Another three preludes

Frome, 29 January 2023.

 

Another clutch of preludes, with some January birdsong in No 16. 

Prelude No 14 in B:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 14 In B

Prelude No 15 in C# minor:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 15 In C# Minor

Prelude No 16 in B flat:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 16 In B Flat

Listen to all the preludes so far:

michaelpeverett · Preludes

Twenty Lambert

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana)

Picked up in the car park of Holiday Inn on the edge of Swindon. I think this might be Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana), first raised at Westonbirt (not far from here). But if it isn't then it's one of the parent species, whose homelands could hardly lie further apart: the Bhutan Pine (Pinus wallichiana) and the Mexican White Pine (Pinus ayacahuite).

I included a table knife to show how big the cone is. 

The ripe cone is quite light and flexible, as pinecones go. You wouldn't fear it falling on your head. It may be different with the unripe cones (e.g. when they are chewed off by squirrels). Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana) is the tallest pine (to 60m) and its unripe cones can weigh 2kg. On another Californian pine, the Big-cone Pine (Pinus coulteri) the unripe cones can weigh 5kg: plantation workers wear hard hats.

I suppose my long-latent interest in pines has started to emerge on this blog, manifested in two relatively recent posts:

The Aleppo Pine:
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/11/aleppo-pine.html
The Scots Pine, and pine vocabulary in English and Swedish.
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/01/todays-swedish-vocabulary.html

This one is the third. 

Pinus lambertiana is named in honour of Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761 - 1842), an early luminary of the Linnaean Society. He was a typical botanical enthusiast of the time, born in Bath to inherited wealth (partly founded on estates in Jamaica, worked by slaves I assume). In 1803 he published A Description of the Genus Pinus, a splendidly illustrated publication that must have been aimed at other wealthy amateurs: it will cost you a fortune to buy today. Further editions, with added content, came out over the next twenty years. The 1803 one, happily, is available to read online:

https://archive.org/details/mobot31753003472476

[If you're using a UK phone, you might not be allowed to see archive.org (for no apparent reason). Laptop access works fine.]

It's well worth a look; and, like most old scientific books, it's as revealing of ignorance as of knowledge. One inference from this is to feel smug about the greater knowledge of our own time; another is that science is the illusion that you almost understand something. 

Lambert's book takes us back to a time when Pinus embraced other coniferous species; thus his Pinus nigra means the N.American Black Spruce (Picea mariana) and not, as it does today, the Black Pines of Europe (Austrian, Corsican etc), which surprisingly are absent: surprising, I mean, as these are now the most commonly-seen alien pines in the British Isles.

Today there are reckoned to be around 120 pine species: Lambert describes only 18 true pines (though I suppose some more were added in the later editions) -- only 17, really, as he knew hardly anything about Pinus occidentalis, the Hispaniolan endemic. A lot of the names have changed. His Pinus inops is what we now call Pinus virginiana; his Pinus variabilis is now Pinus echinata. (These are pines from eastern N. America, like five more of his inclusions: Pinus taeda, Pinus resinosa, Pinus rigida, Pinus palustris and Pinus strobus.) Pinus longifolia (from the Himalayas) is now Pinus roxburghii. Pinus pumilio ("The Mugho, or Mountain Pine") is Pinus mugo or uncinata. Lambert calls Pinus cembra the "Siberian Stone Pine" but for us it's the Arolla Pine of the Swiss Alps; the admittedly similar Pinus sibirica is usually considered a separate species. He calls Pinus pinaster the Pinaster or Cluster Pine; it is, he tells us, "frequent in English plantations". On the other hand what he calls Maritime Pine, with the Latin name Pinus maritima, is a tree he knew only from a single small specimen at Sion House, and from samples in the Sherardian herbarium: he evidently considered it a different species. 

