A Bibliomane Prepares To Move House

I suspect when your boxes of books start looking like this, you're nearing the tail-end of book packing. Or at least deserve a break and a brew.

One thing's for sure, my next home is going to be The House That Books Built.

An Unkindness for Halloween

And so to Mother Shipton's Cave in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, where I've been meaning to go for a long time.  It turns out that Halloween is a great time to visit, because the staff dress up and there are lots of hammy mannequins positioned around the woods which aren't in the least bit creepy until you forget they're there and then suddenly glimpse them and jump.

First though, lunch in the pub over the road - The World's End, so called because Mother Shipton, a witch and prophet who, we are told, lived here in the 15th and 16th centuries, declared the world would end if the bridge over the River Nidd fell for a third time.  (So far, it's happened twice.)

Unlike Daughter the Elder, I'm not a massive fan of kitsch, but there was plenty during the woodland walk to the Cave and Dropping Well to interest me. 

Like some altogether more tasteful carvings made from those much prized beech trees which have had to be felled owing to disease ... 

 ... and Igraine and George Skelton, keeper of the ravens at nearby Knaresborough Castle. Along with two of their charges.  

 

Although I've often heard - then seen - ravens flying overhead on Dartmoor and in Wales - and even over our local park in Bristol the other day - and have been moved to write several poems as a result, I've rarely had the chance to get that close to one before, and I was stunned by the hugeness of its presence.  It was like being next to a sizeable dog. 

 

 

This raven is called Izabella. Here's Graine telling her story in an excerpt from a documentary video by David Steans. 

 

Also present was this little chap, which I took for an oversized relative of the magpie from a distance, but who is, in fact, a crow-sized African Pied Raven, named Mourdour after the necromancer in Ivanhoe. 

  

It was very touching to see the close relationship between Igraine and her birds, and when she told of how one of her other ravens, HM Gabriel, had been found dead a month back, we all got rather tearful. 

Here's Daughter the Elder with HM Gabriel back in August, conjoined with a photo of my grandmother, Hilda Hill, because they are so alike.
 

Then it was time for Mother Shipton's Cave and the famous Dropping Well, the waters of which are so high in minerals that they petrify everything that is left there.  This makes for some rather eerie, nay positively Gothick sights. 

 

Then it was off to make a wish in the well - dip your right hand in water and keep it there while you make a wish but don't tell anyone and be sure not to wish for money - oh why not! - or harm to befall another and when you take your hand out, don't wipe it on anything but let it dry by itself - and to view the cave where the decidedly unbonny Ursula Southeil aka Mother Shipton is reputed to have been born to a very young, unmarried mother, banished from the town for not divulging the name of her baby's father, in 1488. 

I'm not sure what to make of the phenomenon that is Mother Shipton. It's tempting to see it as simply a very early manifestation of the tourist industry, but the story feels far far older than that to me. 

I kind of like the poetry of what are alleged to be her prophecies:

Then upside down the world shall be

And gold found at the root of tree

All England’s sons that plough the land

Shall oft be seen with Book in hand 

The poor shall now great wisdom know 

Great houses stand in far flung vale 

All covered o’er with snow and hail.

Time to walk back along the river - all Klimtian with the last of the sun, reflecting the pink cliff on the opposite bank, atop which stands the remains of the Castle - to be visited another day.

 

 

A Birthday Witch

Commissioned for my birthday from my extraordinarily talented friend, the needle felter and potter, Jan Lane.  I can't tell you whom I think of her as for copyright reasons (though she has penetrating blue eyes, a tight grey bun and the tiniest felted bee in her pocket). 










 I also hope that wherever she is now, she is minding where she goes.  

A Poem For National Poetry Day 2015

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme is light, so naturally I've chosen to post a poem about death and foxes, which has just been published in Hailing Foxes, the beguiling new anthology of illustrated poems newly published by Dru Marland of Gert Macky press.  Except that it's about light also.

 A few months after he died, a literary wake was held for Seamus Heaney in Festival Hall, London. Late that night, on the final leg of the journey home, I had an extraordinary encounter. 

Heaney’s Wake

All year 

from winter to autumn I see them 

most evenings  

on high streets, down side-roads

slipping through hedges

under the bunting of parked cars,

charcoal running stitches 

hemming the edge of dark.  In April 

vixens trail their kits 

                                       like knots 

                                                           in hankies

Come September 

   flashes of amber – intermittent –  

a youngster, trapped by headlights 

           panics on Southmead Road

                                     spins in indecision, 

     his current short-circuiting, every nerve and instinct                

                                                   scrambled

After the wake

and the long drive back,

two miles from home and my bed

the stupor in my head gives way to quick 

       anticipation  

a dog-fox on Horfield Common 

in Belisha beacon glare 

waits for me to brake, trots over the crossing 

with a twitch of his white-tipped tail. If I could

touch his fur, sparks would 

       jump and crackle  

    

my spirits kindled by this sight, 

this flaring matchstick 

       to hold against the night

©Deborah Harvey 2015

My next poetry collection, Breadcrumbs, is due to be published by Indigo Dreams in 2016. This poem isn't in it. 

Can't Wait