Over Christmas and throughout January, I seem to have spent many, many hours in the kitchen "keeling the pot", cooking and baking and then making a year's supply of marmalade. Shakespeare's poem "Winter" has been in my mind. These amazing specimens were photographed by my mother. They were suspended from the roof at the back of the cart-house. Oh how we loved to find icicles when we were children! They hardly occur now. So what will the next generation make of Shakepeare's poem? I learnt it as a child, and loved it because everything in it was real. Even the characters were names in our own family, with the exception of Joan. So I am indulging in memories that this poem conjurs up, and looking at lovely pictures on ther ArtUk website. When icicles hang by the wall - We did not have the luxury of inside plumbing [!] and passed by these icicles on the path to the outside "lav" - an earth closet no less. Perish the thought today. Here should be the second line of Shakespeare's poem, which describes a shepherd whose name was Richard, warming his hands by breathing on them .... I can see my father in this shepherd, the many layers of clothes, the boots, the gaiters, the tender look at the "lahtle lamb" ... I can smell the turnips and feel the raw east wind . This picture really makes you feel as if you are in the fields with the shepherd. This picture is called "Shepherd with a lamb" and is by George Clausen [1852 - 1944] and is at The Higgins, Bedford, on ArtUk with Creative Commons with credit to The Higgins, Bedford. Two more lovely pictures of shepherds, the old and the young. The picture on the left is called "The Shepherd" and is by Percy Frederick Horton [1897 - 1970] and is held by Dove Cottage and Wordsworth Museum, with photo credit to the Wordsworth Trust. The picture on the right is called "The young shepherd" and is by David Forrester Wilson [1873 - 1950] and is at the Royal Scottish Academy of Art, Creative Commons CC BY NC ND. A lovely contrast. And Tom bears logs into the hall - What a burden the poor man carries. The sky is cold and the path looks uneven, but he needs his fuel. Think of Good King Wenceslas and his page. Fuel was needed for cooking, heating water, keeping warm. How cold and damp it was if the fire went out. You had to look after the fire and keep it going. This picture is called "Man with a bundle of firewood in a country lane" and is by Herman Herkomer [1863 - 1935] and is at Bushey Museum and Art Gallery and on ArtUk. I love this picture because it was one of my Saturday afternoon jobs to saw up wood on a saw horse and make a pile of logs for the rest of the week. There was a "Stick Heap", where broken fence posts, fallen branches, any bits of wood, were propped up like a teepee. I would get the saw horse out and a bushman's saw and keep myself very warm all afternoon. Everything about the picture above makes you shiver. The grey clouds, the water-logged ruts in the field, the very wintery looking cabbages, the pile of logs and kindling. This picture is called "Winter" and is by Henry Robert Robertson [1839 - 1921] and is at the Sheffield Museum, Creative Commons, photo credit to Sheffield Museum. Another cold scene. This piece of timber is yet to be sawn up. Logs warm you twice, once in the sawing and then in the burning. The distant windmill could possible point to a Dutch landscape, but perhaps not. There were windmills in Britain too. The picture is called "Carrying home the firewood" and is by Thomas Smythe [1825 - 1907] and is at the Colchester and Ipswich Museum and on ArtUk. It was fun to bring in logs on the sledge when there was snow like this, balancing them so they would not fall off. In this picture a young mother is opening the door to let them in, babe in arms, and the bundle of sticks is almost as big as the man carrying it, and they would have to leave the fallen branch outside. She needs to keep the fire in to dry all the nappies. We never came back from a walk anywhere without a bundle of sticks, called kindling, which were then put in a side oven of the kitchen range to dry out for the next day's fire lighting. And milk came frozen home in pail - Here is a milkmaid with her newly calved cow, which she seems to be feeding turnips. We never gave the cattle whole turnips, but chopped them up. There was a turnip chopper, in the Turnip House, and you threw them in at the top, turned a handle round and round and they came out at the bottom chopped up. You put a "swill" underneath to catch them, this was a woven vessel, possibly made of willow, like a very wide basket, and then you fothered the beast out of it. Another warm winter's job. This picture is called "A chat with a milkmaid" and is by John Frederick Herring [1795 - 1865] and is at the National Trust Tyntesfield, available through Creative Commons and on Art Uk. I love the cat, the wooden pails and yoke and three-legged stool. This is a lovely photograph called "Milk Maid" and is by Joseph Hardman [ 1893 - 1972] and is at the Lakeland Museum, available through Creative Commons CC BY NC ND. No sign of a cow though, but she is striding out with her buckets. On the way to milking ? or coming back? This picture is called "Milking Cows" and is by John Walter Hadland [ 1832 - c1920] and is at the Beverley Art Gallery, available Creative Commons CC BY NC ND. Everything about this picture is familiar. I can smell the cows, the