(NB - Click on images for soundfiles)
One of the things Miranda
and I loved most about Medieval Catholicism (is there any other sort?)
is its obsession with mortality as a source of an essentially anti-human
neurosis. Basic fears and concerns are stripped to the bone and
personified in a multiplicity of imagery from Transi Tombs to the
foliate face of The Green Man and other 'memento mori', all of which
serve to underline the belief that this life is but a gateway to the
next, thus justifying all manner brutality and atrocity in the name of
religious truth. Death features as a character in The Durham Pilgrims;
the medieval landscape is strewn with corpses of the victims of crime,
pestilence, poverty, war and hostile nature, of winter and wolves. He
joins them in this opening scene in which a gibbet looms ominously out
of the mists on an otherwise deserted shore...
Hermione Harvestman - 2003
Stage direction by Miranda Hardy:
Scene
One : A group of Pilgrims come upon a gibbeted corpse on a bleak
blasted foggy headland. Though severely decomposed, the corpse begins to
speak, urging them to turn back from their journey and make the most of
life, the aftermath of which is assured oblivion.
Pilgrims! Listen to one who knows!
There is no heaven, nor even God;
This life is all; and this earth is hell, or heaven
as you choose.
The Church is corrupt, unworthy of your time and devotion.
So go back to your loved ones e'er time slays them
The time you waste in devotion is far better spent in love.
Love is all that life allows. There is no greater joy
than the warmth of the living flesh.
So Husbands, go back to your Wives;
Mothers return to your Children
Least they be as I am when you return!
Ad mortem festinamus peccare desistamus!
As I am now, so you must be; as you are now so once was I!
There is no heaven, nor even God;
This life is all; and this earth is hell, or heaven
as you choose.
The Church is corrupt, unworthy of your time and devotion.
So go back to your loved ones e'er time slays them
The time you waste in devotion is far better spent in love.
Love is all that life allows. There is no greater joy
than the warmth of the living flesh.
So Husbands, go back to your Wives;
Mothers return to your Children
Least they be as I am when you return!
Ad mortem festinamus peccare desistamus!
As I am now, so you must be; as you are now so once was I!
Several
are convinced by the corpse's pleas, and begin to turn back; seeing
this THE PRIEST insists they take the gibbet down from the gallows and
burn it as a heretic. As the pilgrims look on, the corpse howls in the
flames: Ad mortem festinamus peccare desistamus! Ad mortem festinamus
peccare desistamus! until all is consumed and silent once more whereupon
the they go on their way - only now DEATH is one of their number...
As a child I saw elves I'm
sure. They came out on summer evenings, in the wild places I frequented
in a state of perfect joy and innocence, entirely untroubled by the
business of the human world back in the house which I never much
understood or cared for. I confess to being heavily under the influence
of Rackham, whose vivid illustrations convinced me of the reality of the
Little Folk as much as did the stories they attended, or not, as the
case might be. I grew up immersed in such lore, be it in book form, or
on the lips of the various storytellers who worked below stairs, keeping
me entertained with the truth of their vivid recountings, though that
wasn't, of course, their main vocation.
Our cook was particularly
wise in such matters, as was a rather pretty young scullery maid called
Dinah who spoke of The Piping of Summer Elves, which she likened to
birdsong only with a more human melody to it. I suppose the outbreak of
the war changed that world forever, however much I clung to it for the
duration, but by 1945 I was fifteen and had other things on my mind.
There are times it has returned to haunt me, and over the years I swear
I've heard their piping of a summer evening as something rustles in the
monochrome Rackhamesque twilight, though I often wonder what Dinah meant
by 'a more human melody'. Perhaps it was the otherworldly notes of the
Lydian Mode, played F to F on the white notes of a piano, on on the
synthesiser, as I do here, communing with my inner child who once heard
such things without asking.
Hermione Harvestman (Notes to Self, 1999)