What It Takes
Hello friends, the latest Jawbone just out –Wild Christ, please consider sharing. And now on to the main event…
You may enjoy the audio for this one – I’m ‘somewhere’ in Ireland, probably by the River Shannon. This is a new development on the bones of an essay I gave us some time back, so a few elements will chime. It’s resurfaced and continued as I think it’s carrying some of the themes in Chivalry for Grown Ups from the other week. So forgive the back tracking, it does lead into new ground.
Darkness and Love
When we think of the myths that underpin Romanticism we unearth a code, a code that is essentially Christian, though woven throughout with all sorts of figures from pagan antiquity and even Arabic poetry. One of the key characters is often the figure of a knight. Within the tradition such a knight is expected to be gracious, humble, brave, and unwavering in his discipline. They are not to remind us of their achievements. They protect those in need. At this point it’s easy for our eyes to grow misty as we half-remember tales of Camelot, of spires and tournaments and toasts, of midnight meetings with a lover in the orchard.
But I don’t want to start there. I want to begin with something that has the scent of the Underworld about it, a murkier dimension. Something that evokes what the poet Lorca called Duende. Because there’s a deeper darkness in these stories than is maybe first apparent. For a knight there’s a price sometimes referred to. Let’s begin with a story from an old medieval ballad, King Henry.
Never should a man go wooing
Who lacks these things three:
A stack of gold, a kindly way
And a heart of charity.
It was late when the young king arrived at the ruins of the old hall. All day he’d been tracking a buck and found himself lost in the woods with a wild night settling around him. In what would have been the kitchen he made himself a fire and sheltered from the worst of the rain. It got darker and darker till the rain stopped and then it got quieter and quieter.
From the deepest shadows came an old woman’s voice:
Some meat, some meat King Henry,
Bring some meat to me,
Go kill your horse King Henry,
And bring him here to me.
Henry’s hounds growled and pressed in against their master’s boots. In the gloom the young king could just make out a pale figure, with a vast dark mouth and teeth like iron spikes.
Oh bring me now your berry brown horse,
Oh bring your trusted steed,
Oh bring me now your berry brown horse,
His flesh is what I need.
With a grieving heart he slew his own horse for the hunger of the ancient being. She gobbled it up to the fur and bones as he, horrified, watched.
Some meat, some meat King Henry,
Bring some meat to me,
Go kill your hounds King Henry,
And bring them here to me.
With a sore heart he slew his own hounds and presented them to the old one. Again, she gobbled them up to the fur and bones as he watched.
Some meat, some meat King Henry,
Bring some meat to me,
Go kill your hawk King Henry,
And bring him here to me.
With a battered heart he called his hawk down from the rafters and killed it. The one with spikes for teeth ate it.
Finally she seemed full. She crooned through the dark.
A bed of heather King Henry,
Please make a bed for me,
A bed of heather King Henry,
I wish to lie with thee.
Henry gathered the heather, made the bed and she got in, beckoning to him.
Through the dark crawled Henry, reaching out to her cold blue shape as he leant in for the kiss she requested. As he kissed he found himself embracing a young woman, flesh and blood, the kind he’d meet in any market square in old England. Transformed, she snuggled in.
But as he felt her swollen belly pressed against him, under her taught skin he could feel his horse, his hounds, his hawk. He’d given her everything he loved.
And there, in the dark and the rain,
Henry realised exactly what it would take to be a king.