muck, the warm milk, the hay, the cow-cake, feel the swish of the cows' tails, hear the low sounds they make, the milk in the pails ... The man milking would set his cap at a certain angle and rest his head on the cow's flank. My father's cap had a very particular patina at the front from years of resting his head on his cows! We had wooden bins at one end of the byre where the meal and cow cake was stored, with metal scoops, and each cow was given so many scoops of meal in a trough as well as the hay in the racks. Every day the byres were cleaned out, swept and washed down. And when snow prevented the milk being taken to the road side, half a mile away, to go to the dairy in Leyburn, then the calves had to drink as much as they could and we made butter. When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who! A merry note - Owls are heard more often than they are seen, so it was always a treat to see one swoop over the stack yard at dusk. Where I live now we have owls, I do not know which variety, but I hear them hunting over the fields and woods around our house. At dawn and dusk they are most active and it is lovely to know they are there even if we don't see them. As children we had Observer's books to identify what we saw around the countryside. Whilst greasy Joan doth keel the pot - This is a poster created for the Empire Marketting Board and is called "Christmas Fare from the Empire - Cooking a Turkey" on the ArtUk website with credits to HMSO & Eyre and Spottiswoode Lts [active 1875 - 1970 and Frederick Clifford Harrison [1901 - 1984] and is at the Manchester art Gallery, Creative Commons CC BY NC ND. I can't think that any ingredients for our Christmas Fare came from anywhere but very local, with the exception of currants and raisins and oranges. The two black and white sketches below are typical farmhouse fireplaces with kitchen ranges for cooking. They are illustrations in books of Yorkshire prose and poems by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, and are by the Wensleydale artist and illustrator Fred Lawson. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw; This picture is called "The cleric" and is by an unknown artist of the British School and at the Royal Cornwall Museum, available on Creative Commons, CC BY NC. It is painted onto boards, which gives it a very rustic appearance, and you can almost hear the Parson sawing on and on, and on and on, the congregation hoping the service would soon be over and they could go home and get warm. Churches are not notable for being warm places. And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw - Well this picture has snow and birds, but I am a bit perturbed at the dead sheep. The Shepherd has not gathered the flock in time .... the picture makes you shiver, the cold , grey light, the last glimmer reflected in the beck, and eery silence..... brrrr. This is called "The weary waste of snow" and is by Joseph Farquharson [1846 - 1935] and is at the Manchester Art Gallery, Creative Commons CC BY NC ND I will spare you a picture of Marian's nose looking red and raw. When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl - Here is a young girl peeling apples, they look larger than crab apples, and she has a cabbage to prepare as well. Onions are hanging up from the ceiling. Apples were an important part of the diet. We had crab apples in the hedges, but they would only be used to make jelly. The different apple trees in the garden were either "eaters" or "keepers". The keepers were all laid out in the Apple Room upstairs and kept for months and months. The skins went waxy, and the perfume from them was lovely. When my mother was cooking she would send me upstairs to get some apples for a pudding. I can feel the cold of the unheated room, the lino on the floor, the smell, the feel of the apples, and carefully carry them downstairs. Home grown food, fuel gathered from the woods, fresh milk, warm from the cow but frozen by the time it came into the house .... all part of a life now only remembered. Then nightly sings the staring owl
To-whit! To-who! A merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. The last picture has a HUGE cooking pot suspended over a fire and an enormous fireplace. The picture is called "The Kitchen of Barra Castle" by James Cassie [1819 - 1879] and is at Aberdeen Art Gallery and available on Creative Commons CC BY NC. In my child hood home we cooked over a fire. There was a kitchen range with an open fire and a hob, i.e. a shelf in front of the grate. The kettle was always on the hob, and pans were balanced on it. You had to watch them, so that nothing boiled over and put the fire out! Everything in Shakespeare's poem was also part of my growing up, how quickly life changes, a life not recognisable any more except through memories and old pictures. WHEN icicles hang by the wall, And [here should be the second line of Shakepeare's poem] And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who; Tu-whit, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. WHEN all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian’s nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who; Tu-whit, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. Love's Labour's Lost - Act V, scene 2
1 Comment
John Stocks
2/2/2024 03:17:53 pm
Your words bring back so many memories.
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