But before that, it’s spring and bluebell time!

Full of the joys of "sprummer" (that's technical term for the bit between spring and summer by the way) Hilary Hinks takes us on a joyous woodland walk through the beautiful bluebells, whilst singing the ancient songs of the English countryside... Hlude sing cuckoo!

Sumer is Icumen in. No need to rush to your spell checkers, or worry about the spelling skills of the younger (OK, older!) generation, this is Middle English, specifically the title of a medieval madrigal about the coming of summer, written at Reading Abbey in around 1260. It is believed to be the oldest song in the English language, the first “round” of its kind. Depending on your taste, you can see the manuscript in the British Library or you can see it featured in a number of films, including the cult 1973 horror film The Wickerman, when it is sung during the infamous human sacrifice scene at the end! But although clearly given a pagan overtone in that film, the lyrics are both sacred and secular and are about heralding in the summer with the song of the cuckoo.

More importantly you can see Timeline Choir performing “Sumer is Icumen In” amongst other medieval songs, at our next “gig” at the Abinger Medieval Fair on Saturday 13^th June (no human sacrifices allowed!). Come and join us!

So Summer is coming, but we are still in Spring, which happens to be my favourite season, and what heralds the fact it is late Spring to many of us, more than anything else? It’s the bluebells – of course it is! For 2-3 weeks at this time of year tens of thousands of us will visit woodlands from Scotland to Sussex to enjoy the spectacular wildflower display created by our English bluebells. Enjoying, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, “the blue buzzed haze and the wafts of intoxicant perfume” of Hyacinthoides non-scripta, to give the English bluebell it’s proper name!

Britain is the home of the bluebell, nearly half of the world’s bluebells are found here, mainly in our woodlands, but also in meadows and on cliff tops, and it is regularly voted as Britain’s favourite wild flower. It takes advantage of the brief window of opportunity in nature, the time between the warming of the soil and the closure of the woodland canopy. Seventy per cent of our bluebells are found in woodland and broadleaf forests and at this time of year, our now erratic climate willing, there will be a fantastic carpet of intense blue stretching out under the beech trees whose newly unfurled leaves, soft and light green, allow dappled sunlight to shine through creating something timeless and magical.

Wow, you see what it does to me, and this year the display of bluebells, along with most other Spring wildflowers, the primroses, red campion, violets, milk maid, wood anemones, celandines, and wild garlic (!)….has been amazing.

I have been out several times this year to see them, with friend and fellow soprano, Pilko, and what better place to enjoy a good walk and seeing bluebells in this area, than at Leith Hill. Which brings us neatly back to Timeline Choir again!

Leith Hill Place, former home of Ralph Vaughan Williams, now owned by the National Trust and open to the public, is where Stef Conner, our musical Director and all round musical genius, started doing singing workshops about 2 years ago, and then formed the Leith Hill Timeline Choir. The rest is history – so if you are interested in singing come along and join us, Tuesday nights at The Punchbowl, Okewood Hill where we rehearse.

I will leave you with some fact and folklore about bluebells (thanks to Woodland Trust and National Trust for these). Try and get to see them before they are gone for another year and Sumer is upon us.

• According to folklore, one who hears a bluebell ring will soon die. A field of bluebells is especially dangerous, as it is intricately interwoven with fairy enchantments
• Anyone who wears a bluebell is compelled to tell the truth
• In folklore the bluebell is considered to be the flower of the house goblin
• The bluebell is a symbol of constancy and is probably the origin of the ‘….something blue…’ that a bride should wear on her wedding day
• Bluebell bulbs were crushed to provide starch for the ruffs of Elizabethan collars and sleeves
• Bronze Age people used bluebell to set feathers upon arrows, known as fletching.
• Gummy bluebell sap was used to bind pages into the spines of books
• Bluebells are important early flowers for bees, hoverflies and butterflies which feed on the nectar
• the bulb has diuretic and styptic properties
• .All plant parts contain glycosides and are poisonous. The sap can cause contact dermatitis
• Because bluebells spread very slowly they’re considered to be an indicator of ancient woodland sites. Even if the trees are not very old, the fact there are bluebells around can indicate that there has been a wood on a site for a very long time. Even if there are no trees there at all, bluebells tell us that there was woodland there some time in the past.
• The bluebell is being studied for its medicinal qualities because it contains things called water-soluble alkaloids that could be useful in developing drugs to fight cancer

