A Sussex Story

It was an open space that I chopped into squares

but still the wind blows across

A Sussex Story

Gold, gold, the quarterboys! The water moves in the dark

Up here on the hill's deck The wind moves full of water

Waiting for the big clock Hands full of breath

And shreddy tatting of the       Yours and mine

bowlines down there in the      Winding around the hill

polepark: Rain, wind, shoes on stone

Gold, gold, the quarterboys!

The clattering polepark

Cold wind flecked with rain

Up here on the town's deck

And to larboard down there

The wheeling funfair lights in the car-park

Trudging to the door with Sheila in heels

Hammering fiercely on the broad pavement

In the mist like tiny nails in fairy-tales

We came to the blue door of the Horse and Groom

(I can't recall if it was Courage or Harveys)

and fumbling for a moment in chilly calm

That I appreciated even in the middle 

of all our turbulence, I squashed my hat

into one palm and with the other turned the handle   

A glare of illumination,  and wisps of smoke,

a public bar in winter, St Leonards on Sea,

not full but fairly lively for mid-week

the beer-rings round that table & the empties collected in the middle,

fags, Friday-Ad, shiny Golden Virginia tins, and them

                  -- yes, I see them now -- crumbling baccy into papers,

Laughing, like any couple anywhere, but quietly,

Drowned out by raucous floods of beer-buzz from the bar.

We were almost breaking up. There was something like relief

when we saw them in the front bar, Sheila's ex landlady/flatmate 

as she'd become after Sheila had come home to find

her lover cosily in bed with her best friend, 

and home was no longer home, 

so she'd moved downstairs to seek refuge;

I knew her too though not very well, 

I had been over at Pevensey Road to stay

(but then, she must have been away mostly, remembering

                 some of the things we did)

(i.e. the ground floor, the first floor was where Sheila and Bryn had lived

                 before this best friend Vicky sought refuge there, 

                 -- which was what she had done, though for what 

                 particular trouble I don't recall --

and Sheila coming back early from work, etc.)

                 this was during that short period between 

                 us getting together and Sheila getting her own place

                 in a neat, rather expensive, basement beside the park

                 (she did have two Fitted markings)

Though come to think of it even in those earliest days of us,

                 the Pevensey days, we were almost breaking up... 

Sheila liked her, yes but feared her, she looked worn out, neurotic,

                 unpredictably pissed off, depressed according to Sheila,

                 full of bizarre life that had nothing to do with us.

Madeline. -- the man's name was Rog. A much older man,

Older but actually they went together, dressed in working clothes

Made for the rain, rumpled jackets, fingerless gloves, DMs,

Everything old with plenty of weather through it .

I could see why she liked him. He was a chimney sweep,

Warm, short, powerful, quiet, maybe even shy.

He'd not got away from his wife before.

Most old houses up in the weald or the vineyards he'd swept in the summer

& the town terraces in winter. 

 

This I remember, but not much of what we talked of. 

They were all older than me, I didn't understand anything

And besides, they had not been to university,

Whilst I was in the thick of a PhD.

In the car park at Firehills, plenty of cars late at night,

the coast of Romney Marsh impossibly drawn out to the misty nova of Dungeness

Rye and Rye Harbour closer, radar turning, 

a single red light in the sky above the coastguard station.

I would stub out my fag and drive down to The Lamb at the Kent ditch.... 

or go back via Paul McCartney's house. 

The whole place was a mournful playground,

and me an ignorant Kipling in a Polo.

Then one day, a year later, 

Tired of running away to Canterbury on my own

To conceal wounds re-opened by Sheila

(Now ex) and my own flatmate Tim fooling around together

I heard about Madeline, and we started going drinking

In Rye, listening to the blues bands, delicate with each other,

Not afraid of tears, more or less knowing the position,

Conceding the quirks of desperate emotion,

The times when you have to stop the car, right here,

And breathe, roll a fag, and wait until you can say the words:

I'm all right now. Sorry. It's all right. Let's carry on. 

I learnt much more than I could take in about her

In the deep gulfs that patrol a beer-filled evening

                  of friendship with a possible lover.

(I put my arm around her once, 

At night on the beach at St Leonards,

                  a pass as light as a butterfly's wing.)

Near that spot she had once been a barmaid for the fishermen's club,

But now she was a primary-school teacher, 

                  misplaced in a too-Christian school

And pretty soon after we became friends

                  she jacked it in and started supply.

 (She was also a morris dancer in a 

                  female troupe called Daisy Roots.)

Our families and relationships poured out on the table

                  or in the dark car after closing time.

Somehow, because of the holy lack of sex,

                  we trusted each other, we told secrets.

Sometimes she made me laugh more than anyone ever.

Rog had died without warning,

One of those merciless heart attacks that do the job in one.

As it happened, Maddy had sort of finished it with Rog,

Not meaning it to end (this occurred sometimes), so

She hadn't found out for two weeks, 

She wasn't in contact with the wife,

The funeral was over and done with.

It was a cremation, she had absolutely nothing to remember him by.

It had been a very private affair, no friend had seen much of them. 

(That time in the golden bar,

Once crossing over at the house in Pevensey Road, 

the four of us sharing a pot of tea...)

But his yacht was still moored at Rye. Over and over

we drove to where his yacht was moored,

Waiting for something to happen. & the dark water slapped, & the chain clanked.

His wife, wheelchair-bound, never went out, had probably never seen it,

Didn't want it, never liked Rog going off 

-- And the boat went up for sale very soon. Madeline watched. 

She wanted the boat very badly, but she had no money.

The boat was the grief she was not allowed to exhaust.

Hey mama, mama don't you want to go...

It was mostly the Ypres Castle, up salty or icy steps 

from Fishmarket Road, empty beer gardens, the benches shining,

Fremlins, King & Barnes,

 

The bands were people Madeline sort of knew to nod to,

Best was a pianist from Cranbrook who (so it was said)

Was now a big name in New Orleans, John Cleary. 

His singing voice was pure Louisiana, of course, but a little light;

His playing technique formidable, and the overall effect -- 

Cheerful... like a half of Harveys. She could drink much more than me.

Madeline had a mother who sometimes came to stay,

(Causing massive increase of stress in both of them).

She had a nephew in Ashford that she loved,

and used to tell me his jokes:

What's orange and sounds like a parrot?  

A carrot. She also watched Coronation Street,

And a Sunday evening serial about yachts, passion and money

                called Howard's Way.

She had two cats, one of whom dominated the other,

And a B.Ed degree on the go at a college in Brighton.

We went drinking in Rye a lot, sometimes every night for a week.

We went to pubs with bands, because Madeline liked the blues

(She liked morris dancing too, and she made me laugh).

The cops were always pulling me over and breathalysing me,

So we started to drive home through the lanes where cops never went.

One night in the bottoms we got out to piss. I finished first. 

                The air was heavy with meadowsweet.

I lit a fag, then I got in the car and put on a tape. Finally Maddy returned.

                The dark trees loomed over the car.

The same tape she liked last week she didn't like now.

She'd really lost it. I looked at her.

Her trouble had replaced her beauty

Her trouble had replaced her youth,

It had stolen their virtues, become desirable,

Become rich and ardent.

Somewhere between Pett and St Lawrence Guestling,

Flooded with Fremlins, 

Meadowsweet nettles oaks rabbits bracken,

The car puttered onto the down and dropped into town.

 

We were both in our thirties, no, I was 29. She despised my work

& criticized my interests (e.g flowers), 

                 which she thought insincere.

I didn't like her any the less for these words,

                  maybe I felt superior.

I was sorry she hated cathedrals.

(Religion and history, her vehement dislikes...)

Those days in Canterbury, tormented by jealousy,

I had waited by a side chapel for a priest to hear confession

In her toilet, you were meant to strike a match to 

                   clear the air when you'd finished.

Oh, and she made the garments for Daisy Roots, 

                   she held the first one up to show me: 

The pattern was yellow around a white disc.

I said (stupefied) "But daisies have the yellow on the inside!", 

                   she wouldn't at first believe me that they

                   were so like fried eggs.

Down there, masts sticking up like a pole park,

Can't see the boats until you climb out of the road.

Working soaked chips free from the bottom of the bag.

The boats two abreast along the W. berths 

The Lizzy, was that the wizard's boat?

