The Dymock Daffodils and the Dymock Poets

Below, St Mary's Church, Kempley which is on the daffodil trail. Photo taken when we visited for my birthday outing last year. I wish I had a photo of the daffs (which are amazing), but they are on You Tube and you can call up images from Google.

"From Marcle Way,
From Dymock, Kempley, Newent, Bromesberrow,
Redmarley, all the meadowland daffodils seem
Running in golden tide to Ryton Firs,
To make the knot of steep little wooded hills
Their brightest show .........."

This fragment of poetry from Lascelles Abercrombie, one of the "Georgian" poets who became the Dymock poets in 1914 when they had a brief-lived colony in the area, tells you something of the beauty of this area at this time of year. Edward Thomas, of whom I am very fond, was ne of their number for a brief spell.


Here are some notes written by a dear friend of mine (J):

"The daffs used to be picked by local families, including my Granny and all her children, which included my Dad of course. They were sent to Covent Garden to be sold as cut flowers, and earned local families a valuable addition to their income. When they picked the daffs it wasn’t from the woods, but from the fields. The wood daffs, although exactly the same wild variety, tend to have shorter stems, due to environment I suppose, so the longer stemmed field daffs were best for selling. Nearly every field in the whole area was carpeted in them. I remember as a small child seeing them, and Granny still picking them to sell. She used to pick them in bud and have them in the scullery in buckets of cold water ready to go on the milk train to London first thing the following morning.

Thankfully the daffs in the woods have always kept going, but farming practices in the late sixties and for the next few decades, really hit the field daffs. Picking never seemed to bother the daffs, they were abundant every year although the fields were often stripped by pickers – but pesticides, ploughing, spraying verges etc nearly wiped the field ones out, Now they are protected and picking is banned."



Below - we were too late for the daffs in Kempley church yard, but these Cowslips put on a pretty show.


HERE is a link to the BBC iPlayer radio programme about both daffs and Dymock poets.

If you fancy seeing them for yourself, try HERE for details of the Open Day(s).

Is it just me?

The mountain river hurling itself downstream from Llyn-y-Fan-Fach. (I will try and do a posting on this in the next couple of days).


People of my age group (I am 60 next month) were, as a rule, brought up to be polite. Not to complain out loud. To think of others. To be considerate. Not to be rude to people, especially those you know (I can think of an exception to this rule, but she was my m-in-law - does that count?)

Anyway, all this crossed my mind today when I went back to collect my prescription at a certain supermarket (see, I'm so well-brought-up I don't like to be rude about them on-line by naming them and I don't want to get the member of staff into trouble! . . .) I'm sure the woman who was supposed to be serving was just busy. She did appear to be doing something as she talked with the Pharmacist. So I waited patiently to collect my prescription. After a couple of minutes, another couple came to join me in the queue, and together we waited calmly. The lady caught my eye and we both raised our eyebrows at being ignored. Then she said, "I can't believe we do this - just wait like this." I agreed, but STILL I didn't say anything to the woman behind the counter who was still being "busy". The other customer and I exchanged pleasantries and both agreed that really, only the English (although, living in Wales, perhaps I ought to say British) would put up with this. In any Mediterranean country there would be raised voices and gesticulations and crossness! At about this point the gist of our conversation must have been overheard by the member of staff and she finally came through and served us, and I thanked her for my prescription and walked off without a single word of complaint. Then I got back to my husband and promptly complained at being kept waiting . . . Perhaps I should have vented my spleen, but I was brought up to be polite . . . Is it just me or would you do the same?

The Friday Post

Some cats know exactly where the absolutely BEST place to sleep is! Banshee . . .


