It is early May and it is cold and wet. In fact, here in the English Chilterns, it has been cold and wet for quite a lot of this year, thus far. Never mind: although the ground is sodden, it means too that the greenery of Spring is lush and vibrant.
Our hawthorn tree has not been discombobulated by the cool, wet weather. Precisely on cue, the may blossom has temporarily transformed it to look more like an exuberant wedding cake.
The hawthorn has a long-standing place in the English heart. I learn from Peter Ackroyd that…
The mark or symbol of the hawthorn tree is to be found in the runic alphabet of the ancient British tribes, as if the landscape propelled them into speech.1
I love that idea - “as if the landscape propelled them into speech”. It points up the fact that societies and cultures evolve in profoundly subtle ways. A landscape, any landscape, directly influences the humans who call it home, not just in obvious but in subtle ways, and over very long periods of time. It is, in fact, a basis of real diversity - a far richer and more sustainable diversity than is generally referred to these days.
As it happens, as I write, there is a news flash that U.S. president Joe Biden happens to have spoken on this topic. At an election campaign fundraiser in Washington on Mayday, he is reported as having said:
Think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic.2
Ye gods, this is such nonsense. Would it fill you with joy if, for example, every city in the world had several McDonald’s outlets. Diversity that isn’t: in fact it is the very antithesis.
But back to the forest and its place in the English imagination. The forest is, of course, a magical place. Its particular potency stems from the duality that it presents. Do you remember in The Wind In The Willows when Mole bravely sets off alone into the Wild Wood in search of Badger’s home?
There was nothing to alarm him at first entry. Twigs crackled under his feet, logs tripped him, funguses on stumps resembled caricatures, and startled him for the moment by their likeness to something familiar and far away; but that was all fun and exciting. It led him on, and he penetrated to where the light was less, and trees crouched nearer and nearer, and holes made ugly mouths at him on either side.
Everything was very still now. The dusk advanced on him steadily, rapidly, gathering in behind and before; and the light seemed to be draining away like flood-water.
Then the faces began.3
A little later in The Wind In The Willows, the Rat and the Mole search through the night for the missing baby otter, Portly. They make their way along the river and, with dawn approaching, arrive at a small island where they moor their boat. They push through undergrowth and find …
… a little lawn of marvellous green, set around with Nature’s own orchard trees - crab-apple, wild cherry and sloe.
‘This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we will find Him.’
The capitalized Him is the god Pan, who, it transpires, is protecting the baby otter. Pan is, of course, one of the Greek gods, a rural god of the wild places, long pre-dating the Christian era.
Shakespeare conjured some of this ancient lore in the forests of both A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It. Here again they are places of, on the one hand, mischief or danger and, on the other hand, of sanctuary … and of a kind of ‘sorting out’. This is the forest as a free-flowing environment (for example, in Act 2 of As You Like It, Scenes Four, Five, Six and Seven are vignettes that move us rapidly from place to place in the Forest of Arden) wherein issues can be separated out and resolved, and where, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, faeries and humans, of high and low estate, are able to find the space and privacy necessary to meet and work out their feelings.
Another expression of the magic of the forests and woods of England comes from a Scottish author, John Buchan (1975-1940). His 1923 novel, Midwinter, a romance set during the 1745 Jacobite rising, includes a section where the eponymous Midwinter will help the protagonist, Alastair, avoid dangers by guiding him through ‘Old England’. Alastair asks:
“Where is this magic country?”
“All around you – behind the brake, across the hedgerow, under the branches. Some can stretch a hand and touch it – to others it is a million miles away.”
“As a child I knew it,” said Alastair, laughing. “I called it Fairyland.”
Midwinter nodded. “Children are free of it, but their elders must earn admission. It is a safe place – but at any rate it is secure from common perils.”
“But it has its own dangers?”
“It makes a man look into his heart, and he may find that in it which will destroy him. Also it is ambition’s mortal foe. But if you walk in it you will come to Brightwell without obstruction, for the King’s writ does not run in the greenwood.”
Oh, I know, corny, corny! But I love it.