Small boat, brown, serviceable, 

               its mast a little back of vertical,

               plastic cover hung over the boom,

Fenders all dangling like flour-bags

Moon and boats in the water, shimmering...

The sound of a train... 

On Armada day, the Daisy Roots were dancing at a beacon

Up in Mad Jack Fuller's country. On the way there (through sunset lanes)

I ran over a rabbit, and saw in the rear-view mirror

Its companion come to sniff over its crushed body, still flipping.

My mind went dark, I said nothing to Maddy, 

Who couldn't bear the least touch of distress. 

 

At the bonfire we ran into Bryn and Vicky, with the baby in morris rompers.

I didn't dance, but I did burn my mouth with pure powdered Colemans 

On a hot dog dripping onions, and knocked over my beer on the grass.

Then the boat was gone & didn't come back,

                gone to Essex or Southampton I imagined,

Anyway sold up, all Rog's and Madeline's love-filled trips

                In the channel, over to France,

Spray, darkness, storm lanterns, tobacco tins, camping Gaz,

Clandestine sex where no eye could spy or listener guess.

And then, we stopped going to Rye...

Then, in winter, she saw something in Friday-Ad

(Everyone read all of Friday-Ad every Friday)

It was Rog's jacket, his wife was selling Rog's jacket.

She thought it over, how many times had he 

               taken her under his wings on a blowing day 

               south of St George's lightship? Twice, maybe,

               but she felt she knew every thread. 

No-one else should have the jacket. Trembling, she threw on a 

Ridiculous disguise, supply-teacher suss, 

Went round to the house and spoke in an altered voice.

(Though this was the only time she ever did meet Rog's wife

Who knew how much she knew? Or was it that, face to face,

She would give herself away, starting to speak of him

To the only other woman who knew him?)

She got the jacket. It smelt of Rog, of soot, salt, Golden Virginia

And him. She wrapped it around her and slept on the sofa

In the smell of his arms for eleven hours.

And then, she was all right. The next time I saw her

Was at Sheila's wedding next spring with her tongue down the best man's throat,

A freelance consultant, 25-ish, whom she married.

They bought the upstairs flat for his office and the freehold,

(The flat that was Bryn and Sheila's when we met)

Then pretty soon after they moved to Barnet.

VOICES LYING IN THE DUNES AT CAMBER SANDS  

Mum, are there any towels around here?

No. What do you want a towel for.

I can make smoke come out of my feet

Joshua, come ‘ere.

Joshua, why are you being rude to your mother

You’re splintering your foot, darling

Come on then, Mummy race you down the sand-dune, come on!

 oo    - ah     - ow     - ah!

Josh, it’s yours!

It’s a trick, Cerys.

If you do that one more time Joshua you’ll answer to me.

And don’t go near them railings, I can’t get you to hospital if you kebab yourself. 

Ah!   It’s hot

Verity that’s a bit silly. Everyone’ll get covered in sand. 

No. We’re going home. 

I glanced up, my daughter was waving and laughing.

Sorry – we got involved in a mud-fight. 

Combi

 

A sunny March week, so not much time for blogging. Here are some pics from Combe Martin (in North Devon) last week-end. 

Buffeted by days of constant sea-breeze, and with no TV reception in the caravan, I woozily read through Sean O'Brien's The Drowned Book. I suspended all effort to think what the poems might mean, or what the book might mean. The pages merged together into a single monochrome journey: estuary, sewer, Acheron. I found it strangely compulsive. 

When their history's over,

The rivermouth offers these lighthouses

Sheltered employment: watch, reflect

And let the square white towers

Take the light laid on at dusk and dawn

By Scottish colourists --

White that is blue,

That is nothing at all,

That is water and air, ...

Since coming back to Frome, I've re-read the book but struggled to enter the same space. The poems meant more but did less. Maybe I needed to be out of myself, as I was that week-end. So instead I read about Hull (Drypool and Scott Street, Little Switzerland), about Joseph Chamberlain, about isomers ("the isomers of boredom"), and checked the meanings of "freshets", "revetments" and "staithe". 

They are the isomers of boredom.

Fleeing through a river-door the adult world's critique

You will hear the foul yawn of low tide caught

Au naturel in its khaki-tripe skin

Between the dented ironclad revetments

Of Drypool and Scott Street:

Barges, drowned dogs, drowned tramps, all are

Subdued to its element, worked

Into the khaki, with ropes and old staithes,

Estuarine polyps and leathery excrescences

No one has thought of a name for.

(from "River-doors")

Returning via Ilfracombe and of course a charity shop, I picked up H.G. Wells' Kipps and a Katharine McMahon novel, The Rose of Sebastopol. (I previously read her novel After Mary.)

Since getting back to Frome, I've finished reading Dave Boling's warm-hearted and moving historical novel Guernica. It begins with three boys, virtually orphans, growing up on the farm at the beginning of the twentieth century.

. . . Josepe spotted a sliver of darkness banking in tight circles above the hillside. "Justo, Justo, an eagle -- are there lambs out there?" he screamed.

"Get the gun!" Justo yelled, leaping down onto a bale and rolling off onto his feet.

Pascal Ansotegui's rifle was old before the turn of the century and the boys had never seen it fired. At thirteen, Justo was as strong as some of the men in the village, but Pascual had never taught him how to shoot. Josepe could hardly lift the iron weapon off the pegs in the shed. He dragged it to his brother with both hands at the end of the barrel, the butt bouncing along the ground.

Justo took it from him, raised it to his shoulder, and waved the barrel in the direction of the diving eagle. Xabier knelt in front of him and grabbed the stock with both hands, trying to buttress his big brother's hold.

"Shoot him, Justo!" Josepe screamed. "Shoot him!"

With the rifle butt inches from his shoulder, Justo pulled the trigger. The cartridge exploded in the barrel, and the recoil thrust Justo to the ground, bleeding from the side of his head. Xabier flattened out beside him, screaming from the noise. The shot did not even startle the eagle, which was now applying a lethal clench of its talons into the neck of a tiny, still-wet lamb.

With Justo and Xabier down, Josepe charged. Before he could reach it, the eagle extended its wings, hammered them several times into the ground, and lifted off on a downhill swoop just over Josepe's head. 

(pp. 11-12)

Thirty years later there'll be another attack from the air. 

Still awake at dawn, Miguel left his sleeping wife and daughter in their beds and walked to the bakery on Calle Santa María in hopes of finding something other than grainy black bread for their breakfast. Strangers filled the streets, strangers who were hungry and upset, dirty and homeless.

At the bakery, where he saw nothing worth buying, he was told that there had been a break-in the night before, the first time they'd had such a problem. Some who sat in the bakery shopfront that morning, finding comfort there in their mutual uncertainty, told of hundreds of war-wounded who had been brought to the hospital at the Carmelite Convent overnight. Men from the Loyola Battalion had been burned and disfigured by phosphorus bombs; others had lost limbs or bled to death before they could be treated by the few doctors available. 

Surely, Miguel thought, these were tales from the alarmists, exaggerated like so many stories told in town. From more reliable mouths, he heard talk of cancelling the afternoon market and the pelota games scheduled for the evening. At the last moment, the council agreed that people would have too difficult a time making it through the week without the market, and it would be impossible to get word to the outlying farmers who were already herding stock towards town. And to cancel the pelota games might cause more alarm than necessary. 

The news that all would proceed as normal settled Miguel as he trudged back home without the bread he'd sought. 

(p. 193)

Lauburu : a four-angled leaf symbol popular in Basque culture. It appears on the title page and chapter headings. 

Pelota : a racket game played in Basque regions. 

Mus: bewildering bidding and betting card game, with partners. Basque origin, but popular throughout Spain.  

Txingas: a contest to carry weights (one in each hand) as far as possible around a circular track. 

Baserri: traditional housebarn farmhouse.

Basque jota: "The Jota, by virtue of its presence at most gatherings, seems to be the national dance of the Basque people. Even though most Basque dances are danced by men, Basques of all ages, all vocations, men and women, know and participate in the Jota." It's unclear how or if it relates to the jota of Aragon and Castile.  https://www.sfdh.us/encyclopedia/basque_jota_lester.html

Irrintzi: traditional high-pitched cry. https://walkonthebasqueside.com/en/irrintzi-the-basques-ancestral-scream/

Kuttuna: darling

Makila: traditional Basque walking stick, carved from medlar wood. 