That title sounds important, doesn't it? I've had a busy week, and that was the best I could come up with. So far this week, I have done painting (front hall, kitchen and bathroom), changed the winter-weight curtains curtains in the kitchen for the summer-weight ones, washed all the china in the bathroom and put it back up against a freshly-painted wall, deep-cleaned the bathroom, made bread, had a couple of walks, planned what to do next in the garden, been shopping, volunteered, finished sewing a thank you gift for a friend (photos once she's received it), peeled, chopped and cooked 4 lbs of root ginger which is now hopefully preserved, and mourned poor old Gypsy. Thank you all for your kind comments, by the way.

Today my darling OH decided finally he couldn't put off servicing our old Hergom stove any longer (e.g. it had STOPPED!) I am glad to say it just needed a thorough de-coke and a little bit of air pinched out of the line where the oil level had dropped so low. Though even he didn't expect to find a mummified sparrow when he cleaned it out. Thankfully we have managed (just) to gather together the money for a small oil delivery, so the house is having a day of warmth and then back to being frugal with the oil again.

The walk I gave up on. I had intended to walk along the bridleway and meet up with my OH as he came back from collecting the papers, but after climbing this steep hill, my legs decided that walking was perhaps an over-rated exercise . . .

So I turned around and walked back down to meet him. Past the beautiful Chestnut Tree . . .

And down by the river, where it glissades over the pebbles.


Not a good day for colour, as the mist was late to rise from the fields.

But Wales DOES do green . . .

A big pan of ginger for preserving.


A nice fresh bathroom and CLEAN china . . . probably a lot of disgruntled spiders too.

Have a good weekend all.

R.I.P. Gypsy

Gypsy arrived on our doorstep in December about 7 or 8 years ago, when we judged her to be in early middle age - 10 or so. She was absolutely bulging, and we thought she must be pregnant, so we took her in. However, she wasn't and since she never walked more than 50 yds from the house, it was obvious she had been dumped on us . . . She was completely tame and a sweetheart, but had the IQ of ball of cotton wool. She never did learn how to use the cat flap . . . She mixed in well with the cats we had, and was never the least problem. Over the last couple of years she lost weight, drank lots and wee'd lots, so it was obvious that her kidneys were starting to fail. On Monday afternoon I came into the kitchen to find her and the cushion she'd been sleeping on, on the floor, and she'd wet herself (I put it down to the jarring of the fall). She ate her tea and seemed as normal.

Then yesterday morning I came into the kitchen first thing and couldn't see her anywhere. Gosh, I thought, she'd perhaps had a bust up with the latest itinerant arrival (Misery Guts aka Estelle) and been chased through the cat flap. I went outside and called, but no Gypsy in sight.

I searched the kitchen again and found her. She was jammed behind the back leg of the kitchen dresser and I had to move it to ease her out. I put her gently down and she wandered in circles, then keeling over. Poor girl. I think it was a stroke. I quickly got the cat travelling box and popped her in it and phoned the vet to say I was bringing in a cat to be put to sleep. It was obvious that she had come to the end. Poor little girl. She was Danny's favourite, so yet another favourite went to join Tippy, Snowy and Honey . . .

In hindsight, it was for the best, just a bringing forward really of the inevitable because of her kidney problems. Poor Alfie was looking for his Aunty Gypsy today though . . . They were often snuggled up together in recent weeks.

Isaiah Sully and Ruth Tongue (part 2)

As green a picture as I could manage - another from this same series taken looking westwards across the Severn from Frocester Hill near Stroud in Gloucestershire.



....."This is to be sung only when in real danger; it must never be used lightly. many years later, in the middle of singing 'Sweet Primeroses', I grew aware that the ninety-five year old helpless huddle of wraps that Isaiah had become was eyeing me with a piercing and deliberately wicked gaze. 'Chime-child, baint 'ee? Oh ah! Cassn't be ill-wished, eh?" Something overwhelming and terrifying was being projected from the depths of that dark old mind; but the memory of the 'Prayer' rose as a wall between us and I sang it, hoping it sounded as casual as I should have liked to feel. It daunted him, and by the time I ended he sat silent, the magpie-like glint fading from his eyes. On my way home I met Isaiah II (his son), now over seventy, clumping wearily back to his lonely cottage. For once he stopped, looked at me with his faded blue eyes so unlike his father's and said slowly, "Ah. I did a-wonder if the day 'ood come when he couldn't a-bear not to try out his powers. A chime-child be a challenge, Miss Ruth, so you take an' carry salt in your pocket."

