The power of the misquote
August 29, 2012
The Black Mountains are long, long ridges; one can walk along them for hours, and see for miles in good weather. Herefordshire in the sun, seen from above: AE Housman�s lines from A Shropshire Lad kept going and going through my head � And see the coloured counties,
Hung out against the sky.
I quoted this to my companions, too. Just now I was emailing a friend and wanted to use the quote, so I checked it for the exact wording. I got a shock. AEH wrote, in �Bredon Hill�:
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
I still can�t believe that he didn�t write the version that�s still in my head. (If he did, someone please tell me where.) �Hung out� is accurate, from a height, in these border parts. The phrase describes the phenomenon of a low landscape appearing to have an unnaturally high horizon. This happens with the sea too, sometimes � it can reach halfway up the sky, like a stage backdrop climbing up its wall. The phrase also makes one think of washing on a line, so apt for the field-pattern of distorted rectangles.
Sound may have played a part in my misremembering. �Hung out against� sounds like �About us in�. And for many years I�ve had a recording of Robert Tear singing, with the CBSO, Vaughan Williams� song-cycle On Wenlock Edge. (The other side � this is vinyl � has Thomas Allen singing Songs of Travel, another VW song-cycle.) I taped this record when I lived in Greece, and used to play it when driving, enjoying the incongruity and nostalgia of such English music in the midst of Greekness. I�ve got a memory of playing it on Crete, while travelling through the mountains and across the hidden Lassithi Plateau with its derelict windmills� sometimes contrasts can work powerfully together.
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| Looking north from the Skirrid, Black Mountains on left |
There was no lark song on the Black Mountains, though I remember them everywhere a couple of years ago, in June, plus a few golden plovers nesting in the remotest parts, barely visible in long grass but recognisable from their haunting call. A lark�s life must be hard work, so much struggling high while singing; maybe they have a rest in August. Last week there were buzzards, and ravens, and kites, sometimes sweeping below us. This week I�ve missed waking up at 1,200 feet, far above everyone and everything except the birds, a few sheep and wild ponies, and the mountain: heather, bracken, earth and rock.
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| Above and below the cloud line |
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