Egun on: Good morning.

Pintxoak: = Spanish pinchos (spikes), snacks pinned to a slice of bread with a cocktail stick. 

*

Passing by a book sale at the Frome Museum last week I eagerly snatched up John Sutherland's The Life of Walter Scott, which I've wanted to read for ages, and which I'll surely write more about. 

Guernica came out of one of the half-dozen book exchange boxes in Frome's parks. It's time to move on a few items to make room for these new ones, so here are some passing notes. 

*

Eighty Years of Frome, 1894-1974, a brochure to commemorate the passing of the Urban District Council. (Thus began Mendip District Council, now facing its own demise.) 

Frome in 1894: "An old town and a hideous... the streets are narrow, crooked, steep and irregularly built, not to say dilapidated" (R.N. Worth: Tourists Guide to Somersetshire); Frome had not recovered from the decline of the wool trade. Luke Ellis defended it in the Echo (May, 1894): "But apart from the interesting church and the wide, sunny street, my memory dwells on that walk through Holly Wood, and the smooth winding path chequered with the shade of Holly and oak, and the sunny glades sparkling with rich colour, where the gorgeous pheasant struts." I have never heard of this Holly Wood, nor does the internet supply any answers. 

Frome was a small town then, still mainly cobbled and with Catherine Hill at its heart. It expanded enormously in the twentieth century and is now doing so again. 

The 1974 ads caught my eye too. "Wally Weston's" (Wallington Weston & Co Ltd) were "Manufacturers of Fromotan, Fromocene, Fromide" (kinds of plastic). The Mendip Lodge "which changes its name from Motel this year" offered "Dining and Dancing every Wednesday and Saturday". 

*

Michael McGarvie edited the above booklet, and also another local book that's passing through: The King's Peace: The Justice's Notebooks of Thomas Horner, of Mells, 1770-1777 (1997). (Michael McGarvie is Frome's renowned local historian. I used to fix his computer when we both worked at Marston House.)

Thomas Horner was fond of hunting and shooting, landscape gardening, drinking, robust humour and serving at "the alter of Venus". He seems to have been a diligent and fairly moderate magistrate, for the time. His notebooks are mostly populated by the rural poor.

7th April 1774 -- At a sessions held at the Talbot Inn in Mells. Present myself, Mr. Edgell and Mr. Harris.

Made an order respecting a female bastard child lately born in the parish of Frome of the body of Mary Tucker singlewoman. John Sedgefield the reputed father to contribute 2s. per week, said Mary Tucker 1s.

....

James Case of Frome cordwainer being apprehended by a judge's warrant granted on an indictment for a riot, and unlawfully taking away sixty pounds weight of butter and other things, from Anthony Rymil, found sureties for his appearance at next assizes to answer said indictment.

....

Examined Betty Carr an intruder into Frome parish, and granted an order to remove her to Horningsham in Wiltshire, the place of her settlement. 

Examined Jonathan Carter and granted an order to remove him and his family from Beckington to North Bradley in Wiltshire.

Examined Sarah Mitten of Beckington singlewoman as to the reputed father of a male bastard child lately born of her body in that parish. She refusing to discover the father, was committed to gaol. 

*

Two perceptive and lively books by Julian Lovelock that deserve better than to be given away after skim-reading. From Morality to Mayhem: The Fall and Rise of the English School Story (2018) -- on Hughes, Farrar, Golding, Buckeridge, Blyton, etc -- but I was sorry about the complete absence of Molesworth, the undisputed hero of my own youth. As for Swallows, Amazons and Coots (2016), it's a brilliant guide, but is too dangerous to hang on to; it would inevitably draw me into reading all twelve of Arthur Ransome's series.  

*

At Combe Martin there weren't many plants in flower yet: Blackthorn, Gorse, Great Wood-rush (above) just starting, Lesser Celandine of course... And on the sheltered coast path heading east from the village, Greater Stitchwort and Lady's Smock. 

Thomas Middleton and William Rowley: The Changeling (1622)

Helen Mirren as Beatrice-Joanna 

[Image source: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=changeling . A still from the BBC TV production broadcast in January 1974.]

The great period of English tragedy was coming to an end. It was 1622, six years since Shakespeare's death and fourteen years since his last tragedy (Coriolanus). But there was still time for the Middleton and Rowley partnership to invent film noir, some three hundred years early. 

From the Moment they met it was Murder!

The ordinary couple who drop into crime would become a common motif of films like Double Indemnity (1944). Shakespeare had his own criminal couple in Macbeth, but they were senior nobility, his play was a study of greatness gone wrong. 

The Changeling was a different kind of play and Beatrice and Deflores were something new: a woman far less confident and happily integrated than her worldly position might suggest; a man fallen on hard times and compelled to bide his time in service to another. Their story wasn't grounded in historical chronicle but in a compilation of tawdry crime stories.

*

CHristian Reader, we cannot sufficiently bewail the iniquity of these last and worst days of the world, in which the crying and scarlet-sin of Murther makes so ample, and so bloody progression . . .

Thus the Exeter merchant John Reynolds, prefacing his collection of thirty histories of God's justice in exposing and punishing murder. The first book came out in 1621, the rest by 1635. The collection was very popular. Contrary to Wikipedia and the DNB (based on Anthony Wood's Athenae Oxonienses), Reynolds was explicit that his stories were not translations. He said that he heard the stories when on his travels, and that he stuck to foreign crimes so as not to disgrace his own country. I'm not sure, but I imagine this basically means "I made them up"; it was quite a striking feat of invention in a realist mode. Reynolds had certainly used his merchant travels to equip himself with local details, e.g. in this case the imposing castle of Alicante and the church of Santa Maria. 

Illustration from a 1679 edition of John Reynolds' The Triumphs of Gods Revenge against the Crying and Execrable Sin of Murther (Book I, History IV). 

This illustrates the story according to Reynolds.

The top row shows Alsemero seeing Beatrice-Joana in the church, then presenting himself to her and her father. The second row shows her with her suitor Alfonso Piracquo (turning her head away in repulsion), then with Deflores; then Deflores murdering Piracquo. So far this is all like the familiar plot-line of The Changeling. This is not to say that there are no differences in detail and emphasis, but from this point the divergence becomes much greater. 

In Reynolds' story Deflores, though "feeding his hopes with the air of her promises" exacts no price for his service. Beatrice-Joana is married to Alsemero and has three months of wedded bliss. But then Alsemero is afflicted by causeless jealousy and takes his wife off to a confined life in Valencia. [So in fact the basic premise of Rowley's comic subplot is also taken from Reynolds; so is the name "Alibius", prominently appearing at the head of the next story (Bk I, History V).] 

When Deflores arrives with a letter from her concerned father, Beatrice contrasts his reliable  loyalty with the way her husband is now behaving towards her, and the two become affectionate. After Deflores has left, Diaphanta tips off Alsemero, who confronts Beatrice with drawn sword; she then excuses herself by telling Alsemero of Deflores' service in killing Piracquo. Alsemero is not happy, but he lets her off for now, strictly ordering her not to see Deflores any more. Nevertheless she secretly becomes Deflores' lover, and Alsemero (kept informed by Diaphanta) surprises them in bed and kills them both (third row, picture 1). Then he gives himself up to the authorities and is pardoned. 

However, Alsemero says nothing about Alfonso's murder (why?). Thomaso is convinced that Alsemero must have been an accessory and challenges him to a duel of rapiers in Alicante. Alsemero accepts the challenge (why?) but takes no chances. When they meet, he throws away his rapier and begs to be heard in his own defence. When Thomaso tosses his own rapier aside, Alsemero pulls out his concealed pistols and murders him (Row 3, picture 2). Alsemero flees but is apprehended by the authorities. He reveals the circumstances of Alfonso's death and is then executed (Row 3, picture 3). 

Reynolds underlines the point that, though Alsemero wasn't in fact active in Alfonso's murder he had been quite willing to kill Alfonso himself.  

(I used Reynolds' slightly different forms of the names in the above paragraphs.)

