Once, everywhere, the land was storied.
Here is where uncle Joe met your auntie, this is where we rest the sheep during the droving, here is where we found the best cherries, on that hill is where our ancestors made a vow… My late nan told me about Bealach na Ba, the Pass of the Cattle, high above Applecross in the west of the Scottish Highlands, how she had seen other farmers drive a herd down from the heights to the village below, followed by one of the first motorcars to make it over the pass. 1
We know the story of how the link between land and humans was broken, in many places and in many times, right up to the present moment. We may know all about the history of extraction of both the goodness and the people from the land. But I have a strong feeling that one of the ways we can give back to land is to hear the stories it tells us, to keep them, share them, and tell them in the places they are from, whether exact locations, accurate to the puddle, or more generally, in the county or country. Sometimes to tell them widely, to share the goodness stored in them. Of course we can research place, and dig deep into the record, tell ‘real’ stories. But we can also feel for the poetic truth of land and make prose, poems, or dramaturgical work that speaks not only to and of human people, but the non human people, too.
I have the great pleasure to work professionally with people2 who know how to teach others how to become aware at a granular level of the living world around them, using methods as different as myth, plants, storytelling or walking.3 As a youngster I could feel land, but university, (especially reading too much post-structuralism), pretty much killed that for me. My sense of the sacred in the landscape was wiped until around 2015, with brief glimpses only in between, which I have written about here before. Since being on Rannoch Moor at Carrying the Fire, the sense returned shockingly strongly, forcing me to turn my life around. I am sure that living on a boat on the river Thames for eight years had something to do with it too, but meeting people who did not laugh when I said, ‘the earth is alive and sentient’ was probably the biggest factor. Now, no matter how alarmingly real the voices or signs from land are, I have a way to trust and respect them, rather than distrust and reject them, (which is the norm for our over-culture). Modern people are famously currently bereft of meaning, and lost to nature, and this makes them ill. There are so many books about it: The Nature Cure, Last Child In The Woods, The Way Home…
We do not need to strip-mine or obliterate the many thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of traditional or indigenous tales that might pertain to land and its myriad moods. Like books in a library, or tales in a compendium, old and new stories can sit alongside each other, rub up against and complement each other. The sensitivity to earth’s stories requires cultivating a certain kind of stillness and a listening ear akin to the forager’s eye. We could pick up stones and turn them over in our hands, kick up some dust. We could dig a little, as Nick Hunt wrote recently.
Below are three outings of my word-trowel. The first was written for spoken word, for a gathering of pigment people online last year, and refers to the long entangled history of the red, white and blue of the British flag. The second is a piece about reciprocity and giving thanks to the spirit of the place of our homes, without burning down the house, from 2018. The last is a hearty yee-hoo to auld Cailleach, the great Celtic Old Woman of the mountains, who reclaims the year from Brigid every Summer Solstice. Dougie Strang told me traditional tales of her as we were on the ferry from Stranraer to Belfast a year and a half ago, passing some of the isles in the myths, en route to go visit a bushel of great writers / friends, Mark O’Connell, Mark Boyle and Paul Kingsnorth. Some glimpses of those tales made it into the poem.
What is the wild world saying to you this week? Have you made time to listen?
Red, White and Blue (and yellow mud)
Red. 47 AD. I am Verctissa. Emperor Claudius is here. He's finally taking the country after all these years that we've been pushing them back but now they're here. I cannot believe the purple of his robe. His cloak! I've never seen anything like it. Red for the generals, purple for the emperor… Well, the brown of the legionaries, we know that colour. We too wear woollens the natural colour of a sheep sometimes. But that red, it’s nothing like the madder shawl I’ll wear tomorrow. I'm going up the Thames. I'm going to cross at the Staines and I’ll see if I can hide with my kin from this awful bloody onslaught. They do not honour our gods, they treat the living land like coins, staked on a game of dice, and they stamp Claudius’ head on everything. I can’t stomach it.
White. 1088, 22 years since Guillaume le Batard came here. Conqueror. Huh. Well his son, William Rufus, the red haired idiot. He wants us to cut this white rock all day, our white rock, Portland stone, the greatest white stone, lasts forever… It's got these weird shapes hidden in it screws, circles, tiny little shells. You might say something was here before us, I don't know, but the dust it's getting in my lungs, this white dust, in my hair. I go home looking like a ghost. ‘Loefwyn Godwinson,’ my wife says, ‘Leofwyn, you look like a ghost.’ Well I will be soon enough as the Normans lean out of the tower with their bows and arrows pointing down at us. We already call it ‘bow and arrow castle’. Rufus Castle. A pentagonal monstrosity. What are they doing building these towering castles? They gonna watch us all for ever looking down on our every move, getting in our heads?
