Once upon a time, when Saint Columba was traveling through the country of the Picts to meet the Pictish King in Inverness, he had to cross the River Ness. When he reached the shore there was a group of people, Picts and Brethren both, burying an unfortunate man who had been bitten and mauled to death by a water-monster. Columba ordered one of his people to swim across the river and retrieve the man’s boat, that was adrift, so that he might cross.

On hearing this, Lugneus Mocumin stripped down to his tunic and plunged in to the water. The monster saw him swimming, and having tasted blood, broke the surface of the water and made for him. Everyone who was watching was horrified, and hid their eyes in terror.

Everyone except Columba, who raised his holy hand and inscribed the Cross in the empty air. Calling upon the name of God, he commanded the savage beast, saying: “Go no further! Do not touch the man! Go back at once!”

Lugneus brought the boat back, unharmed and everyone was astonished. And the heathen savages who were present were overcome by the greatness of the miracle which they themselves had seen, and magnified the God of the Christians.

- adapted from the Serene Dragon and Green Canticle websites.

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Loch Ness through Fire, by Citril.

Celtic Christians valued the natural environment for its own sake. They valued times of quiet in solitary and often wild places, where they could read Scripture, meditate and pray.

Because they lived close to the natural environment, it is not surprising that Celtic Christians discovered the immanence of God. Their poetry often echoes those Psalms which speak of God in nature (Ps. 19, 89, 98 ) suggesting a similar spiritual process at work.

The following extract of a poem in the Celtic psaltery is attributed to St. Columba in Iona:

“Delightful it is to stand on the peak of a rock, in the bosom of the isle, gazing on the face of the sea.

I hear the heaving waves chanting a tune to God in heaven; I see their glittering surf.

I see the golden beaches, their sands sparkling; I hear the joyous shrieks of the swooping gulls.

I hear the waves breaking, crashing on the rocks, like thunder in heaven. I see the mighty whales…

Contrition fills my heart as I hear the sea; it chants my sins, sins too numerous to confess.

Let me bless almighty God, whose power extends over the sea and land, whose angels watch over all.

Let me study sacred books to calm my soul; I pray for peace, kneeling at heaven’s gates.

Let me do my daily work, gathering seaweed, catching fish, giving food to the poor.”

- a psalm of St Columba from Green Canticle.

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A depiction of Saint Columba in about 565AD, urging Picts on Iona to become Christian, from The Independent.

Many legends have gathered about Columba, but there is also some historical data concerning his many works in the writings of Bede and Adamnan.  According to one story, Saint Patrick of Ireland foretold Columba’s birth in a prophecy:

He will be a saint and will be devout,
He will be an abbot, the king of royal graces,
He will be lasting and forever good;
The eternal kingdom be mine by his protection.

Columba was a man of tremendous energy with a vigorous personality. Born Colum MacFhelin MacFergus,1 in Ireland in 521 A.D., the great-great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish king, on his father’s side;2 while Columba’s mother was also descended from a king of Leinster and was related to the royalty of Scottish Dalriada.3 Columba, who had the potential to become a king in Ireland, instead, chose to give his full service to the mission of the King of heaven.4 Early in life Columba showed scholarly and clerical ability. He entered the monastic life, and almost immediately set forth on missionary travels. Even before ordination in 551, he had founded monasteries at Derry and Durrow, and is said to have founded as many as 300 churches and monasteries during his lifetime.5

Columba had a love for literature, and tradition asserts that, sometime around 560, he became involved in a dispute with his mentor, Abbot Finnian, over a manuscript Columba copied at the scriptorium—intending to keep the copy. Abbot Finnian disputed Columba’s right to keep the copy. The dispute eventually led to the Battle of Cul Dreimnhe in 561, during which many men were killed—perhaps 3000.6 As penance for these deaths, Columba suggested that he work as a missionary in Scotland to help convert as many people as had been killed in the battle.

He exiled himself from Ireland, and in 563, Columba and a dozen companions set out for northern Britain, where the 5th century Picts had lost territory to the previous Irish kings, and were still generally ignorant of Christianity. The religion of the Picts—Druidism fok law —were the beliefs which prevailed in the rest of Britain and Celtic Gaul.7 Historian Adamnan records that Columba’s efforts at conversion were strenuously opposed by the diabolical arts and incantations of the Druid priests. Fountains were particular objects of veneration, as well as heavenly bodies and oak trees, a superstitious awe which many fountains and wells are regarded with today—likely a remnant of the ancient Pictish religion. Druidism acknowledges a Supreme Being, whose name was synonymous with the Eastern Baal, and was visibly represented by the sun and sun-worship. Many of the antiquities scattered across north Scotland, such as stone circles, monoliths, sculptured stones, etc., are believed to be connected with the Druid religion.8

Columba was kindly received by Conal, king of British Scots, and allowed to preach, convert, and baptize. He was also given possession of the isle of Iona, where, according to legend, his tiny boat had washed ashore. (The island was known by the simple name “I” changed by Bede into “Hy” and Latinized by the monks into “Iova” or “Iona.”)9 Here Columba founded the celebrated monastery which became a school for missionaries and the center for the conversion of the Picts, as well as the only center of literacy and education in the region, at that time. Says the historian Bede, “The monastry of Iona, like those previously founded by Columba in Ireland, was not a retreat for solitaries whose chief object was to work out their own salvation; it was a great school of Christian education, and was specially designed to prepare and send forth a body of clergy trained to the task of preaching the Gospel among the heathen.”10 From Iona Scotland, his disciples went out to found other monasteries to the west in Ireland, and to the east the famous Lindisfarne monastery in Northumbria, among others.

As a close advisor to the Gaelic king Conal11 of Dalriada, Columba served as a diplomat to neighboring kingdoms in Ireland and Pictland. (Dalriada was a Gaelic kingdom that extended on both sides of the North Channel: in the northwest of Ireland, and western Scotland. One of the little known facts about Scotland is that the county of Argyll received extensive immigration from the Irish of northern Ireland, known as “Scoti” and had become an Irish, i.e. “Scottish” area. Despite heavy onslaughts from the Picts, the Dalriada of the Scottish mainland continued to expand. From 574 to 606, Dalriada was ruled by one of its most dynamic and successful kings, Aedan mac Gabran. In the mid-800′s, King Kenneth I. MacAlpin brought the Picts permanently under Dalriadic rule. Thereafter, the whole country was known as “Scotland;” thus was the end of the Picts of the ancient British Isles.)12

Attended by his disciples, Columba made long journeys through the Highlands of Scotland, as far as Aberdeen, spreading the light of faith in God and instructing the people in the truths of the Gospel. For thirty years, he evangelized, studied, wrote, and governed his monastery at Iona. He supervised his monks in their work in the fields and workrooms, in their daily worship and Sunday Eucharist, and their study and teaching.

There are many stories of miracles performed through Columba during his work with the Picts. Columba perceived that by converting King Brude, one of the known leaders of the ancient Picts, it would lead to the success of bringing over the whole nation to the worship of the true God. So he visited the pagan king Bridei (or Brude), king of Fortriu, at his base in Inverness,13 where it is said that the king had the gates locked against Columba. But that when he arrived at the king’s castle, Columba made the sign of the cross and the gates opened of their own accord. King Brude was so impressed that he opened his home—and soul—to Columba, becoming a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.14

Among the many accomplishments of Columba, he was also an impressive sailor.15 Columba was known for his joyous love of life.16 As well as a man of action, Columba was also a poet, whose Latin and Gaelic poems reveal a man very sensitive to the beauty of his surroundings.17 He is also credited with transcribing 300 books personally.18 At the height of the Iona monastery, it produced The Book of Kells, a masterwork of Irish Celtic symbols, art and literature. The community Columba founded at Iona became the center for an early renaissance where books, art, music and culture were preserved at the on-set of the Christian destruction in Dark Ages from Rome.19 To keep a succession of the teachers of Christianity, Columba established a monastery in every district of the Pictish territories,20 and from these monasteries, for many ages, came men of authenticity who watered and tended the good seed planted by Columba.

Columba had great influence among the neighboring princes, and they often asked for his advice. They submitted to him their quarrels, which were frequently settled by Columba.21

Columba died peacefully in 597, while working on a copy of the Psalter. He had put down his pen, rested a few hours, and at Matins was found dead before the Altar, a smile on his face. He is quoted by his biographer Adamnan as having said, “This day is called in the sacred Scriptures a day of rest, and truly to me it will be such, for it is the last of my life and I shall enter into rest after the fatigues of my labors.”22

For many years after his passing, Columba’s influence was felt in the Celtic lands and abroad. Columba’s mission at Iona led to the conversion of Scotland and of the north of England.23 Columba’s life contributed to Ireland becoming one of the monastic hubs of Europe, with the culture of Ireland dominated by monasteries and monastic leaders. Other Irish monks became missionaries and converted much of northern Europe to Christianity.24

1 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
2 Columba: Early life in Ireland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
3 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
4 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
5 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
6 St. Columba. http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=419
7 General History of the Highlands – The Druids: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist17.html
8 General History of the Highlands – The Druids: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist17.html
9 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
10 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
11 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
12 Dalriada. www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/dalriada.html
13 Columba: Scotland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
14 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
15 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
16 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
17 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
18 Columba: Scotland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
19 Who is Saint Columba? www.columba.org/about/qanda.html#whois
20 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
21 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
22 Episcopal Book of Prayer on Lesser Feasts and Fasts.
23 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
24 Medieval Sourcebook: Rule of St. Columba 6 th Century. www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columba-rule.html

- from the St Columba Retreat House website.

Those following the political news from London recently will have been aware of the arrest of Damian Green, the Conservative MP, in relation to a police investigation into the leaks of sensitive information from the Home Office. The following article, ‘Golden Thread, National Myth‘ by Tom Holland, is published in the New Statesman -

The makers of The Devil’s Whore, Channel 4’s recently screened extravaganza set against the backdrop of the English Civil War, must have been especially excited by the arrest of Damian Green. Certainly, it is hard to know what more the Metropolitan Police could have done, short of donning floppy lace collars and pursuing parliamentarians across Marston Moor, to highlight the topicality of the drama’s themes. The centrepiece of the first episode was the notorious attempt by Charles I to seize five troublesome members from the very Parliament House itself.

