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| AF Cookbook: Cover Competition |
AF COOKBOOK: Cover Competition
Ok folks we are going to have ourselves a little contest here!
We need a cover for the Cookbook so we would like for you to take pictures of any recipes you have cooked and have submitted for the book or even just pictures of foods or vegetables fruits etc. The picture must be something colourful (not just a picture of a bowl of fruit please), the winner will be given a Free copy of the Cookbook and be given all honors for picture etc in the book itself.
Photos MUST be submitted by November 1st we are on a deadline woohoo so everyone get your camera out and start shooting pictures of food, drink, a bottle of wine and while your at it have a bit yourself... |
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Posted by Beirn Wednesday, October 14, 2009 (16:41:17) |
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Happy Birthday to our beloved Queen of the Celts - Beirn - Have a Wonderful day and year ahead!
So on behalf of all the staff and all at AnFianna
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
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Posted by NS Thursday, November 08, 2007 (13:24:33) |
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| To our one and only Queen of the North |
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Posted by NS Saturday, October 27, 2007 (21:38:22) |
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Many great kudos to Cleiteag for this!
Available now, the AF calendar
www.lulu.com/content/567017
Due to the server crash its a little later than we had hoped, but we hope it'll still be a source of enjoyment to all of our members!
Created from AF member photographs, winners of the monthly photograph context and including Celtwitch's overall winning entry "September"
Some photos have been rendered in "art" form (like paintings) and others in photographic (original) look
Containing notes through out the year on Irish, UK, USA and Celestial (astronomoical) dates.
only £9.95
AND
These beautiful images will be available on a range of other products as well!
As ever any monies raised go to keep AF on air
Any enjoyment you recieve form this calendar is due to Cleiteag's hard work and our talented and generous members! |
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Posted by Beirn Thursday, February 08, 2007 (15:52:42) |
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As most of our members know, in 2005 our very own and very wonderful Cleiteag came to us with her Calendar idea, and not only thought it up but has spent well over a year working so hard on it!
It's nearly ready - the bloody server crash delayed it - and I know lots of you are looking forward to it! I'm just waiting for the proof copy and then we'll launch it  it's a lovely collection of great photos by everyone who contributed, and massive congrats to Celtwitch for her winning photo.
We did have other things in the pipeline, but some were nicked and others fell by the wayside as these things do. HOWEVER our Genius Editor (ie Cleiteag) has come up with some impressive new ideas, coming soon for your delectation! plus our very own Starchild has some great ideas for the PPP as well.
So hang on, it's coming soon - and in the meantime, once again, thanks to Cleiteag for over 14 months of work on this, and for having such an excellent idea in the first place, not to mention organising our monthly photo comps etc...Hard hard work, and we're impressed and grateful! |
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| THE SAMHAIN STORY COMPETITION WINNER!!!! |
Created By Prosperos Daughter, CONGRATULATIONS TO A WORTHY WINNER!
These were the hounds that could find him
“Now, the next fox being old, and his trials past a-dawning
He's made straight away for the river
The fox he has jumped in, and an hound jumped after him
It was Traveller, a-striding on for ever….��?
First up, I am not the sort of person who sees ghosts. I wouldn’t like you to think that.
I saw what I saw. And I wasn’t the only person to see it. I was the only one to come out alive, is all.
Folk think the horror started on the river, in the fog and the black water, that twi-lit Christmas night, 1836. You will have read about it in the paper. None are left alive, anyway, save me, to talk of what we saw the night before the Fleet village band died on the dark river, as they crossed back home to the Fleet side, after mumming and playing round the outlying farms. Not a living soul knows about it. What we saw at the crossroads, hard by the Plantation. That thing. If I spoke of it, I would end up in the county asylum; none would believe it anyway.
