belong … even the twist of a rope that won’t tie Or the path that unwinds in a wood It gathers its strength on a threshold …” (Extract from “The Other Land”)We discussed our responses to these enigmatic isolated and empty structures set in woodland, and explored some of the issues raised in my earlier post around Bachelard’s “Poetics of Space”, the temptations of the “hermit’s hut”, refuge/retreat, and the negotiations that must take place when two people take up residence. The titles of my trio of drawings “When Adam delved”, “And Eve Span” and “Who was then the Gentleman” struck a chord with Kate, referring to John Ball’s speeches that helped inspire the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. These words relating to equality and social justice resonated. I went on to develop studies for a painting of the shelter we had been to visit, which responded to “The Other Land” referencing certain features from the poem, like the coppiced trees. These included ipad drawings, a charcoal study and two oil studies:

“Shelter”charcoal study, 85cm x 115cm

Shelter II, acrylic on acetate, 21cm x 21cm

Detail from Shelter II

Shelter, oil on canvas, 90cm x 120cm
“He found the gate unguarded – except by thorn – the angel gone The forgotten trees had dropped their fruit and multiplied…”(the opening lines from “Adam’s Return”)
“... Here they will live out their days in a small and private place intertwined as strands of wool by twists of love and pain …” (Extract from “And Eve Span”)It was a privilege to see how subtle changes in wording in the few iterative drafts enhanced the poems, shifting emphasis, refining rhythm, suggesting alternative perspectives, picking up on certain aspects of the paintings. The three poems expand meaning and add greater depth to the paintings, and it was a pleasure to be a part of it.
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Rural Women – Past, Present and Future
Travelling in Time and Place
2017 – The hours gone but not forgotten
Marrying a Murderer – The Errant Hours 2
The Errant Hours 2: Marrying a Murderer






Dundee University Review of the Arts – ‘Flocks of Words’
Kate Innes (Mindforest Press, 2017); pbk £5.99

Before time was measured and marked, in the great black between the stars, beings lived, one of each kind.Divided into five sequences, the collection moves back and forth through time, from pre-history to the present day, through vast land- and space-scapes, often with troubling scenes of biblical horror amidst images of the Creation.But the clear poetic stream running through all Innes’s poems (yes, she is obsessed with water) is a seemingly boundless imagination and immersion in the ancient world, often also closely bound up with images of both water and the universe. The titular poem takes its imagery from the world of migrating birds to consider the living, organic, self-renewing nature of words; it imagines the freedom of not naming objects, “like the unseen stars at the edge of the universe”, “like Eden before Adam spoke.” She envisages word-birds returning, refreshed and new to enhance language. In “Walking the Hills” she turns to Darwinism to contemplate the evolutionary nature of earthly things;
We walk and return, becoming dust making stone.Her imagery is often startling, panoramic, spine-tinglingly thrilling. Elsewhere she focuses in on the minute, “the gyroscope of butterflies, / waterboatmen and the rifle sight/of the heron” (“Where it May Lead”) or on the discomfiture of a boy fishing and his inability to accept the distress of the caught fish. (“Fishing”). Above all, Innes’s poetic focus is on the oneness of man with his environment, an impression of infinite continuity. She returns to a time when there were no noisy, polluting cars, “Before the drone of the road” . She paints a picture so vivid that the reader is tempted to linger, reading and re-reading:
In the time when the slice of oars and poles slit the shining water down to twisted roots and the river vein healed itself with the eddies, with swimming sky. (“Winter River”)In “The Morning Path” Innes refers to the earth as a “familiar body” and, in “Late Light”, the sun belongs to the whole world, shining not only on her but on “all the Russian steppes”. Again, the collection invites the reader to look beyond the immediate environment, while also delves into the mysteries of the natural world. “Snowfall” focuses on the miracle of snowflakes, “… unseen/laws of our constrained belief, /fragile pieces of divine space.” Innes’s integral connection to the earth and to the universe is profoundly spiritual and overt: “I am part of the universe” (“Constellation”). Its magic and mysteries are as important to her as those matters offered by the real world. If Innes’s work is widely informed by other artists, painters and wordsmiths – Christina Rossetti, van der Weyden, Velazquez, primitive cave painters in France and the stained-glass artist Margaret Agnes Rope – it is her broad and yet intense observation of nature which, for this reader, makes this collection very special. In “Spring”, lambs are described as “just bones/covered in a crochet of silky wool.” And in “Sleeping Dogs”, she allows the creatures to sleep – “Let them dream/, the wolf inside”. The gory nature of childbirth, too, comes into the great pattern of Innes’s poetic thought in a collection which will tempt the reader to return again and again to her observations in this lovely work. I look forward to her next collection.