Some of the best reading comes at the end, in the supplements on "Medicinal and Other Uses" (by William George Maton) and on timber by Thomas Davis (of "Hommingsham, Wiltshire" -- which I think must mean Horningsham)  and the Rev. William Coxe (on "Christiana Deal", i.e. from Oslo), an extract from his Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1784). I'll quote the latter, with Lambert's additional paragraph:

"The planks and deals are of superior estimation, to those sent from America, Russia, and from the different parts of the Baltic, because the trees grow on the rocks, and are therefore firmer, more compact, and less liable to rot than the others, which chiefly shoot from a sandy or loamy soil. The plan[k]s are either red or white fir, or pine. The red wood is produced from the Scotch Fir, and the white wood, which is in such high estimation, from the Spruce Fir. This wood is the most demanded, because no country produces it in such quantities as this part of Norway. Each tree yields three pieces of timber, eleven or twelve feet in length, and is usually sawed into three planks; a tree generally requires seventy or eighty years growth before it arrives at the greatest perfection.

"The environs of Christiana not yielding sufficient planks for exportation, the greater part of the timber is hewn in the inland country, and floated down the rivers and cataracts. Saw-mills are used for the purpose of cutting the planks, but must be privileged, and can only cut a certain quantity. The proprietors are bound to declare on oath, that they have not exceeded that quantity; and if they do, the privilege is taken away, and the saw-mill destroyed. There are one hundred and thirty-six privileged saw-mills at Christiana, of which one hundred belong to the family of Anker. The quantity of planks permitted to be cut amounts to 20,000,000 standard deals, twelve feet long, and one inch and a quarter thick."

In Scotland, they distinguish the wood cut in the native forests from that obtained in plantations, by calling the former Highland Fir, and the latter Park Fir. The Highland Fir is most esteemed, on account of its greater durability, being frequently found undecayed in ancient buildings, when the other sort is entirely wasted. This striking difference in the same species is probably to be attributed to the mountainous and rocky situations in which the native timber is found, and where the trees being of slower growth the wood is consequently of a harder texture; the latter may be readily distinguished from that of the Park Fir by its much deeper yellow colour.

(p. 84)

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana)

A bunch of five: needle tips of (probably) Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana)

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 26 January 2023.

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 26 January 2023.

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 26 January 2023.

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 26 January 2023.

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

The foliage swinging about on a blowy day, a very engaging sight.

Unripe cones of probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Two unripe cones that were lying on the ground. They were too sticky to put down anywhere, hence the paper napkin.

The other pine-cone in the photo is probably Dwarf Mountain Pine, Pinus mugo (see below).

Unripe cone of probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

There was also this dramatically different pine, a shrub with short needles and small cones (about 4cm). I think this is the Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo), native to mountains of SE Europe. But if I'm wrong please say, I'm only a learner.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

The ripe cone from two different angles....

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Karin Boye: The Child

The child

To the rock lay Prometheus shackled.
A child came forth in the early dawn.
"Halt, child, and see here
the friend of man shackled in irons
because of all the good he has done!"
But the child, scared
by the bigness of the words and the defiant eyes 
crept past with a prayer to Zeus
and ran off to the loveliest games. - -
I wanted to follow you silently, where you go.
Wise folk and children, through play they touch

what in the heavens lies hidden.

Barnet

Vid klippan låg Prometheus smidd.
Ett barn gick fram i tidiga morgonstunden.
"Stanna, barn, och se här
människors vän i järn smidd
för allt vad gott han gjorde!"
Men barnet, skrämt
av ordens storhet, ögonens trots,
smög förbi med en bön till Zeus
bort till vänaste lekar.  -- --
Jag ville följa dig tyst, där du går.
De visa och barnen, de leka sig till
vad i himlen är gömt.

Karin Boye, from Gömda land (Hidden Lands, 1924)

I thought it was time to translate some more Karin Boye poems, and I chose this one to start with, because of its brevity and lack of rhyme. 

