Miscellany No 78

MISCELLANY No 78

Another technical literary term

Last week we did ‘mondegreen’. This week we have  

an extract from Thomas Hardy’s A PAIR OF BLUE EYES

The two young lovers, Elfride Swancourt and her suitor Henry Knight, are walking at the seaside, when Knight notices that the weather is beginning to turn against them...

í think we had better return,' he said. 'That cloud which is raining on them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is that?'

'Something in the air affects my face.'

'Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear,' returned Knight tenderly. 'This air would make those rosy that were never so before, one would think—eh, Nature's spoilt child?'

Elfride's colour returned again.

'There is more to see behind us, after all,' said Knight.

She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw, towering still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the hill on the right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was visible like a concave wall, bending round from their position towards the left.

The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole height by a single change of shade.

It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully; a great one not at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of the cliff.

'I cannot bear to look at that cliff,' said Elfride. 'It has a horrid personality, and makes me shudder. We will go.'

'Can you climb?' said Knight. 'If so, we will ascend by that path over the grim old fellow's brow.'

'Try me,' said Elfride disdainfully. 'I have ascended steeper slopes than that.'

From where they had been loitering, a grassy path wound along inside a bank, placed as a safeguard for unwary pedestrians, to the top of the precipice, and over it along the hill in an inland direction.

'Take my arm, Miss Swancourt,' said Knight.

'I can get on better without it, thank you.'

When they were one quarter of the way up, Elfride stopped to take breath. Knight stretched out his hand.

She took it, and they ascended the remaining slope together. Reaching the very top, they sat down to rest by mutual consent.

'Heavens, what an altitude!' said Knight between his pants, and looking far over the sea. The cascade at the bottom of the slope appeared a mere span in height from where they were now.

Elfride was looking to the left. The steamboat was in full view again, and by reason of the vast surface of sea their higher position uncovered it seemed almost close to the shore.

'Over that edge,' said Knight, 'where nothing but vacancy appears, is a moving compact mass. The wind strikes the face of the rock, runs up it, rises like a fountain to a height far above our heads, curls over us in an arch, and disperses behind us. In fact, an inverted cascade is there—as perfect as the Niagara Falls—but rising instead of falling, and air instead of water. Now look here.'

Knight threw a stone over the bank, aiming it as if to go onward over the cliff. Reaching the verge, it towered into the air like a bird, turned back, and alighted on the ground behind them. They themselves were in a dead calm.

'A boat crosses Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls, where the water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it. We are in precisely the same position with regard to our atmospheric cataract here. If you run back from the cliff fifty yards, you will be in a brisk wind. Now I daresay over the bank is a little backward current.'

Knight rose and leant over the bank. No sooner was his head above it than his hat appeared to be sucked from his head—slipping over his forehead in a seaward direction.

'That's the backward eddy, as I told you,' he cried, and vanished over the little bank after his hat.

Elfride waited one minute; he did not return. She waited another, and there was no sign of him.

A few drops of rain fell, then a sudden shower.

She arose, and looked over the bank. On the other side were two or three yards of level ground—then a short steep preparatory slope—then the verge of the precipice.

On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands and knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had wetted the shaly surface of the incline. A slight superficial wetting of the soil hereabout made it far more slippery to stand on than the same soil thoroughly drenched. The inner substance was still hard, and was lubricated by the moistened film.

'I find a difficulty in getting back,' said Knight.

Elfride's heart fell like lead.

'But you can get back?' she wildly inquired.

Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the drops of perspiration began to bead his brow.

'No, I am unable to do it,' he answered.

Elfride, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the sensation that Knight was in bodily danger. But attempt to help him she must. She ventured upon the treacherous incline, propped herself with the closed telescope, and gave him her hand before he saw her movements.

'O Elfride! why did you?' said he. 'I am afraid you have only endangered yourself.'

And as if to prove his statement, in making an endeavour by her assistance they both slipped lower, and then he was again stayed. His foot was propped by a bracket of quartz rock, balanced on the verge of the precipice. Fixed by this, he steadied her, her head being about a foot below the beginning of the slope. Elfride had dropped the glass; it rolled to the edge and vanished over it into a nether sky.