Image © Hilary Hinks

During rehearsals for Timeline Choir's performance of Sussex and Surrey folk songs (Sing a Song o' Sussex 2015), Carol Fisher found herself reflecting on the rather frequent references to beer, found not only in the folk songs we encountered, but also in Henry Burstow's memoirs, Reminiscences of Horsham, and Hilaire Belloc's Sussex-inspired songs and poems. Here she discusses Belloc's West Sussex Drinking Song and some of its more archaic terminology...

Beer & folk songs must always have been linked!

Where better to come together to sing, than in front of a roaring log fire, with one arm around the shoulder of your neighbour & the other carefully balancing a glass of the landlord’s finest? And what better drink than a beer to moisten the vocal chords and stiffen the reserve before launching into the first song of the evening? So it should be no surprise then , that, through the ages, many folk songs have celebrated the drinking of beer!

Hilaire Belloc, poet, politician and lover of the odd pub crawl, also wrote folk songs. And, in his West Sussex Drinking Song, having begun by asserting: ‘They sell good beer in Haslemere…’ he goes on, later in the song, to talk of ‘the swipes they take in at Washington Inn…’ For those unfamiliar with the term, the dictionary definition of ‘swipes’ is: “washy or turbid or otherwise inferior beer”. Other sources have dated the word, which is always written in the plural, as first appearing in the eighteenth century. As for its usage , an American visitor to London in 1869 wrote the following:

“Everybody drinks beer in London. You can see labourers and dockmen sitting outside of public houses, swilling what they call ‘swipes’, at two pence a pot.”

The stated price for ‘swipes’ should be set against his next para, which contains the following:

“A quart bottle of good beer or porter can be got anywhere for sixpence…a man may procure as much good beer as he can drink at a draught for three pence a pint…”

In another example, an Australian writer & ‘beer expert’, David Downie, says on his website australianbeers.com, that:  “Throughout the nineteenth century, colonial beer was variously called…’swipes’, ‘sheepwash’ [and other slang names]. He underpins his statement by quoting its usage in a poem called “The Brewer’s Lament”, dated 1857, where the writer complains about the impossibility, at that time, of brewing a decent beer in Australia.

But surely Hilaire Belloc didn’t mean to use the word pejoratively? Well certainly not, since his ‘swipes’ is described as “the very best beer I know”.

So, let’s just assume he was talking of beer of a strength that meant it could be drunk in volume, so that he could continue “singing the best song ever was sung” and which, best of all “ has a rousing chorus”…

 

West Sussex Drinking Song

By Hilaire Belloc

VERSE 1: They sell good Beer at Haslemere

And under Guildford Hill.

At Little Cowfold, as I’ve been told,

A beggar may drink his fill:

There is a good brew in Amberley too,

And by the bridge also;

But the swipes they take in at Washington Inn

Is the very best Beer I know, the very best Beer I know.

CHORUS: With my here it goes, there it goes,

All the fun’s before us;

The tipple’s aboard and the night is young,

The door’s ajar and the Barrel is sprung,

I am singing the best song ever was sung

And it has a rousing chorus.

VERSE 2: If I were what I never could be,

The master or the squire:

If you gave me the hundred from here to the sea,

Which is more than I desire:

Then all my crops should be barley and hops,

And should my harvest fail

I’d sell every rood of mine acres, I would,

For a bellyful of good Ale, a bellyful of good Ale.