Alright, let me try to balance this romanticism with romance of a rather more … ahem … earthy kind. Here’s the 17th century antiquary, John Aubrey (1626-1697), writing about the life of Sir Walter Raleigh:
He loved a wench well: and one time getting up one of the maids of honour up against a tree in a wood (‘twas his first lady) who seemed at first boarding to be something fearful of her honour, and modest, she cried, ‘Sweet Sir Walter, what do you ask me? Will you undo me? Nay sweet Sir Walter! Sweet Sir Walter! Sir Walter!’ At last as the danger and the pleasure at the same time grew higher, she cried in the ecstasy ‘Swisser Swatter Swisser Swatter.’ She proved with child, and I doubt not but this hero took care of them both, as also that the product was more than an ordinary mortal.4
Which, to really lower the tone, reminds me of a timely reference in my copy of The Penguin Book of Vice. One of the chapters in this deliciously naughty book is (of course) on Alfresco Sex and it leads off with:
Hooray, Hooray, the first of May,
Outdoor fucking begins today.5
Mayday! Mayday! Do enjoy yourselves.
Thanks for reading.
The image at top is from Shutterstock. The photos are my own.
Ackroyd, Peter. Albion: the Origins of the English Imagination (2002)
As reported in various news sources.
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind In The Willows (1908)
Aubrey, John. Brief Lives (last decades of 17th century)
Davenport-Hines, Richard (Editor). The Penguin Book of Vice (1993)
What a delightful piece! I really enjoyed that :-)
Spring in the Chilterns and also in Oslo -- although I reckon we're a coupla weeks behind you. The leaves are coming out here too, and they have the same hysterical green colour (like in your second photo). It's the most optimistic colour I know.
My grasp of UK geography is a bit sketchy, I must admit. I try to connect places and dialects with something I already know, to help me remember. I know the Chilterns because that's where the Windsor chairs came from! and because High Wycombe was well known for its chair manufacturing. 'The Chiltern Bodgers' is a classic woodworking video among the arboreal cognoscenti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP5_OJxNccY
And I've been to Chesham! That's not so far off, is it? My Grandfather, Hugo Michael Liebmann, whose first name is my second, moved there with his second wife, Rose, who we knew as Nanny. My mother took me visiting when I was about ten years old. I remember how England smells different! Coal? Gas? And my Grandpa lying on the sofa with a newspaper over his face, trying to have a nap after dinner while I was playing a bit too noisily on the floor: "BE QUIET, CHILD!" I also remember pulling the tail of their Spaniel and it biting me.
'The Wind In The Willows' ... I vaguely remember it as a Ladybird Book from my childhood, but realize now that I ought to get the adult version.
"The dusk advanced on him steadily, rapidly, gathering in behind and before; and the light seemed to be draining away like flood-water. Then the faces began."
Although being a bookish boy, rather playing the trumpet than joining the Boy Scouts (and with no interest in sports at all), my stint of soldiering (national service, AA gun commander) demonstrated the feasibility of sleeping somewhere other than in my own bed. In my early twenties I sometimes would go wandering in the forests for a weekend. I slept in a Mexican hammock (up off the cold, damp, stony ground) with a military, waterproof poncho strung up above as a roof. Primus kerosene stove for coffee and hot meals and a shotgun for hunting small game. Being alone in the forest is ... interesting! Some parts of the woods are spooky, bad places ... others feel safe, benign. Peel away society with all its courtesies and conventions and you're soon just another animal looking for a good place to sleep safely as night falls. I have no trouble understanding how our forebears believed in trolls and elves. Nothing is easier than being a cocky rationalist so long as the streetlight shines outside your window and you've got Deliveroo on speed dial. More difficult when there's a big animal making annoyed noises in the darkness ... somewhere. And Norway is not parkland, like England (sorry, not my intention to boast of brutality ... but -- it's true) "Then the faces began" ... Pan, the ancient satyr, is also at the root of panic.
I love your quote from 'Midwinter'!
“Where is this magic country?”
“All around you – behind the brake, across the hedgerow, under the branches. Some can stretch a hand and touch it – to others it is a million miles away.”
“As a child I knew it,” said Alastair.
It's only your grown-up brain who thinks this is corny. That part of your heart you've kept secure since childhood knows it is true. As true as only love, beauty and magic can be.
I also enjoyed how you ended this post :-) My wenching days are behind me -- there is a season for everything -- but I've always been sceptical of men who cannot find mirth in bawdy rhymes, sentimental songs and strong drink. They seem to me the kind of men who do not know how to give pleasure; not to women with their manly charms, nor to men by their wit or feat of arms. "Hooray, Hooray, the first of May" had me guffawing :-)
Soo ... that's at least three more books on my reading list, then ... (grumble, mumble) ... at the rate my spectacles are wearing out ... cost a fortune ... postage ... more shelves ...
Live well, my friend!