But it didn't prove quite as simple as I expected. It begins with the problem that Boye uses a verb "smida" (lines 1,4) that has no exact parallel in English. It's related to the word "smith" and it means, more or less, what a smith does: forging and hammering. The expression smidd vid (line 1) means, if you can imagine it, "smithed to": Prometheus was smithed to the rock. "Vitter stil" (high or poetic style) remarks the SAOB, who also pointed me to C.F. Dahlgren's line about "den klippa, / Vid hvilken Prometheus smeds" (though Dahlgren's poem of 1841 is anti-heroic in a quite different way from Boye's). I went for "shackled to", which at least has a metallic connotation, but it doesn't so vividly evoke the actual work of shackling someone. A subsidiary issue in this line is "låg", which literally means "lay" but in Swedish often just means "was" (indicating location rather than body position). I decided to keep "lay", because paintings of the captive Prometheus do tend to show him lying down, and also to retain the Swedish word-order, hoping to suggest high style. 

The second issue is "vänaste" (line 9), another poeticism meaning "fairest" or possibly "gentlest". I can't say that I've so far managed to come up with a word that really works well with "games". 

The third issue is "de leka sig till" (lit. they play themselves to). I couldn't make the lines work with "play" as the verb, which is fine, but this meant I needed to choose some other verb that "through play" could qualify, and I couldn't really settle on one more than another: I considered "approach", "find", "discover", "glimpse" and several others. At the moment of first posting I've gone for "touch", but I don't promise not to change it again. 

David McDuff has translated all of Karin Boye's poems (Karin Boye: Complete Poems, Bloodaxe, 1994). I realized I had not checked out his translation of "The Child": when I did, I had to confess that I liked it more than mine. So here it is:  https://www.karinboye.se/verk/dikter/dikter-mcduff/the-child.shtml .

*

My translations of poems by Karin Boye:

From Clouds (1922)

From Hidden Lands (1924)

From Hearths (1927)

From For the Tree's Sake (1935)

From The Seven Deadly Sins (published posthumously in 1942)

So another trip to London

The growth of the capital, a view from Leman Street, Aldgate.

So I had with me, for the train and tube, two small-format books: a selection of Francisco de Quevedo's love poems (Poesía amorosa), and a Gale Nelson pamphlet from 2000 called in it.  

I began to read Quevedo's Endechas (unrhymed lines of six or seven syllables) beginning "Estaba Amarilis...". 

  Estaba Amarilis, 

pastora discreta,

guardando ganado 

de su hermana Aleja, 

  sentada a la sombra 

de una parda peña, 

haciendo guirnaldas 

para su cabeza.

  Cortaba las flores 

que topaba cerca, 

veníanse a sus manos 

las que estaban lejas. 

  Las que se ceñía 

siempre estaban frescas, 

mas las que dejaba, 

de envidiosas, secas.

There was Amaryllis,

discreet shepherdess,

guarding the flock

of her sister Aleja,

   sitting in the shade

of a brown rock,

making garlands

for her head.

  She cut the flowers

that grew close by,

while those more distant

came themselves into her hands.

  And those she wore

stayed ever fresh,

but those she left aside

withered from envy. ...

"Aleja" is the Spanish equivalent of "Alexa".

Amarilis falls asleep, and a number of bees descend on her, mistaking her cheeks for roses and lilies, her lips for carnations, her breath for jasmine and violets, etc. The poet intervenes, telling the bees that they're fools trying to make beeswax out of marble, and it's a bad idea to make honey from flowers that produce poison. Amarilis wakes up and the bees, blinded by her two suns (eyes), flee murmuring away. I think the poem ends with the poet saying that the honey they hoped to gather from her garments was obtained just by looking at her. Some of this is beyond my Spanish (and Google Translate's, too), but I'm guessing there's a joke in there about premature excitement. 

My eye caught on the name Pisuerga: it is the river that runs through Valladolid, I have swum in it. That is near the bottom end, just before it joins the Duero. Quevedo's poem must be set up-river, on the plains of Castilla y Leon or even in the mountains of Cantabria, not so very far from his birthplace. 

