The River Ock: Lyford Manor : 無料・フリー素材/写真
The River Ock: Lyford Manor / Giles Watson's poetry and prose
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
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| 説明 | JOINING CHARNEY BASSETT AND LYFORD 28Like The Man in the Moon from the Harley Lyrics, the foolish hedger has had to reinforce the hedge's natural defences, if not with stakes, then with barbed wire. The hedge has not been properly laid for decades, it is obvious, and gaps like this have opened up. I recite the Harley lyric:Wher he were o þe feld pycchynde stake For hope of ys þornes to dutten is doren He mot myd is twybyl oþer trous make Oþer al is dayes werk þer were ylorenOr, if Middle English daunts you:He’s there in the field, struggling with stakes,Hoping the thorns will close up the gapsHis twybill must chop and gather a bundleOr else, alas, his day’s work is lost.There is a strange bitterness to this view. It is not just the wounded state of the poor, ragged hedge. Last weekend, on the other side of the manor house, a rather snooty lady had stalked out of the church as we admired the manor, and implied that we were trespassing, although we were actually in the road. I have started to understand why John Clare's inherent conservatism was eroded by his observation of the true habits of the rich. They are never embarrassed to ask for money they think is due to them, and never chary of putting up a 'No Trespassers' sign where there never was one before. Perhaps this hedge was planted in response to the Enclosure Acts. If so, there is a painful irony here. Hedgerows like this are one of our richest havens for wildlife, and one of the greatest contributors to the beauty of the countryside. Once, for Clare, the newly planted hedge was a symbol of oppression and hypocrisy, dividing the land in random squares and rectangles, as drawn on the map from an office in London. Venerable old trees, like the beloved elm beside his house, were at the same time cut down to make the land more 'productive'. Now that the hedgerows have become one of our most important national assets, the rich, whose ancestors were perhaps amongst the few who benefited from Enclosure, fail to maintain them, hacking mercilessly at them with mechanical flails, ripping the bark in great, unsightly scars and splinters, and when the hedges grow straggling as a result, covering the gaps with barbed wire. And then one day, the landowner gets a bright idea: bulldoze the hedge out of existence altogether, so that it needs no maintenance at all, and replace it entirely with barbed wire. Or alternatively, leave a great open expanse so that the combine harvester doesn't have to make too many turnings, plant the whole lot with genetically modified oil seed rape, and claim a government grant for producing biofuel. My eyes are blind with anger, as Clare's must have been as he wrote his elegy for the fallen elm:"Self interest saw thee stand in freedom's waysSo thy old shadow must a tyrant be.Thou'st heard the knave, abusing those in powerBawl freedom loud and then oppress the free.Thou'st sheltered hypocrites in many a showerThat when in power would never shelter thee."For a cumulative photo essay, see the 'River Ock' set on my photostream. |
| 撮影日 | 2009-01-25 09:52:42 |
| 撮影者 | Giles Watson's poetry and prose , Oxfordshire, England |
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| カメラ | E8700 , NIKON |
| 露出 | 0.015 sec (1/68) |
| 開放F値 | f/5.0 |
| 焦点距離 | 9 mm |