“All my birds have flown,” intoned the actor Peter Capaldi, looking resplendent in a flowing Cavalier wig – for Charles, who was always a stickler for good manners, no matter what his other faults, had naturally made sure to enter the chamber without a hat. The police who arrested Damian Green seem not to have been quite so sensitive to protocol. No wonder that leading Conservatives, scarcely able to believe their luck, should have hurried to anoint their immigration spokesman a martyr for liberty, a hero in the grand tradition of John Lilburne and John Pym. “This,” warned Michael Howard portentously, “is the sort of thing that led to the start of the Civil War.”

A bit rich, it might have been thought, coming from a man whose tenure as home secretary had suggested that he would rather have relished the reintroduction of the pillory. And yet, instead of laughing at Howard’s analogy, commentators gave it so much airtime that now, several weeks on, it has become a virtual given. MPs in particular have shown themselves to be hugely keen on it – and on the left as well as the right. Perhaps this is not wholly surprising. Principle is invariably the stronger when fused with self-regard. That parliament is the guarantor of British liberties, and that an assault upon its privileges is an assault upon all the British people: here are presumptions fit to energise any member, Labour no less than Tory. A respect for history does not have to be the mark of a Conservative, after all – a truth so self-evident that already, well before the fingering of the Ashford One, it was serving to generate improbable alliances across the party divide.

Prior to Green’s arrest, the single most bizarre political event of the year was surely David Davis’s forcing of a by- election in his own constituency of Haltemprice and Howden, in protest against what he saw as the government’s infringement of civil liberties – a démarche enthusiastically backed by none other than that old leveller, Tony Benn. Both men, attempting to explain what appeared to many a thoroughly quixotic venture, made great play with abstract nouns – “freedoms”, “rights”, and so on – and yet it was evident that their truest inspiration derived not from political theory, but from their understanding of Britain’s past.

Just as the revolutionaries during the Civil Wars, even as they set about turning the world upside down, had claimed to be fighting in defence of their country’s ancient laws, so too did Davis and Benn. “This Sunday,” Davis announced in his resignation speech, “is the anniversary of Magna Carta, a document that guarantees the fundamental element of British freedom, habeas corpus.” Parliament, by tamely kowtowing to the 42-day detention plan, had shown itself to be not the defender of British liberty, but rather its jailer. As Benn, shaking his head more in sorrow than in anger, put it: “I never thought I would be in the House of Commons on the day Magna Carta was repealed.”

In January 2006, in a speech to the Fabian Society, Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the exchequer, had spelled out in language no less emotive than Benn’s what he saw as the essence of the country he would soon be leading. There was, he argued, “a golden thread which runs through British history” – and where did the thread begin, if not “that long ago day in Runnymede”? And who better to continue weaving it – by implication – than the Honourable Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath? Two years on, even as civil liberties campaigners continue to cast him as King John redivivus, the Prime Minister surely retains the invincible conviction that if anyone is the true defender of Magna Carta, it is himself.

All of which might seem to suggest, with both supporters and opponents of the government’s anti-terrorism legislation busy laying claim to the legacy of Runnymede, that one side must have it badly wrong. But this is not necessarily so – it is well to remember that Magna Carta has always been hedged by ambiguity. Indeed, that seems to have been precisely what enabled it to be sealed in the first place: the ability of both the king and his enemies to find in it what they pleased. “No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined,” declared its most famous chapter, “. . . except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.” A teasingly Delphic statement: does the second clause serve to buttress or to qualify the first? It is not entirely clear. Either it is freedom from the oppression of unjust legislation that is being prescribed, or else it is freedom under the law, a subtly different thing, because laws may always be changed. The tension between these two interpretations has persisted ever since the tents were first packed away at Runnymede – nor, evidently, has it been settled now. The “golden thread” of British liberty remains what it has always been: a thing of glittering and tantalising ambivalence.

All of which, to many, has long been a source of frustration. What value the mystique of Magna Carta and its centuries-old inheritance, when it is capable of being interpreted in such mutually opposed ways? Yet it is possible to argue that what it may lack in clarity it more than makes up for as a myth. If it is true, as the political historian Benedict Anderson argued, that a nation is an “imagined community”, then what gives shape to a nation’s collective imaginings is inevitably what most effectively reflects the widest possible spectrum of its people’s principles and beliefs.

That is why the most potent national myths of all have invariably been those most susceptible to multiple readings – and most capable of evolving in response to change. For that, the surest evidence this year lay not in Britain, but across the Atlantic, in another democracy with an enduring taste for self-mythologisation: the United States of America.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” So spoke President-elect Barack Obama in his victory speech. A politician of the centre left, the son of a Kenyan goat farmer, an African American, he signalled, with his very opening sentence, that he was subscribing to the time-honoured narrative which had always served to burnish his country’s elevated sense of itself. Unsurprisingly, among those hostile to the very notion of the nation state, and to the United States in particular, this served to raise the odd eyebrow. Writing in the New Statesman in November, John Pilger complained that Obama’s oratory was nothing more than the honeyed expression of the “brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the world”. Even blunter was Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command. The president-elect, he sneered, was like a “house slave”. Rather than labouring in the cause of a universal caliphate, as his Muslim heritage might have inspired him to do, Obama had instead bought into the pernicious ideology of those slave-owning hypocrites, the Founding Fathers. Black he might be – but he was no less the white man’s stooge for that.

A bleak and bitter assessment. No doubt, as Obama himself has wryly acknowledged, he is indeed doomed to disappoint. And yet one can acknowledge as much while still recognising in his invocation of the venerable archetypes of American patriotism something nobler than a betrayal of the colour of his skin. After all, far from casting a veil over slavery, he opted, in his very first speech as president-elect, to make it the climax of his address.

The historical narrative Obama delivered that night, rich with allusions to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and the Gettysburg Address, could hardly be reckoned to have redounded un ambiguously to his country’s credit: for the achievements that it chronicled would never have been necessary without America’s original sin. Yet the speech, far from subverting the founding myths of American democracy, served ultimately to buttress them: for a myth is hardly diminished, and may even be enhanced, by being framed as a tragedy. “That’s the true genius of America, that America can change. Our union can be perfected.” Here were convictions as old as the Republic itself, and yet, coming from Obama, they hinted at darkness as well as light: of how America, having originally betrayed her own noblest ideals, must continue with her quest for expiation.

It goes without saying that there are many Americans – white, patriotic, moose-hunting Americans – who viscerally disagree with this reworking of their nation’s founding story. That, however, is precisely the measure of the narrative’s astounding potency: that it can serve to stir the souls of both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, Republican and Democrat, evangelical and liberal. Even beyond the limits of the party system, on the radical fringes of which both Pilger, and possibly even Ayman al-Zawahiri, would presumably approve, the paradigms of American history have maintained something of their implacable grip. When Gil Scott-Heron, that bard of black militancy, eviscerated American mythology in his classic song “Winter in America”, his anger was all the more savage for being blended with such evident disappointment. The constitution, in Scott-Heron’s reading of American history, has never amounted to anything – and yet it remains, for all that, “a noble piece of paper”. Winter in America it might be – and yet always there is the ghost of the summer that should have been.

The role given to Britain in this American master-narrative has usually been an inglorious one. What King John was to Magna Carta, George III was to the constitution of the United States. Yet it is telling that Scott-Heron, in the very opening line of his great song, should have chosen to name-check the Pilgrim Fathers. If it was colonists from Britain who brought both land-hunger and slavery to the New World, then so, too, did they bring what would end up as the ideals of the infant Republic. An interpretation of Magna Carta which saw it as “such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign” served as no less of an inspiration to the Thirteen Colonies than it would to rebels against absolutism during the British Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution. What should lie embedded within the Fifth Amendment to the US constitution, that “noble piece of paper”, is the most celebrated of Magna Carta’s chapters: a guarantee that “no person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law”. Woven into the very fabric of American history, then, is that very same “golden thread” which Gordon Brown, in his speech to the Fabian Society, had identified as British: the “golden thread” of liberty.

No wonder the soon-to-be prime minister showed himself to be not a little jealous of Yankee grandstanding. “Even before America made it its own,” he protested plaintively in the same Fabian Society speech, “I think Britain can lay claim to the idea of liberty.” The speech itself, with its tortured analysis of “Britishness” and its proposal for a national “British Day”, was almost universally derided as a floundering expedient, a desperate ploy to stop Brown’s fellow Scots from leaving the United Kingdom, and radical Islamists from blowing themselves up on Tube trains. Yet, in truth, there was a sadness about it, and a sense of loneliness which marked it out as the very opposite of cynical. Brown’s tone was that of a man labouring to jerry-build a Skoda, who suddenly realises he has had a Rolls-Royce sitting mothballed in his garage all along.

For almost a decade, the government in which he was such a dominant figure had been promoting a vision of Britain as a blissed-out, baggage-free place, one far too hip to bother with anything so terminally un-Cool Britannia as the past. If that attitude presented new Labour with some fairly obvious targets – fox-hunting, Black Rod, and the like – it also obliged them to trash the Labour Party’s own heritage. It was not only Clause Four that had been cheerfully junked. So, too, was the venerable narrative that had enabled an old romantic such as Tony Benn to believe himself the heir of Wat Tyler, the Diggers and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Heroes of the common people such figures may have been, but they were dead, they were white, they were European, and they were mostly male. Certainly, to the Young Turks of new Labour, it appeared hard to imagine anything less expressive of cosmopolitanism or diversity than Our Island Story. Only Gordon Brown seems to have paused, to have had second thoughts, to have wondered, in his customarily earnest way, whether there was not possibly the risk of losing something important along the way.

And he was right to wonder – as the campaign against his own anti-terror legislation, ironically enough, has served to suggest. After all, despite the best efforts of Davis and Benn, the person who has most tirelessly invoked Magna Carta over the past few years is decidedly not an Anglo-Saxon male. It is pushing things, perhaps, to cast Shami Chakrabarti as the British Barack Obama; and yet there is no question that, just like Obama, she is invoking themes and narratives that have hitherto tended to be seen as hideously white. It was the failure of our history to reflect today’s multicultural reality that originally persuaded the government to brand Britain as a “young country” – as though the thousand years and more that have passed since its constituent kingdoms were first established could simply be magicked away. Chakrabarti’s term of office at Liberty has served to emphasise just how otiose the whole manoeuvre was. By praising the “golden thread” of the nation’s inheritance in terms that would embarrass many a white liberal, she and her fellow campaigners for civil liberties have disinterred a venerable historical narrative, one that sees the flow of our traditions much as Wordsworth did, as “the Flood of British freedom”. In doing so, they are illustrating once again what has always been the key to understanding radicalism in this country: that it looks for inspiration not in the future, but in the past. As another poet, even greater than Wordsworth, once put it: “I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs/By the known rules of antient libertie.”

