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Candia Comes Clean

~ Candid cultural comments from the Isles of Wonder

Tag Archives: reivers

Black Sheep

05 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Candia in Education, Family, History, Humour, Music, Politics, Religion, Social Comment, Suttonford, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bayreuth Festival, black sheep, BUF, cattle thieves, Covent Garden, Dowland song, Ivetta Lukosiute, morphology, Moseley, Parsifal, participle, Reeve's Tale, reivers, St Cuthbert's Shrine, William de Reavely

Image result for black sheep

It was very late when Dru and Gus got back from the wake at

Snodland Nursing Home for the Debased Gentry.  They were

almost beyond hunger, but Snod insisted that they collected

fish and chips and Dru reluctantly agreed that they could eat

in her apartment, even though she hated the lingering odour.

You know, what I have really become interested in is your

father’s line, said Dru, adding more vinegar to her chips.  I mean,

I know all that bit about him being at Monte Cassino before he

took up his post as tutor at Wyvern.  But who were his parents?

Did you look them up on Ancestry.co.uk, or The International

Genealogical Index?  You said you were going to register.

She pushed her tray of chips towards him.  She’d had enough.

(Once, in Yorkshire, she had been told that the ‘scraps‘ were

the best bit, but she was unconvinced.)  Snod was less picky.

Fish and chips.jpg

Well, Reavely, Reavelly- however you spell it- is from the same

root of the verb ‘to reive’. You’ve heard of ‘reivers’ surely?

He was getting into full magisterial mode and addressing

her as if she was in his class.

You don’t mean to tell me that our ancestors were all cattle

thieves?! laughed Dru.  Loads of people say that, but we

can truly make the claim, can we?

You could try to ameliorate things by diverting people’s

interest towards ‘bailiffs’, or tax collectors, suggested Snod.

Oh, yes: The Reeve’s Tale and all that.  Another occupation

guaranteed to gain one popularity.  Like saying you are related

to a banker, or the taxman.

It gets worse.  Snod finished the scraps before continuing:

You see, let’s do some morphology. ‘Reft’ is a …

Suffix?

Emm…participle.  Think ‘be‘ plus ‘reft’.  Meaning something has

been taken away from you.

Like Great Aunt Augusta?

Precisely.

I thought participles always ended in ‘-ing’?

You thought wrong. Just like adverbs don’t have to end in ‘-ly’.

I could say ‘wrongly’.

Oh.  But isn’t ‘bereft’ an adjective? Oh, I remember-

there’s a Dowland song that goes: Wilt thou unkind thus

reave me of my heart?

It’s getting late for all this.  Why couldn’t there be a bell

to go off and save him, just as it often had during those

difficult fin-de-matinee Grammar lessons he always

wished he’d never started?

Fortunately she was showing her feminine tendency to

become tangential and easily side-tracked.

Was that an intolerant thing to believe?  He’d never

challenged himself before.  No doubt Dru would say that

it was.  Virginia certainly would.  Contact with the fairer

sex was definitely giving him wider perspectives and was

challenging his self-knowledge.  Cogito ergo sum.

Dru put the kettle on and cleared away the debris.

But why did you say it got worse? she persisted.

Well, I found that there was a Reavely who, although he

had a fine baritone voice and had sung at Covent Garden,

also had affinities with The BUF.

What’s that?

The British Union of Fascists.

Look!  You’re wearing a black shirt! she teased.

That’s because I am theoretically in mourning. ‘Be- reaved!’

Well, everyone’s got black sheep in their families; skeletons

in their cupboards and all that.  Dru didn’t seem to mind.

We can always concentrate on any positive characters we

come across. And, maybe that’s where you got your fine

voice from.  So, there’s good in everyone.

Yes, I’d rather draw a veil over this connection, said Gus,

sipping his tea.  I know my middle name is Parsifal, but

I’d rather not have found out that this relation was a friend of

Mosley’s, who, of course, went to The Bayreuth Festival.  I

hope my father merely liked Wagner, without all the

concomitant associations.

Who knows? He might have gone too.  It all leaves rather

a bad smell…

Yes, said Dru, spraying the kitchen with air freshener.  But

there were other relations with that name who might have

been goodies, surely?

Snod brightened: Yes, there was William de Reavely and

his saintly wife, Ivetta, who were benefactors of St

Cuthbert’s Shrine.

Well, just stick with them, advised Dru and then added

as an after-thought.  Ivetta? I thought she was the

man-eating dancer on Strictly?

No, she spells it with one ‘t’.  Definitely no relation.

And it was true- there didn’t seem to have been any

dancing genes passed on down the line, as far as Gus

was concerned.

Dru was surprised that her father seemed to know

all about Lithuanian dancers, but then he had also

seemed engaged with the Eastern European AA

assistant they had encountered earlier in the evening.

There must be life in the old dog yet.

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Gardy Loo!