Horror enough, what happened the night after we saw it; when all perished, save me and I‘m staying mute as the grave... I still dream of it, sometimes - those eleven souls drowning, yards and inches away from me. I do not like to think of the hand - a man’s - that reached for me blindly, when the boat was upset and we were in the water. I saw not whose it was, as I swam away fast. For he would have sunk me. I hate myself for it and yet I must own that it was pure, visceral instinct that drove me to get to the side, at any cost. I’ve often asked myself since, were that hand Jo’s , that hand whose icy fingers almost closed tight on my own - would I have tried to save him?
I shall tell you where it started. It started not on the river, but on the road. They call it Enclosure Lane, and it runs between Fleet and Acaster, cutting straight like a knife through butter, between the flax fields of Fleet Home Farm and that little meadow. It runs straight from the river landing to Wheel Hall and Wheel Farm - a familiar enough road, we took it every year. That’s where the trouble began. When we saw that unholy thing that we made an oath never to speak of to a living soul. That oath was an irrelevance - as within another 24 hours, all the Fleet mummers and band players lay dead, save myself.
I’ll tell you summat else about that spot. It was a place where bad things happen. In the meadow behind Home Farm, old Job Munby walked out one sunny spring morning - a few years back, this - and shot hisself in the head. For no reason anyone knew. There were tales about that place, to do with a dead gypsy lass, died for love they said, buried at the crossroads at the bottom there, where the beck goes under the road. I reckoned they telled it like that to keep folk away - that story had suited the Munbys, who owned the meadow and the stream, and happen they wanted to keep children away from it. I also heard tell of stories of this skriking noise; like a keening, piercing, yelling racket that strikes up from that very lonely spot, when there’s a storm coming. It’s not a place I'd linger or even go alone, after dark. Safety in numbers, though. Fleet band numbered thirteen - both players and mummers. We had clarinet, bas viol, French horns... and not least, my fiddle. The men amongst the church singers were also the mummers. Their names is a roll call of the dead, now. Spivey, Lofthouse, Thompson, the two Armstrong brothers, Crowshaw, Jennings, Backhouse, Appleyard, Ledger, Atak... and Jo Lambert.
I am Chris Hemingway, I should tell you. 'Christopher', I was named, although none ever called me that. I was 26 years of age, when this happened. If I looked in the glass, I found this staring back at me; a not too unpleasant countenance, with a slightly too-wide mouth, happen, and somewhat pockmarked from where I had a sickness, in childhood. But nothing too alarming. My hair was, before it happened, a dark, red-brown, not unpleasing to the ladies. Although it went snow white, after. It was said I had hearts fluttering all round the parish and yet I know that was more likely the fact that wherever I went, I brought Jo Lambert. Jo had enough finesse and charisma for us both. I doubt any lady would look at me, now. And none shall ever look upon his face, ever again.
My father was the master wheelwright of Fleet parish and I had just done with my apprenticeship and was wheelwright with him. I was tolerably well educated at the National School in the village. Which is how I keep this diary, for I am lucky I can write. Many lads of my station in life have no need of book learning, but my father always was determined I would make something of myself, and for some years, it appeared that his hopes might be met with success.
From a young age, I played the violin and these past few years, have played for the church singers and also village dances for miles around. I played in Fleet band. As a musician, I know enough to know I’m little more than competent. I could play with brilliance and rapidity maybe once a year, when the spirit moved me - most of the time, that eluded me. But none played better in Fleet. Of course, I shake too much to play, these days. All the old songs make me think of my dearest friend, besides - and what used to delight me now makes me shudder. Or sick to the heart with bad memories
It is an odd thing for a church singer to admit, but I do not believe in the church's god, nor do I think anyone rational could. There are stranger and older things abroad in the woods and fields - you’d be a fool to think otherwise. Still, I sit in the pew of a Sunday as it is good for business to be seen and to be seen to be respectable, my father says. And as business thrives, he may be right. I was always happier playing for the mummers, than for the church band, though.
