13th July 2021

 It is grey and dull this morning and also the music, Beethoven - Pastoral Symphony, has a dirge like mood to it.  The presenter on Radio 3 is at Jervaulx Abbey, a Cistercian abbey and he is talking about the River Ure.

He reminds me that I haven't packed 'The Ruined Abbeys of England' a well researched 19th century book by an American and I am not sure I have the room or inclination to pack it because it is falling apart. 

It seems so many years ago when I fell in love with the abbeys of this country, the Cistercian Order always intrigued me.  Going out into the wilds, of the countryside, a few monks came up to Yorkshire, to lead austere lives in the praise of their god.  Funnily enough I have just seen an article on abandoned gods in Hong Kong.  Someone has carefully collected them and now they grace a hillside above the city, thousands of them.  Unwanted but taken care of.

The reason Radio 3 is at this abbey is for the river though, and it reminds me of Julian Cope and his essay on the sacredness of the Ure-Swale Plateau, an important sacred prehistoric land.  Within its bounds you will find the tall 'Devil's Stone, outside Harrogate somewhere and also of course the lined up Thornborough Henges, telling of a time thousands of years ago when different gods were worshipped.  But do we know that???

I take the book from Paul's bookcase and remember his astonishment at my casual way with books.  I laugh to myself, for he was quite right keeping a book in its original hardcover casing will increase its value whereas I threw the casing away for my book and gave it to a charity shop.  How did my untidy nature live with such a tidy man, only love can tell.  Our natures slowly molded round each other.  If he is out there somewhere in the universe he would be reading what I am writing  now as he did when alive, for he said, I can only find out what you are thinking by what you write.  So indulge me for this moment when an old happy  photo comes to mind at Eskdalemuir.

So which book will I choose? The Modern Antiquarian by Julian Cope or the Ruined Abbeys of England, and as I write remember someone who wrote poetry that Paul collected, Gordon Kingston who lived in Ireland. Will try and find those words!!

And here it is!! first the inspirational words of Julian Cope, don't gag by the way;)

"Atop Knap Hill I eat my snot

For 'tis the only food I got"

And then Gordon's poem......................

 

Their presence

‘Neath Adam’s Grave I push “large chips”

down through my teeth and grasping lips...

Didn’t Strabo state that ancients ate

Their fathers’ bodies on a plate;

And drank the fluid that now gets hid

In a silver cup, under a silver lid?

Somehow their presence is up here still;

Watching me watching, on the hill.

Adam's Grave, atop its hill. Prehistoric Neolithic barrow on the way to Pewsey.

Knap Hill on a misty morning, Neolithic Causewayed Enclosure