Griffin

One does not wish to become obsessed about such things, but this lonely fellow was snapped by a chum who stayed at a B&B just outside Ipswich. She seems a very unhappy girl who reminds me of a furry four-footed black and white creature when she had been caught trying to eat a chicken bone. Just look at those swept-back ears indicative of an animal that knows it is in trouble.

Why on earth did they not turn her round 90 degrees clockwise so that she could keep guard properly instead of resting her head on the red brick wall?

Sadly the chum did not think to rescue her so that she could come and live with the Cornish community who, since you ask, are doing very well and ensuring that no hawkers or miscreants get into the garden.

Frere Jacques

Talking of Estonians, I was also able to add another language to my collection of European versions of the well-known Frere Jacques. I stumbled over this by accident many years ago at a multi-national barbecue and have been collecting ever since. I was quite pleased with myself until I looked on Wikipedia where the possible origins of the song are suggested. If it is a taunt at Martin Luther then this might explain why protestant England does not have a version in its own language. Alternatively it could be a British stiff-upper lip not wishing to suggest that Brother Jack is in any way sleeping longer than he should.

Wikipedia also has many different versions with translations, easily out-scoring my collection. The range must put it up there just behind Happy Birthday as one of the most ubiquitous tunes in the world.

Although the thrust is the same in most languages - someone sleeping when the bells are ringing - the person varies between John/Jacob and Martin, and the clocks or bells make a charming variety of sounds, like French farm animals. The Estonian version, to complete the loop, has smiths.

I shall carry on collecting ...

The Origins of English

I was chatting late at night on a stalled train with my favourite Estonian friend - actually my only Estonian friend - discussing our languages. As with many smaller European peoples who were for years treated as serfs, her language had only been codified in the 19th century. 'When was yours developed?' she asked. I tried to explain and dredged my memory for Chaucer's Prologue. This set me thinking.

It would be bold to say that Beowulf (between 8th and 11th century) was the moment as it hardly looks or sounds like English:
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
... which may mean something like:
Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (14th century), on the other hand, is familiar to anyone who did GCE 'O' Level English and can surely be claimed as something of a defining moment for such discussions:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

... and is a joy in Coghill's translation.
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,

She had, she thought, seen a Shakespeare (16/17th century) play in translation. I still find it quite incredible than anyone can translate his plays which are undeniably English. Just slip this into Estonian, would you:
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.   

Where the late 19th century romantics codified these European languages; L'udovit Stur did it for Slovak. We had Dr Samuel Johnson in the 18th. Should we look to him as the defining moment? How does one answer such questions fairly and without boasting about the Bard? It would be like a German not mentioning Bach when talking of music.

Nature's wonder

Millennia have passed. In deepest jungles genes have been exchanged; the fight for survival has taken its course and each generation has been better fitted to survive than the last (fundamentalists look away now). Insects and birds have done their job under the watchful gaze of the blind watchmaker until something perfect and balanced has emerged: the humble cheeseplant.

Man arrives and takes the humble plant into captivity, constraining her in pots which are never the right size, sticking individuals into the corners of cafeterias, foyers, staircases, lobbies, offices, sitting rooms and then treating them as pieces of furniture, giving them no food, no water, no care. Our neglected hero magically exists - growing would be too strong a word - for ever reaching out to any light and following nature's instinct to reach for the sky. As she grows we tie her to a stake and wrap her tendrils around a dead branch to prevent her reaching out too far. Another escape foiled.

If plants ever do come alive it will not be triffids but the humble cheeseplant, or its companion ficus or ivy, that we torture as we do, reaching out to return to those jungle homes so far away. What is the mysterious attraction of such plants and was this really what evolution was all for?