Evidently, we live in a sceptical, deconstructive age. The identification of Britain’s evolution with the march of enlightenment – what Herbert Butterfield, back in 1931, termed “the Whig interpretation of history” – has long fallen from academic favour. Meanwhile, in universities and secondary schools, the teaching of history is becoming ever more modular and fragmented, while in primary schools, if the government’s senior education adviser Sir Jim Rose has his way, the subject will soon cease to be a distinctive field of study at all. And yet, against the odds, 2008 should be remembered as the year in which Our Island Story made a spectacular comeback: not as a fantasy of the heritage industry, but rather as a storm-centre of political life; not as a triumphalist narrative, but as one shaded by disappointment no less than achievement; not as a thing uncontested, but as the very stuff of urgent, furious debate. A story, in short, that might well merit a measure of reconstruction.

Come the New Year, the government will announce its decision on whether to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport. If, as expected, expansion is given the green light, a whole village will need to be obliterated: not only houses, but pubs, a school and a church dating back to the Domesday Book. Such is progress, perhaps; and yet not even the most rabid enthusiast for air travel would argue that the whole of Britain be concreted over, that the entire country be transformed into a mere transit hub with shops. Yet that is what we may well end up inhabiting, should we forget the history that has shaped us, the narratives, the themes and, yes, the myths as well.

We live in an age when the issues that have shaped the grand sweep of Britain’s past – issues of security and personal freedom, of identity and dissidence – are coming back into ever more pressing focus, of no less interest to the terrorist suspect banged up in Belmarsh than to the Eurosceptic brandishing a Union Jack.

To let the memories of Our Island Story fade is not to give a vote of confidence to a progressive and multicultural future, but to diminish it. To paraphrase 1066 and All That – it risks seeing more than History come to a.

Brithdir Mawr, according to Wikipedia, means ‘Great Speckled Land’. You can find out more about the story of the roundhouse from its dedicated website.  In the mean time, below is the latest news from the Times -

Tony Wrench was toasting victory over the planners yesterday with a glass of wine made from the vines that grow on the turf roof of his wooden roundhouse.

After ten years of planning battles, during which he and his partner, Jane Faith, faced having to demolish the home they had built themselves, they have finally won the right to stay.

The roundhouse, known officially as “That Roundhouse”, was built in a hidden corner of a farm in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. It has a grass roof and walls built from cob – a combination of mud, straw, sand and water – and 16in (40cm) logs. A skylight was salvaged from an old coach and a milk churn is used as a stove.

For years no one knew it was there until a pilot carrying out an aerial survey spotted the glint of Perpex and the planners went in to investigate.

What they found was a community in which Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit from The Lord of the Rings, would have felt at home. Smoke curled from the chimney of the grass-roofed roundhouse. Mr Wrench, who was once a council official, was scraping a living from music-making and woodturning.

The roundhouse is part of the self-sustaining Brithdir Mawr Community, which had built several other environmentally friendly buildings, including a geodesic dome and a house made from straw bales.

Unfortunately, none had planning permission and the National Park authority took immediate action to have their occupants evicted. In 2004 Mr Wrench, who spent £3,000 building his 34ft diameter house, was about to start demolition when local people rallied to his support. The issue was raised in the Welsh Assembly but the application was rejected time and again by the park authority.

But then the wind changed and the environment suddenly became a fashionable issue. Mr Wrench, 62, who has been pioneering the concept of “permaculture” for decades, found his lifestyle being hailed as a model for sustainable living. The park authority amended its rules to allow “low-impact” housing, and yesterday he was told that the roundhouse is no longer condemned.

“The planners did everything they could to get rid of us, but we have been able to prove to them that it is possible to have a sustainable and low-impact community in the countryside,” Mr Wrench said.

“It’s great that our efforts to build a community using renewable resources have now been supported. We had to prove that we were improving the bio-diversity of the area and conserving the woodland – and we did that.

“I would urge other councils and national park planners to take the same view as Pembrokeshire National Park. The planners have worked miracles in making a new policy, which enables communities that are self-sufficient to exist.”

Mr Wrench and his partner generate their own power, have a compost lavatory and burn wood they coppice themselves for heat and cooking. He admits that living sustainably can be hard work, especially in the depths of winter when his wind turbine and solar panels struggle to power a single light bulb.

Emma Orbach, 52, who founded the community, said: “It’s a milestone in a free society that a minority of people who wish to live simply on the Earth are now being given this opportunity. The villagers are pioneering a new lifestyle.”

Planning approval has been given for eight roundhouses, along with lavatories, agricultural buildings and workshops on the land. Power is generated on-site, water is collected locally and three quarters of the villagers’ income comes from working the land and from craft industries.

A National Park spokesman said: “It is pleasing that support can be given at this stage in a longstanding and complicated case.”

Ecological alternatives

— Grass roofs are a coveted must-have for any eco-conscious homeowner, but alternatives include insulating lofts or wall cavities with sheep’s wool – renewable, durable and naturally resistant to fire

— Fill your home with potted plants, which remove harmful chemicals such as benzene and carbon monoxide. Bamboo palm and gerbera daisy are particularly good

— Don’t rely on mains electricity to pump harvested rainwater. One alternative is a solar fountain, which powers a low-voltage pump using a small panel. A complete fountain will cost upwards of £100

— Have a go at ground-source heating, a way of drawing heat from the ground using either a borehole or pipes laid a few metres below the surface. It must be boosted to the level needed for heating a home using a heat pump. In a well-installed system, every unit of electrical energy put in will yield three or more units of heat energy Invest in a condensing boiler, which increases efficiency by recovering heat normally wasted in the hot flue gases given off by a conventional boiler. It may cost a little more (between £100 and £300) to install, but will use less fuel

— Don’t be bashful about more radical steps. Composting of human waste is as old as the hills. The right amount of “soakage” – typically using sawdust, straw and earth – gives good decomposition. Keeping urine separate is the key to avoiding a bad smell

Source: Centre for Alternative Technology

From the Daily Mail -

Grazing quietly in the forest opening, this majestic creature seems gently oblivious of its radiance and beauty. With its antlers held high and its thick coat luminous in the morning light, the animal stops briefly among its fellow deer, turns and sniffs the air. While his brown companions blend easily into the landscape, he stands out bright, bold and exposed. For the precious moments he is still, he seems to have stepped out of a stranger, more mysterious world. Far from being just another deer, this is a white hart – an animal both rare and revered in equal measure – which was spotted this week roaming the New Forest.

The White Hart, seen in the New Forest – from the Daily Mail

Since time immemorial, the white hart has been a creature surrounded by mystery, a beast whose very existence is suffused with myth and legend. An inescapable part of British folklore, its mystical quality led to it being adopted as a symbol of royalty, which is why a multitude of White Hart pubs is scattered around the country. Some believe that this New Forest white hart could even be a direct descendant of the same white deer that Henry VII hunted in the area in the 15th century. And for forest keeper Andy Shore, coming face to face with animal was an awe-inspiring experience. “There’s something quite eerie and beautiful about him that stops you in your tracks,” he says. “He can be a ghostly-looking animal, especially if you come across him on a misty day, as I have on a few occasions.”

He is white – but not albino – as a result of a rare genetic mutation resulting in a condition called leucism which changes the animal’s pattern of pigmentation. The parents of a white hart can both be brown – they just need to have the same recessive gene to produce a white calf.

The sighting of this white five-year-old male fallow deer comes days after an equally rare Scottish equivalent, a white stag, was spotted in the Highlands of Scotland, ranging across a glen with a herd of red stags. “I thought it was a sheep when I saw it because of its mottled colour,” says Fran Lockhart, 45, of The John Muir Trust conservation body. “I managed to get quite near to him, and he was even more magnificent up close.”

But there is a high price to pay for this magnificence. The rarity of these beasts is such that their mounted heads and antlers can fetch thousands of pounds. And even though their location is usually a closely guarded secret, poachers are unscrupulous. Last October, they shot a treasured white hart, known affectionately as Snowy by local farmers and gamekeepers, on the border of Devon and Cornwall. The animal was found decapitated and hanging from a tree, its head and antlers taken as a blood-drenched trophy.

Those who killed this stag, however, may have got more than they bargained for. Like many legends, those surrounding the white hart come with their fair share of curses and prophecies of bad luck to anyone who crosses the creature. For the ancient Celts, the white hart was a harbinger of doom, a living symbol that some taboo has been transgressed or a moral law broken. To come across a white hart was to realise that some terrible evil or judgment was imminent. The white hart’s reputation improved in Arthurian legends, where its appearance was a sign to Arthur and his knights that it was time to embark on a quest – it was considered the one animal that could never be caught so it came to symbolise humanity’s never-ending pursuit of knowledge and the unattainable.

Soon, the white hart was appearing in stories throughout Europe.

To Hungarians, it was a white hart that led their ancestors to their homeland; in a French legend, anyone who killed a white hart was cursed with the pain of unrequited love. It was not long before Christianity managed to appropriate the white hart for its own purposes: the white stag came to symbolise Christ and his presence on earth. Fundamental to this myth was the story of David I, King of Scotland, whose encounter with this animal led directly to the establishment of the royal palace, Holyrood House, in Edinburgh. It is said that in 1128, a rebellious King David was warned by his priest not to go hunting on the Feast Day of the Holy Rood (Holy Cross). Stubbornly, he set off on the hunt and came across a large white deer, which he chased. Thrown from his horse, the deer charged him. David cried out to God to save him, and at that precise instant, the deer’s antlers miraculously turned into a cross, and the animal vanished in a puff of smoke. The shamed King built a church to the Holy Rood on the spot where his the vision occurred.

From then on, the white deer became a symbol of purity, redemption and good fortune in Scotland, and eventually took a leading position in English heraldry alongside its cousin, the mythic unicorn, whose horn was supposedly endowed with magical properties. King Richard II adopted the white hart as his personal emblem. Even today, white harts are seen to be lucky charms, and anyone who spots one is said to have a dose of good fortune just around the corner.

From Reuters -

A mythical and ghostly creature has appeared in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands — and has been caught on camera. The rare white stag, from the red deer species, is believed to be among just a tiny handful living in Britain, according to a conservation group.

The John Muir Trust is now keeping the stag’s location secret for fear of poachers. “To see him amongst the other stags was truly thrilling because he does look like a ghost: you do a double-take,” Trust Partnership Manager Fran Lockhart, who filmed the stag, told Reuters. White stags are seen as a magical and powerful force in many mythologies.