Susan Haigh
The Errant Hours 1: Martyrs and Motherhood
This post was originally commissioned by the University of Surrey for their Blog -
Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon
An International Network Funded by the Leverhulme Trust

Image from The Taymouth Hours
BL Yates Thompson 13, f.68v
I am quite convinced that if you scratched most writers of medieval fiction, under the surface you would find a childhood spent reading stories about the middle ages: Robin Hood, Arthurian Myths, Fairy Tales. Perhaps you would also find a longstanding love of medieval imagery and symbolism, the pictographic shorthand for saints’ lives and biblical tales. As a child, I devoured such stories, and I loved decoding medieval artworks. It was so satisfying to know that if the female saint was holding a tower, she was St Barbara, if a wheel or a sword then St Katherine and, if there was a gridiron, poor St Laurence. I felt like I’d learned a secret language. When I decided to study Archaeology at University, I expected it would have a bit more mystery and symbolism in it – a bit more romance and a bit less mud. Ah well. I had reckoned without the British weather. My later career in museums allowed me to indulge those narrative interests, as each object has innumerable layers of meanings. But when I came to write my first novel, The Errant Hours, the influence of my early love of archaeology was still strong. Archaeology, in the main, looks at the discarded and unwanted remains of daily life, the broken things most people do not consider important. In The Errant Hours, I wanted to uncover what life was like for the people who did not make it into the history books – to explore the daily lives of people who lived in the distant past, and to understand how their circumstances affected their fears, hopes and beliefs. And certainly the large numbers of nails, bones and potshards I found on archaeological sites helped me do that, and to flesh out the characters’ habits and habitats. But it would not have been a very satisfying book without another ingredient. People of the middle ages lived not just in a physical environment but in a spiritual and social one, and one of the most lasting and powerful elements of these medieval ways of thinking are the religious and secular stories that were commonly known and shared. You may be familiar with the way Christian ideology at the time tended to characterize women as virgin/saint, mother/wife or whore/temptress. There are lots of influential medieval stories about saints and whores, and not nearly as many about wives and mothers. The first part of The Errant Hours explores the interesting relationship between a holy virgin and mothers in the legend of Saint Margaret of Antioch. The second half of the book explores the wife/whore relationship through the legend of The Lady of the Well/The Knight with the Lion, which I hope to blog about later in the year. Most female saints were either martyrs or nuns, but the virgin martyrs seem to have been most popular. Looking at the passions of these saints in compilations such as Voragine’s ‘The Golden Legend’, I was struck by the similar outcome for young women who refused to have sex with powerful men: generally torture followed by death.St Margaret of Antioch being tortured
BL Royal 2 B VII f. 308v (public domain image)
In some cases a miraculous return to life is achieved (eg. St Winefride) but then the woman goes on to become a nun, not to a ‘normal’ family life. However in the case of St Margaret of Antioch, there is a nod to marriage and motherhood in her story, through a quite unexpected agency. And this interested me because, although some medieval women did become nuns, most women were not wealthy enough. The vast majority of ordinary women married and became mothers, or died trying.
St Margaret in prison and emerging from a dragon, who is still chewing on her dress. BL Yates Thompson 'The Taymouth Hours' MS13 f 086v early 14th century

The Birthing Chamber - BL Egerton 877 f. 12 (public domain image)
The text says: “The Father is alpha and omega, the Son is life and the Spirit is medicine. Thanks be to God”.
In this image we see the mother who has just given birth lying in the bed, and the midwife holding the swaddled infant. On the right, I believe that the figure under the canopy is Saint Margaret. Holy people are often given this architectural device. But the paint on this side of the page is so smeared and distorted through repeated kissing, it is hard to make out the full figure. As Professor Lowden says in his description: “How many times was this page devotedly kissed by women in fervent hope that their childbirth might leave them ‘unharmed and without any pain’? And if the worst happened and their child was stillborn how many women prayed in anguish, with the help of this little book, that their labour might still end safely?” Through this poignant trace of desperation, I could imagine myself into the lives of these women, even as I remembered the birth of my own son, after a long, stalled labour that would have killed us both in the thirteenth century. I started thinking about the consequences of the large number of deaths in childbirth, and particularly what would happen to a surviving baby whose mother had died. And so the plot began to take shape in front of me, like a detailed picture being drawn before my eyes. The Errant Hours begins in that final illustration, with the difficult birth of the heroine of the story, Illesa (‘unharmed’ in medieval Latin) in 1266. The action continues when she is a young woman and her midwife mother has recently passed away leaving her a richly decorated book, a Passion of St Margaret, which, as a poor woman, she should never have possessed. The Errant Hours is an adventure, following Illesa as she struggles to save her brother and herself in the face of poverty, violence and corruption. But it is also the story of a daughter who loses and finds a mother, the story of a sacred book believed to have the power of life and death, and the story of how a young woman negotiates the physical and spiritual dangers of Plantagenet Britain, and survives to come of age. These stories intertwine, bind, resist and console each other, as all our stories do. **** Kate Innes was born in London and raised in America, returning to the UK in the 1980’s to study Archaeology. She taught in Zimbabwe before completing an MA and working as a Museum Education Officer around the West Midlands. She now lives in Shropshire. Her first novel, The Errant Hours, has been added to the reading list for Medieval Women’s Fiction at Bangor University. Kate has been writing and performing poetry for many years. Her collection, Flocks of Words, was published in March 2017. Kate runs writing workshops and undertakes commissions and residencies. www.kateinneswriter.com @kateinnes2Review of ‘Flocks of Words’ – The Book
Ear worms and El Supremos
Heavenly Lights – a writer’s response to stained glass

Sister Margaret's Memorial
History and its Mysteries
Imagined Worlds – Coleridge and Kublai Khan

A Varied Diet: Publishing the Unexpected

Acton Burnell Castle - home of Chancellor Robert Burnell who was given permission by Edward I to crenellate his manor in AD1284
The Hours – two writing paths intersect

Isabella Breviary, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), late 1480s British Library, Additional 18851, f. 13
The Story Behind the Story
The Story behind the Story


British Library MS Egerton 877 folio 12
This is my description from The Errant Hours:
"Whenever Illesa opened the book of the saint, the feeling was always the same. She became a hawk lifted high in the air, and with the hawk’s eye she could see the sparrow in the hedge and the fearful beasts at the edge of the world in an instant, and all the detail of their beauty and horror. But the last picture in the book disturbed Illesa. The image of the saint was smudged, and the features of her face were like a reflection seen in the water at the bottom of a well. Ursula said that many women had kissed the saint, smearing the paint in their devotion, for as she had come out of the dragon’s belly unharmed, so Saint Margaret had the power to bring forth healthy infants and spare the lives of their mothers." I found it very poignant: medieval women, in their time of great pain and danger, kissed this painted image and sent up prayers to St Margaret to save them and their babies. I began to imagine these women, especially those giving birth for the first time. And the plot began to take shape, the story of the mother and the daughter, and the story of a sacred book, believed to have the power of life and death. Of course I realised that a great number of women did die in labour, and the babies who were born into these situations would be raised by others. More of the plot began to take shape in front of me, like a beautiful picture being drawn before my eyes. So this was where the story began, and it is also where it ends. The book of St Margaret is passed on to another mother; to read, to bless and to make intercession for those in pain and grave danger. The Passio of St Margaret ends with this entreaty to the unborn child. “Come forth. If you are male or female, living or dead, come forth for Christ summons you, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.” (translated by Prof. John Lowden) Now that my book has been brought into the world, I hope its readers will see something of the courage and strength of medieval women, and all those women living now, around the world, giving birth with little or no medical help. And the powerful hope and desire they have for their children to come forth whole and unharmed. Kate InnesWalking the Hills
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Shropshire Hills - The Lawley from Caer Caradoc with The Wrekin beyond |
Earlier this year I received a commission to write a poem for a hydro-geologist, for his birthday.
