Full of Sound and Fury

MCMarrs on Aviary

There was a time when those who wished to display some superior knowledge used the cliche 'this moment in time', as though they had an existential grip on metaphics denied to the rest of us. I will accept the words as part of a Barbra Strysand song, because I like her voice but, otherwise, the phrase is outdated and boring.

After listening to some people talking, you realise, with the bard, that 'Life is a tale, Told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing'.

I've just heard a freshly baked cliche: 'thrown under a 'bus'. This means cast aside, as in when someone gains a promotion, old friends get trampled. Those still waiting at the 'bus stop feel bitter. 

I 'feel their pain', but 'Much Ado about Nothing' teaches
'Friendship is constant in all other things,
 Save in office', so perhaps it's a 'necessary evil' to leave some friends behind.

In Welsh,  a 'cleck' who spreads the latest news, aka gossip, is alluded to as a 'cywun bach melyn' (little yellow chick), meaning a cheeper.

Mice are a focus for some aphorisms:  A mean person is said to be prepared to 'skin a mouse' and stewed
tea is thick enough to 'trot a mouse on' and you can stand a spoon in it.

Feathers conjure up images: 'You could have knocked me over with a feather', for instance and people who cannot make their minds up are referred to as 'Feathers for every wind that blows'.

Time's whirligig

Somerset Maugham said there were advantages to growing old, although he was unable to think of any.
In 'Antony and Cleopatra', Shakespeare gives us the line:
'Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
It does from childishness'.
If this were only true, it would be one benefit resulting from ageing, but Shakespeare also knew, when he talked about the seven ages of man, that we return to a second childhood.

It is true that some babies appear to be 'old souls', born with their boots on and they grow up to be 'young fogeys'.

In Henry 1V Part 2, we have the sad spectacle of Falstaff, who has been the young Prince Hal's 'boon companion' (they spent a lot of time drinking and wenching), cast aside when the new king assumes his duties.

In ancient Greece, silver heads were a sign of wisdom. At the age of fifty citizens were deemed to be 'Elders', their seniority bestowed by increasing years. Their goal was to lead an honourable life so that old age led to serenity.

W B Yeats, the Irish poet, spoke of old age as being 'full of sleep'.
In 'As you like it' the life cycle is likened to that of fruit:
'And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot',
which, whilst accurate, is not joyful.

When I was in college, one of the lecturers had a habit of quoting Marvell towards the end of the lesson:
'But at my back I always hear,
Time's winged chariot drawing near'.
This signalled that homework details were going to be discussed, thus taking us from the sublime to, if not the ridiculous at least to the mundane, a form of bathos which might serve as a summation of life's trajectory.   

Lavender and Larvae

I've washed all my summer clothes and sealed them away in plastic bags. It's not that I like the smell of plastic, you will understand, but I care even less for the sight of moth holes.

I drew back the curtains this morning, disturbing the sweetest little moth you ever saw. I flicked my feather duster like a prestidigitateur flicks his wand and the darling disappear. Despite hunting up and down the walls the darng critter had made for the hills.

Now if I say that all the curtains in our house are made of linen, cottons and  silks, I don't mean to sound like a mercer from Cloth Hall, but natural fibres, which contain keratin are beloved by moths. Wool and cashmeres are particularly susceptible to moth larvae.

A friend lost a few hundred pounds worth of coats and jumpers to moths and their larvae, who are the real villains.  Keratin is a substance found on natural fibres and this is what attracts the creatures. It's best to wash all clothes or dry clean heavy items before storing them.

I have a long flexible brush for hard-to-get-behind radiators, and use a vacuum cleaner nozzle attachment to hunt out wee beasties who may be lurking in the corners of rooms.

The problem is central heating and airless houses encourage moths. If you don't like a chemical cosh, do as I did and get some lavender bags. I don't know if they've done the trick but the place sure smells nice.

Straight Talking

I went to Fishguard this afternoon. It was showery and windy but I passed a crab apple tree, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, making the small fruits shine like enamel.

John Constable, the 19th century artist, writing of a day in September, called it  'silvery, windy and delicious'.
Often, autumn appears to be about over-ripe fruit and fallen plums infested by bees, wasps and various insects, but Constable transforms the feeling of decay into an image of crispness.

'Silvery, windy and delicious' brings the taste of fresh spring water, crisp slices of cool cucumber, grass rustling in the breeze. Torpor is replaced by an invigorating buoyancy

Speech can make the day sparkle and how sad it is that cliches are often used as form of short hand, to save the speaker from using original thought. 

'Happy in my skin' is meant to convey that one is, if not smug, at least fairly contented. (I believe this idiom is originally a French invention). What is wrong with saying 'I am happy with my life'. A cliche delivers the speaker from the need to probe too deeply into how she is really feeling.

Someone confided  they were going to explain to an acquaintance where she was going wrong. 'Not that I want to take the moral high ground' the speaker claimed.
'On the contrary', I wanted to say, 'you are merely disguising your moral superiority as a good  intention and this makes you a hypocrite'.

