'Twere joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee

O, were I loved as I desire to be!
What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
Or range of evil between death and birth,
That I should fear, - if I were loved by thee!
All the inner, all the outer world of pain,
Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine;
As I have heard that somewhere in the main
Fresh water springs come up through bitter brine.
'Twere joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,
To wait for death - mute - careless of all ills,
Apart upon a mountain, though the surge
Of some new deluge from a thousand hills
Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge
Below us, as far on as eye could see.



I'm always surprised when I run across a Tennyson poem I don't know, but this one was new to me today. It's an early poem, published when he was 24 years old (!) in his second collection of poems, in 1833, the same year that Arthur Hallam's death was to change his life. The poem looks straightforward but there are some interesting things about it: the distinction between inner and outer worlds of pain; 'clear love' (what does that mean?); that wonderful image of fresh water springing up through brine.

Since visiting Tennyson's haunts on the Isle of Wight a little while ago, I can no longer think of him without thinking of Julia Margaret Cameron, who lived nearby and illustrated some of Tennyson's poems with her photographs (and it occurs to me now that the village they lived in is called Freshwater; what an odd coincidence). So the picture is her portrait of Ellen Terry, called 'Sadness'.

A Sunday Morning Hymn

The dawn of God’s dear Sabbath
Breaks o’er the earth again,
As some sweet summer morning
After a night of pain;
It comes as cooling showers
To some exhausted land,
As shade of clustered palm trees
’Mid weary wastes of sand.

Lord, we would bring for offering
Though marred with earthly soil,
Our week of earnest labour,
Of useful daily toil;
Fair fruits of self denial,
Of strong, deep love to Thee,
Fostered by Thine own Spirit
In our humility.

And, we would bring our burden
Of sinful thought and deed,
In Thy pure presence kneeling,
From bondage to be freed;
Our heart’s most bitter sorrow
For all Thy work undone;
So many talents wasted!
So few bright laurels won!

And with that sorrow mingling,
A steadfast faith, and sure,
And love so deep and fervent,
That tries to make it pure;
In His dear presence finding
The pardon that we need;
And then the peace so lasting,
Celestial peace indeed!

So be it, Lord, forever;
O may we evermore
In Jesus’ holy presence
His blessèd name adore,
Upon His peaceful Sabbath,
Within His temple walls—
Type of the stainless worship
In Zion’s golden halls.



This hymn is by Ada Cambridge Cross (1844-1926). I just discovered it, at the dawn of this Sunday morning. I have a fondness for literature in praise of Sundays, like George Herbert's beautiful poem of that name:

Sundays the pillars are,
On which heaven's palace arched lies:
The other days fill up the spare
And hollow room with vanities.
They are the fruitfull beds and borders
In God's rich garden: that is bare,
Which parts their ranks and orders.

The Sundays of man's life,
Thredded together on time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King.
On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope:
Blessings are plentiful and rife,
More plentiful then hope.


People always talk about how dull Sundays were in the days before Sunday trading, when the Sabbath was strictly kept, and I'm sure they could be tedious. But this is the other side of it, which you don't hear so much about: a true day of rest, set aside from the cares and business of the week - whether "useful daily toil" or "so many talents wasted/so few bright laurels won" - a day of reflection and peace, to make us stronger for the week ahead. No wonder this hymn calls it the 'dear Sabbath'.

Also, I really like the kind of self-referential hymn which pays attention to what people might be thinking as they gather in church. Modern church music often tries to do this and sometimes does it badly, focusing on us and focusing what we're doing (singing a new church into being, apparently) rather than God. But this strikes a nice balance between acknowledging that people may have worries on their mind, and pointing them upwards to the eternal Sabbath in "Zion's golden halls". It reminds me of 'Not for our sins alone', another hymn which is highly self-referential but nonetheless humble and devotional, and completely focused in the right direction. 'Hymns about hymns' are always something special: this, one of my favourites, speaks of the other end of the Sabbath day:

Our day of praise is done;
The evening shadows fall;
But pass not from us with the sun,
True Light that lightenest all.

Around the throne on high,
Where night can never be,
The white-robed harpers of the sky
Bring ceaseless hymns to thee.

Too faint our anthems here;
Too soon of praise we tire;
But O the strains, how full and clear,
Of that eternal choir!

Yet, Lord, to thy dear will
If thou attune the heart,
We in thine angels’ music still
May bear our lower part.

’Tis thine each soul to calm,
Each wayward thought reclaim,
And make our life a daily psalm
Of glory to thy name.

A little while, and then
Shall come the glorious end;
And songs of angels and of men
In perfect praise shall blend.


Have a happy Sunday!