I was very glad to be asked, but this in turn made me ask myself:
'What kind of poem would a hydro-geologist enjoy?'
'What really excites them?'
and finally 'What do I know about hydro-geology?'
The only question I could answer was the last one, and the answer was 'Hardly anything.' But fortunately Shropshire has more hydro-geologists than you can shake a stick at. There was advice at hand and resources aplenty.
My first port of call was the Geology Gallery at the newly refurbished Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery link. I love this museum. It was opened in 2014, and is thoughtfully presented and designed. The Geology Gallery not only has beautiful specimens of rocks and fossils, but also commissioned art and a wonderful video showing the voyage of Shropshire.
It turns out that the reason there are so many hydro-geologists in Shropshire is that it has an extremely diverse range of geological strata both in age and rock type.
Add to that, in the words of the Shropshire Geological Society,
'its frontier position: at former plate boundaries, just below the major erosion surface of the crust prior to opening of the Atlantic Ocean, and the meeting point of several glaciers during the last Ice Age. Thus the variety of geological settings is unmatched within the British Isles or, within such a relatively small area, probably anywhere else in the world.' http://www.shropshiregeology.org.uk
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Stanford's Geological Atlas (Woodward, 1914) |
Shropshire has, in its 500 million year history, travelled from a location south of the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere 12,000km to where it is today. In that time it has been volcanic, forested, tropical, desert, shallow seas, and now the temperate landscape of hill and field, a patchwork embroidered with hedge and forest.
Armed with this new information, I walked up one of my favourite hills: The Lawley. Looking south from the Lawley, one sees Caer Caradoc thrusting through an ancient fault line running in Pre-Cambrian rock northwards to the Wrekin. Around the Lawley spreads the intricate complexity of the countryside, rising and falling, growing and dying. Under my feet was living rock, full of the signs and scars of its journey. And growing from it, the most delicate and hardy of flowers, heather, and the lichens, airy and brittle versions of the languid seaweeds fossilised nearby.
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Ordovician Bryozoan from the Caradoc Series www.discussfossils.com |
Afterwards, it did not take long to write the poem, and then, having heeded the advice of poets in my writing group, I delivered Walking the Hills to the person for whom it was written.
But a little bit like Shropshire, Walking the Hills had further to travel. I submitted it to the WriteScience Poetry Competition poetry of science and it was selected as one of the six finalists. I was sent to the Minton Library in Stoke-on-Trent to read it and celebrate the symbiosis of art and science at their Fun Palace festival. ceramic city
Stoke-on-Trent, aka The Potteries,
was just the right place for the poem to arrive,
a place built on special rock and soil which is made and remade,
heated and cooled, used and discarded.
The Year of the Gibbon: Apes and Monkeys – Part One
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The Thinker Monkey from the Breviary of Mary of Savoy, c. 1430 Lombardy, Chambery Bibliotheque Municipal, MS 4 fol. 319r Notice his belt, to which a chain would have been attached. |
It was with a gibbon.
And it was in a zoo.
One is not meant to go to Africa to meet southern asiatic apes in captivity. But that is what happened and it has made me think carefully about the parts of human society that we project on to apes and monkeys, and the schizophrenic attitude we have towards them.
The children wanted to go to 'Monkey Town' link , and, to be honest, I did too. Because I enjoy seeing the beauty and variety of animals across the world, I do put aside my concerns and scruples about caged animals and occasionally visit zoos. It is something that causes me pleasure and embarrassment in almost equal measure. And if it is a place I have not visited before, I approach with trepidation.
In this case my fears were, for the most part, unfounded. The enclosures were large and well designed, and it was the walkway for the humans that was caged, allowing the monkeys plenty of space to display their incredible acrobatic abilities. However, what made the visit extraordinary was the desire of many monkeys to interact with the human visitors. One spider monkey played push-me pull-you with my son and a twig. The marmosets raced us to and fro.
But when we came to the gibbon, things were quite different. There were several gibbons in a large enclosure, and when I came to the fence a few moments behind the rest of my family, an older female gibbon was already holding my daughter's hand.
She held each of our hands in turn. This went on for some time. Then she turned around and hung, with her back to us, against the wire fence. She wanted her back scratched. All this time she did not make a sound; just gazed at us, calm and self possessed, with her intense melancholy eyes. We stayed with her until the zoo closed.
The gibbon is one of the 'lesser' apes, due to its smaller size than gorilla, chimp and orang-utan. It is tailless, but still is the fastest and most agile tree-dwelling mammal, due to the extraordinary length of its arms and the clever ball and socket joint in its wrist. Gibbons have been observed to mate for life.
Monkey Town is home to many apes and monkeys who have been rescued from neglect or inappropriate environments. There was one who was a recovering alcoholic, as his previous owner had given him beer to drink every day. Although I do not know this female gibbon's history, it seems likely that she was used to human contact and company, and although there were plenty of other gibbons to interact with and she had obviously born several babies, she sought out human interaction.