*

When Rowley and Middleton remodelled Reynolds' story, they ended it in reconciliation. The moral poison is centred in Deflores and Beatrice and is purged by their deaths. Alsemero has no blood on his hands, is reconciled with Tomaso and offers himself as a son to the grieving Vermandero. (To say nothing of the happy ending of the Alibius/Isabella subplot.) Nevertheless Alsemero's questionable part is still there in the play: it was after all he who first suggested getting rid of Alonzo (II.2.22).

These are the other major things that Middleton and Rowley added:

-- The whole of the madhouse subplot. 

-- Deflores' ugliness, and Beatrice-Joanna's initial loathing for him. (Deflores isn't much of a character in Reynolds, who focusses much more on Alsemero.)

-- Deflores insistence on payment in sex, with the consequence of Beatrice losing her virginity before her marriage.

-- All the subsequent transactions around Alsemero's virginity test, the bed-trick, the fire and Diaphanta's death. 

-- Beatrice's growing feeling for the man she used to hate takes on quite different meaning in The Changeling, though some details are obviously suggested by Reynolds' account. 

-- Jasperino is a new character. Diaphanta is much more of a character than in Reynolds, where she's merely a blab. 

-- Middleton and Rowley maintain the location in Alicante throughout, eliminating Reynolds' shifts of location between there and Briamata and Valencia. 

On the other hand, here are some things in Reynolds that they stuck particularly close to:

-- Alsemero's total change of plan when he glimpses Beatrice in the church, and forgets all about going to Malta (I.1).  (However Jasperino and the sailors are new creations. Also Middleton and Rowley did not bother with Reynolds' extensive account of the progress of Alsemero's courtship and his uncertainty about whether Beatrice favours him, the letters between them, etc.)

-- The circumstantial details of the murder of Alonzo (=Alfonso): the concealed sword, the removal of sword-belts to get through a narrow space, etc. (But they misunderstood some of Reynolds' detailed castle layout, and the cutting of the finger is their invention.)

-- Beatrice confiding the details of the murder to Alsemero, hoping it will save her skin (V.3). 

*

For more on John Reynolds and the Spanish setting of The Changeling, see this excellent essay:

Randall, Dale B. J. “Some New Perspectives on the Spanish Setting of ‘The Changeling’ and Its Source.” Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 3, Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp DBA Associated University Presses, 1986, pp. 189–216. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24322019

*

Pauline Wiggins' important 1897 monograph: 

An Inquiry Into The Authorship of the Middleton-Rowley Plays

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/readbook/AnInquiryIntotheAuthorshipoftheMiddletonRowleyPlays_10013110#0

One difference between the authors concerns feminine endings. In Middleton's verse they equal (or even exceed) one in two; in Rowley's they are about one in four. (see page 30). 

Seems straightforward. So let's check out I.1, considered a Rowley scene, using Richard Dutton's text. 

There are 234 lines in total. 31 are in prose, so effectively 203. I counted 59 feminine endings. (It's surprisingly often difficult to decide, but I tried to be as objective as I could.) 

Compare II.2, a Middleton scene. 94 feminine endings in 165 lines. 

So it checks out. Feminine endings in the Rowley scene amount to less than a third, in the Middleton scene over half. 

Wiggins points out other metrical differences. The rhythm of Middleton's lines is relatively smooth, but he's happy to tack on extra syllables at the end: 

Deflores. There's no excuse for't now, I heard it twice, madam;

That sigh would fain have utterance, take pity on't, ... (II.2.103-104)

Rowley's rhythms are more uneven. He tends to stick to ten syllables but wrench the accent.

[Beatrice-Joanna.]

[Aside] I shall change my saint, I fear me, I find

A giddy turning in me. [To Vermandero] Sir, this while

I am beholding to this gentleman,

Who left his own way to keep me company,

And in discourse I find him much desirous

To see your castle: he hath deserved it, sir,

If ye please to grant it.  (I.1.151-157) 

Apart from showing who wrote what, Wiggins' other main contention is that both authors were equally involved in the overall design of the play. Though it's naturally the Middleton scenes we remember, e.g. those incendiary two-handers between Deflores and Beatrice, yet Middleton is writing within an overall conception whose romanticism rather suggests Rowley and is notably lacking in the plays Middleton wrote on his own. 

 

*

The brilliant BBC production of The Changeling with Stanley Baker and Helen Mirren, broadcast in January 1974. I was fifteen, so it had a very formative effect. I was amazed, watching it again last week, how I still seemed to recall every gesture, tone and kiss; and it's still difficult for me to see the action of the play any other way. 

Deflores/Baker was the unquestioned hero in my eyes, finding his way to sexual fulfillment in the face of a woman's implacable disdain (a situation I could well relate to). Which is troubling, since what Deflores does is rape that woman (isn't it so?); and Deflores never regrets what he's done because his joy outweighs all ills, and Beatrice comes to approve his masterly handling and voluntarily seek his comfort, and the play itself approves him because it agrees that she deserved her fate. The Changeling embodies a base anti-feminist male fantasy, from that point of view. But the view is too narrow. Beatrice, seeking to have her will within the highly authoritarian constraints of her society and her father, holds our attention. She remains as resourceful after Deflores' harsh lesson as before, as powerful when dying condemned as when influencing events in the opening scene. Like her "good" double Isabella, and even the bumptious Diaphanta, Beatrice contributes to a sense that the realism of The Changeling actually has a proto-feminist aspect, as in Women Beware Women. (This paradoxical combination of macho abusive males and strikingly powerful women runs through a lot of film noir, too.)

At just over 1hr 40mins, the BBC production was quite a speedy re-handling. The main plot is allowed to flow without interruption up to Deflores arranging Piracquo's after-dinner tour (II.2), before we get our first glimpse of the madhouse (based on I.2). Then follows the murder and, without a break, the scene in which Deflores exacts his reward (III.4). Now comes the second madhouse scene (some of III.3 -- Franciscus is omitted, and this Isabella seems to respond positively to Antonio's kisses). Then the main plot takes over again, with just a brief sight of the madmen's dance (the end of IV.3), inserted before V.3.

Ah, those good-natured madhouse scenes. Most modern performances of The Changeling have found it impossible to include them in full. They seem to operate at a different tempo to the rest of the play, and of course in a very different mode. Lollio, very likely played by Rowley himself (if the jokes about his bulk are any indication), is a kind of master of ceremonies, on stage almost throughout but with no real stake in what's happening. There are some indications that the contemporary popularity of The Changeling may have been due principally to this part of the play. In the study, at least, it works very well, if only to build anticipation by forcibly suspending the hurtling momentum of the main plot, and to underline the latter's darkness by sunny parodies of the same situations (it's as if Shakespeare had intercut Macbeth with scenes from The Merry Wives). Whatever, Rowley's strange ideas about subplots result in a highly intertextual play. The two authors must have worked very closely together.

Complete list of posts on Shakespeare and his contemporaries

The language of ferns

Ormbunksväxter

Ormbunkar, fräken och lummer kallas gemensamt för kärlkryptogamer. De är gröna av klorofyll och jämfört med övriga kryptogamer högt organiserade i rot, stam och blad. Hos kärlkryptogamerna finns en generationsväxling, sporofyten är den välutvecklade generationen, "ormbunksplantan". Sporerna, de små encelliga förökningskropparna, sitter i sporgömmen på bladens undersidor, ibland på särskilda, ombildade blad eller i speciella ax. Det finns 65 arter i Sverige, några är vitt spridda, andra är stora sällsyntheter och fridlysta. Stensöta, örnbräken och träjon är välkända och allmänna, medan dvärglåsbräken, hjorttunga, jättefräken och cypresslummer är inskränkta till några få lokaler och försvinnande. Den vintergröna mattlummern har av gammalt använts för juldekoration. Stensöta, träjon och mattlummer är gamla medicinalväxter; namnet "ormbunke" förklaras av, att jordstammen av träjon använts som medel mot inälvsmask ("orm" innefattar mask och diverse kryp). 