Each year, we did the rounds off the outlying farms, and the gentry’s houses, come Christmas. I’ve played in all of them, and taken it in too, how them folk live. We had a grand time of it, mumming round the farms and big houses, as there was food and drink for all when the playing was done with and it was some time away from everyday cares. Besides, it was good to see the ladies dancing with ribands flying, and the little dogs yapping at their feet, and the spangles and glitter of the mummers’ costumes, and the smell of mincemeat and plum puddings and everyone in holiday mood. Despite my lack of religion, I looked forward to it. The money we raised, went to the parish poor. The Reverend Gillyflower had a private fortune, besides his stipend from the church, and a tithe from almost every farm in the parish. And yet it was us, the singers and mummers, who raised a few bob, whilst he rode to hounds or pursued 'the Lord's' work by visiting wealthy ladies of the parish. We singers were mainly farmers of the middling sort, with tenancies on the smaller farms, maybe the odd parcel of land. There was a shoemaker amongst our number, and a fisherman, John Lofthouse who was also the church warden and took charge of us all. And myself, a wheelwright.
We players and musicians walked the lanes between farms and houses, lacking the money to hire a couple of gigs or farm carts even; and we used John Lofthouse‘s little rowing boat to cross from Fleet to Acaster, then back again. . That last Christmas week, it was dusk before five o’clock, but a full moon. The river was deep and the currents powerful, in consequence. I kept my fiddle strapped tight to my back, and took one of the oars when we were on the river. It was shocking cold - your breath stung in your nose, and so cold. This was my fifth year of playing for the mummers. I had started when I was twenty one. We went out three nights running - christmas eve, christmas day and boxing day. The money we raised went a long way for the parish poor and the gods know I never begrudged the buggers any of it.
We must have been an odd sight, walking the lanes at dusk, with the mumming costumes and the musical instruments and suchlike, all spangled and be-ribonned. It is said now that they still walk there, some full moon nights. I would not know for I left Fleet, after it happened. I cannot bear to think of dear Jo walking those lanes, his lips white, the stink of the river on him.
Things went well on the first night. We had crossed to Acaster, and visited Acaster Hall and then done Home Farm. The church singers made a fair attempt at 'The Holly and the Ivy', and the band fought valiantly with 'Tam Lin' and won, although the playing of an obscure piece we'd only got the music to before we set out, resembled a race and I think the bas viol won it. Best of all, when Jo laid aside the clarinet and sang the old hunting song:
“And there was Dido, Bendigo, Gentry he was there-o
Traveller, he never looked behind him
And there was Countess, Rover, Bonny Lass and Jove
These were the hounds that could find him!��?
Still there was dancing, and bright delft plates heaped with sugared plums and glistening almonds were passed round, and the music and the daft mummers' play went down well. We had some ale and porter between us but it really was very little, and not a one of us was anything more than what you’d call ‘market day merry’ when we left Wheel Farm. My particular friend, Jonas Lambert, played the clarinet. I still remember it hovering high, almost cut off from the other instruments, perfect and faultless. Jo was one of the three whose bodies were never found. He so hated the river and I hate to think of him in it. Maybe washed the thirty miles down to the sea, by now. I used to comfort him and distract him when we were in that little boat, making him laugh with my antics, to take his mind off the black, treacherous Ouse, beneath the creaking boards at our feet. Still later, I taught him how to row so that would take his mind off being in a boat. He hated the river so much! Did I mention, the boat was Lofthouse's; he used it to ply his trade up and down the river in the salmon season. We knew nothing of boats, Jo and I, but as so many of the others were getting on in years, we decided to row back and forth for them. At the inquest, I was asked why we had not gone the two miles to Harwood, and paid the ferry to cross. Those two miles - or rather, the avoidance of them - cost twelve lives.
That first night, we had to cross the river back to Fleet and do one last place, at Moreborough, before we parted company for the evening and retired to our respective beds. The Enclosure Lane was one very long, very straight stretch of road, which would take us down to the landing where the boat was moored. It had but one bend in it, almost dead centre; so it was impossible to see the entire length of the lane, in both directions, unless you stood in the crook of this bend. At this same point, there was a sort of crossroads as a farm track bisected the Lane, and a brook ran under the road also, at this point.
