| HOME | Current Issue | Index by Issue | Search the Site | Translate On-Line | Printer Friendly |
| Internet Help Centre | Regulars | Specials | Humour | Book Reviews | Links | Affinity Lodges |
|
|
Brother Lightfoote's Journal The Recollections of an Eighteenth-Century Gentleman of the Craft
Quid est veritas?
I recently directed my course to the West, to Cornwall, to be more exact, to Helston to be perfectly precise, to witness the ancient custom of the Furry Dance (Furry, pronounced to rhyme with hurry, from the Latin feriae – a festival). This takes place each year upon the eighth merry day of the merry, merry month of May. What happens, in short, is that the townspeople, led by their mayor, begin dancing early in the morning, youngsters in the vanguard. By the evening, the entire population will have capered in and out of every house in the town, entering and leaving by different doors where possible, to bring extra luck. Nightfall heralds a Bacchanal in which the exhausted inhabitants indulge on all manner of excess, the local ale providing more than sufficient lubricant for the proceedings. It is obviously the ‘hangover’ of a pre-Christian crop fertility ritual, the details of which may all too easily be imagined. For some reason I find the sight of drunkenness sobering. Perhaps it has something to do with that business of suppressing in oneself that which, in others, one finds distressing. Whatever the cause, I went to bed uninebriated, by Lightfoote standards. I was staying at an inn called The Angel, which has stood for over three hundred years. Many of the fixtures and fittings are original, including, I suspect, the mattress upon which I slept. I awoke, early in Lightfoote terms and stiff in Lightfoote limbs, dressed myself, and staggered downstairs in the hope of an hearty breakfast. Vain hope indeed! The inn-keeper, a former ship’s surgeon who, on the previous evening had access to a seemingly inexhaustible stock of navy rum and nautical ribaldry, was now silent and immobile as the Rock of Gibraltar upon the taproom floor. I stepped carefully over him, as if ascending a winding staircase, and out, into the sweet and scented air of a quaint old Cornish town. In minutes I was strolling through a landscape that might have been Eden. All things that love the sun were out of doors; the sky rejoiced in the morning’s birth; I felt resolute and independent... There are, in these parts, ancient traces, reminders of those who were here before history was recorded in writing but whose presence is preserved in stone. I came upon such a remembrance: a Quoit. Once a burial chamber, its walls of earth and turf had long since disappeared, along with its grisly contents. My mood suddenly became sombre as I gazed upon these melancholy emblems of mortality: a monstrous circular slab supported by three massive uprights, looking, for all the world, like... ‘A giant’s stool!’ The voice that volunteered this singular explanation was deep and guttural, loud, and about four inches – or a hand’s breadth – from my right ear. I cried out in alarm and spun around to confront its owner: an ancient rustic, all smock and battered hat and missing teeth. All around was open ground. Where had he sprung from? How long had I been lost in contemplation? He leered at me, and continued, ‘Ha-haar... For this also has been one of the dark places of the earth...’ ‘Indeed,’ I replied, regaining my composure, ‘but I believe you’ll find that it is, in fact...’ ‘A Sacred Symbol!’ he roared. ‘Is that it, Sir? Ha-haar!’ He held me with his glittering eye. ‘Could it be that yon great disc be the circle at whose centre lies a certain point, and them three pillars, what might they be called, eh, Brother? What’s the truth? Ha-haar! ‘Tis a question of interpretation, is it not? ‘It is indeed, Brother,’ said I, offering my hand. We walked back to The Angel together. ‘Has the landlord told you about the boulder that the Devil dropped when challenged by Saint Michael?’ asked my friend. ‘The one that’s now embedded in the wall of his hostelry?’ I ventured, ‘The Hell’s Stone from which Helston takes its name?’ ‘Load of nonsense!’ quoth he, and so it is. His name was Peter, same as the Fisher Pope. Just like his namesake, he was a perfect example of the rough diamond, as it were, revealing the smooth and polished gem concealed within.
|
