Download the article: Sharing Impressions of England
A summer holiday trip to England had me reciting verses and songs from the kindergarten Wynstones collections. I was actually seeing things I had only imagined.One Wynstones song kept coursing through my mind as I saw "bracken" for the first time.
Yellow the bracken, golden the sheaves,
Rosy the apples, crimson the leaves,
Mist on the hillside, clouds grey and white,
Autumn good morning, Summer goodnight.
Bracken (if you share my unfamiliarity with it) is a tall, vigorous, fern-like plant that grows on the hillsides. But unlike the ferns I know, these are huge. A hike took us tramping through a hillside of bracken, as tall as my shoulder. We literally had to whack our way through with a stick, so thick, sturdy, and abundant were these tall "fern trees." Our English friend guiding us said that though they seemed like a small forest in the height of summer, in the autumn they would all fall flat to the ground, covering the hillside like a yellow carpet. When I saw a photograph of autumn bracken, I experienced with my eyes what the song describes. The color is a golden yellow. The plants are completely collapsed to the ground. To see it grow and regenerate the next spring must be a very heartening and encouraging experience.
I found myself wanting to change the words to "sheep on the hillside." Once out of the cities, every hillside is dotted with sheep, everywhere. It was explained that this is necessary not only for raising the sheep but to keep the forests back. If the sheep and cows did not openly graze on meadow land all the time, soon the land would become reforested. This is such an amazing contrast to the semi-arid, etheric thinness of Colorado! I think holding these images in our minds as we speak and sing these pictures to the children has a healing and supporting effect, even if they do not physically "see" what is being described in their own environment.
I also happened upon an old book describing a farm child's experience of the festival, seasonal year in simpler, pre-mechanized times. Some of these seemed to enlighten my understanding of images we use in the kindergarten. Clara's Country Year, by Ralph Whitlock, describes a time much simpler than our own. Although the exact date is not specified in these descriptions, farming was the major occupation, labor done by human effort with the assistance of farm animals. Technology and mechanization were long off. It was still a time when the year was marked by rhythmic festival celebrations, reflecting traditions and wisdom from times past.
Reading about "Wassailing the Apple Trees-January 16," made me think of an apple verse in an orchard autumn circle in Nancy Foster's Let Us Form a Ring. She credits the verse as "traditional English."
Here stands a good apple tree.
Stand fast at root,
Bear well at top,
Every little twig, bean an apple big:
Every little bough, bear an apple now.
Hats full! Caps full!
Three-score sacks full!
Hello, boys, hello!
The tradition described is that on this wintery, cold night, all the family went out into the apple orchard. Bread had been toasted crisp during the day. A young member of the family was lifted up to reach the tree branches where s/he placed pieces of toast, soaked in apple cider, into crooks of the tree branches. Others poured cider from a jug over the trunk of the tree.
Then the adult men fired off their guns, others beat on pots and kettles, making as much noise as possible "to make sure the spirits of the apple trees are paying proper attention to what we have been doing." This was all done to assure that the apple trees would bear well in the growing season. Then everyone sang this song:
Old Apple Tree, Old Apple Tree,
We wassail thee, and hope that thou wilt bear;
For the Lord doth know where we shall be
Till apples come another year;
For to bear well and to bloom well
So merry let us be,
Let every man take off his hat and shout to thee,
Old Apple Tree, Old Apple Tree,
We wassail thee and hope that thou wilt bear
Hat fulls
Cap fulls
Three bushel bag fulls,
And a little heap under the stairs.
A Wynstones version:
Here stands a tall apple tree.
Stand fast root,
Bear well top,
Pray, God send us a howling crop.
Every twig
Bear an apple big.
Every bough
Bear an apple now.
Hats full! Caps full!
Three score sacks full
Hurrah! Boys, Hurrah!
The next festival description that struck a familiar chord is "Pancake Day-Shrove Tuesday." On this day, traditionally all perishable foods and fats are eaten up-eggs, milk, butter, flour-in a feasting before the long fast of Lent. Making pancakes was the traditional way to use up these ingredients. Part of the festival day was the annual village pancake race. The women of the village would gather at the church with their frying pans. Each had a pancake in her pan. On the given signal, women would all race ahead, tossing the pancake up in the air and catching it back in the pan. The first one over the finish line, having successfully tossed and caught the pancake three times, was the winner.
One wonders whether this custom was not inspiration for Christina Rossetti's poem often used in the kindergarten:
Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan.
Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake,
Catch it if you can.
Holding the picture of these women racing across the church yard to win a prize for her family brings this picture alive. We could perhaps turn it into our own little game on Shrove Tuesday with felted "pancakes" being tossed and (hopefully) caught.
A harvest festival custom of "The Corn Dolly" prepared the way toward the new growing season. While we make our own corn husk dolls in America, in British terminology, "corn" refers to all grains in general-wheat, rye, barley, and oats. "Corn" as we know it in America, is referred to by the British as "maize."
The story goes that the men harvested the last standing grain with their heads bowed, eyes fixed firmly on the ground, not looking at the stalks of grain. They knew that the "Corn Goddess," a very powerful spirit who put life into the grain, lived in these fields. They knew she had been able to escape from their harvesting through a gap in the hedge from one field to the next as they progressed to the last field. But once in the last field, there was no escape. The harvesters covered their faces so she could not see who it was who cut the stalks of her last refuge and on whom she might take revenge. The harvesters took some grain stalks from the last sheave and plaited it into a "kern baby" or "corn dolly." The plaited corn dolly is placed as an honored presence at the village harvest festival and celebration.
On Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelve Night, the last of the Holy Nights, the fields were ploughed for the first time since harvest. The corn dolly was placed in the first turned farrow and buried there. This was to return her to the cornfields where she gives life to the seed and produces the harvest. She was in the last stalks of the standing grain. Now as dolly made from those last stalks, she goes back into the soil after the new year to start her work all over again. Perhaps our corn husk dolls' ancestress was this corn dolly, a very powerful and revered image.
A traditional "Harvest Shout" from this time is one we might find home for in our harvest circles.
Well ploughed,
Well sowed,
Well harrowed,
Well mowed.
And all safely carted
To the barn
With never a load throwed!
Hip, hip, hip hooray!
Nancy Blanning is a remedial and therapeutic teacher at the Denver Waldorf School and prior to that, taught 17 years in the preschool/kindergarten. Nancy is a member of the WECAN Board and is a WECAN regional representative for the Texas/Mexico/Southwest/Rockies