We were already weary from playing, and singing and larking about, before we ever stepped foot on that lane, but we stepped out with a measure of high spirits, whistling the old hunting song ‘Dido, Bendigo’ and laughing at the sheer hubris of Jo, who danced along with his worn old hat slouched over one eye, his coat tails flying. As I had said before, it was a full moon night, and so the flat fields were almost as lit up as in broad daylight. Enclosure Lane had low thorn hedges, which were punctuated its whole length by massive oaks, and crack willows and some younger service trees and alders, so we passed from light to dark shade, as the thirteen of us progressed along the long, grey Lane, lugging our instruments, the actors still half dressed as dragons, horses, knights, and suchlike.
‘Miss Varley looked uncommonly enchanting tonight, you must own, Chris.’ Jo said, trying to make me rise to the bait, as ever.
‘Did she? I didn’t notice.’
‘Too busy sawing away at the violin, to open your eyes, I’ll bet.’
He nudged me and fixed me with that comical look of his, that look I will never forget and yet cannot find the words to convey adequately, here.
‘I don’t ‘saw’, I tease the music out from the fiddle.’
I had known Jo ever since I could know anyone or anything. We had gone everywhere together, done everything together, from the earliest time I can remember. When he took up the clarinet, I took up the fiddle. When I fell in love with Miss Varley; he fell in love with the younger sister, Rosa. He had the next desk to me at the National School, and I assumed we'd live out our entire threescore and ten pretty much side by side. I was the solemn, more timid one. Jo was the clown, in any company - the louder one.
We were the youngest of the band, most of them being men in their forties and fifties, one or two older… and had already outstripped the others, by a small distance. I looked back at the older men. They would never have made that extra two miles to Harwood, I remember thinking.
‘I hear Acaster’s getting a church organ. Like Moreborough, and Kelby and everywhere besides. It’ll be Fleet next, Chris, and this might be the last year we ever do this. You thought on that? No need for a village band, with an organ. Kelby lot disbanded, at Michaelmas.’
‘So long as I still play the dances, I can’t say I’m overly bothered, either way, Jo. So long as I get to play somewhere, I can’t say I care where. I could live without ‘sawing’ my way through “God Moves In Mysterious Ways His Wonders To Perform��?, in any case…��?
‘Me and all but mind you don’t say owt to old Lofthouse. Still, it’s passing strange to think this may be last time we ever do this, eh?’
‘Ay, Jo, don’t talk of it. Anyway it might never happen. We’ll be walking down here at night this time next year, this time in ten years’ time, I know it.’
Then Jo laid his hand on my arm, and stood stock still, dragging me to a halt, with him.
‘Hear that?’
Something ahead of us.A sound like a chain dragging along gravel, somewhere along the side of the beck, just out of view.
Now it was a clear night, not foggy like the following night was to be. Unusual to have a clear night on the Vale of York, that time of year. Which is why I remember it was so well. This is the foggiest place in England, come winter. It’s not uncommon to have whole weeks pass by where the fog barely lifts, all day and all night as the land is so low lying, and as we were so hard by the river.
Again. And once more, I heard it; the sound of something metal (a chain?) dragging along a hard surface. Then... a strange sort of rumble, and then some very distant sounding barks, like the baying of hounds, in a hunt. Similar, but not quite that, and also at a distance it was impossible to calculate although the night had been silent, and the air still.
‘What the fucking hell is that?’ Jo said, his hand now gripping my arm so tight I felt it through my heavy sur-coat. I also felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
‘Jesus, Chris, what…?’
And there before us, right across the lane, ran a whole seething mass of small, black, shadowy shapes, that were too indistinct to identify as hounds, and yet surely, must have been.
‘Wild hunt.’ I said, quietly. For I knew the old stories better than most. And I knew Tam Lin backwards. But the wild hunt? I might have said it but I didn’t believe it, in my heart, for a second.
