The Parting Glass
The Yew in Compton Dundon churchyard is nearing two thousand years old. Despite its age, it has boughs uniquely smooth and green, a geriatric with the muscles of an unblemished youth.
“A comely old bugger,” Ed mutters, climbing into its hollow interior.
A few mere hours into our walk, we ask the Yew what the journey ahead might bring. With stark booming clarity, I’m told I’ll we’ll achieve “Greatness”, while Ed hears promises of “Safety”.
I play with the hopeful combination: “Safe greatness?”
“Great safety” Ed prefers.
“But you may not reach Liverpool” the Yew adds.
“Balls for schools, I was right up for Scouse” Ed moans, dangling from a bough.
In the thirteenth century pulpit of the empty Church beside the Yew, we sing “The Parting Glass”, an Irish song of death, ascension, separation.
“Of all the friends that ever I’ve known, they’re sorry for my going away,
And of all the sweethearts that ever I’ve known, they’d wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot, that I must rise, while you shall not,
I will gently rise, and softly call: Good Night, and Joy be with you all...”
Then we leave the Yew and church and walk on, as farm lorries full of straw rattle by, and thatchers call out merrily from their rooftop labours. Villages like Compton Dundon might be artificially preserved by city salaries, but it remains a valuable pleasure to witness how families can be sheltered, and animals fed, from growing and cutting grass.
“Summer’s second oldest industry” Ed winks.
Sorrows Away
We give our first public-concert in the town of Street, home of Clarks shoes. Grinning security shift us quickly from the private precincts, so on public high streets we compete with roving army recruiters. Their muttered curses fall flat and bland against loud anti-war classics like ‘The General’ –.
If you’re looking for the Private, I know where he is...he’s hanging on the old barbed wire...
Glastonbury arrives very shortly after, where we gorge on white spring water, before sleeping in the shadow of the Tor.
Under violent summer rain we approach the city of Wells. Just outside her limits, in a Beech grove of soaring green majesty, we find the slashed tent of a former long-term resident, along with his remnant mountain of bin-bags, plastic bottles and gas canisters.
Young people of Britain, hear this: If you run away from home, take your water from a clean cattle trough, cook on a fire, burn your rubbish, and dig a hole for your toilet.
Angry that we are unable to clear up this mess, we enter Wells, to find the intricately defended Bishops’ Palace, built to protect holy greed against hungry townsfolk. The wide green moat is fed from the town’s namesake well, whose out-spinning 140 gallons per second are not fit for consumption, due to Roman lead mining in the Mendips.
“If fracking happens, even the deepest of Britain’s natural springs will become undrinkable” Ed predicts blackly, and I hope he’s not right.
A man in subtle multi-coloured clothing peacefully approaches, and passing school-children mutter his name like a charm. He comments brightly on our dog’s two-coloured eyes.
“Like David Bowie?” I guess, having heard it a thousand times.
“Like Alexander the Great” he corrects me.
The official Fool of Glastonbury, he donates us a trout supper and an slightly tricky ode to badgers:
While the Japs were supping on their whales,
Germans ate squirrels and the French their snails,
We English ate mostly badger and sometimes frogs,
But unlike the Chinese we never ate our dogs.
We sleep on a nearby hill, and next morning sing for Wells in her Penniless Porch, built by Thomas Beckynton, the town’s fifteenth century re-designer. Afterward, the Fool leads us like a smoky mirage to the Bishop’s Palace, and the soon-to-open garden of contemplation, where a great buried wheel is inscribed with Machado’s classic poem on walking:
Wanderer, we have no road, we make the road by walking.
Immediately outside, we meet three blind OAPS, sat on a bench in dazzling white,
“Angels” Ed whispers.
We’re both tired, hot and hungry, yet we must sing. So we choose “Sorrows Away”, a remedy song we learned in gentle South Downs’ breezes, early in our walking days.
Now time passes over more quickly today,
Since we learned a new way to drive sorrows away...
Well I may not be rich, and I may not be poor,
But I’m as happy as those that have thousands or more...
Blessings are given, and we leave Wells for the tourist village of Wookey-Hole, where a fellow from the Social Club leads us to a secret cave, with a fire-pit and wood-pile waiting.
“Rewards are manifold” yawns Ed, and re-united in happy journey, I wholly agree.
The Banks of Claudy
Intent on Bath, the city of waters, we hit the stone farming village of Wellow. A boarded-up horse trough, and driveways of Range-Rovers, demark the recent shift from agriculture to professionalism. No-one knows where to find the holy well of St Julian, patron saint of wandering singers, for which Wellow was once famed. Many legends attest to the ‘fair white maiden’ of this well, though such a myth was once universal to British springs (See the prologue to Chretien de Troye’s Perceval).
We finally locate the flowing source, hidden deep in British jungle, and we both savour a tasty sip.
That night, we visit Wellow long-barrow, on the hill below the village. In this tomb/calendar/shelter we sing Claudy Banks, a truly ancient British song, whose theme, of a returned lover who tests his waiting partner, is as old as Homer.
As I rode out one evening, all in the month of May,
Down by the banks of Claudy I carelessly did stray,
There I beheld a fair maid, in sorrow did complain,
Lamenting of her own true love, who had crossed the raging main.