In the Medieval period in Europe, apes and monkeys were popular pets for the rich. They became an exotic status symbol, and it is quite common to see examples of fettered monkeys in the margins of medieval manuscripts. But the ape and the monkey were also symbolic of degradation, sin and the devil in the Medieval world view. They were 'man unbounded by constraint', and as such, a symbol of those who give into their animal cravings, most commonly lust and greed. And they were a very useful satirical tool for the artist. See Apes in Medieval Art
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Monkeys drinking - from Roman d'Alexandre - Tournai early 14th century |
By contrast, in China where the gibbon is a native, they featured prominently in ancient Taoist poetry, were known as the 'gentlemen of the forests' and considered noble. Gibbons were believed to be able to live for hundreds of years and to transform themselves into humans. Their incredibly powerful voices, calling across the Yangtze gorges, came to represent the sadness and melancholy of travellers far from their homes. But this respectful view did not stop people from destroying the thing they admired in an attempt to own its beautiful qualities.
"The popularity of captive gibbons being kept as pets appears to go as far back as written history . . . The traditional method to catch a live gibbon always consisted in looking for a female carrying an infant, then killing the mother with an arrow or a poisoned dart from a blow-pipe and taking the infant still clinging to her when she has fallen dead onto the ground. Humans often became deeply attached to their pet gibbons. When a king of the Chou dynasty (i.e. Chuang-wang, 613-591 B.C.) had lost his gibbon, he had an entire forest laid waste in order to find him."
See this informative blog from Thomas Geissmann : gibbons in chinese art and poetry
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Two Gibbons in an Oak Tree by Yi Yuanji Song dynasty |
Will that help them in this human dominated age? Will it harm them?
Having met a gibbon, who was obviously affected by past human contact, I see the contradictions in my own feelings. It was an extraordinarily moving experience to be trusted by a gibbon. It made me hungry for more interaction. But that gibbon had been forced into our humanised environment. Forced to live in a house and a zoo, and if nothing is done, that may be the only environment in which gibbons do survive.
The IUCN Species Survival Commission has declared that 2015 is the Year of the Gibbon. Almost all of the gibbon species are endangered due to habitat loss (99% of habitat in China already gone), hunting and illegal trade. Mother gibbons are hunted and killed, just as they were thousands of years ago, in order to acquire the babies for the pet market. Often, both mother and baby die.
In Britain, one is allowed to own primates as pets. One can buy a baby monkey on the internet, with little or no regulation. In 2014, the government decided not to ban the owning of monkeys as pets, claiming this law would be 'draconian'. They decided that no legislation should be approved until more was known about the situation. Here is part of the response from conservation organisations.
Philip Mansbridge from Care for the Wild said: "The report says that there are a lot of unknowns: we don't know how many primates are kept as pets, we don't know how well they are kept, we don't know if existing legislation is working. But deep down, we do know one thing: that monkeys, chimpanzees and other primates ultimately are not objects for us to own. And that information alone should be enough to settle this debate once and for all."
The Guardian 10 6 14
Let us work towards a world where primates do not need to be rescued,
because they are swinging through their forests,
calling across the deep ravines
to those of their own kind -
grooming and holding each other -
clinging to their own mothers
and living out their own lives.
Kate Innes
gibbon conservation
The Mighty Elephant
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Elephant drinking from the Zambezi River |
It is interesting that, until the medieval period, elephant were endemic to the whole of the African continent. The extinction in Northern Africa (around a thousand years ago) occurred as a direct result of the ivory trade, to provide ecclesiastics and aristocrats with beautiful, prestigious artworks. Ivory has been sought after and worked for millennia. It is very hard, lasts indefinitely, doesn't splinter and can be carved into the most intricate of forms. Medieval craftsmen felt its pale purity was particularly suited to representing the Virgin Mary.
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Virgin and Child, carved in elephant ivory 1320-30 in Paris, Victoria and Albert Museum (note the contrapposto of the virgin, which is demanded by the curve of the elephant tusk) |
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The eternal battle between the Dragon and the Elephant from the Worksop Bestiary, MS M. 81 12th century, Pierpont Morgan Library |
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An illustration from The Elephant's Child, Rudyard Kipling (note also the bi-coloured python rock snake which we had the privilege to hold during our trip) |
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Colin and models with his crochet goods: caps, rucksack, and tablet case |
Candle flame, lamp light
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Detail of Christ in the Carpenter's Shop - Georges de La Tour-1645 -The Louvre, Paris |
Looking at Georges de La Tour's work reminds me that, for the vast majority of the history of human civilisation, nightfall has been followed by the lighting of lamps and candles, and by the contemplation of fire. De La Tour was a master of chiaroscuro, the dramatic play of deep shadow and bright light, the flame either bare or hidden behind a hand. But he doesn't allow the light merely to set the stage. In his paintings, the flame is a central character and the focus of our gaze. Many of his paintings are ostensibly religious in subject matter. Some include children carrying lamps and candles, their skin an unblemished mirror for the warm light. I think de La Tour enjoyed this partnership of flame and youth, and the tenderness of forms softened by wavering, living energy.
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The dream of St Joseph, c. 1628-1645 Musee de Beaux-Arts de Nantes |
In a few days I will return to Africa, accompanied by my three children and the man I met there. All sorts of things swirl around in my mind when I think about the two years I spent working as a teacher in rural Zimbabwe. Far too many to express here. And since the day that my husband and I decided to return for a long holiday, to show our children the place we fell in love with (and the place we fell in love), I have been beset with longing and anxiety in almost equal measure.
One cannot step twice in the same river, as we have all been told. I know that it will have changed. Zimbabwe has been through some bad times since I left in 1994. Equally, the advent of the mobile phone has transformed so much of interaction throughout Africa, giving more power to the producers traders and growers, and of course, there has been a massive increase of globalisation through the internet.
However, the great Zambezi River will still be there, and we will see it flow and thunder. We will, I hope, hear women singing and clapping in church, accompanied by the syncopated drumming that makes everyone dance. And we do very much want to see elephant, giraffe and the beautiful Lilac Breasted Roller once again.
But one of the things I am most looking forward to is the fire light and candle light. Night falls quickly in Southern Africa, usually at about 6pm. Then the sounds change, the stars are revealed and the matches are struck. At the mission where I lived in the Zambezi Valley, the generator would go off at 9pm and, from then on, we did everything by candlelight. Of course most Africans do not live with a generator, and so candles and lamps are the norm.