The hideous black shapes teemed across the road, in a seemingly endless jumble of baying, skriking shadows, crossing ahead of us but seeming to be insensible of us. They poured black as treacle across the narrow lane, just after its one bend, and at the point where another farm track crossed, and the beck ran under the road. Just hidden from view of the rest of the Fleet band. The others were gaining on us, but still at a small distance, and only Jo and I saw this shocking sight.
‘Hunt? It’s close on midnight!’
‘No earthly hunt.’
‘I’ll be damned!’
‘No riders, either, Jo. Look! Just them…. dogs.’
'If them's dogs I sure as fucking hell don't want to see the riders...'
And just then, as the rest of the Fleet band caught up with us, the final shadowy shape flitted into the hedgerow, insubstantial as vapour.
‘What’s up lads? Seen a ghost?’ This was Lofthouse, the church warden.
‘Din’t you hear owt, Mr Lofthouse?’ Jo asked.
‘Hear what? You lads pissed? How can that be, when you drink like a pair of ladies at the vicar's tea party?’ Lofthouse had always disliked me. Hated Jo.
I looked to Jo, and something in his _expression told me to say nothing; and then back to the rest of the band. As I did so, the look on their faces changed from good humoured to something quite different. Slowly, I turned and that is when I saw what I saw.
The skriking of the other ‘hounds’ was gone, evaporated into an uncanny silence. And as the last one had melted into the hedgerow, - what we’d taken to be the last one - this final creature materialised, in the dead centre of the lane, only yards ahead of us. Just as they had seemed intent on the chase, this creature seemed intent on us. And just as they were small, insubstantial as shadows, less than shadows even; this thing was solid, and real as Wednesday morning. Twice as real.
It was a massive black dog, large as a calf. Its eyes burned red, the size of the delft saucers we’d been served cakes on earlier, at Wheel Farm. But when you examined the eyes more closely, they had rings of blue and white, around the red pupils. As it stared us down, it slavered and panted and the stink of its breath, a smell like a corpse that’s been weeks in the river, enveloped us all. It was utterly black, the black that you get when you close your eyes, the black that is nothingness, deeper than optical black. And there it stood, panting from the chase, but now stock still, its quarry in its sights, hackles up and tail low. Its eyes firmly fixed - I was convinced of this point, too - not on the band as a whole but specifically, Jo and myself, as we had gone ahead of them. Somehow, it was all our fault. We had disturbed it. It had the look of a dog guarding a threshold. The sort of dog that wanted to rip out your throat. Only I never saw a dog that size in my life.
I felt my blood freeze in my veins. Every fibre of my body was screaming ‘run!’ and yet I couldn’t galvanise myself into action.
Then the sound, a metallic dragging as the creature prepared to pounce, and we saw it bound by a chain, a dull, rusty chain of interminable length, and then it started. The heart-bustingly loud shrieking, skriking sound as the dog opened its jaws wide and…
‘Jump in ‘ ditch, the fucker can’t cross water!’ I yelled, but hardly knowing how to do it myself, Jo took the initiative, and half hauled me sideways down the steep bank and over the brook. It had been on the road, just the nearside of where the water ran, underground, beneath its… not paws. That was it. The thing’s feet. Were webbed.
‘Now’s no time for gawping, lads, just jump and run!’ Jo yelled, and somehow the motley thirteen, mummers and musicians, all leapt after us, then we ran away down the lane, Jo stopping to piggy back old Peter Spivey who could barely hobble along, let alone run. I turned once, and saw the bargest explode in white flames, which died to a blue flicker, at the same instant there was the loudest crack of thunder over our heads, I ever heard. The rest of them ran without stopping to look behind, and I slowed my pace to accomodate Jo and old Spivey - but all the time we were followed by that hideous, keening and skriking sound. Only when we had an acre between us and it, did the vile stench from its jaws start to fade, although the heavens opened and torrents of freezing cold rain lashed down on us, whilst the thunder shook and lightning found the trees' naked fingers all around us.
