Crazed On The Dulcimer

The first time I heard the word "dulcimer" must have been when Brian Jones played one, with a feather quill, on the Rolling Stones track "Lady Jane". Very hip, very cool. It was an Appalachian Dulcimer but I didn't know that. 

A little later I was talking to a neighbour, Geoff, a pipe-smoking builder - very un-hip, very un-cool - who told me that his father, Will Lawrence, used to play the dulcimer and travelled around to village feasts and fairs with his cousin, playing tunes and dancing. Geoff described the instrument to me and it was clearly a different beast, a heavyweight  made from an old door or unwanted pieces of furniture - "you need seasoned timber, see, else it'd bend and warp under the tension of the strings". It was a Hammered Dulcimer, but I didn't know that either.

Then I was visiting a musician friend, very hip and cool too, and there hanging on the wall was an Appalachian Dulcimer. You used to see them often enough hanging on walls in those hippy-trippy days but this guy could play it too. I mean really play it. And he put me straight on the rest of the family of instruments - zither, psaltery,  cymbalon, hackbrett, santoor and probably others too. All of them basically strings stretched across a wooden box and either plucked or hit with hammers. 

He also put me on to an LP of English dance music played by village musicians. It included players of the squeezebox and mouth-organ as well as the Hammered Dulcimer player, Billy Bennington.

Billy Bennington learned to play from Billy Cooper and says that as a young man he was "crazed on the dulcimer". And for a while it seemed that the whole folk music scene became crazed on the dulcimer too and there were lots of players around in the folk clubs. Some of them even made LP records.

I hadn't heard one or seen one for quite a while. Then, in the Cambridge Folk Museum the other day, I came face to face with the rather dusty instrument in the second photo on this page. You'll notice there's a little card on it...

HAMMER DULCIMER

This musical instrument was made by George Willmott

Lawrence of Haslingfield, and later Thriplow Heath, in

about 1866. His son Herbert who died in 1947 was the

last of the family to play the dulcimer. In his youth he

toured the village feasts during the summer, playing in

 the dancing booths and public houses with his cousin

Will, who also played and made dulcimers.               

So this dulcimer was made by my former neighbour's great uncle nearly 150 years ago. But even though the dulcimer-playing died out in the Lawrence family the role of providing music for people to dance to lingered on a little longer: Geoff's son Dave had a mobile disco for a few years in the 1970s!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONhyQelMA94 to hear John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris playing on the album pictured above.

Take care.

              

Glimpses Of The Past

Just a few weird or wondrous things encountered during the last year or so:


Four Marys

Representations of Mary and Jesus from different churches that I've visited recently. All of them are relatively modern additions as places of worship continue to evolve.

A Military Man

Rather rusty but still instantly recognisable from his resolute profile - The Duke Of Wellington. These cast iron plaques date from the nineteenth century, patriotic times when admiration of military heroes was perhaps more fashionable than today. I think these plaques would have originally been painted. Quite how the noble Duke has come to be nailed up beside a selection of old horseshoes I can not imagine.

Protection

This symbol, known as a daisy-wheel, is said to protect against ghosts and witchcraft. They are often found on mantelpieces to discourage evil spirits from entering down the chimney, for whereas doors and windows could be locked at night the fireplace remained open. This one dates from the seventeenth century.

How Long Is A Pound Of Butter?

Believe it or not it was formerly possible to buy butter in Cambridge by the yard! In fact it was the only way to buy it (though shorter measures were also available). Butter sellers carried butter made into yard-long rolls in baskets like the one above and would cut you off whatever length you wanted. This carried on into the middle of the last century when butter rationing made this method of sale both impractical and illegal.

On The Fiddle

This fine fellow was exhibited at an country show to publicise Burwell Museum. We've already visited and you can read all about it here. What the model holds beneath his arm is a seed-fiddle, an early piece of agricultural mechanisation. The handle was drawn back and forth like the bow of a fiddle to turn a wheel which distributed the seed; a great improvement on broadcasting by hand apparently.

Hell's Angels?

This piece of design, which would not look out of place on the back of a leather jacket or the cover of a heavy metal album, is actually a detail from an old tomb. Not the most subtle imagery but I think it makes its point!

And Finally....

A couple of bits of motoring memorabilia. The first an old tax disc (for a "mechanically propelled vehicle") from a vintage car seen at a show.....

And the second an old petrol pump that still stands in the village of Melbourn, just a mile or so from my house...

....at one time nearly every village had its own garage where you could top up your tank.

Take care

The Old Grey Ferguson

The Old Grey Ferguson

When I was a young fella-me-lad

I worked down on the farm

They gave me lots of jobs to do

Where I could be no harm

But when nobody was about

And no one to complain

I climbed up on the Ferguson

And rattled off down the lane.