Blue. It's the year of our Lord 1680, I am Winifred Abington. I am so happily married at last, I love the chintz that my husband has given me for my trousseau, it's so beautiful. You know, the pure indigo from India printed on the finest cotton from the colonies is tremendously, absolutely, exquisite. And what is better, none of my friends have it, so my dress is absolutely unique. I love the latest fashions! I had the fabric from Chennai sent to my dressmaker and made up into a very, very fine dress which I'm going to wear to a dance, with my darling husband, when he gets back to Portsmouth, which I hope will be soon.
Yellow mud. 2022 common era. I’m Caroline, sitting under a tree felled by freak winds, climate chaos makes the storms so severe now across the south of England. The wind comes up off the Atlantic and suddenly all your favourite trees are lying in a row. Here I am beside a golden puddle. The rains come down and wash away this incredible yellow clay from the roots of the redwood trees planted by the American Rockefeller heir, Dorothy Elmhurst, a philanthropist and founder of Dartington Trust. A very rich, well-known, good egg. I scoop up her mud and put it into used plastic bags, and make it into pigment. I show people how to make earth paints with it, I’ll be doing that in October, about a mile from the tree. I don't know where I fit in, in all this, but I can sit here and witness these roots and write about the routes these colours have taken. I have no great love for the red, white and blue Union flag, nor any other banner, but I do love the rocks and isles on which they occasionally flutter. The stones will outlive all claims.
A neighbourhood
A neighbourhood, two adjacent houses. One a family of four. The other, two small flats, a person a piece, and close. The river, which flowed at quite a depth underneath the foundations, caused no harm and blessed all above it. Two were devotees of the Mother, whose land it was. A dry cellar ran the width of the plot, with easily enough space to stand tall. In an alcove at the back was a stone altar, lamp lit, wick well-trimmed, sitting on a bright cloth.
The devotees took turns, filled the lamp, adorned the altar, sat on the chairs, read a book, strummed some instrument, or prayed. One winter day both arrived at once with oil and scissors, offerings and prayers, as well as chocolate to eat whilst reading. This hadn't happened before. Much polite greeting, deep recognition. Something began to stretch time, a doubling. Woods that had been outside were twinned and now internal. The lamp got overfilled and the wick was left untrimmed for a while, resulting in a high flame, a bright light and surprising warmth, a bit of soot on the ceiling. Offerings were placed, nothing was overturned. Music was left un-played, books unread. The Mother was present, yet did not make her presence known, though she stopped the cloth catching light, and made it so no-one smelled the smoulder.
Next day the devotees returned home. Alternate visits resumed. Solstice approached, old offerings were cleared away, new things left in their place. There was time to turn the other's items over in the hand, or to sniff: quince, spirits, ochre, oak galls, a leaf.
There is only room for one at a time to kneel at the alcove, unless you get very close.
Giantess of the Isles
Here comes Cailleach
Tossing boulders from her apron
Each passing erratic
A smouldering lobbed bun
She was baking Brigid’s
Bones this morning
For Samhain supper
The giantess of Ardnamurchan
Had her skirt lifted
By the French ship’s mast tip
As it sailed slyly past
The Dutchman’s Hat
Brought a smile to
The auld girl’s face
To see the Gauls
Back in Gaelic space
This is my year
My year
My year now
Ye ken
This week’s good thing: Nick Hunt’s new book Red Smoking Mirror is out this week. I need to get my copy… Described as a lovechild of JG Ballard and Ursula LeGuin, you literally couldn’t say something more like catnip to my reading mind.
This week and next I am recording my voiceovers on my laptop without my usual great mic, as I am travelling to see family. Please excuse the less than perfect sound quality.
Nick Hunt, Charlotte DuCann, Mark Watson. Charlotte will be starting her Substack in September. Her current book After Ithaca is superb.
…pictured when we had just finished teaching in May 2022 at Schumacher College.
We need the land, and the land needs us. Intertwined
What beautiful words to wake to this morning. From the swans to the Cailleach. The land still storied needs the listeners too.