The only times we experience this in Britain is during a power cut, or when we take ourselves off and camp in the wilds. Then we are forced back to the contemplation of the most charismatic of elements. Our children like it best when the fire is lit and, to quote my youngest, "I can poke it with a stick."
Children and flame - both are fascinating, quick and volatile. I am looking forward to many nights in their company as we camp our way from South Africa to Zimbabwe, under the distant fires of the stars.
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The New Born Christ, c. 1645-1648 Musee de Beaux-Arts de Rennes |
To finish, here is an old poem, written when the children were very small, during a power cut.
Windows: looking in, looking out
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Cape Cod Morning - 1950 by Edward Hopper |
There is something urgent and sad about his work. His paintings are full of isolation and silence. Very often windows are a key feature of the composition and the viewer observes figures through them (as in Nighthawks, for example). The windows seem to emphasise the sense of separation and self-containment in his work.
I can't say I enjoy it, but it moves me, perhaps particularly because I am reminded of my childhood amongst the trees and lakes of Connecticut, the blazing sun of the seashores, the unremittingly direct and obvious human constructions. Black and white, sun and shadow, nature and man. The only subtlety is in the nuanced emotion evident in the gesture, posture and expression of the figures.
When Andrew Motion presented this painting, Cape Cod Morning, in a workshop at the Wenlock Poetry Festival and suggested we use it as a starting point for a poem, I had mixed feelings.
I knew it would not be an easy poem.
It immediately conjured up feelings of separation; a relationship broken or unequal. The intensity of the gaze looking out of the window seemed to contain both resentment and longing. I wrote several drafts along these lines. So it was with some amusement that I came across this quote about the artist's own thoughts:
The tendency to read thematic or narrative content into Hopper's paintings, that Hopper had not intended, extended even to his wife. When Jo Hopper commented on the figure in Cape Cod Morning "It's a woman looking out to see if the weather's good enough to hang out her wash," Hopper retorted, "Did I say that? You're making it Norman Rockwell. From my point of view she's just looking out the window."
quote source
I cannot understand that. There is nothing in the figure of the woman that speaks of 'just looking'. And certainly she is not thinking of her washing. Whatever she is searching for from her vantage point in front of the large glass is something that has cut her heart, caused her to wake in tears in the middle of the night. Perhaps time and time again.
So the artist creates, and the creation goes forth to be appropriated and changed, made different in everyone's eyes. The painting (poem, sculpture, book etc.) itself becomes a window. Perhaps the creator offers her view on the world from this window, and the viewer/reader sees it. But more often the viewer gazes at the window, expecting to see what the artist saw, and instead sees the reflection of herself.
My own poem changed too, until it was no longer really about the painting.
Here is what might be the final version:
I am like a woman
You glide into the water
and dive
sometimes you turn your
on the headland.
Kate Innes
The Cat before the Altar
A tabby cat enjoys watching a patch of sunlight in the peaceful, cordoned-off area in front of the main altar of Wells Cathedral
During a fascinating research trip to Hailes Abbey and Wells Cathedral, I was struck by the number and variety of animals I found in these well-preserved sacred contexts. Our age, on the whole, seems to disapprove of animals in church, as if somehow their animal nature made them inappropriate in the humanly constructed holy space.
This was not the case in Medieval art. Animals appear in abundance, taking on roles as faithful companion, indicator of nobility and symbol of just about every virtue and sin. They are painted on the walls, sculpted in the ceiling bosses and climb around the column capitals. They wind around the font and patter along the floor tiles. They look down from the highest heights, and mischievously up from below as part of misericords, little seats which supported the bottoms of monks and priests in church.
A boss from the ceiling of Hailes Abbey Chapter House, showing either Jesus fighting the Devil in the form of a lion, or Samson and the Lion
In this way, the churches constructed and decorated by medieval people mirrored the natural world outside, rather than making a 'better' separate space for worship. The church was a place for people to learn what the natural world meant in the heavenly plan, and every last animal had its role to play and its lessons to teach.
A short-eared owl from Hailes Parish Church (13th century), an adorable animal supposed to represent sin and darkness
The Medieval Bestiaries (about which I have written more here: robin redbreast post) were very eager to tie up the behaviour of animals, whether real or imaginary, with their spiritual significance. This is not an area of theology pursued in modern times, but perhaps the celebration of and identification with the natural world should be more encouraged. The many animals in danger of extinction could certainly stand as symbols of human indifference and greed in a modern iconography.
A hybrid elephant from Hailes Church
During the Reformation a rift occurred between image and word, between the natural world with all its instructive behaviour and the spirituality of the intellect. Natural representations were covered or destroyed by those who wished to emphasise the primacy of the revelation of God through the word, the Bible, rather than through creation. This is obviously a vast oversimplification of the profound and violent change that the western church underwent at that time, but it is one of the obvious effects for people exploring the development of sacred buildings.
In my opinion, it is only when nature and humankind, image and word, intellectual and physical are joined together that we come anywhere near being able to express the Divine.
The tabby settles down for a nap in front of the altar of Wells Cathedral
A fragment from Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart (1722-1771)
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
The Painter and the Poet
Ancient Trees
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Old Knobby - from Ali Martin Arboriculture - www.alisonk.co.uk |
I have plenty of wooden furniture in my house, as many people do. I use paper. I have a log burner. I do understand that many species of trees are grown for timber, and I do understand that farmers and foresters must keep their tracks clear to allow access. My head understands all these things, but the rest of me is unable to accept the results of this economic activity.
Behind my feelings about logging is my belief that these remarkable plants, which are able to create air, beauty and fertile habitats, should be cut down, when necessary, carefully and without collateral damage to other well-established native trees. Areas of woodland beauty, such as glades and wooded tracks, should be considered as more than just the sum of their parts. Specimens of particular importance and age should be protected and not treated as though they were weeds.