Ferns and their allies

Ferns, horsetails and clubmosses are collectively known as vascular cryptogams [2]. They are green plants containing chlorophyll and in contrast to other cryptogams they are highly organized into root, stem and leaves. In vascular cryptogams there is an alternation of generations. The sporophyte is the well developed generation, the "fern plant". The spores, the small one-celled reproductive bodies, are located in sporangia on the undersides of the leaves, sometimes on specially adapted leaves or in special spikes. There are 65 species in Sweden: some are widespread, while others are great rarities and are protected. Polypody, Bracken [8] and Male Fern [5] are well known and common, while Least Moonwort [9], Hart's-tongue Fern [6], Great Horsetail [7] and Blue Ground-cedar [3] are restricted to a few sites and are disappearing. Stag's-horn Clubmoss, being green in winter, has long been used as Christmas decoration. Polypody, Male Fern and Stag's-horn Clubmoss are old medicinal plants. The explanation of the name ormbunke (fern [1]) is that the rhizome of Male Fern was used as a remedy for intestinal worms (the meaning of orm includes worms and various insects). 

[from Ut i naturen [4] (1995), text by Ingvar Nordin. This is a popular pocket-sized handbook containing descriptions and illustrations of 600 common Swedish plants and animals.]

1. So the Swedish name for fern (ormbunke). Orm generally means "snake" (e.g. huggorm, viper) but is cognate with English worm. As Nordin says, it can also refer to worms and some insects. SAOB casts doubt on whether the name really derives from Male Fern's use as a remedy against intestinal worms or whether it preceded it. Bunke is an old plant word that refers to the kind of tough growth that is unpalatable to grazing animals. I can't think of a good equivalent in English but maybe something like "snake-fibre" would give a general impression. 

2. kärlkryptogamer (vascular cryptogams).  Kärl means "vessel", for example blodkärl, blood-vessel. Like the English word vessel, it can also mean a container for liquid such as a jug or gravy-boat. 

Diphasiastrum tristachyum (Blue Ground-cedar)

[Image source: illustration from Hans Martin Jahns, Farne, Moose, Flechten Mittel-. Nord- und Westeuropas (1980).]

3. cypresslummer (literally "cypress clubmoss"). This is Diphasiastrum tristachyum, a clubmoss of dry conifer woods in central Europe. It doesn't occur in the British Isles and there is no vernacular name for it, but it does occur in eastern North America and I've borrowed one of its American names (Blue Ground-cedar). I don't know where this Swedish rarity occurs, but I imagine in the south. (I used to find out these things from the invaluable website Den virtuella floran, but it has now been frustratingly offline for about six months. Apparently for redevelopment, but that doesn't make any sense: you don't need to withdraw a live service to redevelop it.)

4. naturen . In Swedish, nature is given a definite article: "the nature". Thus the book title literally means Out in the nature. I've often wondered if it makes a difference. 

5. träjon (Male Fern, Dryopteris filix-mas). SAOB speculates that the name arose from someone (Linnaeus?) misreading their own note of the name "bräjon" i.e. "bräjken" (bräken as spoken in a Småland accent). At any rate the name träjon has no written history before Linnaeus used it in 1745. 

(When I looked this up on the SAOB website, on 14 March 2022, the Word of the Day happened to be TRÄJON, which freaked me out.)

A preparation from the rhizomes of Male Fern is indeed a taeniacide (kills tapeworms), though a somewhat dangerous one to the host, and safer ones are used today. 

6. hjorttunga (Hart's-tongue Fern, Phyllitis scolopendrium aka Asplenium scolopendrium). According to C.A.M Lindman, it is recorded in Sweden only from two sites in Halland, also Gotland and its small outliers the Karl Islands (Karlsöarna). It likes a wetter climate than Sweden can provide. Here in the south-west of England it's the commonest fern. 

7. jättefräken (Great Horsetail, Equisetum telmateia). Recorded from just three sites in Skåne. 

8. örnbräken (Bracken, Pteridium aquilinum). Örn means eagle (cf. the Latin name). In Swedish bräken is a general term for fern, and is a suffix in the names of various fern species (e.g Moonwort in the next note). Bracken is common up as far as central Norrland, but I never saw it in Jämtland.

9. dvärglåsbräken (Least Moonwort aka Little Grapefern, Botrychium simplex). A red-listed species throughout Europe. It's recorded at around ten sites in southern and central Sweden and is becoming even rarer. You have to be on your toes to see it fully grown, for just a few days toward mid-June before it releases spores and quickly withers away (it depends on a mycorrhizal partner). Its sites are mostly coastal and contain some lime. Grazing is required to keep down taller vegetation.

 My information comes from this useful PDF:

https://svenskbotanik.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/dvrglsbrken_44.pdf

Literally the Swedish name means "dwarf-lock-fern". The much more common Moonwort (Botrychium lunaria) is låsbräken or låsgräs. Another old name for this species is fjättergräs ("fetter-grass"). The explanation is evidently that given by Thomas Fuller in The Holy State, 1642: "They say of the herb Lunaria ceremoniously gathered at some set times, that laid upon any lock, it makes it flie open" (found in the OED entry for lunary). 

to break what would face you

I've had a quick internet wander after reading Jennifer Kronovet's work in the anthology women: poetry: migration, ed. Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, 2017.  [JK: born New York, lived in Guangzhou at the time of the anthology, subsequently Berlin.] It contains five of her sonnets about fighting (she is a martial arts enthusiast). This one is the third:

3. Choke

Here and here: weakness. Go behind

to break what would face you. Here:

weakness that is the human form. Here:

my weakness that is me choking

on what I want to feel: a safe distance

from my life. The children. Here:

the points that can break a person down

into pain. I can point out my weakness

because you can't use it. It merely blurs

me into a high-pitched slow rot

I can only quiet when fighting. 

I can take another's body from behind

as nothing. I can calculate myself. Use

weakness to choke weakness out. 

*

Apart from her own poetry Kronovet has co-translated Liu Xia from Chinese and Celia Dropkin from Yiddish. [For details of all this, see https://www.jenniferkronovet.com/ .]

Some years after the former book was published she got to know Liu Xia in Berlin. Liu Xia had finally been released from house imprisonment by the Chinese authorities, following the death of her husband, the activist Dr Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. [The house arrest began because the Chinese authorities didn't want her to attend the ceremony in Oslo in her husband's place.] Kronovet has written a beautiful account of this later acquaintance with a woman previously known only through her poems. 

https://poetrysociety.org/features/visiting-poet/visiting-poet-jennifer-kronovet-on-liu-xia

Here's one of the three Liu Xia poems quoted in that article. 

Shadow

                         -- for Xiaobo

One morning as I was sleeping,

a shadow hovered over me like a dream.

This shadow still blocks my vision.

Time goes by, seasons change,

but that long, cruel morning

hasn’t ended.

A chair and a pipe

wait for you in vain.

No one sees you walking down the street.

In your eyes, a bird is flying,

green fruit hangs from a tree without leaves—

since that morning, the fruit refuses

to ripen in the fall.

A woman with burning eyes

starts writing day and night

with endless dream-words

while the bird

in the mirror falls into a deep sleep.

                                 4/1997

(Liu Xia, translation by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern [Kronovet]. Her husband was serving his second stint in a labour re-education camp.)

*

Celia Dropkin (1887 - 1956) was born in Belarus and her earliest poems were in Russian, but after emigrating to New York in around 1910 she wrote in Yiddish. Here's one of her direct, explicit poems:

Adam

Spoiled,

you had been fussed over

by many women’s hands

when I came across you,

young Adam. And before I pressed

my lips to you

you pleaded, your face paler

and more gentle

than the gentlest lily:

Don’t bite, don’t bite.

I saw that teethmarks covered

your entire body. Trembling,

I bit into you—you breathed

over me through thin nostrils

and edged up to me

like the hot horizon to a field.

[Poem source: https://jacket2.org/commentary/celia-dropkin-her-white-wake-selected-poems-celia-dropkin . Translation by Faith Jones, Jennifer Kronovet and Samuel Solomon.]

*

I can't resist quoting another of Jennifer Kronovet's own poems. This is one (of several apparently) meditating on Peacock Island (Pfaueninsel) in Berlin. 

Peacock Island

From the island

he saw the castle

 

and from the castle

he saw the island.

 

Some people live

this way—wife/

 

mistress/wife/mistress.

But this story isn’t

 

the one I’m telling.

From the island

 

he saw the castle

and that made him

 

distant from power

and from the castle

 

he saw the island

and that made him distant

 

from imagining

what power can do.

 

The story I’m telling is

the war coming.

 

How can you go from

island to castle to island

 

to castle and not give

birth to a war? No.

 

I still can’t explain it.