Pictures: two sunny Suffolk churches, Aldeburgh (top) and Stoke-by-Nayland

Thou'rt the music of my soul: Maiden of Morven

Maiden of Morven: An Ossianic Love-Lament

The lament of an Ossianic hero for the death of his lady-love, accidentally lost in a storm off the point of Ardnamurchan


Moan ye winds that never sleep,
Howl ye spirits of the deep,
Roar ye torrents down the steep,
Roll ye mists on Morven.
May the tempests never rest
Nor the seas with peace be blest
Since they tore thee from my breast,
Maiden of Morven!

Fairer than the flowers that grow,
Purer than the rills that flow,
Gentler than the fallow doe
'Mid the woods of Morven;
As the leaf is to the tree,
As the summer to the bee,
So wert thou, my Love, to me,
Maiden of Morven!

Ossian's harp sings Fingal's praise;
Wild the lilt of Carril's lays,
Men and maids of other days
Fire his tales of Morven.
Though their chords like thunder roll,
When at Beltane brims the bowl,
Thou'rt the music of my soul,
Maiden of Morven!

Oft I chased the deer of yore;
Many a battle-brunt I bore,
When the chiefs of Innistore
Hurled their might on Morven.
Blunt my spear, and slack my bow,
Like an empty ghost I go,
Death the only hope I know,
Maiden of Morven!


This dramatic piece of Victorian Scottish antiquarianism is by Harold Boulton. I don't know much about Ossian and his laments, but you don't really need to in order to enjoy the awesomeness of this song. The tune is an old Highland melody with a super-dramatic setting by Malcolm Lawson, like thunder clouds rolling; you can sort of hear it in this recording at Amazon.

Innistore, according to the note in Songs of the North, is "the Orkney Islands, then like many of the Islands under the dominion of the Scandinavian Kings, who were frequently at war with the Celtic Fingalians of the Mainland". Oh, those Scandinavian kings, always at war with someone. Archaeology helpfully confirms the historical records, since just last year there was a very exciting discovery in Ardnamurchan: a Viking ship-burial complete with the body and artefacts.

Most of my knowledge of this part of Scotland comes from the film 'I Know Where I'm Going', and so this stormy song always makes me think of its climatic scene in Corryvreckan whirlpool (the whole film is on youtube; the whirpool scene starts at about 1:07:00). It's a wonderful film, impossible not to fall in love with; you should definitely watch it if you have an hour or two to spare. The plaintive tune playing as the boat returns is, appropriately, The Boatman, because Powell and Pressburger had excellent taste...

Stories of St Dunstan, 7: The Boys of Canterbury and St Dunstan's Ghost

My last story of St Dunstan is one I've been intending to post for a long time, but never quite had a reason to. It's not strictly about Dunstan himself, since it took place almost eighty years after his death, but it's an extraordinary (if slightly unpleasant) story, an incredibly vivid insight into the life of a monastic community.

Any medieval story which can be precisely dated and located is fascinating to me; that's one reason I love Eadmer's life of St Anselm so much. And this is an Eadmer story too - one to which he was a witness, as a child of perhaps seven years old, being educated in the school at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the tumultous year that followed the Battle of Hastings. Towards the end of his life, living at Canterbury as archbishop, the venerable and learned Dunstan had often chosen to teach the boys in the cathedral school, and so his later biographers emphasised his special affection for the young, and especially for the Canterbury boys. Eadmer tells a story of how Dunstan posthumously heals a little boy from paralysis, and then goes on:

It pleases me to add to this pious deed performed on behalf of a little boy another act of love of this most loving father carried out for the boys of the church.

The feast day of the birth of Christ was approaching [in the year 1067]. It was an ancient custom in that same monastery on the fifth day before this feast that the boys… within the schools be beaten with severe and excessive lashes. This punishment of the wretched boys was inflicted not for any sins committed but out of custom, and for that reason they were in no way able to escape it, except when the strenuous intercession of advocates might reduce the viciousness of the schoolmasters.

And so on a certain occasion the teachers were of one mind and inflamed with such great wrath against the boys that no prayer by their advocates, no intercession poured forth by anyone on their behalf could at all succeed in calming the madness which had seized them. The wretched boys knew not what to do nor where to turn. Only one refuge remained, to invoke the love of loving Dunstan.

Already on the night before this unspeakably cruel event the boys were trembling with fear when behold, the loving father, appearing to one of the boys in a dream, asked in a gentle manner why he and his companions were afflicted with such grief. And he, unaware of who it was that spoke to him, broke out in tears and explained how the rage of the teachers had conspired against them without a thought for mercy.

But he replied, ‘Have no fear; for I am your father Dunstan whom you have asked for help. I have considered the boundless and unholy wrath of your teachers and I have seen your great need. Do not be afraid, for I will be present with you and you shall suffer no harm. So let your liberation today serve as a signal for you to speak on my behalf to the custodians of the church so that they remove the stinking corpse of the son of Harold, which out of adulation – something I abhor – certain men have buried next to me. Moreover, I am all the more troubled by this because I know that the soul of this boy is damned because it has not been reborn [i.e. baptised]. So if the body is not removed immediately, let them know that before too long the whole church will suffer a grave loss on this account.’

