Over the last week or so I have begun to start taking small walks as part of my recovery after cancer. I can’t go far as my body is not capable of much yet, so I am starting small with short trips out close by. I am fortunate, in that I live in rural Suffolk and it is within mere moments of stepping out of my front door that I can be in the countryside.
As I take my small ambles, I find that I am drawn to the sights and sounds around and they stir within me the inner folkie. I have mentioned, in previous blogs, that I am indeed of folk stock; both my parents and grandparents being from the folk world. I may not have been an ‘active folkie’ for a while, but like all things that are in the blood, it never really leaves you.
Nature and folk are inextricably linked, there is nothing that separates them, intertwined as they are. It is easy to understand how fables and cautionary tales were created from the land with the multitudes of sounds, sights and elements that form from nature and all of which would have dictated how you lived your life years ago, before modern science, cynicism and technology provided factual answers.
On some of the folk camps I went to, there would sometimes be a midnight expedition set upon by some of the youth. A route would be scouted out during the day by one or two of the older young-ones, then later, well after dark, they would lead the rest over fields, through woods, through sleeping villages and sometimes down to the coast all without torches, street lights or indeed, mobile phones (yes, no mobile phones then). If you have ever been out in the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere with no false illumination but only what the stars and moon provide, then you will understand how small noises can become wild animals, shapes not quite made out in the gloom will loom as lost figures and the merest touch of an over-hanging branch can become the land coming to personified life.
As a writer of stories, poems and songs, I know I have had a lot of influence from folklore and wobbling about on my short trails I can’t help but conjure up tales from the things I see.
On one of my short routes nearby I always pass a view of two tall trees standing close together and they inspired the following folk-style tale…
Two Brothers
The land has forever been divided, fought for, won and lost and in a never-ending variety of ways. Battles have raged, feuds nurtured for centuries; lives and loves lost both on and for the ground.
Many years ago, before metal monsters chewed and turned the earth, spitting out great plumes of dusty crops, a family; generations long in farming, tended their land. Their living was hard won by constant care and year after year their crops grew and they prospered. They did so well, in fact, that they became well known in their county and were soon seen as a family of standing.
The head of the family was growing old. He had worked on the land all his life and had endured earlier times when they were not so prosperous and remembered well that you could only reap what you had sown. He had been part of a large family, being the eldest of seven siblings and, as was tradition with the oldest boy, he had been brought up in the knowledge that it would be his responsibility to take on the farm when his father passed away.
Now that he was nearing the end of his life he had decision to make. For you see, he did not have an eldest son of his own, but two. A rare occurrence of twin boys had been a gift to him from the gods and until this point had served him well. It was perhaps part of the reason the farm had prospered so; having twice the help. But there was a problem; his sons were both excellent workers, intelligent in the ways of the business and both wanted success – but they bickered so. Under his instruction, they toiled and tamed the land, but it was in competition against each other, he had begun to realise. They would not work together for a common goal but would work a full day and night without sleep if it meant besting the other.
The old man feared what would happen to the farm after he died if his sons were to carry on in such fierce competition. He called them to him, one winter afternoon and instructed them to sit and listen.
“My boys,” he said, “as you know I am getting on in years now and I have to think about the future of this farm; the prosperity of which will support you and your younger siblings in years to come. My father handed the land down to me, being his eldest, but as you two are equal in age – for me nor your mother can rightly remember which one of you appeared first – I have not such an easy decision.
“I feel my time is approaching that I must say goodbye to this world, and grateful for it I will be, all told. I have had a good time, but a hard time and the world is changing faster than I can keep up and I am tired. There is just one thing that will keep me from peaceful rest and that is the continued bickering of the pair of you.
“I have decided that until the year comes fully round again, I shall hand the running of the farm to the pair of you and at the end of that time a decision shall be made.
“If you have proved that you can work together for the good of everyone, I shall gladly leave the whole to both of you. But if you bicker and fight and contest each other along the way, I shall have to think again, who will inherit the land.”
And so it was that the old man let go his part in the running of the business from the following day and settled back to watch his sons and hope that they would find the path to working together.
