Chalk Figures ...

ENGLAND'S BIGGEST TOURIST ATTRACTIONS ...


The Uffington Horse, Oxfordshire


In Wiltshire there are several realistic White Horses ...


When I was tiny, I had an old maiden aunt, who lived in an ancient cottage with metre-thick walls deep in the Wiltshire countryside.
The house was near The Westbury White Horse


Trotting White Horse, Wiltshire Hills


Baby White Horse, Devizes, Wiltshire.
The newest chalk horse, produced in 1999
(To make these, you just excavate the grass and the chalk's right there; they only need filling in with fresh chalk when they get really old)


The leaping Folkestone White Horse in Kent


The Long Man of Wilmington is a 70 metre tall giant on a cliff south of the village of Wilmington in the South Downs, between Eastbourne and Brighton in the county of East Sussex


But the most famous figure stands "only" 55 metres high in Cern Abbas in Dorset. He is best known for being "excited" ...


The "excitement" stands 3-4 metres high ...
(Visitors to the site keep making it bigger~!)
The figure is generally believed to be an ancient fertility god
But the historian Aubrey Manning posited that he is in fact a caricature of the only president (1649-1658) England has ever had, Oliver Cromwell!
He kind of looks surprised to be stark naked ...


In 2007, Homer Simpson appeared next to the giant


Executed in white paint, the figure was a publicity stunt promoting the latest Simpsons movie

Intellectual Librariantics

A DAY OF INTELLECTUAL DISCOVERY. I have so many ideas... I have been trawling the library to pursue them... research... (I have to research this book that I'm determined to write down. Determined.) ... Languages of the world... there are so many countries I want to visit and so many different languages I've wanted to speak... I have an abiding interest in antiquity, especially the ancient Near East... My study of the Bible piqued an interest in this, particularly Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah (the Jewish exile) which were set in Babylon and the Medo-Persian empire... fascinating. I spent ages copying out the Hebrew alphabet but there weren't many good sourcebooks for studying that language (I think I'm going to have to seek out a specialist Jewish shop...) Then I got waylaid by showbusiness. Madonna. The library has barely anything about Elizabeth I and yet they have two volumes of Jordan's autobiography. Priorities, please! Also I got tired of the security guard prowling around like we readers were trespasssers on his private domain (and perish the thought that we might want to take a dreaded mobile phone call~ oo no that is too much) but the man who spent half an hour in the upstairs toilet with a queue of African exchange students rat-a-tatt-tatting ever more desperately on the door and then fled leaving it blocked with diarrhoea and the most gruesome pong rolling in an invisible putrid cloud past the Britannicas and into the maps reference section. Only when it reached the enquiry desk did loud exclamations arise and a large sign go up saying toilet out of order. Ooer I've got thoroughly waylaid now but it was a good day. Cheerio everybody.
Till tomorrow!

VIDEO:
Bringing to life surrealist art, this supposedly cost $5 million (I don't believe that)... it is one of Madonna's best though...

More About Nursery Rhymes

I'VE DONE SOME MORE RESEARCH on the nursery rhymes posted yesterday. (This is one of those days when weblogging's reverse-chronological sequencing really makes no sense. But anyway ...)

To start off: this is how the BBC's website describes the game of oranges and lemons - better than I did. (I don't remember ever deciding to be an "orange" or a "lemon", incidentally; but maybe that's my bad memory.)

Oranges and Lemons
The Actions:

A group of children decide to play 'Oranges and Lemons'. Two children become the 'chopper' by holding hands and forming an arch. They secretly decide which one of them is 'Oranges' and which one is 'Lemons'.

The other children go through the arch in a line, circling round behind the arch, and going through again, singing the rhyme as they go. At the last line of the rhyme the 'choppers' bring their arms up and down in a chopping motion over each child that goes through. The game can get quite nerve-racking for the children at this point, and they often run through as fast as they can. The child caught in the middle at the last word of the rhyme is out.

The captured child secretly chooses to be Oranges or Lemons, and then moves around to stand behind that child forming the arch. When all the children have been captured, the teams have a tug of war. The winning team is the one left standing, but usually none of the children are by the end.
Incidentally, their version of the rhyme ends with this line:

Chop chop chop chop the last man's head!

Which makes a treble repeated rhyme. Definitely not the version I knew.

Also, the version we used to play had at least three choppers lined up so the poor kid going through had to run the gauntlet of chopping ...