But in the course of looking this up I also read about Quevedo's (1580 - 1645) lifelong antisemitism; not the passing insults that you can expect in e.g. every dramatist of Shakespeare's time, but the chillingly programmatic antisemitism that dreams up Jewish conspiracies and solutions for dealing with them.

I found I could no longer focus on Amarilis, despite the rousing beauty of the verses, so I took a look at Gale Nelson's in it instead. Here's the beginning:

for the that in it

from our of than in

free for the that then

then the it then

then that then in

then that in then that

that then then then in

in it it in it it then

then the it

then the then

then the then then

then the then for

for the that it it

from our of in

from of in our than

then our of it then

our of it

then that of

If you're curious to read more of it, well, you can. The entire text is printed on the jacket of the booklet as well as within it, so you can see the second half in the photo at the bottom of this post. (But the jacket version doesn't show that the poem is in five numbered sections.)

 I wanted to quote as far as the fourth stanza so you could see the argument of the poem starting to develop. For there certainly is an argument: most obviously it's about form and freedom, both in art and in life. But there's more to it, because this necessarily leads into why we do art, in fact why and how humans do things at all. So it becomes a very broad topic. And  it's quite funny and quite impressive that it's conducted using a vocabulary of just fifteen words.

Much of Nelson's writing employs the idea of a limited pool of vocabulary; a "source-text", in Jackson Mac Low's terms. 

Eleven of those words make their appearance in the first three lines. The remaining four words, when they show up, have the force of detonations, or perhaps water-drops on a parched tongue.

The words aren't used with anything like equal frequency. Perhaps the engine-room of the poem is then and that, words with such a powerful range of uses. The words strain into each other (for-form-from-free, the-then-than-that, it-in-is-this) and they talk about each other, turning each other into nouns ("from our of then / this then our then / that then is our that / then is in our then"). Reaching the end, I knew that I had read not just an argument but a poem as fresh and lively as the Cantabrian rivers, in its own way.  

The White Tower, built by William the Conqueror in the 1080s

"To all intents and purposes, the Tower of London may be said to be the beginning of our London..." (E.V. Lucas, London Afresh (1936)). 

Heading home

By the return journey I felt I had enough phone battery left to drop into Kindle and indulge in a few pages of Claude Simon's The Flanders Road (Richard Howard's translation). I won't say anything more about that yet, but here's a sample of what I read:

and then she blew the lamp out, turned away and went out into the bluish dawn that was like a cataract on a blind eye, her figure silhouetted a moment while she was still in the darkness of the barn, then, once across the doorstep, seeming to vanish, although they continued to stare after her, not walking away but apparently dissolving, melting into what was really more grey than blue and was undoubtedly the day, since after all it had to come, but apparently without any of the powers, the virtues inherent in the day, although a little wall was discernible now on the other side of the road, the trunk of a big walnut tree and behind that the trees of the orchard, but everything flat, without colours or values, as if wall, walnut tree and apple trees (the girl had disappeared now) were somehow fossilized, had left only their imprint on this spongy and uniformly grey matter that now gradually crept into the barn, Blum’s face like a grey mask when Georges turned round, like a sheet of paper with two holes torn for the eyes, the mouth grey too, Georges still saying the words he had started to speak or rather hearing his own voice saying them (probably something like: Say did you see that girl, she…), then his voice stopping, his lips still moving perhaps in the silence, then they stopping too while he looked at that paper face, and Blum (he had taken off his helmet and now his narrow girl’s face seemed still narrower between the unstuck ears, not much bigger than a fist, above the girl’s neck coming out of the stiff wet coat collar as though from a carapace, miserable, mournful, feminine, stubborn), saying: “What girl?” and Georges: “What…What’s the matter with you?” Blum’s horse still saddled, not even tethered and Blum simply leaning against the wall as if he were afraid of falling, with his rifle still over his shoulder, without even the strength to take off his pack, and Georges saying for the second time: “What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?” and Blum shrugging, moving away from the wall, beginning to unbuckle the saddle girth, and Georges: “For God’s sake leave the horse alone. Go lie down. If I pushed you you’d fall over…” he himself almost asleep on his feet, but Blum did not offer any resistance when he pushed him away: the hair on the horses’ coppery rumps was pasted down by the rain, dark, flat and wet under the saddle blanket, giving off a harsh acrid odour, and while he set their two bundles of harness along the wall he still seemed to be seeing her, there where she had been standing a moment before, or rather still seemed to feel her, perceive her like a kind of persistent unreal imprint, stamped not so much on his retina (he had seen her so briefly, so little) as, somehow, on himself: a warm white thing like the milk she had come for at the moment they had arrived ...

