An extract from Sea Change: The sun struggled up over the horizon, blocked by trees casting long dark shadows over a landscape of sparkling white. Presently they came on a weird circle of jet black sculptures erupting from ice. Almost immediately, Simeon deciphered these strange shapes as the remains of an ancient tree in the last stages of decay. And what a tree! Its diameter must have been in excess of two or three prostrate men end to end, and a girth of a dozen children, arms outstretched, hand to hand. He looked up to gauge the probable height of this once living entity when Mab’s smile caught his eye. ‘Wow! Think of all the creatures which must have lived in that massive tree.’ ‘Generations of them,’ she breathed in awed whisper. ‘A living entity; a verdant myriad of limbs forming the leafy world of an ancient yew.’ ‘Older than the Old Manor House?’ ‘Much older. This venerable yew was reputed to be 2000 years old 200 years ago when it housed a family of charcoal burners.’ Mab spent the next ten minutes explaining how the aged and hollowed gigantic tree trunk accommodated Luke and Betty Kenny. Their eight children where somehow sheltered in turf-roofed sheds wedged into the vast system of branches, main branches and sub branches of that colossal tree. The author admitted an element of legend to this extraordinary history, the subject of her current book. ‘Charcoal! But what good is burnt wood?’ ‘I draw with it. And a blacksmith needs a fire of intense heat in his forge … and it’s necessary to make gunpowder.’ Mab was more interested in the social history associated with this improbable Kenny domicile. Had Simeon heard of the nursery rhyme Rock-a-bye Baby? Yes - and he recited – Rock-a-bye baby In the tree top When the wind blows The cradle will rock When the bough breaks The cradle will fall And down will come baby Cradle and all She said these lyrics were composed, as it were, on the hoof, by Betty softly crooning to her baby reposing in a cradle fashioned from a hollowed-out branch. Presumably, ‘cradle and all’ was suspended by ropes attached to one of the yew tree boughs. ‘And what about that poor child? Did it fall?’ asked a horrified Simeon. ‘Some things we can never know for sure,’ smiled Mab.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:59:55 +0000
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