Hearing these things the boy awoke and turning over what he had heard in his mind he vacillated between hope and fear. And now, dawn, that is, the dreaded hour, had arrived; armed with bull-hide whips and knotted lashes the teachers stood waiting in opportune places for the boys to pass by there. But suddenly all at once a most deep sleep enveloped those malevolent men, so that none of them was able to stop the boys passing through their midst, nor to inflict injury upon anyone.

It was not the viciousness which they bore against the innocent children that roused the teachers from their slumber, but the singing and rejoicing of these innocents, and the high feast itself. They were confused, and regretted too late that by falling asleep they had lost the chance to indulge their savagery, from which they had allowed the boys to escape without anyone interceding on their behalf.

But the boy to whom the holy father had appeared, knowing for certain that it was blessed Dunstan whom he had seen, related to the custodians of the church what he had been told about removing the stinking cadaver. Those men considered the words of the youth to be of little consequence, and likewise spurned the warnings and threats of the blessed bishop. Whereas afterwards that same father was sometimes seen leaving that place by certain pious monks of the church. Whenever he was stopped by them and asked why he was leaving he would reply that he was no longer able to tolerate the stench of pagan flesh in that place, nor the iniquities of certain evil men. And he said, ‘But if these things are not rectified swiftly, mark my word I predict that that the entire city as well as the church will very soon pay a well-deserved penalty for that.’

What in fact happened afterwards proved this premonition to be true. For only a few days after these things had happened the city, together with the whole church and the workplaces of the servants of God, was consumed by fire. Nevertheless it transpired through the great mercy of God and the intercession of holy Dunstan that two buildings, without which the brothers could not have existed, remained unscathed by the conflagration, namely the refectory and the dormitory with the cloisters which adjoined it.

Translated by Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir in Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald (Oxford, 2006), pp.173-5.


I'm not sure this story shows Dunstan (or his ghost) in the best light, but it may be help to think that whichever King Harold it was whose son's presence caused Dunstan such distress (possibly Harold Harefoot, son of Cnut, but also perhaps Harold Godwineson), he would have been a controversial figure, and it was probably a source of contention among the monks if his son was buried there. One thing I find interesting about this story is what it suggests about the way the potency of a great name can linger on within a community; none of the boys in this story were old enough to remember Dunstan, but they knew that invoking his name would win their case for them. Perhaps if a child of today said 'the ghost of Winston Churchill appeared to me and said...' it would have a similar effect!

I also like Nicholas Brooks' comment on this story, "Some will also see in the story evidence of a brutal and unimaginative discipline; others evidence that even in the eleventh century middle-aged and elderly Englishmen liked to recall the corporal punishment that had characterized the educational system of their youth" (Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), p.266. There was no corporal punishment in my youth, but I've certainly heard men at high table in Oxford reminiscence rather fondly about what they endured at school... And it also reminds me of this piece in the Telegraph the other day; nothing changes.

The fire which Dunstan's ghost predicted, as it left its grave and walked to and fro, destroyed the Saxon cathedral so thoroughly that when Lanfranc began to build the new one ten years later all the foundations had to be taken up. It's a potent symbol for what happened to all the glories of Saxon Canterbury, including the fame of Dunstan himself; but Eadmer and Osbern (who also tells this story, from personal observation) did their best to shore these fragments against the ruin, and in time Dunstan was again honoured as he deserved to be.

A young boy is healed (by St Thomas Becket, this time) in medieval glass from Canterbury Cathedral

Stories of St Dunstan, 6: The Thief and the Cliff

As Archbishop of Canterbury Dunstan acquired a reputation for wisdom, humility and holiness, particularly impressive for someone who was also the leading minister of state. He was much loved at Canterbury, and after his death was by far the cathedral's most popular saint until the day Thomas Becket was murdered before his own altar - Dunstan had no story dramatic enough to compete with that! But for the two centuries before that, Dunstan was their hero. This comes across in the many, many stories his later hagiographers tell about occasions after his death when he intervened to help his monks. I'll save my favourite tale of this kind for tomorrow, but this is also a good one - a miracle which was told to William of Malmesbury in the early twelfth century. Dunstan, he says,

"was able to lighten the woes of his sons by great miracles. One of these I have not seen in writing, though I recently heard it narrated by a monk of Christ Church [probably Eadmer]. A thief, condemned to fall to his death, called on the aid of St Dunstan; his eyes already blindfolded, he was pushed away by his executioners and leapt into the chasm, but without coming to any harm. The blessed Dunstan spoke with him in person there, and removed his bandages. The poor man, heartened by this help, found his way along rough paths to higher ground; an invisible hand on his back supported him as he clung to the cliff-face, and prevented him slipping backwards".