'Hold tightly to me,' he said.

She flung her arms round his neck with such a firm grasp that whilst he remained it was impossible for her to fall.

'Don't be flurried,' Knight continued. 'So long as we stay above this block we are perfectly safe. Wait a moment whilst I consider what we had better do.'

He turned his eyes to the dizzy depths beneath them, and surveyed the position of affairs.

Two glances told him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was that, unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope with the precision of machines, they were over the edge and whirling in mid-air.

For this purpose it was necessary that he should recover the breath and strength which his previous efforts had cost him. So he still waited, and looked in the face of the enemy.

The crest of this terrible natural facade passed among the neighbouring inhabitants as being seven hundred feet above the water it overhung. It had been proved by actual measurement to be not a foot less than six hundred and fifty.

That is to say, it is nearly three times the height of Flamborough, half as high again as the South Foreland, a hundred feet higher than Beachy Head—the loftiest promontory on the east or south side of this island—twice the height of St. Aldhelm's, thrice as high as the Lizard, and just double the height of St. Bee's. One sea-bord point on the western coast is known to surpass it in altitude, but only by a few feet. This is Great Orme's Head, in Caernarvonshire.

And it must be remembered that the cliff exhibits an intensifying feature which some of those are without—sheer perpendicularity from the half-tide level.

Yet this remarkable rampart forms no headland: it rather walls in an inlet—the promontory on each side being much lower. Thus, far from being salient, its horizontal section is concave. The sea, rolling direct from the shores of North America, has in fact eaten a chasm into the middle of a hill, and the giant, embayed and unobtrusive, stands in the rear of pigmy supporters. Not least singularly, neither hill, chasm, nor precipice has a name. On this account I will call the precipice the Cliff without a Name.*

     * See Preface

What gave an added terror to its height was its blackness. And upon this dark face the beating of ten thousand west winds had formed a kind of bloom, which had a visual effect not unlike that of a Hambro' grape. Moreover it seemed to float off into the atmosphere, and inspire terror through the lungs.

'This piece of quartz, supporting my feet, is on the very nose of the cliff,' said Knight, breaking the silence after his rigid stoical meditation. 'Now what you are to do is this. Clamber up my body till your feet are on my shoulders: when you are there you will, I think, be able to climb on to level ground.'

'What will you do?'

'Wait whilst you run for assistance.'

'I ought to have done that in the first place, ought I not?'

'I was in the act of slipping, and should have reached no stand-point without your weight, in all probability. But don't let us talk. Be brave, Elfride, and climb.'

She prepared to ascend, saying, 'This is the moment I anticipated when on the tower. I thought it would come!'

'This is not a time for superstition,' said Knight. 'Dismiss all that.'

'I will,' she said humbly.

'Now put your foot into my hand: next the other. That's good—well done. Hold to my shoulder.'

She placed her feet upon the stirrup he made of his hand, and was high enough to get a view of the natural surface of the hill over the bank.

'Can you now climb on to level ground?'

'I am afraid not. I will try.'

'What can you see?'

'The sloping common.'

'What upon it?'

'Purple heather and some grass.'

'Nothing more—no man or human being of any kind?'

'Nobody.'

'Now try to get higher in this way. You see that tuft of sea-pink above you. Get that well into your hand, but don't trust to it entirely. Then step upon my shoulder, and I think you will reach the top.'

With trembling limbs she did exactly as he told her. The preternatural quiet and solemnity of his manner overspread upon herself, and gave her a courage not her own. She made a spring from the top of his shoulder, and was up.

Then she turned to look at him.

By an ill fate, the force downwards of her bound, added to his own weight, had been too much for the block of quartz upon which his feet depended. It was, indeed, originally an igneous protrusion into the enormous masses of black strata, which had since been worn away from the sides of the alien fragment by centuries of frost and rain, and now left it without much support.

It moved. Knight seized a tuft of sea-pink with each hand.

The quartz rock which had been his salvation was worse than useless now. It rolled over, out of sight, and away into the same nether sky that had engulfed the telescope.