I swear, every single tree we passed was struck with lightning, one after the other. The old crack willows were the worst. I can't account for how any of us got out unscathed - and yet we did. For now.
We only stopped running when we’d gained the river landing, even the most elderly amongst us; and we only spoke coherently when we had rowed across, and were climbing out the Fleet side, with not only a thin brook but the whole wide expanse of the Ouse between us and the black dog. As we re-convened, still breathless, hearts hammering in our chests and all shaking, we started to try to make sense of what we had seen on Enclosure Lane.
‘What in the Lord’s name was that?’
‘The Lord has nowt to do wi’ it.’ One of the older ones, probably Will Armstrong, said.
‘Aye, that’s the devil’s work.’ This was Dan Atak. He would be first to die, on the morrow. His body was fished out by a passerby, whilst the others were still flailing in the waters.
‘Don’t talk cant, man, it was nowt but a Newfoundland dog. They must have just got one up at Home Farm, is all.’
‘Wa’n’t like any Newfoundland I ever saw.’ Thompson said.
‘Me, neither.’ A few others chimed in.
'Bargest.' I said.
'You what, Chris Hemingway?'
'I've read of them. That was a bargest. Black dog, appears in certain places. Portent of death.'
'You're living proof too much reading sends a lad soft in ' head.' Said Lofthouse.
'No, he in't. I've heard of it, and all...' Said Thompson. 'My uncle Ferris, poacher, told us he saw a bargest once, t'other side on this meadow... I thought it were just tales told round hearth of a winter's neet, never gave it much credence...'
'Most folk that say they've seen summat like, seen it on their way back home from Jolly Sailor, or Grey Horse, is what I think.'
'That's as I used to think, too.' Said Thompson.
'But we know we're not in our cups, are we lads? So how d'you explain that, then?' This was old Spivey. After Lofthouse, he commanded the most respect.
'You two young uns were closest. What did you see?' Asked Thompson.
I looked at Jo and he looked at me. I nudged him to take the initiative. Whatever he said, I'd agree with.
'We just saw the big black dog, baring its teeth at us.'
'Nowt else?'
Jo shrugged.
‘This is what we're doing. We have to make a vow, whilst we’re all here together, now, before anyone comes by… not to speak of that… that abomination to anyone, so long as we all live…’ John Lofthouse said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because we were out raising brass for ’ church, well poor relief by ’ church, which amounts to same thing. What’d vicar say ?’
‘He’d reckon we were pissed when we were on church business, is why we better shut up.’ Said another of them, the bas viol, I think, Tommy Thompson.
‘I don’t care if I never speak or think of that thing again in my life. What say the rest of thee?’
There were nods, and words of assent. Jo and I stood silent.
‘Let’s never speak of that, then.’ Lofthouse concluded.
‘You young lads agreed? Chris Hemingway? Jo Lambert?’
‘Aye.’ We both said, both wondering what we’d conjured up and hoping by never mentioning it again, it might disappear forever, from our minds.
‘You young lads see old Peter home. Same time tomorrow. Only we’ll take the long way to Acaster, let’s avoid Enclosure Lane, right? And think on, least said soonest mended.’
‘Wouldn’t get me back down there in a month of Sundays.’ Someone said. I was thinking the same.
We went our respective ways. Jo, to his farm and me to my home; not without some talk between ourselves about the bargest. For I had no doubt that was what we had seen. It meant death for someone, that I knew. A portent. Not for me, not for Jo, I thought.We were too young. And yet it had been looking straight at us two; its eyes burning into ours, no-one else’s.
Christmas Day came with a thin coating of snow, skinned by hard frost, and the dreaded three services in the cold, miserable church. I played the violin in fingerless gloves, against the cold and all the while, wishing I was home before the fire. The night before’s storm had abated and at some point in the depths of night, the weather had changed to snow, and so we stood in the narrow stall where we played in the church orchestra, none of us daring to meet the eyes of anyone else, in case we saw reflected back at us, the shock and terror of the night before, on Enclosure Lane.
