Oh you know me, Patrick. I'm more inclined to fiddle. Last time I went
there it was Cornish weather - now and then it offers you a day that
self-proposes to be using first day of creation light; and mostly it's
grey. Anyway I got there and it seemed very small. It was me that was
small, shrivelled. It was wet and muddy. The field, the path etc. Yet I
know and knew it's a fascinating place.
Few people go there. There's another one a few fields over that takes
forever if you take roads seriously; and that's much more visited - The
Merry Maidens. That's the one where there was all the fuss 150 years ago
I'm grateful for your comment. That's rather the effect I wanted, to maybe
reflect the way the stones have been seen "recently" and the way one
guesses perhaps wildly they might have been seen - chances are we are
nearer to the birth of Christ than boscawen un is; and yet somehow it's
still there.
In the face of that all a man *can do is fiddle.
L
On 26 March 2014 17:17, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> L thanks enjoyed that has that sort of riddling feel-do you dance there or
> fiddle?P
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Lawrence Upton
> Sent: 26 March 2014 13:10
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Boscawen un
>
> nineteen a round
>
> and one in the middle
>
>
> nineteen unsound
>
> but one with a fiddle
>
>
> and they then each give voice
>
> and get back their voices
>
>
> heavy stone all
>
> changing as the weather
>
>
> nineteen alone
>
> and one, quite together
>
>
>
>
> *Boscawen-un*
>
>
>
> [Boscawen un has been translated as *the pasture of the farmstead at the
> elderberry tree*]
>
>
>
> [*Boscawen un * is a bronze age stone circle in the far west of Cornwall
> In
> Christian centuries the stones have been associated variously - either the
> work of Satan, or some apparatus of Satan; or the bodies turned to stone of
> dancers breaking the Sabbath... In the 1850s employers in west Cornwall
> were
> complaining that young employees had not turned up but were dancing at a
> nearby stone circle. At such dances, the musician would stand by the
> central
> stone when such remained, as it does at B U. It would be called the daunce
> men.... men here is Cornish for stone. There you are: am intro longer than
> the poem]
>
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