One of the tufts by which he held came out at the root, and Knight began to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment. Elfride uttered a low wild wail of agony, bowed her head, and covered her face with her hands.

Between the turf-covered slope and the gigantic perpendicular rock intervened a weather-worn series of jagged edges, forming a face yet steeper than the former slope. As he slowly slid inch by inch upon these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of vegetation—the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further descent. Knight was now literally suspended by his arms; but the incline of the brow being what engineers would call about a quarter in one, it was sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion of his weight, but was very far from offering an adequately flat face to support him.

To be continued

This passage’s claim to fame is that it coined a well-known everyday figure of speech. If you haven’t yet got it, the answer will appear next week.

Return to Good in Parts Contents page

Miscellany 77

MISCELLANY No 77

 

CLASSIC SCOTTISH POETRY: II

Although Dorothy and William Wordsworth (and Coleridge) may be home safe in Grasmere, we continue to think Scottish this week, with a (short) Scottish epic poem that became famous.  In order to appreciate it, you need to read it out loud, preferably in a Scots accent, and even better in the style of Private Frazer (John Laurie in Dad’s Army).  More discussion at the end...

Ye Highlands, and ye lawlands,

Oh where have ye been?

They have slain the Earl of Murray,

And layd him on the green.

"Now wae be to thee, Huntly!

And wherefore did you see?

I bade you bring him wi' you,

But forbade you him to slay."

He was a braw gallant,

And he rid at the ring;

And the bonny Earl of Murray,  

Oh he might have been a king!

 He was a braw gallant,

And he play'd at the ba';

And the bonny Earl of Murray

Was the flower among them a'.

He was a braw gallant,

And he play'd at the glove;

And the bonny Earl of Murray,

Oh he was the Queen's love!

Oh lang will his lady

Look o'er the castle Down,

Eer she see the Earl of Murray 

Come sounding thro the town!

This poem gave rise to the invention of the term ‘mondegreen’, a misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, with the ear and the brain combining to try to make sense of an ambiguous group of sounds, especially in a poem or a song. The story goes that an American journalist,  Sylvia Wright, coined the term in 1954, writing about how as a girl she had mis-heard the end of the first verse of this poem, "...and laid him on the green" as "...and Lady Mondegreen", thus:

They have slain the Earl of Murray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

 and had had felt sympathy for Lady Mondegreen who seemed not to have done anything to deserve being slain alongside the Earl of Murray.  

  

 

Return to Good in Parts Contents page

No 76

MISCELLANY No 76

 

RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR MADE IN SCOTLAND: XIV

 

Wednesday, September 21st.—The house where we lodged was airy, and even cheerful, though one of a line of houses bordering on the churchyard, which is the highest part of the town, overlooking a great portion of it to the opposite hills.  The kirk is, as at Melrose, within the walls of a conventual church; but the ruin is much less beautiful, and the church a very neat one.  The churchyard was full of graves, and exceedingly slovenly and dirty; one most indecent practice I observed: several women brought their linen to the flat table-tombstones, and, having spread it upon them, began to batter as hard as they could with a wooden roller, a substitute for a mangle.

After Mr. Scott’s business in the Courts was over, he walked with us up the Jed—‘sylvan Jed’ it has been properly called by Thomson—for the banks are yet very woody, though wood in large quantities has been felled within a few years.  There are some fine red scars near the river, in one or two of which we saw the entrances to caves, said to have been used as places of refuge in times of insecurity.

Walked up to Ferniehurst, an old hall, in a secluded situation, now inhabited by farmers; the neighbouring ground had the wildness of a forest, being irregularly scattered over with fine old trees.  The wind was tossing their branches, and sunshine dancing among the leaves, and I happened to exclaim, ‘What a life there is in trees!’ on which Mr. Scott observed that the words reminded him of a young lady who had been born and educated on an island of the Orcades, and came to spend a summer at Kelso and in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.  She used to say that in the new world into which she was come nothing had disappointed her so much as trees and woods; she complained that they were lifeless, silent, and, compared with the grandeur of the ever-changing ocean, even insipid.  At first I was surprised, but the next moment I felt that the impression was natural.  Mr. Scott said that she was a very sensible young woman, and had read much.  She talked with endless rapture and feeling of the power and greatness of the ocean; and with the same passionate attachment returned to her native island without any probability of quitting it again.