The animal’s ghostly glow comes from a recessive gene which causes leucism, a condition which reduces the normal brown colouring in hair and skin. They are not albinos, which have red eyes due to lack of pigment.

In Celtic traditions, white stags represent messengers from the afterlife. Arthurian legend has it that the creature can never be caught — King Arthur’s pursuit of the animal represents mankind’s spiritual quest.

It is also said that for those who set eyes on the animal, a momentous moment is near. “They say their appearance is meant to herald some profound change in life for those who encounter them — but I am still waiting,” said Lockhart. Her dog, though, stood transfixed for 45 minutes watching the white stag, instead of his usual scampering around.

Lockhart believes the Scottish Highlands’ white stag is between 6 and 7 years old. She said he is maturing well, with a good set of antlers.

From Mary Jones’ Celtic Encyclopedia -

The white stag is a familiar creature of myth and legend. Its origins are likely in the totemic period of early Indo-European society, particularly the northern societies of the Celts and pre-Indo-European cultures, whose subsistence was gained not only through agriculture, but through hunting.¹ This dependence on deer may be seen in the zoomorphic Celtic god Cernunnos, depicted as being a man with the antlers of a deer.

The white stag in Celtic myth is an indicator that the Otherworld is near. It appears when one is transgressing a taboo–such as when Pwyll tresspassed into Arawn’s hunting grounds, or when Peredur entered the Castle of Wonders in his second adventure at the house of the Lame King. It also appears as an impetus to quest–the white stag or hart often appears in the forests around King Arthur’s court, sending the knights off on to adventure against gods and fairies. (C. S. Lewis uses this device at both the beginning and end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.²)

It also appears in French romance and lais as a similar indicator, such as in the lais of Marie de France, when Guigemar happens upon the strange sight of a white doe with antlers. He wounds the strange, hermaphroditic–note that word–animal, which curses him to grow up and fall in love.

[...]

To Christians, the white stag came to symbolize Christ, perhaps in part inspired by the St. Eustace legend, wherein the Roman soldier Eustace is hunting, and happens upon a deer with a cross between his antlers. Eustace converts on the spot, and is put through numerous tragedies, persecutions, etc., including the death of his family, until being miraculously reunited with them. However, it is clear that this pious legend has pagan predecessors. It is also worth noting that in Christian iconography, the unicorn is a symbol for Christ.

There is a close identification between the white stag and the unicorn, and it can be reasoned that the white stag is the equivalent of the unicorn in these northern cultures, which do not record the existence of unicorns.³

The white hart also was the heraldic symbol of England’s King Richard II.

The first thing to examine is the color: white is a symbol of purity, while also a symbol of otherworldliness. The white stag in Pwyll penduc Dyfed has a white body with red ears–the typical colors of otherworld creatures (the hounds of Arawn are also this color). It is also associated with the sun; in Christian iconography, the stag appears with the sun between its horns.

Earlier gods associated with the stag were also nature deities: Cernunnos, Fionn, Gwynn ap Nudd. Santa Claus–that half-memory of Odin/Thor–is drawn by eight reindeer–who may or may not be white. (If they live at the North Pole, they most likely are

The deer, finally, was a source of life, an important resource for early man. Ultimately, the white stag is not only a creature of the gods, but is a god himself, symbolizing the creative life force of the universe–sex, life, and also death.

---

1. This split life between agriculture and hunting is readily seen in the Fenian Cycle of Irish literature–Fionn Mac Cumhill and his band, the Fianna, spend half the year in the forests, hunting, and the other half of the year in the service of the king. Fionn’s original name was Demne, a word for dear, while his wife Sabd was transformed into a deer by a druid, and his son and grandson’s names contain references to deer: Oisin “little deer,” Oscar “deer-lover.”
2. Oddly enough, the White Witch’s sleigh is drawn by a white stag, and these are the first things Edmund sees when enterin Narnia, while it is a white stag which leads the children back to England. Perhaps this is an example of Lewis’s occasional belief in relativism, that even the evil things of this world have some place in God’s plan, though we can’t see it. The white stag may be pulling the White Witch, but this is what draws Edmund, and then later the elder siblings, into Narnia. Otherwise, it is doubtful that everyone would have ever believed Lucy.
3. It is worth noting that the white stag in Peredur is described as having one horn–which is how it is described in the second continuation of Perceval. The Welsh version most likely originally described a white stag; the French turned that into the more familiar unicorn, and the later Welsh redactor of Peredur returned the animal to a stag, but keeping the odd image of a single horn.

From British Trees -

Where found:
Mostly calcerous soils although found on all except poorest and acid soils (above ph 5.5). Prefers moist but well drained fertile soils. Up to 450m in altitude. Grows well in mixed stands provided not shaded. Natural distribution throughout British Isles and Europe into Asia Minor and Caucuses. Rare north of Great Glen in Scotland.

Phenology timeline:

Flowers	Leaves	Fruit	Ripen	Fall
April	May	June	October	Sept

Uses past & present:
Pale creamy wood that is strong and elastic. Uses of wood – Hockey sticks, oars, paddles, rudders, billiard cues, cricket stumps, polo sticks and policemen’s truncheons. Also used for veneer and furniture. Burns fragrantly when green or dried due to low water content even when green (30 – 35%) but seasoning (to 15% water) does improve efficiency.

Propagation and Growth:
Grow from seed – deeply dormant – treat as per Acer campestre. Long thin brown seeds approx 2.5cm long. Approx 8000 germinable seeds per kg. Seeds form in large sprays. If planted green seeds may germinate following spring or even straight away whereas brown seeds will germinate the second spring after planting. Grows quickly to 20 – 40 years old but growth stops at 60 years.

From Royal Forestry Society -

The common ash in Britain bears the Latin name Fraxinus excelsior It is a large familiar tree with a long silvery grey stem in lowland woods. On higher ground it becomes a shorter picturesque billowing hedgerow feature.The branches reach out widely and twist skywards.

Ash foliage with fruit or ‘keys’ in the background. From an image copyright Eva Wallander.

It is deciduous and comes into leaf late in spring.

The 20-30cm leaves are pinnate, which means they have a central stem and 9 to 13 toothed oval leaflets arranged in pairs with a single one at the tip. It sheds its muddy brown or dusty yellow coloured autumn foliage early. In winter clusters of prominent black velvety buds provide a unique clue to the trees identity. A good drawing of ash is available elsewhere online.

The flowers appear before the leaves in April, in loose clusters near the tips of the twigs. They are green in colour, small and inconspicuous, possessing neither calyx nor corolla. The renowned dendrologist, the late Alan Mitchell, described the ash as a tree of ‘total sexual confusion’. It may be unisexual with individual trees bearing only male or female flowers; it may be bisexual in that individual trees bear both male and female flowers: individual branches on the same tree may bear only male or female flowers or both; individual branches may bear only male flowers one year and only female flowers during the following year. The flowers may be male, female or bisexual.

Female flowers of ash in spring. From an image copyright Eva Wallander.

Eva Wallander of the University of Gothenburg has a World Wide Web site with further images of the flowers of the Fraxinus excelsior as well as images of other ash species. There are about 65 species world wide. European ash occurs naturally from Britain and Ireland to the Caucasus and western Russia, and from the Mediterranean coast northwards to Scandinavia. Fraxinus is a genus of the Oleaceae family and is closely related to jasmine, lilac and the olive, a fact that is not immediately obvious at first sight.

muddy brown and yellow autumn foliage. From a drawing by John White.

Individual trees may live in excess of 400 years. Some are particularly large, the largest averaging about 45m. ( 149 ft) in height and 6m ( 20ft ) girth in UK.

Although hardy enough to survive anywhere, ash trees prefer valley bottoms and stream sides. They must have full light at all times and never be crowded out by other trees. They grow easily from seed but it must be collected and sown in early autumn while still green.

The timber is pliable and tough but not durable enough to use untreated outside. Forest trees 40cm in diameter (about 60 years old) produce optimum quality wood. Ash is the only British native timber that has never been replaced by an imported substitute. As an amenity tree it makes a bold landscape statement but spends much of its annual life cycle in the leafless state. Very little else will grow under ash so it is not encouraged as a park or garden tree.

image showing typical black buds when leafless and male inflorescence just opening in spring. From an image copyright Eva Wallander

The English name ash is derived from aesc the Anglo-Saxon name for a spear, once a common use for ‘ground ash’ as young slender saplings were called. The name Fraxinus was given to the tree by the Romans. It seems likely to have been derived from the Greek phrasso meaning a fence. Ash, living or dead, has always been used for marking field boundaries.

The old Latin name for the seeds (ash keys) was lingua lavis meaning bird’s tongue, which they closely resemble.

Ash coppices freely if felled before maturity.The quick grown poles are valued for such purposes as tool handles.

Ash wood is light brown in colour with little difference between sapwood and heartwood. The wood is too perishable for any use which brings it in contact with the ground. It is a first class firewood. As a wood ash is renowned for its toughness and pliability which taken together make it the best wood in the world for tool handles, sports goods such as hockey sticks, oars and where wood framing may be required for large vehicles or caravans. If a wood is required to take a shock or a strain and absorb it smoothly without risk of fracture, ash is the best choice.

From wikipedia -

Fraxinus excelsior (Ash; also European Ash or Common Ash on occasion to distinguish it from other ash species), is a species of Fraxinus native to most of Europe with the exception of northern Scandinavia and southern Iberia, and also southwestern Asia from northern Turkey east to the Caucasus and Alborz mountains. The northernmost location is in the Trondheimsfjord region of Norway.^[1][2]

Male flowers

It is a large deciduous tree growing to 20-35 m (exceptionally to 46 m) tall with a trunk up to 2 m (exceptionally to 3.5 m) diameter, with a tall, domed crown. The bark is smooth and pale grey on young trees, becoming thick and vertically fissured on old trees. The shoots are stout, greenish-grey, with jet black buds. The leaves are 20-35 cm long, pinnate compound, with 7-13 leaflets, the leaflets 3–12 cm long and 0.8–3 cm broad, sessile on the leaf rachis, and with a serrated margin. The leaves are often among the last to open in spring, and the first to fall in autumn if an early frost strikes; they have no marked autumn colour, often falling dull green. The flowers open before the leaves, the female flowers being somewhat longer than the male flowers; they are dark purple, and without petals, and are wind-pollinated. Both male and female flowers can occur on the same tree, but it is more common to find all male and all female trees; a tree that is all male one year can produce female flowers the next, and similarly a female tree can become male. The fruit is a samara 2.5-4.5 cm long and 5–8 mm broad, often hanging in bunches through the winter; they are often called ‘ash keys’.^[1][3][4]

Foliage and immature fruit

Least Concer

It is readily distinguished from other species of ash in that it has black buds, unlike the brown or grey buds of most other ashes.

