I have been busy doing some grafting for a builder again this week. 61 years old and a building labourer/gardener. Very reasonable rates.
Hopefully I will get some of my own jobs done over the St Brigids Bank Holiday. I might go carbooting but plants don't usually sell in winter.
Only Ireland could have a holiday weekend in February.
Any road:
Remember round Christmas time when I did a post about Thomas Hardy's Oxen kneeling at the Nativity post?
Recently I was reading Chapter 17 of Tess of the Durbevilles and Dairyman Crick told the gathered milking dairy men and milk maids the tale of fiddler old William Dewy played at a wedding on a Saturday night.
The riddles and dances went on all night and William was tired and it was a moon lit night so he decided to take a short cut over a farmers field. Suddenly a huge bull came charging and chasing after him.
William Dewy was brought up in the countryside and he knew there was no way he would out run a bull.
So he began to play his fiddle and the bull stopped and listened and his face was perplexed and full of curiosity.
Then the fiddler had an idea and he played a Nativity hymn and it was not even Christmas. Rathr like the Christmas Eve oxen. The bull stopped and reverently kneeled for a moment.
William Dewy took the opportunity to leap over the fence and escape from the Christian bull! He had managed to trick the bull.
Dairyman Crick said back in medieval times people believed in a real living faith.
Anyone else read Tess or seen the films? Do you think Thomas Hardy was a fatalist? Should Tess have had a more happy ending,
Thomas Hardy definitely could write classic English literature.
Yes. I have read "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and seen a film version. I don't think that Thomas Hardy had a clear philosophy about the nature of life but at times he was indeed fatalistic. He grew up, as most people did back then, surrounded by religious belief and The Church but he was very sceptical about all of that stuff.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right YP. I feel the same when farm animals are born dead. A lot of people particularly rural workers had very hard lives. Some even miserable. Thomas Hardy was a social reformer in a pastoral setting. I love Dorset so much.
DeleteHappy ever after is mainly for Disney films not English literature.
ReplyDeleteNot all TH novels are sad Marlene but his greatest books are. I wish Tess had an happy ending.
DeleteI read it in high-school, 55 years ago or there-abouts.I was of an age where I simply accepted a novel as it was written and did not argue with the author. I just wept copious amounts of tears.
ReplyDeleteJude The Obscure was the same with me Debby. Thomas Hardy's mother came from a very poor upbringing and no doubt she told him many a tale?
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