[Poem source: https://poets.org/poem/peacock-island .]

Onward

James meets Ellen (Lady of the Lake, Canto I)

[Image source: http://austenfamilyalbumquilt.blogspot.com/2014/11/block-31-lady-of-lake-for-sir-walter.html . An American silk painting, early 19th C.]

Scott spent an intensive six months composing The Lady of the Lake. When it was published in 1810 it was a sensational best-seller, his greatest success to date. It was the poem that introduced Scott to a European audience. For more than a century it was frequently studied in schools. For William J. Rolfe, a headmaster in Cambridge, Mass., reading The Lady of the Lake needed no justification. It sat easily beside Virgil, Shakespeare and Milton: a precious cargo of the most universal and most profound pleasures that poetry can give. He doesn't say this, but he shows it on every page of his lovingly assembled notes. 

[The Lady of the Lake, complete online text with notes by William J. Rolfe (1883, incorporating notes by Scott, Lockhart and R. W. Taylor (1875)):

https://www.poetrynook.com/story/lady-lake

-- Unfortunately the text that Rolfe collated so carefully is now dusted with a few OCR errors.

]

Today, however, few poetry fans have even heard of The Lady of the Lake and fewer still have contemplated reading it. Which is a shame, because reading it is a dazzling experience.

The few modern discussions I've been able to find are ultimately preoccupied (even if they seem to ignore it) with the problem of how a poem such as this can be brought into line with our own expectations of what poetry ought to be offering us; a problem that for Rolfe and others simply didn't exist. 

Though, of course, there were early rumblings about whether this was really poetry at all. That always happens if a poem is unduly popular. And when the poem reached Italy (as recounted by Mary E. Ambrose, see end of post for details), classicist critics took exception to it being cast as a poema, that is, an epic poem. 

But if The Lady of the Lake eludes us today, it's most likely because life itself eludes our ever more virtualized existences: because we're no longer attuned to some things that everyone used to see. After being immersed in the poem so long, I've found it resonate suddenly amid scenes of bustling activity. For instance picking up children from school: this poetry giving meaning to a formless daily scene of wedged cars, converging people and voices.

HARP of the North! that mouldering long hast hung

On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring,

And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung,

Till envious ivy did around thee cling,

Muffling with verdant ringlet every string, --

O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep?

Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring,

Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep,

Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid to weep?

Not thus, in ancient days of Caledon,

Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd,

When lay of hopeless love, or glory won,

Aroused the fearful, or subdued the proud.

At each according pause, was heard aloud

Thine ardent symphony sublime and high !

Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bow'd;

For still the burden of thy minstrelsy

Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's matchless eye.

 

O, wake once more ! how rude soe'er the hand

That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray ;

O, wake once more ! though scarce my skill command

Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay :

Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away,

And all unworthy of thy nobler strain,

Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway,

The wizard note has not been touch'd in vain.

Then silent be no more ! Enchantress, wake again !

(Canto I, Prelude)

In these introductory stanzas, addressed to the Harp of the North, Scott placed his poem in an ancient tradition that compelled attention because of its subject matter ("Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's matchless eye") and because of the accompanying music of the harp ("Thine ardent symphony sublime and high"). To partake in those delights inspired socially valuable feelings ("Aroused the fearful, or subdued the proud"). But now the tradition had fallen into decay, and Scott could only hope for "Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay". This is a poetic that pitches the art as both celebration and social ceremony. It's a poetic that's offered playfully: its imagined tradition is in part a historical fantasy combining courtly and popular practices, continental romance and native ballad, as Scott well knew. And anyway his poem of 1810 stood at a large remove from it. Reading The Lady of the Lake was as likely to be solitary as communal (though not so inevitably as today). There was no literal harp symphony in 1810; just Scott's own verbal music, resounding in his readers' imaginations. Nevertheless the suggestion of building a social consensus was indeed at the heart of the enterprise. We can hear, in this most grounded of Scott's poems, the author seeking to promote mutual respect and understanding across cultural and social barriers (between highland and court, or the rulers and the ruled) by invoking shared appreciation of e.g. nature and landscape, common aspirations (love, honour) and common experience (weddings, funerals); by allowing different manners to be displayed and different views to be expressed without judgement (e.g. in the debate between James and Roderick).

*

The title posits an image of timeless stillness and tranquillity. But in Scott's imagination life is always movement. Even Ellen on her skiff is in motion, glowing with "the sportive toil". And in fact the poem portrays dynamic change. The lives of all the main characters change dramatically. The vision of Ellen on her skiff has an eternal dimension, but by the end of the poem we can see that it belongs to an era already past. It's a point subtly underlined by the poem's abandonment of its highland setting in the later cantos. 

"Onward" (I.13): it describes The Lady of the Lake in a single word: both the propulsive movement of the verse and the drive of the narrative. 

Here, for example, is Duncan's funeral at Duncraggan being interrupted by the summons to war.

XVII.

See Stumah, who, the bier beside

His master's corpse with wonder eyed,

Poor Stumah! whom his least halloo

Could send like lightning o'er the dew,

Bristles his crest, and points his ears,

As if some stranger step he hears.

'Tis not a mourner's muffled tread,

Who comes to sorrow o'er the dead,

But headlong haste, or deadly fear,

Urge the precipitate career.

All stand aghast: -- unheeding all,

The henchman bursts into the hall;

Before the dead man's bier he stood,

Held forth the Cross besmear'd with blood;

"The muster-place is Lanrick mead ;

Speed forth the signal! clansmen, speed!"

XVIII,

Angus, the heir of Duncan's line,

Sprung forth and seized the fatal sign.

In haste the stripling to his side

His father's dirk and broadsword tied ;

But when he saw his mother's eye

Watch him in speechless agony,

Back to her opened arms he flew

Pressed on her lips a fond adieu, --

"Alas!" she sobbed, -- "and yet be gone,

And speed thee forth, like Duncan's son!"

One look he cast upon the bier,

Dashed from his eye the gathering tear,

Breathed deep to clear his labouring breast,

And tossed aloft his bonnet crest.

Then, like the high-bred colt, when, freed,

First he essays his fire and speed,

He vanish'd, and o'er moor and moss

Sped forward with the Fiery Cross.

Suspended was the widow's tear

While yet his footsteps she could hear ;

And when she mark'd the henchman's eye

Wet with unwonted sympathy,

"Kinsman," she said, "his race is run

That should have sped thine errand on ;

The oak has fall'n, -- the sapling bough 

Is all Duncraggan's shelter now.

Yet trust I well, his duty done,

The orphan's God will guard my son. --

And you, in many a danger true,

At Duncan's hest your blades that drew,

To arms, and guard that orphan's head!

Let babes and women wail the dead."

Then weapon-clang and martial call

Resounded through the funeral hall,

While from the walls the attendant band

Snatch'd sword and targe, with hurried hand ;

And short and flitting energy

Glanced from the mourner's sunken eye,

As if the sounds to warrior dear

Might rouse her Duncan from his bier.

But faded soon that borrowed force,

Grief claim'd his right, and tears their course.

XIX.

Benledi saw the Cross of Fire,

It glanced like lightning up Strath-Ire.

O'er dale and hill the summons flew,

Nor rest nor pause young Angus knew ;

The tear that gather'd in his eye

He left the mountain breeze to dry ;

Until, where Teith's young waters roll, ...

(III.17-19)

The Lady of the Lake was in six cantos, each of around 30 lengths like the two-and-a-bit that I've just quoted. These lengths are like roughly equal-sized paragraphs or portions of verse. Thus an inset ballad like "Alice Brand" occupies four of these lengths (IV.12-15). You could say that these lengths are like the steady ticking of a clock. For, as Scott took care to point out in his headnote, each canto corresponds to a day. Hence each canto begins with dawn (the smoky city dawn of the final canto is in marked contrast to the others). As often in Scott, his landscapes are portrayed in perpetually fine weather. Six days without any rain, albeit in high summer, would really be quite unusual in the Highlands. Only the poem's numerous references to dewdrops remind us that such fresh landscapes depend on almost daily drenchings.

The linearity of motion applies in space as well as time. The reader follows the various characters back and forth along what is mostly an east-west axis between Stirling in the lowlands and Loch Katrine deep in the highlands. This linearity matches the shape of the narrow valleys through less accessible mountain country. I've summarized the very detailed topography of the poem below.