Jo had greeted me with an ironic bow, and I swiped his hat from his head, before Lofthouse spotted he was wearing it in the house of god. And I though ruefully of all the days of our childhood, and that time Jo and I had built that temple to Pan deep in the woods, after I read about it in some book, and I thought how happy and free we had once been. And I passed the time between services by carefully not trying to talk about the bargest, or anything like.
We took tea at the vicarage that day, as every Christmas day; it was how the Reverend Gillyflower thanked us for our mumming and playing, and I wondered how he didn’t noticed how unusually silent and subdued the Fleet band were, that grim, Last Supper. Maybe he put it down to them knowing what was coming. It was when the infintily small measures of brandy were flowing (‘Not too much, mind, gentlemen, as you will be foraying out again, for one last time round the parish, this evening!’), at the end of the meal, he chose to confide that he had decided to raise a subscription to buy a church organ, and he had reason to believe there was every prospect of success, for this venture. In short, that the band would be redundant, soon enough. Only Jo and I took that with equanimity.
Our tradition was to sing one rousing song for the Reverend, before we set out. In my case play the accompaniment, as I was the only fiddle and everyone else sang. I found the key for them and they at once dived into' Dido, Bendigo' (the Reverend was a keen hunting man), and I took it at a rattling con brio, so we could be out and off as I was suddenly conscious of the fact we’d be walking the long way round, when the river was crossed - and the same on the way back. None would venture back onto Enclosure Lane, even if they’d been in a packed mail coach let alone on foot, by night.
And so we passed from Fleet to Acaster, where we only had the one farm left to do. Still, no-one spoke a word of the night before, although I believe we all shot more than a few nervous glances North, in the direction of Enclosure Lane, which ran off at a tangent from the farm. Not one of us would set foot on that road, even if it was the most direct route back to the landing. Instead, when we took our leave, by a sort of tacit consent, we simply doubled back towards Acaster village itself, a circuitous way of going about things, but the only alternative way there was. The company was sober, and silent, and with none of the usual antics which enlivened the walks down to the river. Even Jo was sombre, his battered top hat set squarely on his head, not at the old, rakish angle, and although he walked beside me, as ever, we barely exchanged a word. I felt that with the others in earshot, we couldn’t talk about the one thing we wanted to - so conversation was pointless.
Finally, tired from the extra mile’s walk, we found the river bank and the treacherous, muddy, icy landing.
‘Well lads, I’ve been coming out here since the 1780s. But this looks to be the last Fleet parish mumming. And after last night, I’m glad to be shot on it.’ Said old Spivey.
‘Let’s not have any talk of it, however indirect.’ Said Lofthouse.
'It's no bad thing we're all going to be replaced, and this is coming to an end. I won't want to be venturing out at night next christmas, that's for sure!' Said Thompson, and they all agreed with him. They were already getting used to the thought the singers would soon be no more.
We climbed in the boat, slowly and steadily, struggling a bit with the slipperiness of the floor and the mucky bank. Although we were no boatmen, as ever, Jo and I took an oar each, as the youngest and hailest pair there. That old fishing bark was a crank vessel; barely river worthy, they said at the inquest. And it should not have held thirteen. But thirteen it held that night as we skulled, painfully slowly because our hands were frozen and numb with the cold, out into the middle of the water. Where the waters run deepest, and the tide at that stage of the moon, treacherous. Of all on board, only Lofthouse made his living on the river. And he, like many a sailor, could not swim a stroke. Why he took not an oar, I can’t say. What happened next, or precisely why the little boat capsized, I also cannot say.
Jo and I had got it out midway, when it happened.
At first, all I heard was a clanking, jarring sound. The sound of metal on metal.