The valley of the Jed is very solitary immediately under Ferniehurst; we walked down the river, wading almost up to the knees in fern, which in many parts overspread the forest-ground.  It made me think of our walks at Allfoxden, and of our own park—though at Ferniehurst is no park at present—and the slim fawns that we used to startle from their couching-places among the fern at the top of the hill.  We were accompanied on our walk by a young man from the Braes of Yarrow, an acquaintance of Mr. Scott’s,  who, having been much delighted with some of William’s poems which he had chanced to see in a newspaper, had wished to be introduced to him; he lived in the most retired part of the dale of Yarrow, where he had a farm: he was fond of reading, and well informed, but at first meeting as shy as any of our Grasmere lads, and not less rustic in his appearance.  He had been in the Highlands, and gave me such an account of Loch Rannoch as made us regret that we had not persevered in our journey thither, especially as he told us that the bad road ended at a very little distance from the place where we had turned back, and that we should have come into another good road, continued all along the shore of the lake.  He also mentioned that there was a very fine view from the steeple at Dunkeld.

The town of Jedburgh, in returning along the road, as it is seen through the gently winding narrow valley, looks exceedingly beautiful on its low eminence, surmounted by the conventual tower, which is arched over, at the summit, by light stone-work resembling a coronet; the effect at a distance is very graceful.  The hills all round are high, and rise rapidly from the town, which though it stands considerably above the river, yet, from every side except that on which we walked, appears to stand in a bottom.

We had our dinner sent from the inn, and a bottle of wine, that we might not disgrace the Sheriff, who supped with us in the evening,—stayed late, and repeated some of his poem.

Thursday, September 22d.—After breakfast, the minister, Dr. Somerville, called upon us with Mr. Scott, and we went to the manse, a very pretty house, with pretty gardens, and in a beautiful situation, though close to the town.  Dr. Somerville and his family complained bitterly of the devastation that had been made among the woods within view from their windows, which looked up the Jed.  He conducted us to the church, which under his directions has been lately repaired, and is a very neat place within.  Dr. Somerville spoke of the dirt and other indecencies in the churchyard, and said that he had taken great pains to put a stop to them, but wholly in vain.  The business of the assizes closed this day, and we went into Court to hear the Judge pronounce his charge, which was the most curious specimen of old woman’s oratory and newspaper-paragraph loyalty that was ever heard.  When all was over they returned to the inn in procession, as they had come, to the sound of a trumpet, the Judge first, in his robes of red, the Sheriffs next, in large cocked hats, and inferior officers following, a show not much calculated to awe the beholders.  After this we went to the inn.  The landlady and her sister inquired if we had been comfortable, and lamented that they had not had it in their power to pay us more attention.  I began to talk with them, and found out that they were from Cumberland: they knew Captain and Mrs. Wordsworth, who had frequently been at Jedburgh, Mrs. Wordsworth’s sister having married a gentleman of that neighbourhood.  They spoke of them with great pleasure.  I returned to our lodgings to take leave of the old woman, who told me that I had behaved ‘very discreetly,’ and seemed exceedingly sorry that we were leaving her so soon.  She had been out to buy me some pears, saying that I must take away some ‘Jedderd’ pears.  We learned afterwards that Jedburgh is famous in Scotland for pears, which were first cultivated there in the gardens of the monks.

