Social issues reflected in poetry
Jackie Tweedale
As part of researching the history of this time, I have been reviewing the poems of the Dymock Poets, to see how clues in their verses reflect life in Dymock during the early 1900’s. The poems leave a record of the main issues affecting the thoughts and lives of local people at this time, especially the ordinary men and women in the village and surrounding area. They give a glimpse of the social and economic issues before and during the war.
The main themes of the poems are: travel, love, friendship, relationships, the countryside, nature, farming, war, death and religion. The poems reflect the voice of the common man. They talk about manual workers, urban and rural life; they use the speech of country people. Despite being treated with suspicion because they didn’t have regular jobs, spoke with funny accents and received strange visitors, the poets were keen observers of life and the issues affecting local people. The poets were not wealthy and poetry writing did not always pay well or on a regular basis. They moved to Gloucestershire because it was less expensive to live here and they had family and friends who could help them to find cheap accommodation.
Poems describe the cottages and life in them. In “The Old Nail Shop” we get a feel for life under thatch and also a history of the previous residents – nail makers who worked in the living room that Gibson used. The room’s hearth was where the forge had stood. Three women lived there: a wife, a grandmother and a young girl. All think of different things as they hammer the nails. We are left to guess where the man of the house is. Gibson recalls the starlings, waking him up 20 inches from his head, in the thatch and the elms he can see from the window. But he captures the worries and concerns of the previous residents and their daily existence. In “The Golden Room” we know there was no electricity, walls were cream washed and it names the birds to be found in the fields.
The poets wrote many poems about daffodils and we get hints of the industry and agriculture associated with the plants. In “Ryton Firs”: (Abercrombie) “she who’s robbing us for the market buyer, the crone who strips the field our dances scour” and the farmer who scythes the flowers “because the blue leaves make his mown grass sour”. Also in “Ryton Firs” we learn the woods were felled and natural habitats are lost for wildlife. The trees were to become “props in a Glamorgan mine” and part of the war effort.
Rural life was hard and harsh and many of their poems reflect this. “Daffodils” (Gibson) describes an itinerant crock mender, travelling the dusty lanes, hobbling along on his crutch with his pack on his back. He is turned away from the landowner’s house by the butler “His lordship says he won’t require no more crocks riveted or mended till the war is over”. The crock mender then recollects how his son as an infant played among the daffodils in his blue frock but who is now fighting in a trench. Small boys wore frocks between the ages of 2 and 8 from the mid-16th century until the early 20th century. They were then breeched and got to wear trousers that usually went down to the knee. In “The Orphans” 2 elderly brothers find themselves homeless after their mother has died. Now they roam the countryside with their packs. Other tramps make a living picking mistletoe, pulling up docks, flint picking, navvying and sleeping rough at night in hedge rows or haystacks.
References to the maid servant getting up a 4 o’clock in the morning to do her chores before she can have her day off; to the doctor coming to attend a woman in labour; a widow running a pub after her husband dies; the inn, the smithy and shop were common in most villages. Farming methods with plough, scythe, hoe and rake are mentioned and the loss of manpower and horses due to the war.
Many of the poems refer to transport, with carts and horses the main form of travel; taking pigs and daffodils to market; horses used for ploughing fields; bicycling and walking. If you did not have a horse or cart you walked – to market, drovers taking cattle to larger markets, visiting friends on a Sunday. The other main form of transport was the train. Steam trains and regular services meant the poets could live in the countryside and still get to London or other parts of the country easily.
The poets, like other villagers, had vegetable plots and we know what was grown. They had to scare birds off the growing seeds, kept fruit trees, strawberries, and used pea sticks gathered from birch twigs to support growing plants. In one poem old clay pipes are dug up whilst tending the plot.
At home cooking was done on a range, water came from a well. The bed was probably handed down through the generations seeing bride, birth and death. Poems contain references to woodpiles and gathering faggots – bundles of sticks gathered form the woodland floor and tied together to light the fires; clothes being folded up and stored with camphor. There are references to children’s games – leap frog, swings, fly-the-garter and high-cockolorum.
We need help to fill in the detail of the poet’s observations – what life was like in Dymock? How many people lived in the parish and what jobs did they do? How did the village prosper under the land ownership of the 7th Earl Beauchamp and how did things change in 1919? We would also like creative input to the project – poems, photos, oral histories.
Please do get in touch.