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by Candia in Architecture, Arts, Celebrities, Family, History, Humour, Literature, Music, Politics, Social Comment, Suttonford, television, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

affrontee gules, Alex Salmond, Auchentoshan, Bannockburn House, bauchle, beeswax, Bohemia, Bonnie Prince Charlie, chamber candlestick, chatelaine, Clementina Walkinshaw, dexter and sinister, Faberge egg, Game of Thrones, Gardy Loo!, King of Cumbria, lion sejant, Lost Middlelands, manflu, mizmaze, Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, Pele Tower, reivers, Rory Stewart, The National Trust, The Proclaimers, The Young Pretender, Tindall, Tyndale, Walter Scott, Wyvern Mote

Drusilla and Murgatroyd sipped their Auchentoshans simultaneously

and gazed at the faux Faberge egg sitting on the coffee table.

Sorry to have disappointed you, said Murgatroyd.  It isn’t one of the missing

ones.  Bless Aunt Augusta.  She was trying to bestow something on you,

but it is practically worthless.

The Tindall Jewell, on the other hand is priceless. I wonder if it had any

connection to either of the Tyndales who turned down the throne of

Bohemia?  I must do some research.  But I suppose it is earlier than

that.  Looks medieval.

The strange coincidence is, as we discussed earlier, that a branch of the

Tindalls owned this pele tower at one time.  So, in a sense, you might be

coming home.  I’ll dig out the charters tomorrow.  I was going to frame one

or two for the Great Hall.

I’m not going to drag Gus through a lengthy process of establishing rights.

The insurance on the jewel would be a liability and a nightmare.  It should

remain with The National Trust at Wyvern Mote, Dru stated firmly.

I think you are right, Murgatroyd nodded sagely.  I get in a tizzy over the

security of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s communion chalice.  I hated getting it

marked by ultraviolet, but it is alarmed in that niche by the fireplace.  One

day it will be yours, my girl.  Come to think of it, you do resemble

Clementina Walkinshaw a tad.

Clementina Walkinshaw NG.jpg

Well, thanks for that.  I have no intention of escaping to a convent just

yet.  Do you think it came from Bannockburn House when Clementina was

nursing The Young Pretender from a nasty bout of Manflu?  He probably was

demanding the Last Rites histrionically- you know- the way all you guys do

when you catch a cold!

So the story goes, but Walter Scott and his ilk tended to embellish things

as you can imagine.  It does come from the Rebellion period and has a very

good maker.  I won’t take it out now, but it bears the motto: Nemo Me

Impune Lacessit and the lion sejant affrontee gules, crowned, holding in

dexter paw a sword and an erect sceptre, proper..

Whae dare meddle wi’ me?  A motto I would gladly adopt as my own ,

smiled Dru.  Well, I must go up the spiral stair to bed.  My head is

spinning with all this history, the Auchentoshan, or losing myself in the

mizmaze this afternoon. 

I’m sure it is a combination of all three, speculated Murgatroyd, handing

her a beeswax taper in a pewter chamber candlestick.  The hive has

been busy to light you on your way.  I’ve only been stung twice.  You can

taste the honey at breakfast, my sweet. 

She felt a renewal of filial affection which wasn’t diluted by being shared

with her biological pater.

The embers were dying, so Murgatroyd placed the fire-guard in front of the

glow and rolled back the rug, lest a spark should catch.  He was turning into

a fussy old chatelaine.  Dru left the egg on the table.  If there should be a

raid by the reivers, they were welcome to it.  The egg, not the table!

RoryStewartTalk.jpg

She dreamt of Border tussles: mafia bosses fuelled by proxy wars, with

visages remarkably like Rory Stewart.  She briefly counted sheep in Cumbric,

that language, Stewart claimed, of The Lost Middlelands.  She thought she

saw the face of the last independent King of Cumbria who vanished in the

11th century and screamed as it morphed into the heavy-browed, jowly

phizzog of Alex Salmond.  Clearly she had watched too many Game of Thrones

episodes.  Or he had.

Thank goodness the tower was fortified!  Any snatch of The Proclaimers

which might herald the approach of The First Minister and penetrate the foot

thick walls and she would be tipping the contents of her chamber pot out of

the window.  If Alex was stationed below with his troops and that wee

bauchle, the standard bearer, who shall remain nameless, Dru would not even

give them the warning:  Gardy Loo!

Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland.jpg

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My name is Candia. Its initial consonant alliterates with “cow” and there are connotations with the adjective “candid.” I started writing this blog in the summer of 2012 and focused on satire at the start.

Interspersed was ironic news comment, reviews and poetry.

Over the years I have won some international poetry competitions and have published in reputable small presses, as well as reviewing and reading alongside well- established poets. I wrote under my own name then, but Candia has taken me over as an online persona. Having brought out a serious anthology last year called 'Its Own Place' which features poetry of an epiphanal nature, I was able to take part in an Arts and Spirituality series of lectures in Winchester in 2016.

Lately I have been experimenting with boussekusekeika, sestinas, rhyme royale, villanelles and other forms. I am exploring Japanese themes at the moment, my interest having been re-ignited by the recent re-evaluations of Hokusai.

Thank you to all my committed followers whose loyalty has encouraged me to keep writing. It has been exciting to meet some of you in the flesh- in venues as far flung as Melbourne and Sydney!

Copyright Notice

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Candia Dixon Stuart and candiacomesclean.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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