Ecology

Ash occurs on a wide range of soil types, but is particularly associated with basic soils on calcareous substrates. The most northerly ashwood in Britain is on limestone at Rassal, Wester Ross, latitude 57.4278 N.

A number of Lepidoptera use the species as a food source. See Lepidoptera which feed on Ashes.

Uses

Replica of the body frame from the Volvo ÖV 4 car, made primarily from ash wood

The resilience and rapid growth made it an important resource for smallholders and farmers. It was probably the most versatile wood in the countryside with wide-ranging uses. Until the Second World War the trees were often coppiced on a ten year cycle to provide a sustainable source of timber for fuel and poles for building and woodworking.^[5]

Wood

The colour of the wood ranges from creamy white through light brown, and the heart wood may be darker olive-brown. Ash timber is hard, tough and very hard-wearing, with a coarse open grain. It lacks oak’s natural resistance to decay, and is not as suitable for posts buried in the ground. Because of its high flexibility, shock-resistance and resistance to splitting Ash wood is the traditional material for bows, tool handles, especially for hammers and axes, tennis rackets and snooker cues, although American hickory, from trees of the genus Carya arguably performs even better for these purposes. Ash is valuable as firewood because it burns well even when ‘green’ (freshly cut). Ash was coppiced, often in hedgerows, and evidence in the form of some huge boles with multiple trunks emerging at head height can still be see in parts of Britain. In Northumberland crab and lobster pots (traps) sometimes known as ‘creeves’ by local people are still made from ash sticks. Because of its elasticity European Ash wood was commonly used for walking sticks. Poles were cut from a coppice and the ends heated in steam. The wood could then be bent in a curved vice to form the handle of the walking stick. The light colour and attractive grain of ash wood make it popular in modern furniture such as chairs, dining tables, doors and other architectural features and hardwood flooring, although the wood is often popularly stained jet black.

Cultivars

There are a number of cultivars including;

• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Aurea’, see ‘Jaspidea’
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Aurea Pendula’ (Weeping Golden Ash)
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Autumn Blaze’
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Autumn Purple’
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Crispa’
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Diversifolia’ (One-leaved Ash)
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Erosa’
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Jaspidea’ (Golden Ash)
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Monophylla’
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Nana’
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Pendula’ (Weeping Ash), one of the best known cultivars, widely planted during the Victorian era, it grows vigorously forming an attractive small to medium size tree with mounds of weeping branches.
• Fraxinus excelsior ‘Skyline’.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Rushforth, K. (1999). Trees of Britain and Europe. Collins ISBN 0-00-220013-9.
2. ^ Den virtuella floran: Fraxinus excelsior distribution
3. ^ Mitchell, A. F. (1974). A Field Guide to the Trees of Britain and Northern Europe. Collins ISBN 0-00-212035-6
4. ^ Mitchell, A. F. (1982). The Trees of Britain and Northern Europe. Collins ISBN 0-00-219037-0
5. ^ Mabey, R. (1996). Flora Britannica. Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd ISBN 1856193772.

From Trees Mystical World Wide Web -

Since ancient times some have believed that the first man was created from the branches and flesh of the Ash tree (and also of the oak). The Ancient Greeks thought that at the beginning of time cloud-ash was produced spawning small melia which came together and resulted in humanity being created. (The oak was thought to produce the first man and the trees themselves were called the first mothers). Perhaps if it can create man this is also why the ash tree was thought traditionally to hold many curative powers.

Stories and legends abound for this tree. Some connected with the supernatural and often with negative energies, whilst others have a root within specific belief systems such as Paganism or Christianity. One mythological belief focuses on when Christianity was brought to Northern Europe, the Scandinavian gods of the North were obviously affected by this new belief. They were transformed into witches and the ash became their favourite tree. In ‘Phantastes’ Dr. George MacDonald tells how the ‘Forest of Fairyland’ was a place visited by witches. There was an ash tree in the forest which was thought to be an ogre, or at least people thought that evil forces dwelled there, and on ‘Walpurgis Night’ it was said that the witches ate the tree buds so that there would not be any on ‘St. John’s Night’. To keep ‘Askafora’ (Eschenfrau) or wife of the ash content an offering had to be given on Ash Wednesday. She was seen as a particularly evil spirit who wrought havoc when not satisfied with events around her.

The seeds of the Ash have long been used in love divination. If the seeds did not appear on a tree the owner was thought to have been unlucky in love, or a future venture would not be successful. By repeating the following traditional English (UK) verse the inquirer would soon have the identity of their intended revealed:

Love Divination Verse
‘Even-ash, even-ash, I pluck thee,
This night my own true love to see,
Neither in his bed nor in the bare,
But in the clothes he does every day wear.’

In the North of England (UK) it was thought that by a woman placing an Ash leaf in the left shoe, she would be fortunate enough to meet her future spouse immediately.

Another traditional English (UK) verse was held to have the power to reveal weather information:

Weather Changes
‘If the ash leaf appears before the oak,
Then there’ll be a very great soak.
But if the oak comes before the ash,
Then expect a very small splash.’

To ward off negative energies and personal misfortune the following English (UK) verse was thought to aid those who came upon an Ash tree and picked a leaf from a branch:

‘Even ash, I do thee pluck,
Hoping thus to meet good luck.
If no good luck I get from thee,
I shall wish thee on the tree.’

Having found a leaf by chance, success and happiness would be doubly assured if the Ash leaf was kept upon the person or worn openly.

A wonderful Norwegian love story tells of ‘Axel Thordsen and Fair Valdborg’. The two were never a couple in life but upon death they were buried close to each other. An Ash tree was planted on each grave. As the trees grew to the same height the branches inclined and became entwined.

In the story of ‘Lay le Fraine’, that translates as the ‘Adventures of the Ash’ or the ‘Lay of the Ash Tree’, a twin is deserted by the mother. It is left at the door of an abbey underneath an Ash tree. This French romantic tale says that the infant is found by as abbess. She called the child ‘Le Fraine’ because of it being found under the tree.

Another legend from Scandinavia tells of how a giant once gave an Ash tree to a community. He proceeded to instruct them to place the Ash tree on a church altar. The giant told them that he wanted to destroy the church. Rather than follow this perhaps sacrilegious instruction, the people deposited the Ash tree on top of a grave. It immediately burst into flames.

There is no Ash tree in the churchyard of ‘Nortorf, Holstein’. According to Saxon legend one may eventually grow into a tree, as each year an Ash shoot appears. On ‘New Year’s Night’ each year it is cut down by a white horseman riding a white horse, and every time a black horseman with a black steed tries to stop him. The white horseman thought fends off the black horseman’s challenge. It is said that the tree will grow when the black horseman succeeds in challenging his opposite. When this happens the tree will be tall enough for a horse to be tied underneath it, and so the king will be able to fight a mighty battle with his army. The horse under the tree will belong to the king and will stand there all the way through the battle. If this happens, the king will become more powerful than before.

Another English (UK) belief attached to the winged seeds is that is these do not appear then a reigning monarch will die.

From British Trees -

Where found

Very tolerant of water logged conditions whilst dormant. Typical streamside tree and as a specific habitat – Alder Carr – in Lake District and Norfolk Broads. All soil types except poor acid peats. Fixes nitrogen via root nodules and will grow on relatively infertile soils and hence used for site reclamation. Natural throughout British Isles and most of Europe.

Phenology timeline

Flowers	Leaves	Fruit	Ripen	Fall
Feb-Mar	Apr	Oct-Dec	Dec	Nov

Propagation and growth
Grown from seed. The seed does not undergo dormancy by germination rate increased if given a period of moist chilling at 0.5C for up to 10 weeks. The seeds float and are carried by streams naturally germinating in mud. Seeds are red brown flakes – 250,000 seeds per Kg. Often rapid growth in first year but best kept in nursery and planted out in second year. Can be beneficially grown with oak on damp sites and ash.

From the Royal Forestry Society website -

Most alders are pioneer species. They invade and thrive in gaps and clearings in forests, often on the poorest soils. Many tolerate a high water-table and periodic flooding.

Alder shows all the features of a successful pioneer survival strategy – it produces numerous small seeds, rapidly colonises bare open ground, has fast initial growth and a short life-span. They need good light, open ground and cannot tolerate shade and competition – in natural conditions they are overtaken by larger trees which out-shade them.

Five species of alder are commonly found in the UK – one native and four imported.

In British forestry, they are of little value as timber trees but can be used as “nurses” to protect and bring on more valuable trees or as soil improvers on sites with undeveloped soils like reclamation sites. Most alders coppice well.

Alnus glutinosa leaves, male amd female catkins, from Bilder ur Nordens Flora

The black alder – Alnus glutinosa – is native throughout the British Isles and much of Continental Europe. It is found widely but particularly on wetter soils, often at high elevations on infertile terrains although it does not thrive on acid-peat or dry-sandy substrates. It can form small woods or “carrs” on boggy land.

The grey alder – Alnus incana – is found across central Europe. Introduced to Britain in 1780, it resembles the native Black Alder in its lifestyle and site requirements.

Italian alder – Alnus cordata – from southern Italy and Corsica, was brought to Britain in 1820. Like all alders, it is a strong light demander and withstands exposure and pollution well, copes better with drier, calcareous soils than its relatives and is a good landscape tree.

Grey and Italian alders have been planted as windbreaks round orchards.

The red or Oregon alder – Alnus rubra – is native to large tracts of the Pacific Coast of north America, where it is closely associated with Sitka spruce. First introduced into Britain in the late 1800s, it has been tried as a timber tree with mixed results although it is a significant pulp wood in its native home.

The green alder – Alnus viridis – has a shrubby growth form and lives in arctic and alpine regions of Europe. It provides vital stability and fertility when planted to start reclaiming bare derelict land like China Clay spoil in Cornwall.

Over the last few years, many riverside alders in Britain have succumbed to a fungus from the Phytophthora group.

Similar to poplar, alder wood is one of the weakest hardwoods. However it is resistant to decay under water so was sometimes used for sluice gates and also for charcoal in making gunpowder.

Catkins of the common alder in February

Alders have catkins – the male and female ones open in early spring, before the leaves appear, so the wind can carry pollen from male to female flowers.

Each long, dangling male catkin is a complex structure loaded with about 120 individual flowers and 480 pollen-producing stamens. After the clouds of yellow pollen are shed, the male catkins wither and fall.