Some years later Mrs Isaiah died, and I traced the old man to another cottage where he sat mute before a grand-daughter-in-law as large, solid and fanatical as the rest of the family. When she left us for ten minutes he announced gleefully, "I telled the old missus I'd see her off to her Heavenly Ways afore she drove I Downstairs. Oh ah, an' I done it. 'Tis a true time for singing' ", and he broke into a song for which I had long waited, with a beautiful strange old air. Alas, a married daughter walked in on us, and he stopped in mid phrase. "Tryin' to poach what she'd never no right to", said Isaiah when she had gone down the garden. "My songs bain't for the likes o'' she. Gifted folk be a different matter.!"

"Why don't you let young Isaiah learn a few for you?" I urged.

"No! The bye idn' old enough." (He must have been seventy-five). "Let he go down pub an' sing his songs there. Puppies do like muck."

I never saw Isaiah again; he outlived his second wife by less than eight weeks. But I have pieced together some of his uncanny ballads. Two of the best concern the magic and danger of green, the fairy colour. 'The Gay Green Gown', collected over fifteen years, begins:

The Proud ladye she rode through the wood,
Ad there in her way the Wicked One stood.
'Bow wecome, Proud Ladye! Light down, light down,
For I must give thee a gay green gown.
'Twill punish thy pride, for no honest bride
Wears such a gown,
A gay green gown.'

'The Green Lady' is a chilling but fairly complete picture of a dangerous nature-spirit of the vampire type:

Now all you young fellows take heed what I tell
A-down in the wood a Green Ladye do dwell.Her hair it is green and all green is her gown,
And she calleth to all, "Come here! Draw near!"
But she means them no good,
For she drinks their heart's blood;
They never do wed,
For they takes to their bed,
And they dies, yes they dies at the end of the year.


But I hardly gained a footing in his vast storehouse of lore in twenty years, and many of his strange and beautiful songs must be hopelessly lost."


Just in case you have an interest in the folk music, I've found a couple of links for you. June Tabor is one of my favourite folk singers, and here is a link to the words of a spring carol sung by June Tabor, and collected by Ruth Tongue . . .

Here's the link to the Gay Green Gown which is quite possibly written by Ruth Tongue herself. There are onward links here to other of the songs which she claimed to have collected.


As for the story - well, it's a good one, true or no. Perhaps Isaiah Sully was based on someone she knew, but perhaps - enhanced a little bit?

Isaiah Sully and Ruth Tongue (part 1)

This is just an excerpt (or two) from the article in my 1965 copy of The Countryman, which I thought may be of interest. The man that Ruth Tongue was writing about, whom she calls Isaiah Sully, was an itinerant folk singer in Somerset. She mentioned that he had a French surname and was possibly descended from Huguenot refugees from the 17th C, but from what he said his roots may well have been descended from French travelling minstrels. He was an outstanding performer, but apparently wicked with it . . . "he was suspected, and rightly, of 'dark dealings' ". He was a leading mummer and Morris man, but his reputation was such that when he was in a village the menfolk carried salt in their pockets and woman crossed their thumbs when they caught sight of him. We are going back a fair way here as he was performing in the 1840s (when Thomas Hardy was born) and in great demand at every local fair across the south-west, and well known for his pure singing voice, his "quick wit and agile dancing" and his acting skills. Ruth Tongue knew him when she was a child (in Taunton, Somerset), when he would have been in his 80s, but still sprightly and able to throw a leap or two.