In a newspaper letter, a young person (who we can perhaps excuse on the grounds of youth but not self- centered smugness), said she had done some volunteering and 'for her sins' had been offered a job. There! She elevated her volunteering by calling it sinful when she  knew it was praise-worthy, but she was being ever so coy (and cloying).

So this is a plea for plain speaking. Not only will it exercise our brains but enrich the language, too.

Melin Trefin

The little hamlet of Trefin lies between Fishguard and St David's. There was a flour mill here for more than five hundred years. 

Originally the name was 'Trefaen' which means 'village on a rock'. Later, it became known as Trevine, but it is now spelt Trefin.

One of the most famous poems in the Welsh language 'Melin Trefin' was written by the Welsh poet and celebrated bard, Crwys, and speaks of the mill no longer grinding in Trefin.


Cerys Matthews, the singer and mother of Glenys Pearl y-Felin and Johnny Tupelo Jones, was married to Seth Riddle in Rehoboth Chapel, Trefin.

Quite a few years ago my daughters and I went to Cardiff, to listen to Cerys and Tom Jones singing  'Baby it's Cold Outside'. (Who needs Nashville?)

John Knapp Fisher, a favourite artist of mine, captures the essential loneliness of the Trefin area.  The paintings have a lime washed quality, a frugality that I find appealing. This is wind scorched country, where rocks sprout in the coarse grass and thorn trees bend and twist to avoid the weather.
If you go down under a moonlight sky, remember Crwys's words:

'Nid yw'r felin heno'n malu, yn Trefin ym min y mor'.

A lover and his lady

There are ways of seeing and you see what you look for, apparently.

In school we learnt Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' and Coleridge's 'Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner'.
Many years were to pass before I re-read the poems, seeing in them a record of  depression. 

Recently, I was thinking of the story of  the 'Lady of the Lake', set in  'Llyn-y-Fan-Fach', in Carmarthenshire.
Dating from the twelfth century, it tells of a young man tending his flock when he sees a beautiful creature emerging from a lake. He falls in love with her and  you can hardly blame him, because he probably met few comely maidens.

Wondering how to entice her, he offers his bread, which she refuses, arrogantly calling,
'Cras dy fara, Nid hawdd fy nala'.
In English  this means: 'Your bread is hard, it is not easy to catch me', an unpromising  beginning.

When his mother hears what has occurred, instead of being surprised that a girl popped out of the lake and spoke to her son, she suggests taking unbaked bread-dough next time, which might be more to the lady's taste.

With hope in his heart and the wet dough in his napkin, he sets out the next morning. Magically, the lady appears and, undeterred by her previous rebuff, he presents his offering.

Again, she scorns his bread, the representation of his love, with the words:
'Llaith dy fara, Ti ny fynna', which means: 'Damp is your bread, I will not have thee'.

Not many men would risk further rejection, but the ardent swain decides to take some half-baked bread the following day.

All day he waits, but there is no sign of the lady. Dusk is falling and, in despair, he turns for home, throwing the bread into the water.

Just then, the lady appears. The hopeful lover explains he has no riches to give her, just himself.  This declaration works the magic and she agrees to marry him.

She has no interest in the worldly goods the bread represents, but just himself and his love. (It would have made things so much easier if she had said so instead of playing games.)

Things were not straightforward, though.  The lady made conditions. If her husband-to-be struck her three times, however lightly, she would disappear back into the lake.  Despite this, the pair marry and have a son.

Preparing to go to a christening, the lady fusses about the child, saying she had to take this and that with her.
(I am tempted to ask here if this is the first sign of  post-natal anxiety, the inability to leave the house without checking endlessly that nothing has been forgotten? Or am I reading this wrongly?)
The husband grows impatient and taps her back.
She tells him he has struck her for the first time. Dramatically, she claims the child would have died if she had not gone through the various rituals. (Is this a part of her hysterical personality?)

A year or so later another baby boy is born.
At a church service, a wedding, the wife cries loudly (a display of her nervous disposition?) and her husband taps her lightly.

This is the second 'knock'. Her tears, she explains, are because she sees disaster for the young couple.
(Obviously, she cannot contain her emotions, and she seeks attention in public places. She does not doubt her predictions, either).

During the third year of marriage, the wife gives birth to another baby. At a funeral, she laughs hysterically and her husband slaps her.
This is the fatal blow. The lady seems unrepentant about laughing, declaring she was glad the dead person had left the misery of this life behind.

Soon after this, she disappears into the lake, taking her cattle with her, leaving her husband and three sons distraught.

As the boys grew, the 'Lady of the Lake' sometimes appeared to her eldest son, Rhiwallon.
She taught him how to heal using herbs and flowers and so powerful were his remedies that he attended Rhys, the Lord of Dynevor and Ystrad Towy. His two brothers also learnt the secrets of healing.

For centuries the descendants of the 'Physicians of Myddfai', as they became known, were active in the area. Rice Williams, who died in 1842, was believed to be a direct descendant of the 'Lady of the Lake' and many travelled to seek his advice.

Did the watercreature suffer from some form of mental disorder, such as  post natal depression or was she one of the fairy folk? How are we supposed to read the story?