Ruth knows a version with far more bells (which waters down the sinisterness also):

"Oranges and Lemons" say the Bells of St. Clements
"Bullseyes and Targets" say the Bells of St. Margaret's
"Brickbats and Tiles" say the Bells of St. Giles
"Halfpence and Farthings" say the Bells of St. Martin's
"Pancakes and Fritters" say the Bells of St. Peter's
"Two Sticks and an Apple" say the Bells of Whitechapel
"Maids in white aprons" say the Bells at St. Katherine's
"Pokers and Tongs" say the Bells of St. John's
"Kettles and Pans" say the Bells of St. Anne's
"Old Father Baldpate" say the slow Bells of Aldgate
"You owe me Ten Shillings" say the Bells of St. Helen's
"When will you Pay me?" say the Bells of Old Bailey
"When I grow Rich" say the Bells of Shoreditch
"Pray when will that be?" say the Bells of Stepney
"I do not know" say the Great Bell of Bow

Another one that Paterfamilias mentioned and I couldn't believe I'd missed out was London Bridge is Falling Down (click for an illustrated version):

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, Falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

Take a key and lock her up,
Lock her up, Lock her up.

Take a key and lock her up,
My fair lady.

How will we build it up,
Build it up, Build it up?

How will we build it up,
My fair lady?

Build it up with silver and gold,
Silver and gold, Silver and gold.

Build it up with silver and gold,
My fair lady.

Gold and silver I have none,
I have none, I have none.

Gold and silver I have none,
My fair lady.

Build it up with needles and pins,
Needles and pins, Needles and pins.

Build it up with needles and pins,
My fair lady.

Pins and needles bend and break,
Bend and break, Bend and break.

Pins and needles bend and break,
My fair lady.

Build it up with wood and clay,
Wood and clay, Wood and clay.

Build it up with wood and clay,
My fair lady.

Wood and clay will wash away,
Wash away, Wash away.

Wood and clay will wash away,
My fair lady.

Build it up with stone so strong,
Stone so strong, Stone so strong.

Build it up with stone so strong,
My fair lady.

Stone so strong will last so long,
Last so long, Last so long.

Stone so strong will last so long,
My fair lady.

Although many say that London Brige "falling down" harks back to the Great Fire of 1666, this is discounted by history because the brige did not actually burn down. "My fair lady" is often attributed to Elizabeth I, but again, her reign was long over by the great fire. According to warphead.com, this rhyme may actually date back to Viking times, when the bridge was indeed torn down. And the "fair lady" may actually be a virgin ritually buried in the bridge's foundations!

Incidentally, by the 1960s, London Bridge really was falling down. So when the American town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona made an offer of $2.4 million to buy the bridge in order to ship it over and rebuild it stone by stone in Arizona the London authorities jumped at the chance. Only when the brige had actually been delivered (so the story goes) did the Arizonans jump up in arms ask "where are the opening up bits, where are the towers?" The bridge they had bought was a common (but nice-looking) road bridge, not the ornate landmark they'd been expecting.

The Americans had confused London Bridge (by 1962 a pretty bog-standard large stone bridge) with the spectacular Tower Bridge - which would never have been put up for sale anyhow!

Wikipedia's London Bridge article shows lots of red London buses and blue Connex commuter trains. Their top picture, incidentally, includes a view of the famous Gherkin tower block.

By the way, the reason (so I hear) that London's towers are so poxily, embarrassingly gnomelike by international standards is an eejut height restriction put in to assist planes flying into the tiny City of London Airport (City of London refers to the financial district not the metropolis and the airport there is tiny. London's main airport, Heathrow, is the world's busiest international transport hub.

History Speaks

THIS MORNING I WOKE UP with this rhyme going through my head.

Oranges and Lemons

Oranges and lemons
Say the bells of St Clements
You owe me five farthings
Say the bells of St Martins
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey
When I grow rich
Say the bells of Shoreditch
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney
I do not know
Says the great bell at Bow
Here comes a candle to light you to bed
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head

Chip-chop chip-chop chip-chop-chop!

Brings me right back to my childhood. The place-names form a musical tour of old London. The tune to which it is sung does recall churchbells very vividly. I remember this being "performed" at kiddies' parties, the children pairing off, holding hands in a row. Then one child walks through as the arms are brought down as the choppers.

Do children still sing these songs, I wonder? And are they sung anywhere abroad? I've never heard of American kids singing Oranges and Lemons.

The origins of these rhymes are often sinister and grotesque: Oranges and Lemons is no exception. It dates back to the reign of Henry VIII, the "happy headchopper" ... need I say more?

The other one that was very popular with future stoners (how many times have I heard drug-abusers recall how they "used to spin round and round till they fell over" in childhood:

Ring-a-ring of roses
A pocket full of posies.
A-tissue! A-tissue!
We all fall down.

This one is chanted, not sung. The children hold hands in a circle and skip round faster and faster until they dizzily fall on the floor in a heap. Always a popular move with the under-sevens.

This one dates back to the times when bubonic plague was terrorizing the heart of England. The "ring of roses," supposedly refers to the rosy spots that were often the first symptom of the deadly illness. Nice smells and posies were said to afford protection from the "bad air" that brought with it plague. Sneezing was often taken as a first sign of infection. "We all fall down." - yes - dead.

And last but not least:

Mary Mary quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells
And cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

The Contrary Mary was Bloody Mary, "silver bells and cockle shells" refer to instruments of torture (click the link to find out); the "maids all in a row" were "maidens" - an early form of the guillotine!