Winter went well, for the talking to that they received from their father, worked its magic for a short while. Despite the cold and frost there is still much to do on a farm and the hostile weather lent a lack of social events to distract them. But as Spring was on its way out and summer in full swing the news got around that the two young men were in line to inherit a quite substantial amount of land, and interest from families nearby, who had daughters ripe at the age of marrying, began to send for them to attend events away from the farm.
In short, the twins were wooed by society. They were wined, and dined and escorted to summer fayres and entertainments by the parents of young ladies with an interest in the land.
The old man watched from afar, determined to leave the full year to turn to truly see the result of his proposition. As the summer weeks passed into autumn, he grew sadder and sadder for he could see the land suffer from neglect as his two sons were distracted by parties and gaieties. He became ill and eventually it was clear that his time had come upon him sooner than he had thought.
On a particularly fine autumnal day, when the world was filled with fiery colours and the smells of wet earth and distant smoke were warm on a gentle breeze, the old man took himself slowly, on unsteady feet to a nearby copse. There was a spot in the centre where he had often come to rest his eyes and feel the land around him breathe and it was to this place he went to seek solace. Sitting on the rough bark of a fallen tree he tilted his face to the sun and tears fell down his cheeks.
After some time, he became aware of a presence beside him and turning to look he was faced, through bleary and old eyes, with what appeared to be a person; thin and pale and somehow giving the air of translucence. The old man looked into dark green eyes and felt a peace he hadn’t known for years. There was a familiarity to this being, despite having never met before, it was the same feeling he had when his hands were in the earth or coppicing the willow. He asked, “who are you?” and the creature spoke:
“You have a good soul, old man. You care for the land and all that live in and on it. I can feel the love you have for all that lives here. I am part of the land. I am the energy that flows through sap and up stalk. I am in the ground from which life grows and in the warmth of new leaves in spring. I am strong, because you cared. Why do you cry?”
The old man told the creature of his pain that his two sons would not get on and tend the farm as he and all those before him had done. He spoke of how they quarrelled so and how they bicker and compete, all the time not realising how much they could do if they put aside their differences.
He said, “I wish they could stand together and look to this land side by side and see the life it holds and can give.”
He sighed and closed his eyes and when they opened again, the creature had gone. “I am an old, mad fool,” he muttered to himself and went home to die.
The two elder sons made a handsome figure at his funeral and from that moment on were courted harder than ever before but when harvest came upon them they had a sharp awakening from their social whirl. It fell to a poor, unlucky farmhand to deliver the news to the them one morning that their crops had failed. It was such a poor and meagre harvest that it would not see them through the winter, let alone have anything left to make profit at the market. The brothers would not hear of this and demanded to be shown the bare fields.
For the first time in many months they swapped their fine shoes for their tough boots and were led out into the fields. Their feet, unused to their work footwear began to rub and sore and the pain of the blisters forming made them angrier than when they had set off. Having shown them to where there was just the smallest harvest, the farm hand left the two men bickering and shouting; each determined to hold the other accountable.
They stood facing each other, fury making them stamp their feet hard into the bare earth and the pain from the newly formed blisters made them kick off their neglected work boots. As each bare foot was stamped down in anger it planted solidly, fixed to the ground. Their toes began to stretch and elongate burrowing further into the earth until both men were rooted to the spot. Their limbs darkened and roughened, cracking like bark; their mouths stuck agape mid-shout, became knots and from their hair and finger tips grew small branches. Nearby a pale figure watched.
The two brothers stood side by side for the rest of their lives. They grew into mighty trees and stood looking over the land that was once theirs. They watched as, unattended by them, it was divided up further and passed on through families no longer theirs. They grew bent old backs and creaked in the wind, but still, side by side they stood and saw the changes with the march of time. Great mechanised monsters made from metal and with dirty smoking black fumes began to criss-cross the ground and chew into the earth at what seemed lightning speed. The two brothers stood side by side as settlements expanded colonising the fields that their father had so lovingly tended. Side by side they stood, branches overlapping now as if they held each other in wooden arms and they watched as men approached with whirring toothed metal animals that bit into their bark flesh – and side by side they fell.