Some species, such as sweet chestnut, oak and yew, are capable of living for over a thousand years. Ancient trees in the UK tend to survive in the old medieval forests and parks, or because they were once boundary markers or local meeting places. The Woodland Trust record and protect these trees; these links explain their work:
ancient tree hunt link
what are ancient trees and where to find them
Besides their compelling presence in space and time, old trees are also able to help people understand their own history. Tree ring width can be used as a measuring tool to reckon the age of timbers found in all sorts of intriguing objects including: ships/houses/panel paintings/dug out canoes. These ancient survivors of variable climate and human requirements contain a record of our shared experience.
The relationship between tree rings and the characteristics of a particular year's weather was first commented upon by Leonardo da Vinci (unsurprisingly) and the many applications of this link were developed gradually over the centuries. The science of dendrochronology is now commonly used to date wooden objects found in archaeological excavations and to calibrate radio-carbon dating. Thanks to the careful work of scientists around the world, there are now several sequences of tree ring data stretching back thousands of years. These sequences show us variations in climate within countries and across continents. They help us to understand the context of human material culture and written narratives. They show us what pressures were at play in the distant past.
Our impact on the environment, our experiences, are also being recorded by the trees growing all around us. But if we keep cutting down trees in their prime, how will these sequences develop? If we do not value and care for the ancient ones, how will we know where we fit into wider history? If trees eventually across the world are principally grown only for timber, will any ancient trees remain stretching back to this time, for our descendants to decode in a thousand years?
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The Silton Oak, Dorset from bespoke green oak website |
The White Hart
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The White Hart from the Wilton Diptych, created for Richard II, 1395-99 The National Gallery, London (this painting shows a tamed white hart; only a King could achieve it) |
Said to be a symbol of the pursuit of spiritual knowledge, 'The White Hart' also happens to be the fifth most common pub name in Britain.
Spirits of a different kind being pursued, one concludes.
The white hart was a common element in Celtic mythology, a messenger from the other world and the starter of quests. It was said to be the creature that could never be caught. In most stories it caused a profound change in the physical and spiritual state of the viewer/pursuer.
Visions of a white stag compelled King David I of Scotland to create a shrine to the cross, the holy rood, now a seat of power in Edinburgh, and a white hart crowned with a cross showed St Eustace that his fate would be to suffer as Christ had done. Richard II chose the white hart as his heraldic emblem, inherited from his mother Joan, the 'Fair Maid of Kent'. It's purity and power lent him some much needed credibility in his numerous struggles with his rebellious and resentful subjects.
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The White Hart emblem on the angels surrounding the Virgin and Child Wilton Diptych, 1395-99 (the angel on the right looks really bored by the whole thing) |
Whereas humans find albino animals special and accord them a particular positive significance, the same cannot be said of their treatment of human albinos. Instead, these people are often disadvantaged socially as well as suffering from the effects of a lack of melanin. They may be ostracised, scapegoated, or in the worst cases attacked and killed. (It is reported that there have been many recent attacks on albinos in Tanzania and Burundi. Some are being kidnapped and killed because their body parts are thought to make a particularly potent muti - medicine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_people_with_albinism). Difference, in these cases, causes superstition and fear, and becomes an excuse for depravity.
In the myths and stories of the white hart, it is portrayed most definitely as the other, the powerful thing, hunted for the potency and status that it will confer on the hunter. But nowadays, I believe it also contains another meaning. The Britain of wide-ranging forests full of wild game and animals, the setting for quests, fairy-maidens and honourable thieves, is gone. A construct always, promoted by playwrights and poets, but one which expressed something about what was fundamental to our culture and society. We cannot pretend that it exists anymore, because, for the vast majority of the population, the fabric of the land has been transformed by tarmac, brick and large scale agriculture. Wildness is accessed almost exclusively through the tv screen.
But sometimes wildness, graceful, breathtaking, otherworldly wildness, breaks through our managed landscapes, either in our imaginations or in real time. The white hart, a rare and beautiful sight, shocks us into a state of wonder. A few years ago, when I saw one on my morning walk trotting up the ploughed hill through morning mist, it was a sight not reducible to genetic fact or weather conditions.
I think it is this aspect of the 'White Hart' which TS Eliot invokes when he wrote 'Landscapes III -Usk' http://www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/british/5/eliot/landscap.htm although it is possible that he referred to the public house, The White Hart in Llangybi, Usk, behind which was an old, whitewashed holy well http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/aug/06/highereducation.books.
Usk is near Caerleon, the fabled centre of King Arthur's court in Welsh myth. Eliot's poem is ambiguous and grammatically difficult, taking the quoted line from a play by George Peele The Old Wife's Tale (late 16th century) http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/gently-dip-not-too-deep.
This poem of mine is a Gloss or Glosa on Usk. The Glosa is an old Spanish form which sets its task to explain the lines of an older, more famous poem. Explanation is not achievable, but my poem could perhaps be called a variation on Eliot's theme - a third generation poem in pursuit of the white hart.
The Place of the Skull
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Crucifixion from the St Gall Gospels Irish, 8th century, Abbey of St Gall Cathedral Library, MS 51 (One soldier offers Jesus vinegar on a sponge, the other makes ready to pierce his side with a spear.) |
According to the New Testament sources, Jesus was crucified on Golgotha, 'the place of the skull'. Scholars are in disagreement as to whether it accrued this name because it was a place of execution, or if the rock formation had the appearance of a skull from a certain vantage point and was therefore deemed an appropriate place for killing. In any event, the exact location is disputed. I myself favour the theory that the location is a hill just outside the walls of Jerusalem, within sight of the temple, which looks like a human cranium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvary
Unconstrained by facts or lack thereof, Christian artists have approached this place of death with both convention and originality. Early Crucifixion images were characterised by the serene acceptance of Jesus on the cross. This was the representation of Jesus as God. He was pictured against a heavenly backdrop, gold or sometimes blue, and on earth indicated by highly stylised rocks. Almost always, just below the cross with its polite drops of blood, there is a skull, and some other human bones.
