Pound Cottage

Around Pound Cottage you will find evidence of the inspiration Glynne Hughes gained from his rural retreat.  And down in Askrigg in the King’s Arms, is a sign written version of his poem August Dales which he first wrote on the blackboards behind the bar in the late 60s.

My Dale

From The Earth and The Rainbow (1973)

Whenever I see, through a gap in the trees, the road rearing

Far up and away to the back of the moor and beyond,

There is never a wish to leave what I find so endearing,

There is never a thought to be free of my dale and our bond.

For here is my home in the best and the worst of the weather;

Here, here are my kin who accept me for naught that I own;

And, here in the valley or high with the grouse and the heather,

I give back the love that my ancestors bred in my bone.

Lost Village of Semer

First published in Hannah in Yorkshire

Away from the Wolves, away from the boar,

Far out in the lake they built.

Where the piles would knock on the limestone rock,

deep under the glacial silt;

And they joined the piles with primeval trees,

Criss-crossed with the swathes of straws,

And their walls were turves and their roofs were ling,

And they had no fear what the night would bring,

When watch-fires guarded the doors.

They hunted the deer with a flint-tipped spear-

The fish that fed in the stream-

And their bows were bent and their shafts were spent

On shores where the wild-fowl teem.

The vilage of Semer was rough and tough

And never a King’s fair court,

But for many a year it served them where,

Through the summer’s hope and the winter’s care,

Men lived as survival taught.

Yet many a time the tale has been told

Of the saint who begged in vain

And who cursed the village and all it held

And vowed it should not remain:

He was foot-sore, weary, hungered, athirst,

Till a herdsman’s hut he spied,

Where they gave him food and they gave him ale

And he bade them flee to the higher dale

Before the avenging tide.

For that night the clouds crept down on the crag;

The lake rose up in the gloom;

The sinners asleep were drowned in the deep

And washed to a watery doom.

Then the piles soon rotted and fell apart;

The floods rolled over the dead;

Till the grew-goose landed upon the waves

And the fishes swam through the architraves

That sank in the lakeshore bed.

So, though there is nothing you can see,

From this legend you will know

How the devil laughed when he claimed his own,

As he sat in glee on the Carlow stone,

Where his burning footprints show.

You will find no ruin of tower or bower;

No church-bell tolls in the swell;

But the curlew’s sob and the peewit’s cry,

The shadows that pass and the winds that sign

Speak Semer’s long farewell.

11/66

Dog roses have climbed onto the roof of

My coalhouse, joining the sprawling ivy

That waves in the wild west wind of hidden

Interest.

Pinkly against the steel-grey clouds

And framed by my window,

They have replaced

The yellow jasmine of my winter picture.

11/7/70

If you listen to the voices

From the dim and distant past,

There are no uncertain choices

Only truth is like to last.

Listen carefully my brothers!

Do not miss a single line!

Each, important as the others,

Formed a part of Fate’s Design.

Then and now and long hereafter,

Splendid in their mature prime

Those in sorrow or in laughter

Who survive the test of time.

Take the words and shape the story

Fashion it as once it breathed!

Recreate the living glory

Of the dead, with laurel wreathed.

28/3/67

Compensation

I asked her to that earliest room,

Intending to recapture

That prime genetic motive force,

That first fine careless rapture.

The bed was small, the place was bare,

Yet once, in simple fashion,

It served to satisfy the needs

Of elemental passion.

But now my lady tossed her head

And, to the best room turning,

Made mock of my nostalgic whim

And nonsense of my yearning.

For, though disdainfully she cried,

“Give me sophistication,”

She gave me more than e’r before –

And it was compensation.

13/5/68

The Willow Pattern Legend

Mandarin with daughter one

Woke to find his daughter gone;

Cjang and Li-Chi, well afloat,

Had escaped in little boat.

Willow-tree with apples o’er;

Three men passing, may be more;

Angry father, whip in hand,

Not prepared to understand,

Followed by, for Chang, the knife,

Li-Chi ball and chain for life.

Gods in mercy turned the loves

Into two sweet turtle-doves.

29/3/1977

The blue and white willow pattern crockery was introduced into England by Thomas Turner of Caughley, Salop, c1780. The Chinese legend on which it was based is here re-constructed.

Glynne Ivor Hughes