Sowers of seed

One of the things I enjoy is reading, and like many people I can lose myself in a good book. Looking back, three events stand out as having some significance in this respect, starting with my time as boy between seven and eleven years of age, living in Longridge, a small village seven miles from the busy industrial town of Preston in Lancashire.

The first of these events was not long after my brother, two sisters and I left the Shepherd Street Mission Children’s Home where we had lived after our mother died six years earlier. We moved to our own home that Dad had been busy preparing for us during the Depression years. It had been a busy day as we left the home, a family again for the first time in five years. That evening my eldest sister Hilda tucked me into bed and then read me a story or a poem, I can’t remember which, but it became a regular event which I looked forward to. My favourite was ‘A Song of Sherwood’ by Alfred Noyes. There’s a recurring phrase that I would ask her to repeat, sometimes straight away after she had just spoken it; it sounded so very real. I could almost feel myself…

‘In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.'
(the entire poem is at the end of this post)

My love of words, their sounds and meanings began during those wonderful, enchanting times when my eldest sister, Hilda, read to me, so you can understand that she has a special place in my heart.

The second event centres around the time when all I would read was comics, with stories made up mostly of pictures. You know the kind; Beano was one, with Desperate Dan one of the characters. He ate cow pies, it was true! You could see the tail sticking out of the pie at one end and the horns at the other end. I couldn’t get enough of these comics and Dad would say to me: ‘Ee lad, tha doesn’t want to keep readin’ stuff like that, get summat decent to read.’

I looked at him and listened to him, we did in those days but I continued to read comics.

One day I could find no one willing to trade my comics for theirs. They would trade mine for those that had hardly any pictures at all, and they were no use to me. I wanted to see the action in the pictures, that’s what comics were for! But eventually, after trudging round my friends and failing to trade comic for comic, and with dusk beginning to fall, I finally did succeed and came home with The Wizard, The Rover and The Hotspur. I really felt down in the dumps; the writing in the pages was small and packed together in columns but there were some pictures and I started by looking at them. Rockfist Rogan got my attention; it was about a pilot in the Royal Air Force and there was nothing he couldn’t do, no difficulty he couldn’t overcome. He was a real hero, and in no time at all I had made the switch and my reading took on a new dimension.

According to Dad, ‘I was still readin’ stuff that wasn’t proper’ but to me, it was real reading and I was lost in another world, unconsciously building up my word attack skills and extending my vocabulary, as well as feeding a very active imagination. Early in World War II, we moved from the village of Longridge to Preston, to make it easier for my brother Fred and my father to travel to Liverpool to repair bomb damaged houses.  It meant I had to attend the nearest school to our home, which happened to be St. Mary’s Street Methodist School and was where the third event occurred. I was an average pupil until one Friday afternoon, during the last lesson of the day our teacher, Mrs Ferguson, I think, began to read a story called, Great Expectations, and I became completely absorbed. All other sounds and activities were lost to me; only the sound of her voice creating the pictures in my mind was clear, as she took me further into the adventure.

Then suddenly I realised that my friends were leaving and it was time to go, but I remained in my seat, my mind alive to the magic of words. That hadn’t happened before, me being the last one seated. Mrs Fergusson looked at me and I shyly left my seat and went up to her and said how much I’d enjoyed the story and asked her who the author was. What remains in my mind now was the knowledge that from that time on, and for quite a period afterwards, learning for me was like a sponge  soaking up water. It was easy to read and comprehend, as if a switch had been flicked on, and Mrs Fergusson had either shown me the switch or had switched it on for me as she read to us. A short time later I was moved into the headmaster’s special class of about six or seven pupils. We had a marvellous time with him, with all the reading we wanted from a shelf in the assembly hall, and I was there until I left school when I turned 14 to go to work.

From seeds sown during these three events, my love of words and of reading eventually led me to my present occupation today, as the Reading Teacher at Morrinsville College in New Zealand. Fancy getting paid for something you really enjoy doing. Great stuff, eh? You wouldn’t read about it…

Dennis Crompton © 1995
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

A Song of Sherwood

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.
Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves
Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,
Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist
Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.
Merry, merry England is waking as of old,
With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold:
For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
Love is in the greenwood building him a house
Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs:
Love is in the greenwood, dawn is in the skies,
And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.
Hark! The dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep!
Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep?
Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold,
Rake away the red leaves, roll away the mould,
Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red,
And wake Will Scarlett from his leafy forest bed.
Friar Tuck and Little John are riding down together
With quarter-staff and drinking-can and grey goose-feather.
The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows.
All the heart of England his in every rose
Hears across the greenwood the sunny whisper leap,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?
Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old
And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold
Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?
Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen
All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men--
Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day--
Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash
Rings the Follow! Follow! and the boughs begin to crash,
The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly,
And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.
Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves
Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
Alfred Noyes