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Vannuccio Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John the Evangelist 1387-8, Philadelphia Museum of Art |
The indication of this place becoming a battle ground between heaven and earth is accentuated by the inclusion, in some cases, of angels and demons.
There was a gradual increase of the expression of Jesus's suffering over the second millennium AD, emphasising Jesus as Man. As the representation of Jesus's humanity increases, so too does Mary's. By the 15th century she has lost her stoic sadness and she faints with grief and horror. This accentuation of human emotion has an interesting, perhaps unpredicted, effect.
The more his human struggle is shown, the more people are able to 'identify' with Jesus, and, potentially, he with them. But the more human Jesus appears, the less god-like he is, and the more fragile is the faith that proclaims him divine. In that thin layer of painted skin that gives his expression sadness and pain, we recognise our own weakness, our inevitable failing, our eventual destruction.
Twenty-eight years ago I became aware that the Gospels were describing the life, torture and death of a political prisoner, one who had a radical religious message which threatened the power structures of his society. At the time I was involved in Amnesty International and just becoming aware of the horrible creativity expended on torture, whether by direct or indirect means.
The reason that the Christian church adopted the cross as a symbol of its faith intrigues me. The images of the crucifixion, and all the events surrounding it, vastly outnumber representations of the Easter resurrection in Western art (although the nativity scenes of the Virgin and Child do offer a counter balance). It seems almost gratuitous.
As a species we are fascinated by, and terrified of, death. As far as preoccupations go, it almost outweighs sex. We are interested principally in the death of others, not our own. Denial of the inevitability of one's own death coexists with this fascination. Perhaps we are adapted to pay so much attention, so that we learn how to avoid our own death for as long as possible.
Millions of people have died in agony, deliberately, at the hands of other people. It is not Jesus's death that makes him a powerful religious symbol. It is his choice of death rather than life. Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar in Auschwitz, was inspired by Jesus's self denial to put himself in a condemned prisoner's place. The man was being sent into a cellar to die of starvation (retribution for the escape of three prisoners), but he cried out in grief for his family and Fr Kolbe chose to go in his place, dying so that another should live.
From acceptance of death, life emerges. Spring arrives. Life and goodness triumph.
Hold on to that thought while you read this rather depressing crucifixion poem.
White Horses on Green Hills
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The White Horse of Uffington, Oxfordshire, England approximately 1000BC |
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Looking from the Ridgeway to the Manger |
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The scouring of the White Horse (see link) |
The Horse
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Wild Horses on Abdon Burf, Brown Clee Hill, Shropshire |
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A horse tells his fallen rider exactly what he thinks of him, from MS Bodl 264, the Romance of Alexander early 14th century |
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A crusading knight (possibly Henry III) gives homage, accompanied by his horse from the Westminster Psalter 13th century, BL Royal 2 A XXII |
Spring Lamb
I must admit to having conflicted feelings when I see the new lambs in the fields at this time of year. With my urban sensibilities, it worries me that so new a creature with so little in the way of protection is outside in the British weather. Along with this overly mothering attitude, I also understand that many of them will not live out the year, and that my enjoyment of curried and roast lamb is at odds with my protective feelings toward them. And then there is the sheer gratitude that spring is here, embodied in the bright, gangling, fragile lambs.
When I was a young child one of my favourite records included a version of the William Blake poem 'The Lamb' (Songs of Innocence and Experience) set to music by Carly Simon and her sister Lucy, rather surprisingly.
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One of the prints made by Blake for his book "Songs of Innocence and Experience" 1789 |
Lambs and sheep have an impressive portfolio of symbolic roles. In the Pre-Raphaelite painting by William Holman Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd, the artist explores Jesus' claim to be the good shepherd and not a hireling, who cares nothing for the sheep. In the painting the sheep are wandering just as much as the shepherd's mind and hands. He attempts to seduce a shepherdess, who is distracted enough to let the tame lamb eat the apples in her lap (an allusion to giving into temptation) and the flock is beginning to eat the corn in the nearby field. Neither corn nor apples are good for sheep. Eating them can be fatal.
Lambs carry quite a symbolic load, and all the while being one of the staples of our meat-loving diet, bred in their tens of thousands for mass consumption.
But somehow the individual animals manage to supersede their singular purpose for living and their heavy religious duties. Through their exuberance, genial character, and their perfect fit in the landscape, they embody all that we hope for in Spring: energy, beauty and joy.
covered in a crochet of silky wool,
Speaking to the birds
St Francis (AD1181/2 - 1226) is the patron saint of animals and ecology. He saw nature as a mirror of God. In this sense he differed from most religious medieval thought. Many saints are connected with animals in some way, for example St Eustace (the stag) and St Melangell (the hare). The ability to tame or speak to wild animals is a sign of divine or supernatural power in most cultures and mythologies; Harry Potter speaking to snakes being a recent example. But St Francis was unique in considering animals as his equals, calling them brother and sister, and ascribing understanding to them and the ability to have a relationship with God.
One of the most famous stories about him tells that when he was travelling and saw a tree full of birds, he began to preach to them. The birds came down from the tree and gathered around him to listen. This became a popular motif in Medieval art, as it showed St Francis's humility as well as his special divine power and wisdom.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonyynot/7741370022/in/gallery-adfinem-72157630886234870/
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From the Berlinghieri Altarpiece, 1235 Church of San Francisco, Pescia, Italy |
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From the Chronica majora of Matthew Paris, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (notice the speech bubbles for St Francis and the birds!) |
Can an animal be grateful? Can an animal be ungrateful? It is an interesting thought that in ascribing to animals the status of brother and sister, St Francis also ascribed to them the sins of humanity. If an animal (most often cats, in my experience!) behaves ungratefully or takes things for granted, we usually ascribed this to its nature not to some moral or spiritual failing. Although we still look for human characteristics in animals.
Recently I saw a clip from the Jane Goodall Institute of the release of a chimpanzee, Wounda. http://youtu.be/SGAiAwqdDgg
It is hard to view this video without feeling that the chimpanzee had some sense of thankfulness (especially with the emotional music in the background), although it probably also needed reassurance in a strange environment. We seek human patterns of behaviour in animals, longing for understanding, trust and connection.