The plump, club-shaped female catkins have tufts of hair or stigma to trap the pollen drifting in the air.

False cones on alder
© J. Jackson

After pollination, female alder catkins ripen into a woody “false-cone”. In autumn, the scales open and release the seeds to be dispersed both wind and water in this riverside plant. The empty “false-cones” hang on the twigs for several years, and make alder easy to recognise.

Now cleared and drained for intensive agriculture, much fenland was originally dominated by alder carrs.

Further reading : Gibbs, J. N. & Lonsdale, D. (1998). Phytophthora disease of alder. Forestry Commission Information Note 6, 5pp.

From wikipedia -

Black Alder, European Alder, Irish Fearnog or Common Alder (Alnus glutinosa) is an alder tree native to most of Europe, including all of Britain, Fennoscandia and locally in southwest Asia.

Alnus glutinosa foliage and fruit

The Black Alder thrives best in moist soils, and grows under favourable circumstances to a height of 20-30 m, though often less. It is characterized by its 5–10 cm short-stalked rounded leaves 6–12 cm long, becoming wedge-shaped at the base and with a slightly toothed margin. When young they are somewhat glutinous, whence the specific name, becoming later a glossy dark green. As with some other plants growing near water it keeps its leaves longer than do trees in drier situations, the glossy green foliage lasting after other trees have put on the red or brown of autumn, which renders it valuable for landscape effect. As the Latin name glutinosa implies, the buds and young leaves are slightly sticky with a resinous gum.

 

 

12 year old European Black Alder

The monoecious flowers are wind-pollinated catkins: the slender cylindrical male catkins are pendulous, reddish in colour and 5–10 cm long; the female are smaller, 2 cm in length and dark brown to black in colour, hard, somewhat woody, and superficially similar to some conifer cones. When the small winged seeds have been scattered the ripe, woody, blackish cones remain, often lasting through the winter. The alder is readily propagated by seeds, but throws up root suckers abundantly.

Uses

Recently coppiced stumps, showing the orange-red wood

It is important as coppice-wood on marshy ground. The wood is soft, white when first cut and turning to pale red; the knots are beautifully mottled. Under water the wood is very durable, and it is therefore used for piles. The supports of the Rialto at Venice, and many buildings at Amsterdam, are of Alder-wood. It is also the traditional wood burnt to produce smoked fish and other smoked foods, though in some areas other woods are more often used now. Furniture is sometimes made from the wood, and it supplies excellent charcoal for gunpowder. The bark is astringent; it is used for tanning and dyeing.

Female inflorescence

Cultural aspects

Frequently, such as in Brythonic and Norse mythology, the Alder is a symbol of resurrection, possibly because the wood turns from white to reddish-purple when cut, similar to human blood. The first humans in Norse mythology were made from Ash and Alder trees. In Ireland, reverence for the Alder tree was so great that cutting one down was a criminal offence. In other places, such as Newfoundland, the Alder’s medicinal effects were prized; it has been used to treat burns, rheumatism and itching.

From Trees Mystical World Wide Web -

In the Tyrol belief had it that the Alder tree was often used by sorcerers. One particular legend tells of how a small boy who climbed up a large tree, He looked down and saw a number of sorcerers at the foot of the tree. Whilst watching they cut up a dead woman’s body and proceeded to throw the pieces high into the air, so high in fact that the boy caught one of the pieces. The pieces fell back down and the sorcerers began to count them but one was missing. Realising this they replaced the piece with wood from the Alder tree, and the woman came back to life. Ever since the tree has been associated with the dead, and their resurrection back to life.

R. Rapin’s poem tells of the origin of the Alder (and Willow);

‘De Hortorum Cultura’
‘Of watery race Alders and Willows spread
O’er silver brooks their melancholy shade,
Which heretofore (thus tales have been believed)
Were two poor men, who by their fishing lived;
Till on a day when Pales’ feast was held,
And all the town with pious mirth was filled,
This impious pair alone her rites despised,
Pursued their care, till she their crime chastised:
While from the banks they gazed upon the flood,
The angry goddess fixed them where they stood,
Transformed to sets, and just examples made
To such as slight devotion for their trade.
At length, well watered by the bounteous stream
They gained a root, and spreading trees became;
Yet pale their leaves, as conscious how they fell,
Which croaking frogs with vile reproaches tell.’

Diviners in search of water hidden underground are known to often use forked branches taken from the Alder tree traditionally called ‘Wishing Rods’ (also Apple, Hazel and Beech).

Says their website -

Ouse Washes was the name originally given to the area deliberately allowed to flood between the two great canals, dug by thousands of prisoners of war under the direction of Cornelius Vermuyden, in the 17th century. This flooding enabled the remainder of the fenland to be drained and turned into the best farmland in Europe. The Washes, therefore, is the only area that resembles the great watery wilderness that the fenland once was. There the customs, superstitions and ways of life lingered longest. In winter the flooded land is home to one of the largest gatherings of wildfowl in Europe, with ducks, geese and swans travelling from as far as Siberia and Iceland. In the summer the waters recede, the grass grows incredibly long and the Washes are home to many breeding species as well as birds and animals.

And -

The Ouse Washes Molly Dancers are a throw back to those halcyon days where the dance glorified the local heroes and reflected the uniquely freezing, windy wilderness where morris dancers dared not tread with their little tinkling bells and handkerchiefs. The Ouse Washes dance kit is itself indescribable but is said to be based on what the traditional dancers would have worn had they had access to today’s local charity shop, in other words colourful stuff.

Out of the murky, legendary depths where boggarts and the o’the wykes weave reedy dangers come the Ouse Washes Molly Dancers, where echoes of Fenland heroes, vagabonds and ne’er- do-wells are expressed in their unique brand of Norfolk Dance. Molly Dancing.

Ploughboys traditionally performed there own distinctive East Anglian dance when they were unable to work during the frosts, and on plough Monday (the second Monday in January) they would drag a plough round the villages, and dance whilst collecting money for beer and food. Some ploughboys even blackened their face so that they wouldn’t be recognised afterwards, particularly if they had just ploughed up some poor unfortunate’s garden who had refused to put money in the collecting tin (you are warned!). The dances they performed were either country-dances or a stylised interpretation of then, and became the forerunner of molly dancing, as we know it today.

We took the name of the area for our dance group as no one could object as no one lives there. We hope that we keep true to the traditions of the place, which is wild, dark, frightening and teeming with life – just like our dances.

I don’t know the name of the dance that they’re doing – and it’s not Morris Dancing! I find their looks, rhythm and moves mesmerising…

Their history is fascinating -

Lynn Advertiser, Tuesday 16th January 1844
The town of Downham, according to general custom, was visited this week by six or eight individuals, miserably decorated with ribbons, accompanied by a wretched tormentor of cat gut, designated a fiddler, styling themselves ploughboys, extracting alms of the inhabitants.

The police are generally alert in suppressing vagrancy, and were they to exert themselves to prevent cases similar to the above, the suppression would be a boon to the community.

The principal portion of the public in this neighbourhood are zealous advocates for and supporters of the plough, and would willingly give a trifle to the honest plough lad, when solicited to do so; but when the scum of the village, as in this instance, palm themselves upon the public as plough-boys (the principal portion of whom, it is doubtful, whether they know how to manage a plough, if they were ever engaged in such employment) it must be admitted the imposition is unbearable and ought to be put down- to say nothing about the gross insults generally given to those who refuse money when solicited.

Folklore, vol. 72 (December 1961) pp. 584-598 – Folk Life and Traditions of the Fens

‘The seasonal festivals of the year brought to the Fens, as elsewhere, their customs and traditions, most of them not surviving beyond the First World War.

Plough Monday saw the traditional procession of the plough and the demands for money made by the men and boys, many dressed as women or as horses. In the Southery and Littleport Fens, any woman refusing to give money would have her long drawers dragged from her and hung round her neck.

In the evening, at the Molly dancing, the money would be counted, and next day groceries would be purchased and delivered to needy old women. On this day too, teamsmen were initiated by having their noses rubbed against the horse’s tail.’

This dance is called the ‘Strange’ -

This dance came about because some of us liked the tune and thought that it felt right. It took six months to develop the figures and has become one of our core dances. The contrast between the darkness of the sound and the wildness of some moments in the dance comes from the heart of The Ouse Washes and reflects the environment from which the dancing comes. The fenland is the ultimate bland countryside, or so it seems from the horrible roads that cross it. Mile after mile of corn and sugar beet, roads that infuriatingly won’t go straight, drivers in cloth caps who won’t go more than 35, tractors which swing in front of you and stay there forever. But, get off the main roads, get out of your car and the sky towers above you. Ancient stories about Will o’ the Wisps and malevolent spirits seem very real. No wonder when they got together, fenlanders could be a little wild… the tune fits the place.

The group created a dance to the story of Mucky Porter, for which this is the music.

From The Independent, reproduced here in full -

Capability Brown, originally uploaded to Flickr by londonconstant. Here’s londonconstant’s accompanying text -

Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature. It elevated folk art, nature and custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology based on nature, which included human activity conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage. It was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment and elevated medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The name “romantic” itself comes from the term “romance” which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature. The ideologies and events of the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its ideas.

Characteristics

In a general sense, the term “Romanticism” has been used to refer to certain artists, poets, writers, musicians, as well as political, philosophical and social thinkers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It has equally been used to refer to various artistic, intellectual, and social trends of that era. Despite this general usage of the term, a specific definition of Romanticism has been the subject of debate in the fields of intellectual history and literary history throughout the twentieth century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article “On The Discrimination of Romanticisms” in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948); some scholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. Another definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling.”

Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism.

[...]

The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian [an epic on the subject of Fingal (related to the Irish mythological character Fionn mac Cumhaill) written by Ossian (based on Fionn's son Oisín)] cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott.

[...]

Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly associated with the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose co-authored book “Lyrical Ballads” (1798) sought to reject Augustan poetry in favour of more direct speech derived from folk traditions. Both poets were also involved in Utopian social thought in the wake of the French Revolution. The poet and painter William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.” Blake’s artistic work is also strongly influenced by Medieval illuminated books. The painters J.M.W. Turner and John Constable are also generally associated with Romanticism. Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats constitute another phase of Romanticism in Britain. The historian Thomas Carlyle and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood represent the last phase of transformation into Victorian culture. William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, referred to his generation as “the last romantics.”

The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up by J. M. W. Turner, 1838, oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm

[...]