"I first met him as a bent crippled figure tucked into a fireside chair, in the spotless cottage where he was living under the thumb of a highly respected second wife. The village said she had collected and married him when he was in a drunken haze, as the only way of rescuing him from Satan; and for their forty years of married life she applied herself with grim determination to the task of saving his soul. He was no longer allowed to sing, act or dance. But he defied her in one respect: he never attended a religious service, either of her own very rigid sect or of any other.

I was often brought down to the cottage and left to amuse 'Dad' while the grown-ups were at the farm. 'The dear liddle soul she do talk so clear an' she do sing her liddle songs, an' it do cheer en up.' When Mrs Isaiah was out of the way I unburdened myself of all the hotch-potch of tunes and singing games I could remember. . . . Isaiah replied in kind with a spate of song fragments, dance steps and ballads; but he would never sing a song right through and became wilier as I grew older. His benevolence had an uncertain edge to it, as unexpected as his lightning changes from huddled cripple to Morris man and back. With the family away in the hayfield he would fling aside his wraps, caper round the kitchen table and be back in his chair like a mummy again, all in a moment.

Once only did I learn anything of real worth from him, and it proved very necessary later on. Whether he foresaw that time and was impelled to pass on a knowledge that would frustrate his own evil intent, I do not know, but one afternoon he interrupted 'Barbarous Helen' to say sharply: 'Liddle chime-child, bain't 'ee? Cassn' be overlooked nor ill-wished, not no-how. Gifted, bain't 'ee? Well, my maid, thur'll come a time when 'ee'd best call this to mind', and we spent a happy half-hour singing this very old 'Prayer of Protection':

First came Lord God
And then come Holy Ghost,
And then come Sweet Jesu
That di-ed and lov-ed men most.

Now bless-ed be Lord God,
And bless-ed Bright Trinity,
And bless us Sweet Jesu
Who guard us wherever we be.

Glory to Lord God,
Glory to Bright Trinity;
To little Sweet Jesu that sleep under star,
Singen all lustily.

This is to be sung only when in real danger; it must never be used lightly."

Ah, but there came a time when she DID need to sing it . . .


To be continued . . .

Chime children

Another view looking back towards Wales from Frocester Hill near Stroud.


I was going to share with you an interesting piece of writing from The Countryman magazine I got last Sunday. I read through it twice, and had just a leetle hesitation in believing that it might be as much fiction as fact, or the factual bones of the story somewhat frail and much-embroidered. The author was a lady called Ruth L Tongue (1898 - 1981), who was much involved in folk lore and also music and collecting old folk songs - often mere fragments which had survived (and perhaps evolved) over the years.

Of course, I then went in search of some details about a) chime children, and b) Ruth L Tongue.

Chime children are those born as the clock chimes the hour - the really crucial one was midnight which gifted its recipients with the ability of second sight. Others claim that a Chime Child will be able to see ghosts and other-worldly things, develop extra-ordinary herbal skills, control animals and be immune to witchcraft (see HERE). Supposedly the chimes were 3, 6, 9 and 12 - tolled by the church bells and marking those times when religious orders were called to prayer. However this could differ by region, and in Somerset (where Ruth Tongue collected folk lore and songs) and also East Anglia, the chime hours were 8p.m, midnight and 4 a.m. Ruth Tongue herself claimed to be a Chime Child with psychic powers, born between midnight on a Friday and cockcrow on Saturday (perhaps this timing gave special significance in the West Country? ) At all events, Answers.com quotes this from the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore and also claims that she misled people with her Chime Child claim. Within the story I shall share with you tomorrow, she states that as she was a Chime Child, country people were happy to divulge tales, songs and "magical lore" to her when she was small.

This link will take you to the appropriate page on the appropriately-named "In the Chimehours"
which is an interesting site about folklore, with fabulous photographs.

I have to say I have never heard of a Chime Child before, and none of my Folklore books mention it, so this is quite intriguing.