The work of domestication has allowed us to share our lives with animals, without becoming their prey. Having domestic animals has certainly added to our understanding of animal behaviour, but these fundamental questions persist: How close are we? How far apart?
It seems to me that the more we anthropomorphise animals, (those little outfits for dogs are one particularly irksome example) the less we allow them to be wild, with their own adapted behaviour in their own wild habitats. Understanding animals was never more important than now, when so many of them are disappearing into the human wasteland our kind has created.
Sleeping Dogs
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A Dog lying on a Ledge by a Genoese Artist (circa 1650-1680) Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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The Spanish Pointer - George Stubbs Neue Pinakothek, Munich (one is in no doubt that the owner of this dog also owned all of this beautiful landscape) |
But the Ashmolean painting is of a nameless dog, owner (if any) unknown, by a mysterious artist. Anonymous in every way and shown at its most vulnerable. The bare patches on a dog's 'knees' and 'shoulders' are there, the shine of a wet nose, the ears askew and the protruding pink tongue that says 'I might be asleep, but that does not mean I wouldn't appreciate some food'. If you go on this website you will see the detail that I was unable to capture with my iPad. http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/objects/makedetail.php?pmu=730&mu=732>y=asea&sec=&dtn=15&sfn=Artist%20Sort,Title&cpa=1&rpos=0&cnum=&mat=&pro=&anum=&art=&ttl=a%20dog%20lying%20on%20a%20ledge&sou=
This painting, despite the subject being a mongrel on the streets, was owned in the 19th century by Louis-Philippe of France and displayed in his famous Spanish Gallery. One reason, apart from its appeal as an example of trompe l'oeil, may be that it is a very honest painting. It does not flatter, but neither does it denigrate. The dog is painted with a flash of real life in its eyes, and all dog owners will recognise that moment, no matter what breed they live with, when the dog is completely relaxed and at its most elemental.
The descendants of the dog in the painting can be found making their way through towns and cities across Europe, sleeping where and when they can amongst the noise and hazards of human society. They are opportunists, always hungry, and willing to befriend those who treat them with a degree of kindness and generosity.
As creatures of instinct, they are able to act according to their needs without the self-consciousness that plagues us.
Perhaps that is why we delight in watching them sleep.
The Wild Wood
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The Ghent Altarpiece - Jan Van Eyck and Hubert Van Eyck- The Holy Hermits, 1432 |
Somehow Jan Van Eyck painted the leaves, fruit, branches, shadows and bark of that forest so tenderly that the viewer can stand on that path and walk through those trees. http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/#viewer/sync=3&view=1&id1=41&scale1=0.0256¢erX1=631.875¢erY1=1581.6875
And once there, on the darkening path between the trees, look up to the glowing sky and watch the circling doves and wheeling swallows.
For me there is something profoundly exciting about seeing a forest from a little distance. It fills me with longing. I first remember feeling this way as a child in Connecticut. I would sit on the school bus, day after day, looking out of the window as we drove past miles of woodland and wish that I could run through those curtains of branches rather than spend all day sitting in an overheated room under fluorescent lights. The forest of the imagination is still with me, a tingling alternative to the patterned parade of human habitations. Inside the concealing branches, I can touch wave upon wave of leaves, fronds, buds, flowers, foaming moss, spreading fungi, concealed glades and secret streams.
In this panel from the Ghent Altarpiece we see a procession of 'holy hermits' coming out of the woods in order to worship the lamb of God represented in the central panel. Hermits take themselves out of normal human society and live in the wild in order to concentrate on the world of the spirit. They may choose a mountain, cave or glade in the woods, or in the case of Fred (Jozef Stawinoga), a tent amongst the trees on a roundabout on the Wolverhampton ring road http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0510d9t . A few trees can transform an epicentre of dirty, noisy traffic into a piece of wilderness to rest a troubled mind.
In the forest, trees, not humans, are the dominant species. The tradition of going into the wild woods and emerging transformed is as fundamental to fairy tales, and other fictions, as it is to religious traditions. Across Medieval Europe the motif of the wodewose (wild man of the woods) flourished, a common character in literature and the visual arts.
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A man and woman with a dog meet a Wodewose, circa 1330 The Macclesfield Psalter, folio 85r The Fitzwillaim Museum |
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Burgos Cathedral, Northern Spain 13th century |
Searching for an explanation, I believe that the memory of living in the forest is still strong in our species. Jungles and forests are where we came from in primate evolutionary terms. They are where we cache our wildness now. Literally they are our life breath for the future. But for me they will always be a symbol of what we love and reject, our own wild nature, our connection with all other forms of life.
Arms for a maiden – The Hare
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Breviary of Renaud and Marguerite de Bar Metz, 1302-1305 Verdun Biblioteque Municipale, MS 107, fol. 89r detail |
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(photo by Andy Fisher) |
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Hares hunting men, from the Romance of Alexander the Great, French, by Jehan de Grise, 1338 Bodleian MS. 264 fol.81v (click on image to enlarge and see the smirks on their faces) |
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Misericord of a wolf playing the organ Musee de Cluny, Paris |
The Circle of Animals
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Lepus (The Hare) Plate 30, Urania's Mirror, 1824 by the Rev Richard Rouse Bloxham and Sidney Hall |
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M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, close to the tail of Ursa Major |
The Magi
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The Magi by Herrad of Landsberg (1130-1195) reproduced by Christian Maurice Engelhardt 1818 |
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Saint Helena and the Cross by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525 (I'm afraid that, to me, the look in her eye says 'pole dancer' more than 'saint'!) |
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The reliquary of the Three Kings inside the shrine at Cologne Cathedral The three crowned skulls can be seen at the top. |
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Ring brooch, 1350-1450, V&A Museum London |
Robin Redbreast and the Wren
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Robin from the Sherbourne Missal, c. 1400, BL Add. MS 74236 |
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The Holkham Bible, 14th century, BL Add. MS 47682 |