Mr. Scott was very glad to part from the Judge and his retinue, to travel with us in our car to Hawick; his servant drove his own gig.  The landlady, very kindly, had put up some sandwiches and cheese-cakes for me, and all the family came out to see us depart.  Passed the monastery gardens, which are yet gardens, where there are many remarkably large old pear-trees.  We soon came into the vale of Teviot, which is open and cultivated, and scattered over with hamlets, villages, and many gentlemen’s seats, yet, though there is no inconsiderable quantity of wood, you can never, in the wide and cultivated parts of the Teviot, get rid of the impression of barrenness, and the fir plantations, which in this part are numerous, are for ever at war with simplicity.  One beautiful spot I recollect of a different character, which Mr. Scott took us to see a few yards from the road.  A stone bridge crossed the water at a deep and still place, called Horne’s Pool, from a contemplative schoolmaster, who had lived not far from it, and was accustomed to walk thither, and spend much of his leisure near the river.  The valley was here narrow and woody.  Mr. Scott pointed out to us Ruberslaw, Minto Crags, and every other remarkable object in or near the vale of Teviot, and we scarcely passed a house for which he had not some story.  Seeing us look at one, which stood high on the hill on the opposite side of the river, he told us that a gentleman lived there who, while he was in India, had been struck with the fancy of making his fortune by a new speculation, and so set about collecting the gods of the country, with infinite pains and no little expense, expecting that he might sell them for an enormous price.  Accordingly, on his return they were offered for sale, but no purchasers came.  On the failure of this scheme, a room was hired in London in which to exhibit them as a show; but alas! nobody would come to see; and this curious assemblage of monsters is now, probably, quietly lodged in the vale of Teviot.  The latter part of this gentleman’s history is more affecting:—he had an only daughter, whom he had accompanied into Spain two or three years ago for the recovery of her health, and so for a time saved her from a consumption, which now again threatened her, and he was about to leave his pleasant residence, and attend her once more on the same errand, afraid of the coming winter.

We passed through a village, whither Leyden, Scott’s intimate friend, the author of Scenes of Infancy, was used to walk over several miles of moorland country every day to school, a poor barefooted boy.  He is now in India, applying himself to the study of Oriental literature, and, I doubt not, it is his dearest thought that he may come and end his days upon the banks of Teviot, or some other of the Lowland streams—for he is, like Mr. Scott, passionately attached to the district of the Borders.

Arrived at Hawick to dinner; the inn is a large old house with walls above a yard thick, formerly a gentleman’s house.  Did not go out this evening.

Friday, September 23d.—Before breakfast, walked with Mr. Scott along a high road for about two miles, up a bare hill.  Hawick is a small town.  From the top of the hill we had an extensive view over the moors of Liddisdale, and saw the Cheviot Hills.  We wished we could have gone with Mr. Scott into some of the remote dales of this country, where in almost every house he can find a home and a hearty welcome.  But after breakfast we were obliged to part with him, which we did with great regret: he would gladly have gone with us to Langholm, eighteen miles further.  Our way was through the vale of Teviot, near the banks of the river.

Passed Branxholm Hall, one of the mansions belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch, which we looked at with particular interest for the sake of the Lay of the Last Minstrel.  Only a very small part of the original building remains: it is a large strong house, old, but not ancient in its appearance—stands very near the river-side; the banks covered with plantations.

A little further on, met the Edinburgh coach with several passengers, the only stage-coach that had passed us in Scotland.  Coleridge had come home by that conveyance only a few days before.  The quantity of arable land gradually diminishes, and the plantations become fewer, till at last the river flows open to the sun, mostly through unfenced and untilled grounds, a soft pastoral district, both the hills and the valley being scattered over with sheep: here and there was a single farm-house, or cluster of houses, and near them a portion of land covered with ripe corn.

Near the head of the vale of Teviot, where that stream is but a small rivulet, we descended towards another valley, by another small rivulet.  Hereabouts Mr. Scott had directed us to look about for some old stumps of trees, said to be the place where Johnny Armstrong was hanged; but we could not find them out.  The valley into which we were descending, though, for aught I know, it is unnamed in song, was to us more interesting than the Teviot itself.  Not a spot of tilled ground was there to break in upon its pastoral simplicity; the same soft yellow green spread from the bed of the streamlet to the hill-tops on each side, and sheep were feeding everywhere.  It was more close and simple than the upper end of the vale of Teviot, the valley being much narrower, and the hills equally high and not broken into parts, but on each side a long range.  The grass, as we had first seen near Crawfordjohn, had been mown in the different places of the open ground, where it might chance to be best; but there was no part of the surface that looked perfectly barren, as in those tracts.

