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. Rather 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?
DeleteYou are a romantic old softie at heart, Dave.
ReplyDeleteI know JayCee. Perhaps I should write a saga like the following: Edna lived in a old Irish thatched stone cottage on the side of a windswept mountain. It was 1825 and they had a satellite tv dish but nobody had invented electricity yet.
ReplyDeleteEdna use to spend her time chasing rainbows 🌈 looking for leprechauns pots of gold. But she never found any treasure. One day she went in the local Victorian Tesco's and she bought a Euro millions lottery ticket and she won the lotto.
I have read all of Thomas Hardy's novels and his poetry too. I think he really understood the countryside and the lot of the rural poor. The only novel I really didn't like at all was Tess, so I am a bit bemused whenever someone tells me it is their favourite book.
ReplyDeleteThat's wonderful you have read all of his books Tracy. Tess is really well written novel. It's very sad and it does champion the rural poor. Social class must of been much worse than it is in England back then. Have you visited Dorset Tracy?
ReplyDeleteYes. We had a family holiday there a few years ago. It is a beautiful county.
DeleteIt is Tracy. I was last in Dorset in August 2024. I could live there.
DeleteWhen taking my cat Thomas to the vet one summer I sang Christmas carols to him to calm him. It seemed very obvious and natural for me to sing the carols and he could hear me singing and it was gentle and a tender thing to sing I thought. It also calmed me. As you know, Tess is not my favourite book by Hardy although I like the film. I still love Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge. I studied Far From the Madding Crowd at school for O level and was very immersed in it at the time. I like it less now. I enjoyed the post Dave. I thought you must have been working as you were quiet.
ReplyDeleteSentient beings Rachel. We all are. Even our domestic pets. I love Thomas Hardy's anecdotes like Dairyman Crick saying exactly the spot where fiddler William Dewy now lies in the graveyard. He makes words appear into pictures of the mind. I am pleased you like this post. I enjoyed writing it. Thanks Rachel.
ReplyDeleteMy education was clearly lacking. Hardy wasn't part of it and although I've heard of these titles I have never sought them out. My primary school teacher tried to get me to read Jane Austen novels when I was about 10 (and a voracious reader). I hated it and may have been put off such things for life. I read the stories of real people, exploration, colonial development, lives that went before mine, and regarded their endurance and adaptability as inspirational. A family of well-to-do girls fallen on straightened times looking for wealthy husbands really wasn't my bag. I guess it's a shame as I never learned to seek the philosophical or political examination in the more esoteric writing in novels.
ReplyDeleteYes Tigger's Mum it's sad when a book is forced on someone to read for the wrong person or age can put someone off literature. I think reading is like Internet surfing. You read what you like. My reading is very slow these days. Years ago I would mentally eat books. Now I take my time and go back when I read a page or two and try to digest them . Thanks your thoughts.
ReplyDelete