Overheard

Caffe Nero, Oxford High St, 4pm.

Undergraduate #1, casually: How's your day been?
Undergraduate #2, equally casually: I realised I don't understand the second half of Plato's Republic. You?

Collect

This is the collect for the fourth Sunday after Easter in the Book of Common Prayer. Can you believe that this masterpiece of elegance and precision is just one sentence?

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise, that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

May

This is from a collection called 'The Oxford Year' by James Williams, about whom I know nothing except that he was at Lincoln College some time in the early twentieth century.

May

What city boasts herself the peer of thee,
Dear Oxford, when the mist of morning clings
Round Magdalen elms, or when the even flings
Her rosy robe on river, hill, and lea ?
The spirit of the summer rises free
From winter sleep and spreads her silver wings,
The sunny sky holds dreams of nobler things,
Dreams drifting helmless on a fairy sea!
In the green distance smites through cloister doors
The swift and rhythmic throb of racing oars,
The shout of victory and of defeat.
Oxford is Oxford most when May is May,
And Cherwell oarsmen pluck them hawthorn spray
From trees unpruned that shelter stripling wheat.

Barfreston

As promised, let's go on a virtual visit to Barfreston and its extraordinary Norman carvings. Barfreston is a tiny place - as far as I could see, the entire village consisted of the church, a (friendly and welcoming) pub, and sheep.

The church is a funny little shape, as you can see:

It doesn't have a tower - the bell is in a handy nearby yew tree. Essentially the church is made up of two box-like sheds, but the external decoration is stunning. The south door is my favourite. I included the majestic tympanum of Christ enthroned in my post about Patrixbourne, but it's really the surrounding carvings which are so special.

Here's the whole thing:

A detail from the central panel - angels and gryphons:

The arch has three bands - the innermost carved with foliage, then one of beasts, and the outermost shows figures from 12th-century rural life. It's such a characteristically medieval style of decoration, reminiscent of the illustrations you find in manuscripts and churches throughout the period. This ploughman reminds me of nothing so much as Piers Plowman:


And this Norman knight is exquisite:

Now for the animals. Often in medieval illustrations, there's a tendency to show animals engaging in human activities, or reversing the natural hierarchy of predator and prey - like the famous image from the Macclesfield Psalter of a little man being chased by a giant flatfish (!) or the postcard they sell in the Bodleian showing a manuscript illustration of rabbits hunting humans (who are hiding in a tree to escape). Along the same lines, this carving shows a monkey, riding a goat, with a captured rabbit slung over its shoulder:

We have these drinking animals, who look positively diabolical:

An animal playing a harp, and one doing gymnastics (well, dancing, I suppose):

And some musicians. I can't identify the instruments myself, but you can see the one in the middle is playing some kind of stringed instrument, while the monkey or whatever next to him is playing some version of the pan pipes:

We also have some representational animals, of the kind familiar from bestiaries, where the characteristics of the animal traditionally symbolise a certain concept or figure - such as the pelican or the phoenix as Christ. This is a porcupine, which was believed to steal grapes by carrying them away on its spines; it thus represents the devil, who steals souls away from Christ. It's the cutest devil ever, don't you think?


That's just the south door. More from Barfreston another day.

Sunday Lyric

Steadfast Cross, inmong all other,
Thou art a tree mikel of price;
In branch and flower such another
I ne wot in wood nor ris.
Sweet be the nails, and sweet be the tree,
And sweeter be the burden that hangs upon thee.

I ne wot.... - I do not know in wood or thicket

This is a fourteenth-century translation (in modernised spelling) of the Crux Fidelis, a verse of the hymn Pange Lingua which is sung on Good Friday. In Latin:

Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis:
nulla silva talem profert,
fronde, flore, germine.
Dulce lignum, dulces clavos,
dulce pondus sustinet.

The fourth of Faber's sonnets.

'College Garden'

Sacred to early morn and evening hours,
Another chapel reared for other prayers,
And full of gifts, smells after noon-day showers,
When bright-eyed birds look out from leafy bowers,
And natural perfumes shed on midnight airs,
And bells and old church clocks and holy towers,
All heavenly images that cluster round.
The rose, and pink acacia, and green vine
Over the fretted wall together twine,
With creepers fair and many, woven up,
When Autumn comes, into a tapestry,
Richly discoloured, and inlaid for me
With golden thoughts, drunk from the dewy cup
Of morns and evenings spent in that dear ground!

May Morning

As someone with a semi-professional interest in English folk customs, I have an unhealthy tendency to idealise them. I love Morris dancing (see the picture on the side of the page!) and mummers' plays, and folk song, and the seasonal traditions which mark spring and harvest and winter. Now you know and I know that a lot of those traditions have been recovered and to an extent reinvented in the past few centuries, and hardly any of them are as genuinely antique as we would like to think (or as some sites on the internet would lead you to believe!). It's easy to want them to be not only old but pure, unsullied by artfulness or self-awareness; so it's helpful sometimes to be reminded that every tradition is only ever enacted by human beings, and if it's done with too much reverence, or without a sense of humour, the tradition is liable to become artificial and false. The custom of hundreds of people gathering on Magdalen Bridge at dawn on the first day of May to listen to madrigals and welcome in the spring is a beautiful - and truly ancient - tradition. I'm grateful to be reminded every year, nonetheless, that lots of people there are drunk and noisy, that the sound system is never quite perfect, and that getting up at 4 in the morning ruins you for the rest of the day! Those imperfections are part of the tradition too.