One of Romanticism’s key ideas and most enduring legacies is the assertion of nationalism, which became a central theme of Romantic art and political philosophy. From the earliest parts of the movement, with their focus on development of national languages and folklore, and the importance of local customs and traditions, to the movements which would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for self-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key vehicles of Romanticism, its role, expression and meaning.

Early Romantic nationalism was strongly inspired by Rousseau, and by the ideas of Johann Gottfried von Herder, who in 1784 argued that the geography formed the natural economy of a people, and shaped their customs and society.

The nature of nationalism changed dramatically, however, after the French Revolution with the rise of Napoleon, and the reactions in other nations.

(Of course, the French weren’t the only ones to draw on a legendary nature and mythical past connected with the lands to expound their ‘naturalistic’ politics… I digress.) The environmental science writer, Stephen Budiansky, in his book Nature’s Keepers, is critical of the Romantic tradition, and the majority of environmentalism that it has inspired, regarding it as elitist and escapist. He points to it having a sublime-seeking flip side, one that saw its seekers visit mines and quarries just as much as mountain views. He posits that the Romantics’ view of nature was as of something ‘separate, and awe inspiring’ (p.51). Whilst possibly viewing nature as awesome, I’m not sure what Coleridge, Turner and others, for example, in their first-hand, direct encounters with storms and the such like, would have thought of this analysis. 

Photo from wikipedia’s entry on the Great Fen Project

From the website of the Great Fen Project -

• Since 1600, over 99% of traditional fen wetland has been lost. Only three fragments remain. These are Woodwalton Fen, Wicken Fen and Chippenham Fen, which together make up the Fenland Special Area for Conservation, a legal designation which affords protection at a European level.
• Our project area is one of the few areas in which an appreciable peat resource can still be found. Our measurements show that the peat has been declining at a rate of about 2cm per year since 1970. The loss of peat will cause a change in farming from valuable root crops such as potatoes to less valuable (and probably less competitive) combinable crops such as wheat and barley.
• The fens have far fewer footpaths and access ways than elsewhere in Cambridgeshire.

Fenland’s inheritance:

The Fens covers an area of 380,000 Ha in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. In prehistory this low-lying area would have been a vast complex of wetland habitats, created by a low gradient and slow-moving, meandering rivers and streams. The wet grassland, wet woodland, raised bog, reed beds and fens provided a bountiful source of food and natural resources for the people that lived there.

From this period, people increasingly begun working with the distinctive landscape of The Fens, using it to complement the upland, instead of against it. The result, by the 17th century, was one of the most prosperous areas in England, an example of truly sustainable land-use. This prosperity is evident in the cathedrals, churches and abbeys that were found in fen towns and villages.

The Cambridgeshire Fens were successively drained, particularly from the 17 th Century. This was carried out often against the will of local people by venture capitalists, seeking to make profits by creating more valuable grazing and arable land.

Here and Now:

The Cambridgeshire Fens now require constant draining. Much of the area is now below sea level because the peat has shrunk through water loss and oxidation. As the drainage continued apace, wild habitats that were of use to local people were lost and this has continued into the present day.

The Great Fen Project contains two existing reserves (Woodwalton Fen and Holme Fen National Nature Reserves). However it is evident that small nature reserves isolated by large tracts of intensively managed farmland are always likely to lose species. Their small size also makes them relatively expensive to manage. The main response to this has been to raise the nature conservation value of the ‘wider countryside’.

This is being done at many levels, from local action though Local Biodiversity Action Plans, to Europe-wide action such as the agri-environment grants to help farmers support wildlife on their land. However, elsewhere in Europe, particularly in the polders of the Netherlands, the important role of very large nature reserves in a conservation strategy has been realised. The experience is ideal for transplanting to the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Looking forward:

Cambridgeshire has witnessed the highest population growth in the country. Net in-migration is around 2000 per year, on top of natural increases. The greater Cambridge area is expected to provide 105,000 new homes in the next 25 years. There are more people with more free time and they need places for their recreation. Whilst Cambridgeshire is a comparatively prosperous area, there has been a decline in jobs in rural areas. Furthermore, the forecast of 1600 new jobs per year in Cambridgeshire is thought to be outstripped by the number of people in the labour market as the population increases and commuting from outside the county is also increasing.

The Great Fen Project has the potential to provide multiple benefits to support wildlife and people:

• Nature conservation
• Education for children and adults
• Local access for local communities
• Tourism – local, national and international
• Income generation for local businesses though onsite and offsite activities, creating jobs in rural areas.
• Protection of people and property from flooding.

From wikipedia -

The British Fens, also known as the Fenland, consist of an area of former wetlands in the eastern part of England, stretching around the coast of The Wash from Lincolnshire to Norfolk and reaching into the historic counties of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire and Suffolk. These former wetlands consisted both of alkaline peat fen and silt freshwater and salt marshes which were virtually all drained by the end of the nineteenth century.

The position of The Fens in eastern England.^[1]

The Fens are very low-lying compared with the surrounding chalk and limestone “uplands” that surround them, in most places no more than 5-10m above sea level. Indeed, owing to drainage and the subsequent shrinkage of the peat fens, many parts of the Fens now lie below mean sea level. The area is in fact home to the lowest land point in the United Kingdom, Holme Fen in Cambridgeshire, at around 2.75 metres below sea level.^[3] TL202893

Before they were drained in the modern period, the Fens were liable to periodic flooding, particularly in winter due to the heavy load of water flowing down from the uplands and overflowing the rivers. Some areas of the fens were permanently flooded, creating small lakes or “meres”, while others were only flooded during periods of high water, but this was enough that in the pre-modern period arable farming was limited to the higher areas of the fen-edge, fen-islands and “townlands” (this was an arch of higher silt ground around the Wash, where the towns near the Wash had their arable fields). The rest of the Fenland was dedicated to pastoral farming, such as of cattle and sheep, as well as fishing, fowling, etc. In this way, the medieval and early modern Fens stood in contrast to the rest of southern England, which was primarily an arable agricultural region.

Since the advent of modern drainage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Fens have been radically transformed, such that today arable farming has almost entirely replaced pastoral, and today the economy of Fens is heavily invested in the production of crops such as grains, vegetables and some cash crops such as rapeseed.

The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica estimated the extent of the Fens as being considerably over half a million acres (2,000 km²), however, this estimation includes some of the Lincolnshire Fens which are not normally included in the Great Level, such as the lower drainage basins of the rivers Witham and the Welland, while excluding the fens on the east and north coasts of Lincolnshire. The Great Level itself, including the lower drainage basins of the Nene and the Great Ouse, now covers approximately 1,300 km² (320,000 acres). Significant towns in the fens include Boston, Spalding, Ely, Wisbech and King’s Lynn.

Formation and Geography

At the end of the most recent glacial period, known in Britain as the Devensian, ten thousand years ago, Great Britain was joined to Europe, notably, by the ridge between Friesland and Norfolk. The topography of the bed of the North Sea indicates that the rivers of the southern part of eastern England would flow into the River Rhine, thence through the English Channel. From The Fens northward along the modern coast, the drainage flowed into the northern North Sea basin, which, in turn, drained towards the Viking Deep. As the land-ice melted, the rising sea level drowned the lower lands, ultimately establishing the coastlines of today.

Around five thousand years ago, previously inland woodland of the Fenland basin became salt-marsh, a saltwater environment, and fen, a freshwater environment. In general, people writing of the Fens have been vague about the nature of the different sorts of wetland once found there. However, it is clear that the English settlers who named the various features of the place from about the year 450 onwards, noticed eight kinds.

• Wash, which at greater or shorter intervals had bodies of water flowing over it, as in tidal mud-flats or braided rivers.
• Marsh, which was the higher part of a tidal wash on which salt-adapted plants grew. It is now usually called salt-marsh. This probably arises from the fact that salt was produced in such places.
• Tidal creeks. For naming purposes, the English settlers seem to have ignored them unless they were big enough to be regarded as havens. The creeks (in the British sense) reached from the sea, into the marsh, townland and in some places, the fen.
• Townland, a broad bank of silt on which the settlers built their homes and grew their vegetables. This was the remains of the huge creek levees developed naturally, mainly during the Bronze Age.
• Fen, a broad expanse of nutrient-rich shallow water in which plants had grown and died without fully decaying. The outcome was a flora of emergent plants growing in saturated peat.
• Moor. This developed where the peat grew above the reach of the land-water which carried the nutrients to the fen. Its development was enabled where the fen was watered directly by rainfall. The slightly acidic rain washed the hydroxyl ions out of the peat, making it more suitable for acid-loving plants, notably Sphagnum species. This is exactly the same as bog but that name entered English from the Irish language. Moor has a Germanic root and came to be applied to this acid peatland as it occurs on hills.
• Mere, an expanse of shallow, open water. It was more or less static but its shallow water was aerated by wind action.
• Rivers.

In general, of the three principal soil types found there today, the mineral-based silt, resulted from the energetic marine environment of the creeks, the clay was deposited in tidal mud-flats and salt-marsh while the peat grew in the fen and bog. The peat produces the black soils which are directly comparable with the American muck soils.

This aerial photograph shows Boston at the bottom and the pale silt land along the margin of The Wash. The palest fields just inland from Boston are covered in plastic to warm the soil early in the season. The dark peat land of the fen and the moor of East Fen lies inland from the silt while the peat of West Fen lies further inland still, beyond the Devensian moraine at Stickney. The pale upland of the Wolds is at the top edge.

History

Pre-Roman Settlement

There is evidence for human settlement near the fens from Mesolithic period on; indeed, the evidence suggests that Mesolithic settlement in Cambridgeshire was particularly along the fen-edges and on the low islands within the fens, to take advantage of the hunting and fishing opportunities of the wetlands.^[4]

Roman Farming and Engineering

The Romans constructed the road, the Fen Causeway across the fens to join what would later become East Anglia and central England: Denver to Peterborough. They also linked Cambridge and Ely but generally, their road system avoided The Fens except for minor roads designed for extracting the products of the region. These were notably, salt and the products of cattle: meat and leather. Sheep were probably raised on the higher ground of the townlands and fen islands, then as in the early nineteenth century. The Roman period also saw some drainage efforts, including the Car Dyke along the western edge of Fenland.