We saw a single stone house a long way before us, which we conjectured to be, as it proved, Moss Paul, the inn where we were to bait.  The scene, with this single dwelling, was melancholy and wild, but not dreary, though there was no tree nor shrub; the small streamlet glittered, the hills were populous with sheep; but the gentle bending of the valley, and the correspondent softness in the forms of the hills, were of themselves enough to delight the eye.  At Moss Paul we fed our horse;—several travellers were drinking whisky.  We neither ate nor drank, for we had, with our usual foresight and frugality in travelling, saved the cheese-cakes and sandwiches which had been given us by our countrywoman at Jedburgh the day before.  After Moss Paul, we ascended considerably, then went down other reaches of the valley, much less interesting, stony and barren.  The country afterwards not peculiar, I should think, for I scarcely remember it.

Arrived at Langholm at about five o’clock.  The town, as we approached, from a hill, looked very pretty, the houses being roofed with blue slates, and standing close to the river Esk, here a large river, that scattered its waters wide over a stony channel.  The inn neat and comfortable—exceedingly clean: I could hardly believe we were still in Scotland.

After tea walked out; crossed a bridge, and saw, at a little distance up the valley, Langholm House, a villa of the Duke of Buccleuch: it stands upon a level between the river and a steep hill, which is planted with wood.  Walked a considerable way up the river, but could not go close to it on account of the Duke’s plantations, which are locked u When they ended, the vale became less cultivated; the view through the vale towards the hills very pleasing, though bare and cold.

Saturday, September 24th.—Rose very early and travelled about nine miles to Longtown, before breakfast, along the banks of the Esk.  About half a mile from Langholm crossed a bridge.  At this part of the vale, which is narrow, the steeps are covered with old oaks and every variety of trees.  Our road for some time through the wood, then came to a more open country, exceedingly rich and populous; the banks of the river frequently rocky, and hung with wood; many gentlemen’s houses.  There was the same rich variety while the river continued to flow through Scottish grounds; but not long after we had passed through the last turnpike gate in Scotland and the first in England—but a few yards asunder—the vale widens, and its aspect was cold, and even dreary, though Sir James Graham’s plantations are very extensive.  His house, a large building, stands in this open part of the vale.  Longtown was before us, and ere long we saw the well-remembered guide-post, where the circuit of our six weeks’ travels had begun, and now was ended.

We did not look along the white line of the road to Solway Moss without some melancholy emotion, though we had the fair prospect of the Cumberland mountains full in view, with the certainty, barring accidents, of reaching our own dear home the next day.  Breakfasted at the Graham’s Arms.  The weather had been very fine from the time of our arrival at Jedburgh, and this was a very pleasant day.  The sun ‘shone fair on Carlisle walls’ when we first saw them from the top of the opposite hill.  Stopped to look at the place on the sand near the bridge where Hatfield had been executed.  Put up at the same inn as before, and were recognised by the woman who had waited on us.  Everybody spoke of Hatfield as an injured man.  After dinner went to a village six miles further, where we slept.

Sunday, September 25th, 1803.—A beautiful autumnal day.  Breakfasted at a public-house by the road-side; dined at Threlkeld; arrived at home between eight and nine o’clock, where we found Mary in perfect health, Joanna Hutchinson with her, and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by the fire.

SONNET

 

COMPOSED BETWEEN DALSTON AND GRASMERE,
SEPTEMBER 25th, 1803.

Fly, some kind spirit, fly to Grasmere Vale!
Say that we come, and come by this day’s light
Glad tidings!—spread them over field and height,
But, chiefly, let one Cottage hear the tale!
There let a mystery of joy prevail,
The kitten frolic with unruly might,
And Rover whine as at a second sight
Of near-approaching good, that will not fail:
And from that Infant’s face let joy appear;
Yea, let our Mary’s one companion child,
That hath her six weeks’ solitude beguiled
With intimations manifold and dear,
While we have wander’d over wood and wild—
Smile on its Mother now with bolder cheer!

Home again at Grasmere.

Earth has not anything to show more fair. 

Return to Good in Parts Contents page