Spring and birdsong and all that

“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king.” That’s the start of a poem I remember from my schooldays. I found myself quoting it on a beautiful spring morning recently; it’s short, it’s sweet, and it’s by Thomas Nashe, who lived from 1567 to 1601 – which makes him a contemporary of Shakespeare.

Like most youngsters, I assume, I had to learn and recite great chunks of our Glorious Literary Heritage in school English lessons. We memorised an assortment of poems, and Shakespeare speeches of course, and (if we were taking any foreign language exams,) we tried to learn a tiny bit of France’s or Germany’s G.L.H. too, so we could drag in a quote to liven up an essay.

I can still recall some poems now: “If…” (I can do most of that!) and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” (only the first verse alas, but I know it has a dreadfully sad ending,) and “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” – yes, I was interested in the Romans even then.

And, as I said, “Spring, the sweet spring”. It has stuck in my mind because it made us kids laugh. I still think it’s comic on account of the Elizabethan “special effects” at the end of each verse, which aren’t at all what one expects of the G.L.H.

Try reading the first verse out loud:

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Now even at the ripe old age of twelve I could identify birds that went “cuckoo” and “to-witta-woo”. But what in Bill Oddie’s sweet name are the others? “Pu-we” could be a peewit, I suppose. Or maybe a thrush, one of those that has a big repertoire of phrases, and (to quote a quite different poet) sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture that first fine careless rapture.

But I can’t recall ever having heard anything on the wing or up a tree going “jug-jug”.

I wonder, was Nashe just having a laugh, or was he making a serious attempt, in those pre-sound-recording days, to reproduce birdsong for his audience’s delectation? It’s hard to credit it now, but there used to be people who made a living in the variety theatres by performing bird impressions on stage…anyone in the UK remember Percy Edwards? He was a terrific mimic of birds and animals. But I’m sure he never went “jug-jug”.

Well, we have wonderful spring weather as I write this, which I’ll celebrate with the rest of Nashe’s poem.

The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!

And to think I’ve remembered him all these years! Isn’t education wonderful?

Good news, bad news

I’ll start with the good news.

An exciting glimpse of the past has come to light in the market town of Malton, only a few miles down the road from me. Contractors building an extension to a primary school found an Ancient Roman pottery kiln, complete with lots of bits of broken pot. They excavated it and moved it so it can be reconstructed somewhere else, as it couldn’t remain in situ; the school needs its new kitchen and dining-hall.

Before the move, the school’s children had the chance to look at the excavations and talk to the archaeologists. Good – if you want to interest people in history, catch ‘em young!

Mind you, people are already quite used to digging up history in Malton, which was a busy centre for the Romans. There was a fort there, mostly garrisoned by cavalry, and a civilian settlement grew up round it. Those are facts, but another (rather frustrating) fact is that we don’t know for sure what the place was called in Roman times, because the ancient records are contradictory. It was probably Derventio (same root as its river, the Derwent,) but it could just be Delvicia. I’ll stick to Malton for now.

The news reports don’t give much detail about the kiln. What was its date? Was it primarily used for making pots, or for manufacturing roof-tiles? You can often tell this from the kiln’s internal structure. And what else did they find nearby – any coins, perhaps? My curiosity was running at full speed as I wondered about all this. I don’t exactly need this information for the work-in-progress…but when did that ever stop me from following an interesting research trail?

What I do need, I thought, is someone who’s knowledgeable on local history. I’ll ring up Malton Museum, in the market place. They have some interesting Roman stuff there, and are bound to know. Perhaps they’ll even put me in contact with the archaeologists who examined the kiln.

And that’s when I ran into the bad news. Malton Museum closed down at the end of last month.

There must have been publicity about this, but I completely missed it, and the closure comes as a nasty shock. From what I can gather, the Museum lease comes up for renewal in April and apparently the landlords have raised the rent to the point where the Trust can’t afford it. So this month all the precious artefacts are being packed away, to go into storage till a new home can be found. Who knows when that will be?

The trustees bravely maintain that the Museum will “go into the Community”. They’ll continue their educational work,  giving talks and presentations in schools, and they’ll display what they can of their collection at events around the Malton area.

Good luck to them, and may they find a new home soon. Museums are important. I hate to see one disappear.