 Oh! Crunch go the gears

  Clatter, bang and groan

  So long as I'm on me Ferguson

  I never curse or moan

  I'm twice as well contented

  As any man alive

  Me and the old grey Ferguson

  A-Rattling down the drive

It's not much good for ploughin'

That suits me to the ground

What could be more tedious

Than drivin' up an' down

I takes the hens their corn

And then I takes the horse his hay,

Then I jumps up on me tractor

And I rattles along me way.
Crunch go the gears...  

The chaps that does the ploughin'
They work so late at nights

But lucky for me the Ferguson

She don't have any lights

So seven o'clock in the mornin'

Is the time of my departures

An' I'm always home in time enough

To listen to The Archers.
Crunch go the gears...

So if perchance you travel

Down some English country road

And find your way's obstructed

By a slowly movin' load

Just sit and watch the scenery

Enjoy the flowers of spring

You can blow your hooter if you like

But I shan't hear a thing
 For crunch go the gears...

A rather silly song made up at a time when I felt that many so called Modern Folk Songs weren't being written for "folks" at all, but for "posh people and hinty-lek-chewalls" as Old Bert would have said. I hope he'd have approved of this little ditty which is a sort of updated version of a semi-real folk song called "Rattling Old Grey Mare" or "The Country Carrier". For those in foreign parts I should perhaps point out that The Archers is a very long-running British radio programme that was billed as "an everyday story of countryfolk".

Take care, tractor boys!

Stories In Stone

If you live in, or near to, a city like Cambridge you can pass by sculpture and public artwork without a second glance. The colleges cannot have a courtyard or open space without feeling the compulsion to erect a statue, fountain or abstract piece in its centre. The local council, banks, shops and offices are similarly afflicted. It can all become a bit overwhelming but even so certain pieces catch the eye and the imagination.

When I was four years old I was a big fan of "The Big Soldier" on Station Road corner. I didn't know then that it was a war memorial or understand its significance. It's not actually called "The Big Soldier" but "Coming Home" and is by the Canadian artist Robert Tait MacKenzie. 

But that infatuation was short-lived and by the time I walked that way to and from school my allegiance turned to a work on the side of a modern office block. It depicts figures gathered beneath a tree, but that was all I knew. My mother went to work in that office block, I walked past it twice every schoolday but I learned nothing more, which probably means that I was daydreaming during a History lesson; a not uncommon occurrence. Then, some years later, the building was surrounded by scaffolding and builders moved in. I found myself worrying whether the artwork would disappear forever. I was pleased to find that it survived.Clearly I ought to find out more.

The office block was called Kett House, which ought to have rung a bell, but didn't. It takes its name, not from a local building firm as I had supposed, but from Robert Kett. The scene depicted is Kett and his followers gathered beneath what became known as Kett's Oak. Here, briefly, is his story:

    Robert Kett was a yeoman farmer in the town of Wymondham, near Norwich, in the sixteenth century. It was a time when sheep farming had become hugely profitable and as a result the wealthier landowners began enclosing parts of the common land for their flocks, leaving the poor to starve. The ensuing unrest became known as "The Commotion Tyme". The peasants responded by tearing down the fences and visited Kett with the intention of doing the same to his enclosures. To their astonishment Kett agreed with them and aided them in destroying his own fences and hedges. 
   Kett was an educated man and soon became their leader. The discontents assembled beneath an oak tree, Kett's Oak, to draw up a list of demands which centred on the wealthy barons giving back the common lands to the poor and allowing them to live as before. The movement escalated until their encampment numbered some 15,000 men making it the biggest settlement outside of London!
   The rebels marched on and eventually took Norwich. Armies were assembled, mostly consisting of foreign mercenaries, to confront the rebels. Finally the rebels were defeated at a place called Dussindale (don't bother looking on a map - no one knows where it was!). 3,000 rebels were killed and the following day Kett was arrested. On 7th December 1549 Kett was hanged from the battlements of Norwich Castle.
   In the four and a half centuries since his death Kett has been transformed from traitor into hero of the poor.

   I really should have paid more attention during History!

Now follow my schoolday trudge a little further and you'll come to Lensfield Road and the Scott Polar Museum. Outside is a statue entitled "Youth" which catches the eye. But high up on the wall is a bust of Capt Robert Falcon Scott, Scott Of The Antarctic himself. To my mind he looks more kindly romantic than rugged hero, perhaps because the bust of Scott (and the statue of Youth) are the work of Scott's widow, Kathleen Scott. Incidentally the model for "Youth" was A W Lawrence, the brother of T E Lawrence or Lawrence of Arabia.