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom, vol.II, p.15.


Incidentally, this is "apparently the earliest reference to the customary local mode of execution called ‘infalisation’, according to which felons were thrown from a cliff called Sharpeness at Dover". You know how tall the white cliffs of Dover are? Think of that bit in King Lear:

How fearful
And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.


High cliffs were no match for Dunstan, of course.

And let me assure you, this punishment is no longer customary in the Kentish legal system...

Ascension Day in Oxford

I thought some of my readers might be interested in pictures of some of Oxford's eccentric Ascension Day traditions. Like many parishes in England, the city centre churches here continue the ancient practice of 'beating the bounds' of the parish, because it's Rogationtide, the time when you pray for blessings for your land. There's not a lot of farmland in central Oxford but there are a lot of fertile young minds, and they need blessings as much as anyone...

I went beating the bounds with the parish of St Michael at the Northgate in 2008, when Ascension Day fell on a May Day (what a happy coincidence that was!) The way it works is that a group of clergy and parishoners take long sticks of wood and walk around the perimeter of the parish, marking boundary stones with a prayer and a ceremonial beating (of the stone, not of people). The boundaries fall right in the middle of, for instance, Oxford's Cornmarket:


And inside Marks and Spencers (ladieswear section, in case you were wondering):


And the back wall of a restaurant:


But also in the more beautiful Brasenose Lane:


And the wall of the Bodleian Library:


What they do is write a cross, with SMNG around it (for St Michael at the North Gate) and then the date:


The chalk markings build up over the years, and where two boundaries meet, you can see the evidence - as here outside Brasenose College Office, where the boundaries of St Michael's and St Mary the Virgin join:


Inside Brasenose:


Lincoln and Brasenose have their own separate tradition on Ascension Day, commemorating the historical rivalry between the colleges. The colleges back onto each other, and at noon on Ascension Day, for five minutes only, the underground passageway which leads from one to the other is opened and Brasenose students go through into Lincoln.

(This sounds like one of those Oxford myths, but I assure you, it really happens!)

There Brasenose students are served with free beer, laced with ivy, supposedly in reparation for the fact that Lincoln once, in the time of town riots in Oxford, refused to admit a Brasenose student who was being chased by a mob. Having drunk the disgusting beer, we gather in Lincoln's beautiful quad to watch pennies being thrown from their tower to waiting children below. It's an eccentric form of almsgiving!



Viri Galilaei, quid admiramini aspicientes in caelum?

;)



They scrabble for pennies. We all learn a lesson about greed. It's pretty great.

Stories of St Dunstan, 5: Dunstan's Dream

One of the most lurid stories about Dunstan concerns the consecration of young King Eadwig in 955: when the king was nowhere to be seen, Dunstan went in search of him and found him cavorting with a noblewoman and her mother. This is probably a scandalous myth, but it's true that Dunstan and Eadwig did not get on at all. According to Dunstan's first biographer, his fellow monks at Glastonbury were plotting against him too, and Dunstan was eventually forced into exile on the continent. And that's the context for the following dream:

The mercy of his God was with him, and he found favour with a local magnate, who looked after him with a father's affection during his exile. This nobleman's care saw to his everyday needs with all kindness.

Yet Dunstan's mind was constantly back in the land from which he had been expelled so remorselessly. Often did he lament, shedding floods of tears, whenever, now an exile, he recalled the grand religious life he had left behind in his monastery. He had long been taken up with doleful reflections of this kind, when lo and behold! he saw one night in his sleep a vision of the familiar scenes he so eagerly conjured up in his mind while awake. He was back in his familiar monastery, his band of brethren by him, singing Vespers, and, after the final canticle, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord', [they sang] the antiphon 'Wherefore did ye detract from the sayings of truth? You put together words to reproach, and strive to overthrow your friend. Yet...' At this point in Dunstan's dream, they all stopped singing at the same moment and fell quite silent, unable to find the voice or the words to finish the antiphon. And though they vainly tried again and again, they could only sing as far as the same place as before, never able to add the two last words.

In his dream, Dunstan rebuked them: 'Why won't you finish the antiphon with "complete what you design"? From another quarter he at once heard the reply of God: 'Because, I say, they will never bring to pass what they are plotting, namely your expulsion from control over this monastery.' And waking up from his dream he gave thanks to the Almighty for consoling him.

The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford, 2012), pp.73-5.



It turned out all right for Dunstan: Eadwig only reigned four years, and was followed by his brother Edgar, one of Anglo-Saxon England's greatest kings and a firm supporter of the church. Under Edgar Dunstan became Archbishop of Canterbury; the service which Dunstan devised for Edgar's consecration is still the basis of the coronation ceremony for British monarchs, more than a thousand years later.