I looked across to Jo. I could see every line of his dear face, perfectly well, for the moon was so gravid. And he stared back at me. Neither of us dare say a word, but there it was again. Almost imperceptible, the clink, clink, of the links of a heavy chain, slowly starting to go taut and move against something… Maybe a coal barge, I thought.
And we were fighting the current, and the cold, and for some unaccountable reason, our small boat began to spin, like a dead leaf on the river's surface, or a skittish horse - maybe hitting one of those under-draughts, in this the fastest stretch of the Ouse. It could not be helped.
As we fought the small boat under some control, we heard it. First, at such a distance that I thought it was in my own imagination, and kept my counsel about it. Then nearer, and louder. The baying of hounds; their breath mingled in the wreaths of fog just cannoning up from the waters’ edge, somewhere on the Fleet bank.
‘Turn back, for fuck’s sake, Chris! They’re on the Fleet bank!’
‘You sure, fellow? Sounds like behind us, the Acaster landing side, to me…’
‘Chrissy, it’s Fleet, I tell you… Turn it arse around…’
‘It crossed the river, Jo! How did it do that? They can't cross water!’
'Books aren't always right about everything, Chris Hemingway.' One of them said.
The racket the dogs were making! Why didn' all of Fleet hear it and come running?
Then the confusion, and everyone shouting at once and someone (Lofthouse?) taking to his feet suddenly, as if to rest control from us useless, younger men, and the boat lurching and… the sound of the hunt faded. The last thing I saw, from the boat, was the coal black dog, stood big as a month old calf, precisely at Fleet Landing. Its eyes shone out red as hot coals, and the terrible stink was all around us, as if rising from the water with the clammy fog.
As I hit the water, the sound of the black dog, then in the chaos and the dark and the terror as, one by one, remarkably quickly, the voices of the Fleet band were extinguished, like so many cheap, tallow candles, by the icy black Ouse. You’d be surprised how fast folk die in the water.
I do not know how but I held on to the oar, and was pulled out alive, half a mile downriver.
They never found Jo. Or Crowshaw, the fine baritone. Or old Peter Spivey. I, alone, came out of the water, the screams and the unearthly skriking of the black dog still ringing in my ears.
I let the river carry me, turning me over and over as a curious child would an interesting pebble, in its palm. I let it carry me as far as possible. A few more minutes, though, and I'd have been dead from the bitter cold.
In the dark, in the water, you don’t know which way is up. I was too sore pressed fighting for my life to think of Jo. But then there was a thick fog lying on top of the water. I couldn't have seen him. I hope he died quick.
The inquest took place at 'The Grey Horse', in the village, hours after the last body they could recover, was hauled out and laid out on the Armstrong’s kitchen table. Jo, Crowshaw and old Mr Spivey were presumed dead. They called me to the inquest as the only material witness, but all I said was that there was some unaccountable panic, in the boat; and in the dark, fog, and in the confusion that followed, the boat overturned and all perished. None thought to ask me what occasioned the panic, and I did the gentlemanly thing and did not name Lofthouse. Needless to say, the dogs wre not mentioned, either. The passerby who tried to pull Atak out, seemed to vanish with the fog.
Jo’s clarinet case fetched up on the Acaster side, his battered old hat at Harwood, two miles from home. ’
The Fleet Disaster’ was in all the papers and over a thousand people came from all over England to witness the funeral; so many that lads were posted at the church doors to keep the whole throng out, and many of them stood in the church yard; if unable to hear the service, at least to witness the eleven coffins to go in the ground. They buried them in threes. The final two to go in were Lofthouse and Atak.
I took my fiddle to the service and I started to play ‘The Lord Moves in Mysterious Ways’:
God moves in a mysterious way –
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
only I got heart sick of it, and walked out somewhere in the first chorus. The singing continued without me, rising to a swell, as I walked away from Fleet, my fiddle on my back, three guineas in my pocket, and no idea where I was going.
So long as I keep going, the black dog will not find me, I reckon. |
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Posted by NS Tuesday, November 21, 2006 (20:36:47) |
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AF Moon