put aside for winter

Noof

Strange, fat and macabre sloth-like hobgoblins, who are associated with dogwood trees. The Noof are sluggish, lazy and slow moving. Unusually for goblin folk, they eat a lot of leaves, roots and fruits. For some odd reason they also relish catching wild dogs and roasting them over an open fire. If hungry they do not seem to object to insects, snails, worms and other crunchy or slimy snacks. These fat hobgoblins have enormous bellies, large round heads, huge noses and short legs. Noof live in the dense forests and shy away from any contact with outsiders. They are shape-shifting deceivers who can take on the form of an animal. This is really only a kind of glamour spell, and if you touch a Noof, or splash water on one, then the enchantment will be broken and he (or she) will return to their natural form. Noofs can appear to be part animal and part great goblin, or to have some characteristics of an animal, beast or other monster. In its 'native' form a Noof is a bloated hobgoblin, about four feet in height and much the same around the middle. They have greenish skin, claws on their fingers and toes, and large pointed ears. When a Noof 'transforms' itself (using a natural talent for glamour spells) he, or she, will take delight in peculiar and unpleasant changes, with the object of frightening you out of your wits. A Noof might change its head into that of a pig, for example, or its arms into serpents. He might grow horns a yard long or even bat-like wings. Remember, none of this is real but it can be very alarming, especially if you have never encountered a Noof before. 

The Noof are glum forest dwellers who worship the dark forest gods. They wear grey-green robes with large hoods. These dogwood people are intolerant and grumpy; disapproving of any kind of fun and frivolity. They are fat and greedy, rude and unpleasant, glum and surly; sour pusses one and all.

The Noof tribe use barbed throwing spears with skill, and always have a long curved hunting dagger to hand. They do not really use armour or shields. Noof hobgoblins do not like to move quickly; their usual method of catching wild dogs is to set net traps, baited with dead rats or similar doggy treats. These fat and ugly creatures live in caves or caverns deep in the forest. In a Noof cave, as well as a lot of well gnawed dog bones, you may well find crude earthenware jars packed with things like pickled snails, dried slugs, and dog meat pies; perhaps being provisions they have put aside for winter. 

*

One of the 46 entries in Cornelius Clifford's Forest Folk of the Wild Wood (2012), a guide to the peoples of the Hidden Realms. 

The Noof are somewhat mysterious -- deep forest folk. Master Clifford tells us, for instance, that Narks live in the sandy wilds of the western deserts, Gobblers in the far north, the Nisse in southern forests, but he doesn't localize the Noof in this sort of way. Though a curious and bold traveller in the Hidden Realms, you wonder how much he has had to do with the Noof; though he evidently stumbled on a Noof cave once, when its owner was well out of the way. Elsewhere we glimpse him being let down by Hedgekin, having the misfortune of meeting a Snotling, and even having a mystic experience with a Groll, but I have the distinct impression that he has managed to avoid ever encountering the terrible Foth, and that's doubtless a very good plan. I imagine encounters with the Noof are, of their nature, bound to be both unpleasant and dreary, so he left them out of his journal.

Now you've got the idea, here are a sprinkle of other sentences. 

[Boggles] They may also carry a pouch of bling flies. 