In Canto III, Roderick orders the "Cross of Fire" (it is not actually alight) to be sent forth to summon his clan to a muster point. It occured to me that it would surely have been quicker to send out several crosses in different directions. I still think so, but when you consider the linear nature of the valleys where the clan lived, the single line of summons becomes a bit more understandable. 

The first human figure that we see moving along the E-W line is a hunter pursuing a stag. Even before we discover that he is the disguised King James, it's hard not to feel the symbolic implications of this and other incursions from the east, whether for the sake of pleasure, sex or aggression. When James sees Loch Katrine for the first time, his rapture is expressed as how it might be exploited. 

And "What a scene were here," he cried,

For princely pomp or churchman's pride ! ..."

(I.15)

And though the story is set in the sixteenth century and not the eighteenth, it's hard not to feel the same undertow as in Waverley, of lament for a clan life and culture on the verge of being washed away by history. 

After all, Scott called them the Clan Alpine, borrowing the name of a shadowy ur-clan who lay behind several later clans, most appositely the Clan MacGregor, who were themselves proscribed and persecuted until his own lifetime. 

The battle between clan and king's forces freezes, still undecided, when James' belated message arrives. The first hostile incursor to the islet has just been struck down by Duncan's widow. 

Nevertheless the implications are plain that this is a struggle the highlanders can only lose -- if not now, then soon. Their leader is dead. Brian's prophecy was that the outcome would be shown by the identity of the first casualty: and that was a highlander. Roderick himself (in the debate with James) makes clear that the highlanders can never match the wealth and power of the lowlands. Even before that, Ellen's rejection of marriage with him, his own unstable temperament, all point the same way. So Rossini's librettist, when he converted the battle into an outright defeat for the highlanders, was in tune with the poem's underlying logic. 

*

The story is a fiction but the context is historical, specifically the downfall of the powerful "race of Douglas" during the latter part of the reign of James V (1513-1542), the young king's hostility extending even to those who gave them shelter. (However the Douglas of the poem, like his daughter Ellen, is invented.)

The story also alludes to the tradition of James V being addicted to wandering incognito through his own lands. Perhaps his real motives related to the large number of illegitimate children he seems to have fathered. The poem refers to James' reputation for gallantry when he tries to seduce Ellen (IV.17-18). 

When Scott represents James as selflessly concerned for his subjects' welfare and finally reconciled with Douglas, romance has taken over from history.

*

Scott's powers are most fully displayed not in Waverley or any of its successors but in The Lady of the Lake. Discuss. 

Well, that's not an entirely serious contention. But I'm awed by the poem's display of energy, fullness and precision engineering. 

*

Topographical Summary

The reader's attention is carried back and forth on a basically east-west axis. Key locations, running from east to west, are:

Stirling, site of James V's court. 

Doune, where his forces gather (though it's never actually visited by the reader).

A chain of three lochs in the Trossachs region of the highlands: Vennachar, Achray and Katrine. (In the poem "Trosachs" refers more narrowly to the wild glen separating the latter two lochs.)

The modern town of Callander is in the midst of this area, but the poem never mentions it. That might be historically accurate. At the time of the poem's setting (c. 1540) there was a parish of Callander but it may have been more a collective name for estates and farmsteads rather than a definite town. 

Scott knew the area very well, making almost annual visits to Cambusmore (east of Callander) between 1794 and 1810. I'm using his spellings here; some are different today (e.g. "Venachar"). 

Canto I The Chase (Day 1)

The stag, who has spent the night at Glenartney (royal deer forest on the eastern edge of the highlands), flees the hunt to Uam-Var (heath between Callander and Doune, north of river Teith) and then down to Loch Vennachar, heading west, past Brigg of Turk to Loch Achray. At this point the one remaining hunter ("The Knight of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James") loses the stag in the Trosachs glen (8). Now horseless, the hunter finds his way to Loch Katrine (still heading west) where he sees Ellen in her boat and is invited to be a guest on the islet. 

Canto II The Island (Day 2)

Takes place entirely on and beside the islet towards the eastern end of Loch Katrine. 

James departs. With him go his stag-hounds and "a trusty mountain-guide" (6). [We will later find out that he is not trusty. He is the same Red Murdoch who accompanies James on Day 4 (see IV.16), and is under secret orders to Roderick (see IV.7). He falsely assures James that Roderick is far away engaged in a private war (see V.4).] Where does James go now? Presumably back to Stirling, returning to meet his guide two days later.    

Ellen and the aged minstrel Allan Bane talk. Roderick Dhu approaches from the north side of the lake (16), then she hears her father Douglas's bugle and rows over to pick him up from the nearby mainland (21). Douglas is with Malcolm Graeme. He says that they met in Glenfinlas (a valley that runs down from the north to Brigg of Turk) where they nearly ran into a hunting party (26); doubtless these were the hunters of the previous day, searching for their lost companion James. Douglas has been exiled and mustn't be seen. Roderick later says that Douglas was in fact spotted (28). 

Back on the island they meet with Roderick. Roderick's proposal to marry Ellen is refused. He and Malcolm quarrel and nearly fight, and Malcolm leaves alone. Allan offers to row him far up the lake where it will be safer to get away (36), but Malcolm doesn't want to be indebted even for a boat, so he swims straight across to the mainland (37). [According to Douglas, Malcolm is going to Strath-Endrick (26), which lies about 15 miles due south of Loch Katrine. No reason is given for that destination, but we know Malcolm's own lands have been seized by the crown. Anyway, when we next meet him, on Day 6, he's incarcerated in Stirling Castle.]

Canto III The Gathering (Day 3)

The islet. Roderick sends out the "Cross of Fire" to summon the Clan-Alpine. The muster place is to be Lanrick Mead, "a meadow at the northwestern end of Loch Vennachar" (Rolfe). When it's first mentioned we are told "The Fiery Cross should circle o'er / Dale, glen, and valley, down, and moor" (II.36), and that is indeed what happens. The circle runs anti-clockwise. We follow the cross (initially carried by Malise) eastwards to the funeral scene at Duncraggan, "a homestead between Lochs Achray and Vennachar, near the Brigg of Turk" (Rolfe);  then northward to St Brides (the wedding scene) and Strath Ire, both beside Loch Lubnaig. More briefly St 24 describes its subsequent progress to Balquidder (to the north of Benledi), westward past Loch Voil and Loch Doine on the river Balvaig, then finally southward through one of the passes to Strath-Gartney, which lies just to the north of Loch Katrine.

Meanwhile Roderick and retainers have been out on Ben Venue (south of Loch Katrine) securing his western frontier. Douglas and Ellen have retired to Coir-nan-Uriskin, a corrie on the northern side of Ben Venue . In the evening Roderick passes by them on his way back down to the loch. He overhears Ellen singing Ave Maria, and senses it will be the last time he hears her voice (30). His party cross the lake and head east for "the passes of Achray" (see 27), then join his main force at Lanrick Mead (31).

Canto IV The Prophecy (Day 4)

At Lanrick Mead. Malise has been east to spy out the braes of Doune. Roderick decides that the battle will be within the Trosachs glen (8) -- i.e. between Loch Achray and Loch Katrine, westward from his current location. The battle, he thinks, will be "tomorrow noon" i.e. on Day 5. 

The location shifts back to Coir Uriskin (8), where Ellen and Allan are waiting (this is the only significant jump cut in the poem). Douglas has gone on alone. Ellen notes that their fallback meeting place will be Cambuskenneth Abbey, and wonders why (10). James appears (16). [He has left his horses at Bochastle (at the east end of Loch Vennachar) -- he would have seen the mustered clansmen at Lanrick Mead -- and been led here by the same guide who led him out of the area on Day 2.] The purpose of this second visit is to rescue/seduce Ellen. She refuses to go with him, and tells him of her love for Malcolm, which he accepts (18). Ellen casts doubt on the guide Murdoch's good intentions. James moves off with him into the Trosachs glen (20) where they meet the insane Blanche, who likewise warns James. Murdoch tries to kill James and accidentally kills Blanche; James kills Murdoch. James cannot take the known ways and struggles off-piste until he meets and is given overnight hospitality by Roderick in disguise: the location isn't very specific, but is probably high up on the eastern slopes of Ben Venue, south of the chain of lochs. (Coilantogle ford (31), where Roderick says he will escort James the next day, lies at the east end of Loch Vennachar.)