But tucked away around the side of the museum, overlooking the bicycle racks of the Department Of Chemistry, is this curious construction:

He, she, or it is an inuksuk (plural inuksuit) and formerly resided in the wilds of Baffin Island, Canada. In fact it's a special kind of inuksuk in that it is a representation of a human figure and therefore qualifies to be called an inunnguaq. These are made, as I understand it, by the Inuit people of Baffin Island and elsewhere for a variety of reasons: to mark the way in the trackless wastes, as memorials to their ancestors or to guide the migrating caribou to areas where they can be slaughtered. This particular one was brought from such a wild location to this rather less exotic site where presumably he is employed to direct the chemistry students to where they can park their bicycles. Fate can be cruel.

And finally....alongside the path which leads through the grounds of Clare College stands Confucius. He is the product of the skill and imagination of Wu Wei-Shan, one of China's leading sculptors. I think it's wonderful!

Take care.   


 

Forever Autumn

Take care.

Bury St Edmunds - A Tale Of Two Churches

Lets start with what we know about St Edmund. Virtually nothing. There are no contemporary accounts of his life. Everything we know about him was made up years after his death. 

He was born, it's said, in about 841 AD, the son of King Aethelweard, about whom we know even less. At the age of 14 Edmund succeeded his father as King of East Anglia. In 869 AD Britain was invaded by the Great Heathen Army of the Danes. Edmund refused to renounce Christianity and was put to death on the orders of one Ivar the Boneless. 

What you really want to know now - what I really want to know too - is how Ivar got his nickname. He was known to have been a berserker, a group of warriors who got themselves into a trance with the aid of hallucinogens, before they went into battle. But no one knows for sure why he was described as "boneless", though you can be sure that there's been plenty of speculation!

Just to make sure that Edmund learned his lesson he was beaten, shot full of arrows and then beheaded. The head was thrown into the forest but his followers found the head with help from a wolf that could talk. Not only that but it spoke Latin! "Hic, hic, hic!" it cried. ("Here, here, here!")

Despite his unhappy end and unlikely story he became a cult figure after his death and pilgrimages were made to his visit his shrine. By the tenth century a household of Benedictine monks had been founded and a church built on the site by King Canute, no less. By the medieval period St Edmund was widely regarded as being the patron saint of England. The abbey, as it now was, became the most important, and the richest, pilgrimage site in the country. A huge abbey church was built. A model shows how grand it was... 

....but gives no idea of its size. The county's largest parish church, the huge wool church at Lavenham (which you can see here), would have fitted in four times over with room to spare. Now little remains.

By the time Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1539 the monks owned much of Suffolk and had become very wealthy indeed. But, during the two hundred years before that, the monks had become corrupt and extremely unpopular. Monks were killed and buildings were damaged  in riots by the townspeople. In 1327 the Abbey Gate was destroyed and had to be rebuilt.

The Abbey Gate led into a huge courtyard surrounded by grand buildings. Today it survives as Abbey Gardens, a well-maintained public space.

You can wander among the flowers or explore the ruins at your leisure, and all without charge. 

These huge rubble cores are impressive, though nearly all the best building stone has been plundered for later building work. Just tantalising glimpses remain to give some idea of its former grandeur. If you look high up on that tower of rubble you'll see a small remnant of finished stone giving the suggestion of the base of an arch. No need to strain your eyes; I'll help you out...

But behind the ruin you can't help but notice a soaring church tower...

But that church tower is not all it seems as we shall discover. There's been a church on the site since at least 1065 - but not this one. It was started in 1503 but much altered in the Victorian era.

There's a rather elaborate font designed by George Gilbert Scott in 1870, though the cover and the decoration was added later.

In 1914 the church became a cathedral for the new diocese of Ipswich and St Edmundsbury. (Don't ask me why Bury St Edmunds suddenly becomes St Edmundsbury.)  It was decided that cathedral status demanded more building; transepts, a tower, that sort of thing. From 1943 to 1988 Simon Dykes Bower was the architect. He was a controversial figure in that he championed the Gothic revival, which had become deeply unfashionable since its heyday in the Victorian era. However it allowed continuity of style with earlier work.

But the tower, yes the one we saw earlier from the ruins, was not built until this century (between 2000 and 2005. There's some wonderful decorating - painting and gold leaf - which, being brand spanking new, is rather bright and colourful. 

The organ's a bit special too...

So we CAN still build these things! All it takes is time and money.

I'm going to have a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the Cathedral refectory (which won't take much money at all), then I'm going outside to take another look at that tower.

Take care.