In the past thousand years, the marsh has been found along the coast of The Wash, the remaining tidal waters. Moving inland, next there is a broad bank of silt deposited until the Bronze Age, on which the early post-Roman settlements were made. Inland again is the former fen proper. (Compare the sequence of salt-marsh, spit and fen formerly found at Back Bay, Boston, Mass.) From these settlements, the silt strip is known as The Townland. How far seaward the Roman settlement extended is unclear owing to the deposits laid down above them during later floods. It is clear that there was some prosperity on the Townland, particularly where rivers permitted access to the upland beyond the fen. Such places were Wisbech, Spalding and Swineshead, this last, replaced a thousand years ago by Boston. All the Townland parishes were laid out, elongated as strips, to provide access to the products of fen, townland, marsh and sea. On the Fen-edge, parishes are similarly elongated to provide access to both upland and fen. The townships are therefore often nearer to each other than they are to the distant farms in their own parishes.

After the end of Roman Britain, there is a break in written records. When written records resume in Anglo-Saxon England, the names of a number of peoples of the Fens are recorded in the Tribal Hidage and Christian histories. These peoples (with their supposed territories) include North Gyrwe (Peterborough/Crowland), South Gyrwe (Ely), the Spalda (Spalding), and Bilmingas (area of South Lincs).

The Medieval Fenland

In the early Christian period of Anglo-Saxon England, a number of Christian individuals sought the isolation that could be found among the wilderness that the Fens had become. These saints, often with close royal links, include Guthlac, Etheldreda, Pega, and Wendreda. Hermitages on the islands became centres of communities which later became monasteries with massive estates.

Monastic life was disrupted by Danish raids and settlement but was revived in the mid-10th century monastic revival.

These fenland monastic houses include Ely, Thorney, Crowland, Ramsey, Peterborough, and Spalding. As major landowners, the monasteries took a significant part in the early efforts at the drainage of the Fens.

The Royal Forest

For a period in most of the twelfth century and the early thirteenth century, the south Lincolnshire fens were afforested. The area was enclosed by a line from Spalding, along the Welland to Deeping, then along the Car Dyke to Dowsby and across the fens to the Welland. It was deforested in the early thirteenth century, though there seems to be little agreement as to the exact dates or the opening and closure of the period. It seems likely that the deforestation was connected with the Magna Carta or one of its early thirteenth century restatements, though it may have been as late as 1240. The Forest would have affected the economies of the townships around it and it appears that the present Bourne Eau was constructed at the time of the deforestation, as the town seems to have joined in the general prosperity by about 1280.

Draining the Fens

Early Modern Attempts to Drain the Fens

Though some marks of Roman hydraulics survive, and the medieval works should not be overlooked, the land started to be drained in earnest during the 1630s by the various Adventurers who had contracted with King Charles I to do so. The leader of one of these syndicates was the Earl of Bedford who employed Cornelius Vermuyden as their engineer. The scheme was imposed despite huge opposition from locals who were losing their livelihoods in favour of already great landowners. Two cuts were made in the Cambridgeshire Fens to join the River Great Ouse to the sea at King’s Lynn – the Old Bedford River and the New Bedford River, also known as the Hundred Foot Drain.

Both cuts were named after the Fourth Earl of Bedford who, along with some “Gentlemen Adventurers” (venture capitalists), funded the construction, which was directed by engineers from the Low Countries, and were rewarded with large grants of the resulting farmland. Following this initial drainage, the Fens were still extremely susceptible to flooding, and so windmills were used to pump water away from affected areas.

However, their success was short-lived. Once drained of water, the peat shrank, and the fields lowered further. The more effectively they were drained the worse the problem became, and soon the fields were lower than the surrounding rivers. By the end of the 17th century, the land was under water once again.

Though the three Bedford levels were, together, the biggest scheme, they were not the only ones. Lord Lindsey and his partner, Sir William Killigrew had the Lindsey level (see Twenty) inhabited by farmers by 1638 but the onset of the Civil War permitted the destruction of the works which remained to the fenmen’s liking until the Black Sluice Act of 1765.

Many original records of the Bedford Level Corporation, including maps of the Levels, are now held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office Cambridge.

Modern Drainage

The major part of the draining of the Fens, as seen today, was effected in the late 18th and early 19th century, again involving fierce local rioting and sabotage of the works. The final success came in the 1820s when windmills were replaced with powerful coal-powered steam engines, such as Stretham Old Engine, which were themselves replaced with diesel-powered pumps and following World War II, the small electrical stations that are still used today.

The dead vegetation of the peat remained un-decayed because it was deprived of air (the peat was anaerobic). When it was drained, the oxygen of the air reached it and the peat has been slowly oxidizing. This and the shrinkage on its initial drying as well as removal of the soil by the wind, has meant that much of the Fens lies below high tide level. The highest parts of the drained fen now being only a few metres above mean sea level, only sizable embankments of the rivers, and general flood defences, stop the land from being inundated. Nonetheless, these works are now much more effective than they were. The question of rising sea level under the influence of global warming remains.

Restoring the Fens

In 2003, a project was initiated to return parts of the Fens to their original pre-agricultural state. Traditionally the periodic flooding by the North Sea, which renewed the character of the fenlands, was characterized as “ravaged by serious inundations of the sea, for example, in the years 1178, 1248 (or 1250), 1288, 1322, 1335, 1467, 1571″ (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911). In the modern approach, a little farmland is to be allowed to flood again and turned into nature reserves. By introducing fresh water, organizers of the Great Fen Project hope to encourage species such as the snipe, lapwing and bittern. Endangered species such as the fen violet will be seeded.

Fen settlements

Many historic cities, towns and villages have grown up in the fens, sited chiefly on the few areas of raised ground. These include

• Ely (“Isle of Eels“), a cathedral city. Ely Cathedral, on a rise of ground surrounded by fenlands, is known as the “Ship of the Fens”.
• Chatteris, a market town.
• March, a market town and administrative centre of the Fenland District.
• Spalding, a market town, administrative centre of South Holland, and famed for its annual Flower Parade.
• Whittlesey, a market town
• Wisbech (“capital of the fens”), a market town.
• Peterborough, a cathedral city, is the largest of the many settlements along the fen edge. It is sometimes called the “Gateway to the Fens”.

Ancient sites include

• Flag Fen, a Bronze Age settlement

Setting in fiction

• The novels The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers, Hereward the Wake by Charles Kingsley “The Moon Tunnel” by Jim Kelly and Waterland by Graham Swift (1983) are located here. Waterland was made into a film in 1992 (directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal), and many scenes were filmed at Holbeach Marsh on edge of the Wash.

• Peter F. Hamilton sets a number of his sci-fi novels in this area too, notably Mindstar Rising and A Quantum Murder.

• Hal Foster set a portion of the childhood of Prince Valiant in the Fens.

• Cauliflower Drove is an internet murder mystery set in the Fens.

• In Northern Lights (novel), by Philip Pullman, the Fens are home to the water-dwelling Gyptians, who hide the protagonist, Lyra, in the Fens. These Fens, however, are far larger than those is our world, and stretch right across the English Channel/North Sea and connect with the lowlands of the Netherlands.

• Barnabas Sackett, patriarch of an American pioneer lineage detailed in the Sackett novels by Louis L’Amour, was born and raised in the Fens, which are a prominent setting of the first book in the series, Sackett’s Land.

• In one of The Belgariad novels, characters Garion, Belgarath and Silk row through marshy water channels in the Drasnian swamplands known as The Fens.

• In Harry Potter, the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone, Salazar Slytherin is described by the sorting hat to come “from fen.”

• The Silver Chair by C.S.Lewis features a character called Puddleglum the Marshwiggle. He is a gloomy character who lives on Eel and Pike, a stereotypical fenlander (known colloquially as a ‘Fenny’).

• Thorn, a short tale and Interactive Fiction by Eric Mayer, choses the Fens as a ghostly setting.

• Martha Grimes uses the village of Algarkirk, Lincolnshire and the surrounding Fens as the setting of her mystery novel, The Case Has Altered.

Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel “The Bookshop” is set in the fens.

References

1. ^ After Keith Lindley, Fenland Riots (1982)
2. ^ Bedford Levels information from Ordnance Survey 1:50 000 First Series Sheets 142 (1974) and 143 (1974). Lincolnshire information from Wheeler, W.H. A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire 2nd edn. (1896) facsimile edn. Paul Watkins (1990) ISBN 1-871615-19-4
3. ^ UK’s lowest spot is getting lower. BBC.
4. ^ Christopher Taylor, The Cambridgeshire Landscape (London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1973), 30.

External links

• National Trust Wicken Fen
• There are numerous photographs of the region to be found by clicking on the relevant part of this map
• Flag Fen – British Bronze Age Centre pictures
• Official Flag Fen website
• General Topography and Romanticism
• The Great Fen Project
• In search of the great Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden, who reclaimed the Fens, including walking tour
• Jonathan Meades explores the Fens (video)

See also

• Somerset Levels, a similar area of wetlands in the southwest of England.
• Hereward the Wake who led Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest from the fens.
• Wicken Fen, one of the few remaining undrained fens, owned by the National Trust.
• High Fens, between Belgium and Germany.

The Fens were home to such folkloric creatures as Tiddy Mun, boggarts and bogles and willow-the-wykes. Listen to Hugh Luptons’ Tales from the Fens. This from wikipedia -

Tiddy Mun was a bog spirit worshipped in Lincolnshire, England, which supposedly had the ability to control floods. When the wetlands flooded and the rivers burst their banks, local people would gather by the waterside and call

“Tiddy Mun without a name, the water’s rough!”

and the next morning the floods would have receded. Tiddy Mun (old Lincolnshire dialect for ‘little man’) was believed to look like a withered old man with a long, white beard. When he laughed it was said to sound like the whooping screech of a pyewipe (local dialect for peewit). He was said to dwell in the bogs and waterholes of the carrs of north Lincolnshire, and was generally helpful and kind towards humans.

When Dutch engineers led by Cornelius Vermuyden began draining the carrs in the 17th century, the local people used guerrilla tactics to attack and kill many of the engineers. They believed the killings would placate Tiddy Mun, who they thought was angered by the draining and had caused a pestilence as a result.

Tiddy Mun’s existence was first cited in June 1891, in an article by M. C. Balfour in the Journal of Folklore. She recalls a story told to her by an older person in the village who remembered a curse cast upon the town when they were a child because of the ditching and draining of the bogs and fens of Lincolnshire by the Dutch. The faerie spirit is eventually placated by the town after they gather at midnight on a full moon, pour buckets of water back into the bog, and apologize for the damage to the spirit’s bog where he lives [1].

The same spirit also appears in the story “Yarrow” by the fantasy author Charles de Lint.

Tiddy Mun also features in the song “Cursed Cornelius” by Norcsalordie, a song about the draining of the Lincolnshire wetlands.