Canto V The Combat (Day 5)

They move along the brow of a precipice (2) above Loch Vennachar, seeing Benledi behind it (3). While they descend a steep pass to lake-level (3) they debate their opposed points of view, and here Roderick reveals himself and his forces surrounding them (9). They reach the foot of the pass and move along "a wide and level green" (11) until they reach Coilantogle ford at the east end of Loch Vennachar (12). Here they fight and Roderick is wounded. We follow James and his followers (and the fatally wounded Roderick) as they race through numerous places (e.g. Doune, Keir) in St 18 to Stirling. As they approach Stirling James spots Douglas making his way from Cambuskenneth. The rest of the canto is located in Stirling (the burghers' sports day). Douglas, after excelling at the sporting contests, reveals himself and is arrested. King James sends word to try to stop the battle, but too late. (The battle in the Trosachs glen takes place -- this is recounted in Canto VI.)

Canto VI The Guard-Room (Day 6). 

The whole canto is set in Stirling Castle, where Douglas, Roderick and Malcolm are incarcerated. Ellen and Allan arrive soon after dawn.

But inset within the canto is Allan's account of yesterday's battle. At Loch Achray he saw the king's forces approaching from the east. At the Trosachs glen they encountered the Clan-Alpine. The minstrel shifted westward on the slopes of Ben Venue to get a view of the Loch Katrine side of the glen. Both forces emerge from the glen, the Clan-Alpine on high ground and the king's forces down by the lake. They send a swimmer over to the islet where the clan's non-combatants are sheltering, but when he arrives he is killed by Duncraggan's widow. At this moment King James' message arrives and the battle abruptly ceases. (Roderick dies while listening to this recitation.)

The action ends with James revealing himself as King James, with pardon for Douglas and with Malcolm's sentence being marriage to his beloved Ellen.

  

Realism

The Lady of the Lake is conspicuously lacking in gothic elements. This, combined with the circumstantial topography and credible natural scenes, creates a bracing effect of realism. Only relatively so, of course. But enough to notice a few points where the narrative stirs questions.

I don't really understand how James' horse dies of exhaustion, yet his two hounds are still with him (I.9). A horse can be galloped to death, but what dog could keep up with such a gallop? 

Why does the unhorsed James, hoping to meet with his "companions of the day" (I.10), take some pains to head west (I.14), instead of going back in the direction he came from?

Scott is very sound on trees, but more careless about flowers. In the Trosach glen he names summer plants (foxglove, nightshade) alongside spring flowers (primrose, violet) (I.12). Even in mountain country where flowering seasons are compressed I'd be surprised to see primrose and nightshade in flower at the same time. 

Where Ellen's hand had taught to twine
The ivy and Idaean vine,
The clematis, the favored flower
Which boasts the name of virgin-bower,
And every hardy plant could bear
Loch Katrine's keen and searching air. (I.26)

It doesn't seem very likely that Ellen could grow a grape vine here. The clematis in question is presumably the native wild clematis Clematis vitalba, but this isn't particularly likely either. It's a calcicole and hence absent from most of Scotland. According to Rolfe, some early readers ingeniously suggested that "Idaean vine" referred to cowberry (lingonberry), to which Linnaeus had assigned the botanical name Vaccinium vitis-idaea in 1753. That would indeed be a very likely plant, common throughout Scotland, but it's a sub-shrub and doesn't twine. I think we must take Ellen's horticulture with a pinch of salt.

In the afternoon of Day 5 Allan Bane witnesses the battle at the Trosachs, yet he and Ellen appear at Stirling Castle (VI.6) soon after dawn on Day 6 -- about 25 miles away. Not impossible, but I wonder how. If they walked it would have taken them all night and they'd have been exhausted. Perhaps they travelled on horseback with the messengers after truce was declared (the "jaded horsemen" of V.33), and snatched some sort of anxious rest that night. Unlike most of the other journeys in the poem, the details of this one are left to our imagination. 

At the sound of the war-muster "The joyous wolf from covert drew" (III.9). That turns out to be historically realistic, at least. Wolves were probably extinct in England by this time, but they still existed in Scotland, and in growing numbers. Mary Queen of Scots hunted them in 1563, and in 1577 an edict in James VI's name made it compulsory to hunt wolves three times a year. The last recorded killing of a Scottish wolf was in 1680. 

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One of the Europeans who relished the French translation of The Lady of the Lake (Elisabeth de Bon, 1813) was Gioachino Rossini. A few years later the result was his opera La donna del lago, first performed at Naples on 24 September 1819. As Mary E. Ambrose pointed out, the Italian audiences wouldn't have come across Scott before: the first Italian translations were in 1821 (The Lady of the Lake and Kenilworth).

You can watch the whole of it on YouTube, in the 1992 La Scala production conducted by Riccardo Muti, with June Anderson in the role of Elena, Rockwell Blake as Uberto (Giacomo V), Martine DuPuy as Malcom Groeme, Chris Merritt as Rodrigo di Dhu and Giorgio Surjan as Duglas d'Angus. 

The libretto was by Andrea Leone Tottola. There were some inevitable changes to adapt the plot to an operatic context: less social and historical narrative, no breakneck journeys through fells and glens, but more intrigue and more passionate lyricism from Elena and her three admirers. Rossini bathes this world in incessant melody. 

In the opera the disguised king Giacomo is called "Uberto" (you can see why it might have been a bit confusing to have King Giacomo disguised as someone called "Giacomo"). The role of Malcom is for a contralto en travesti (here splendidly sung by mezzo Martine DuPuy). Duglas is reconceived as a father who's out of tune with his daughter, exerting his authority to drive through the dreaded marriage, and telling Rodrigo that her obvious aversion is just modesty. War is mustered but there is no Cross of Fire and the poem's fearsome Brian is transformed into a wholesome Chorus of Bards. The highlanders are decisively routed by the king's forces, unlike in Scott where the battle is suspended while still in the balance. Rodrigo appears late and departs early; his off-stage death is perfunctory compared to its importance in Scott's poem.  

* 

Six years after La donna del lago, Franz Schubert wrote Fräulein am See (Op. 52), seven songs from The Lady of the Lake in German translations by Adam Storck. They are rarely performed as a group, being variously for soprano, baritone, male voice quartet and female choir. But one of them is "Ellens dritter Gesang", much better known as "Ave Maria". The original German lyrics, translating Ellen's "Hymn to the Virgin" (III.29), are most often replaced by the traditional Roman Catholic prayer in Latin. Here's Barbara Bonney singing the original version:

Mary E. Ambrose. “‘La Donna Del Lago’: The First Italian Translations of Scott.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 67, no. 1, Modern Humanities Research Association, 1972, pp. 74–82. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3722387 .  

Interesting article about early responses to Scott in Italy. It took me a while to work out that when Indelicato compares "Fi-gems" to Ariosto's Zerbino, he means Fitz-James! Another commentator, Carlo Varese, pointed out that Rossini's maxim "mantenete il movimento" could have been Scott's maxim too. 

Guest, Ann M. “Imagery of Color and Light in Scott’s Narrative Poems.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 12, no. 4, [Rice University, Johns Hopkins University Press], 1972, pp. 705–20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/449961 .

Notes the variety of colour treatment in Scott's narrative poems. The Lady of the Lake stands out for its "natural hues", for its comparative realism and restraint.

Hubbard, Tom. “‘Bright Uncertainty’: The Poetry of Walter Scott, Landscape, and Europe.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), vol. 13, no. 1/2, Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences (CAHS), acting on behalf of the University of Debrecen CAHS, 2007, pp. 49–64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41274382 . (This is an expanded version of a lunchtime talk given at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2005.)

Entertaining wander through Scott's poetry that takes off from an 1810 reviewer's comment (in the Quarterly Review): Scott "sees everything with a painter's eye. Whatever he represents has a character of individuality, and is drawn with an accuracy and minuteness of discrimination which we are not accustomed to expect from verbal description." Hubbard regards Scott's poetry as appealing to the ear rather than the eye, also notes Ruskin's appreciation of Scott's deliberate indistinctness of visual form (which I'm not sure I agree with, especially in this poem).

My other Scott posts