[Centaurs] They seek to foretell the future and understand the past by observing the stars dancing across the celestial stage. 

[Cloud Surfers] They tend to be rather air-headed, as you might imagine. Whilst they can be a delight to watch, these are, perhaps, the most frivolous, worthless and silliest of all the forest peoples. 

[Diggles] A gardener might be heard to say; 'that looks like Diggle workmanship to me,' of a simple but good quality spade, hoe or axe. 

[Dromlin] They do not go in for subtleties and hate long drawn out discussions. Famously, these hobgoblins have been known to bring tedious negotiations to an abrupt close by simply slaughtering the other side!

[Elder Hags] They wear dirty old rags of what might once have been grey cloth and take delight in necklaces and bangles made of children's teeth. 

[Noggles] They don't have schools, or factories, and are (they believe) all the better off for that!

[Oak Folk] Like all fae folk, the oak people hate iron, which burns them if put against their flesh.

[Tarks] There are many different tribes and clans of cave goblins, calling themselves things such as; the Fangs of Many Tribe, or the Eyes of Despair Tribe, or even the delightfully named Gizzard Slurpers. 

[Woozles] When they do communicate, they do so in a whispering, sighing language that only elves and other Woozles seem able to understand. 

Full disclosure: Cornelius Clifford (b. 1689) is a dear friend of mine. He gave me a copy of Forest Folk of the Wild Wood about ten years ago -- a precious paper copy; seems you can only get a PDF online -- but it's only now I've finally set off on the old faerie roads.

Reservoir edge

As usual we were in the Iberian peninsula during the least flowery time of the year: September-October, at the end of a long, arid summer. 

We went for a swim; in the shallows it was like a bath. I had never seen the reservoir so low. 

But here, along the sandy shore exposed by the shrinking water, there were quite a few flowering plants, so after my swim I took some photos. 

The plant with the white flowers is Corrigiola litoralis, known in British floras as Strapwort. (It is native to the British Isles but incredibly rare, only now in S. Devon.) 

A thousand miles to the south, it was the commonest plant along this shoreline. At first glance I supposed it was a member of the cabbage family, but then I saw that the flowers had five petals not four. Corrigiola is actually in the campion family Caryophyllaceae. 

Rough Cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium). A much-naturalized plant; it's uncertain whether it originated in America or in Asia/S. Europe. 

Once I noticed them, these were the plants that intrigued me most. They were tiny (compare the size with Strapwort in the photo below); they were also in full flower. I had no idea what they were, but Google Lens went for Cyperus and I think that's probably right, though I wouldn't be too shocked if it turned out to be something like Carex bohemica. The problem is that these plants are usually photographed (and drawn) at a later stage in their development, when the stems have elongated and the flowers have morphed into the larger and more distinctive fruits. 

Specifically, the image-matching app went for Cyperus squarrosus, the Bearded Flatsedge of America. But in Europe this species is only naturalized in a few places in Italy. 

I really needed to consult Filip Verloove, whose conspectus of Cyperus, a very difficult genus, is well worth tussling with.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269705349_A_conspectus_of_Cyperus_sl_Cyperaceae_in_Europe_incl_Azores_Madeira_and_Canary_Islands_with_emphasis_on_non-native_naturalized_species

Here's a plant I feel a bit more confident about. It's either Bidens tripartita (Trifid Bur-marigold) or something extremely like it. Locally common in the southern British Isles; I've seen it in Frome, too.

A little grass plant.

Purple Sand Spurrey (Spergularia rubra), I think. But if it is, the basal rosette in the centre is actually a different plant, perhaps Buck's-horn Plantain (Plantago coronopus).

I'm sorry about the dull light in this photo. When we made our second visit to the reservoir, it was still very hot but the sky was no longer blue. We had a week of Saharan dust: the sky pale grey and the setting sun a weird white, like the moon. 

By the way, I suppose everyone except me knew this, but if you click on a photo in this blog you get a much sharper rendition (especially on your phone).