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Turnshoes: Remnants of Anglo-Saxon Life in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage and West Stow Village, Suffolk.
Readings of a selection of these poems, with photographs of the objects that inspired them, can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Owing to problems with copyright on my photos of West Stow Anglo-Saxon village, these poems were never published. This is the whole collection:
Turnshoes:
Remnants of Anglo-Saxon Life
in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage and West Stow village, Suffolk.
Giles Watson
All poems © Giles Watson, 2012
Prologue: The Hanney Brooch
The earth is a deep red womb.
They lie her back in it, arms limp
at her sides. Perhaps there is a wound,
or a blench of disease, a bluing lip,
and beautiful eyes already sinking
in her skull, which will cave in
with the weight of loam. A spindle
is wrapped in lifeless fingers.
There are glazed pots, jars of glass
and a useful knife. Fertile soil
clogs her ears, enters her sagging
mouth. Ground waters leach and spoil
Her braided hair. And when she is reborn
into air, the brooch that held her cloak
glints with garnets. The old brown
Dust clogs the cloisons in their concentric
rings of gold. A boss of cuttlefish bone
gleams white amongst the mould,
the foil and filigree broken
by the plough. All that heart and mind
waiting among the worms and mud
to be shovelled up: she was twenty-five.
Will she spin again? Will some smith mend
the gildings, some god make her alive?
The Hanney brooch was found in 2009 amongst the remains of a female aged around twenty-five years in a field near West Hanney, Oxfordshire. Its owner lived in the seventh century, and was possibly a high-ranking member of the local Saxon Gewisse tribe. Whilst the pattern on her brooch is cruciform, and conforms to the height of Christian Anglo-Saxon fashion, her mourners also followed the more pagan custom of inhuming a range of other, more useful burial goods alongside her body. It visited the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage, for a short period in 2012.
The Cremation
After the fire was raked, and the embers were only warm,
she knelt to pick out the porous chalk of his fingers, dust
on her palms. Scraps of charred cloth, melted brooches:
all went into the urn, along with the smoke-dry bones
of his skull, and all remnants of his appetites and lusts.
She bit off a sob, wiped away smuts, breathed a charm,
bade something from beyond to make him whole.
a peace came over her: a sacred trust. Her breaths
grew calmer. She dropped trinkets in the ashes,
like keepsakes for a shepherd-doll – tiny metal shears,
gleaming in the wind-stirred powder of his bones –
embraced the urn beneath her cloak of wool.
Inspired by the collection of pagan (6th Century) Anglo Saxon cremation urns, one of which contained a miniature pair of shears.
Saxon Man
Please do not touch the Saxon man:
he is worn enough already,
his eyeballs getting out of hand,
his face no longer ruddy.
His nose is ground into a snout.
Beneath his jutting chin,
cloth of limestone binds his throat;
shell-fossils crust his skin.
He rebuilt Dorchester and Chichester,
threw up earth and timber ramparts
at Wareham, Wallingford and Cricklade,
repelled the Vikings, worked in iron,
copper, gold, amber – mastered
filigree and interlace – assembled
garnets in the eyes of dragons,
forged brick-heavy buckles, buried
men in ships, helmeted himself,
glowering beneath his visor, turned
scholar, worked in enamels, made
aestels magnified with crystal,
wrapped them with intricate gildings,
engraving even the hidden parts
with leafwork, left the inscription:
AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN.
Shell-fossils crust his skin.
Cloth of limestone binds his throat
beneath his jutting chin.
His nose is ground into a snout,
his face no longer ruddy,
his eyeballs getting out of hand.
He’s worn and you’re not ready:
you cannot touch the Saxon man.
Inspired by a 7th to 8th Century Anglo-Saxon stone carving from Eynsham, now on display in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage, and that most exquisite of English treasures, the aestel known as the Alfred Jewel, in the Ashmolean Museum.
His Knife
My cord was cut with this, when this and I were young.
With this I wore my whetstone; beside this I grew strong.
This impaled an apple; I skinned a boar with this.
This shaved me when I was a man, wanting my first kiss.
This carved the hunk of bread, spread the butter thickly.
This killed the goat I’d grown to love; this did it quickly.
This fed me hand to mouth – was rarely in its sheath:
I whittled, gouged and stabbed with this; this picked my teeth.
When they come to bury me, with this I shall find bliss –
and when they come to dig me up, they’ll find my bones
and this.
Inspired by two knife blades (Abingdon, 5th-7th Century) and a whetstone (Oxford, 10th Century). For Anglo-Saxon people, there was no more essential possession than a knife. The same tool might be used for eating (forks were not used), shaving, carving and killing animals for food, and at the end of life, one could expect to also be buried with one’s knife. The handles of the knives would have been made of wood or bone.
Buckles
A buckle for a king is no buckle at all:
an ornamental token sewn on where
a buckle might have been. It recalls
a dragon with interlacing scales, eyes
that never tarnish. It takes a whole
boat to bury its owner, but the tongue
of his buckle is silent, welded in place.
Lesser buckles have ways of speaking:
buckles that puckered tucked garments;
buckles on shoes; functional buckles
at the ends of belts, half way down
leather straps for slinging satchels;
buckles for attaching scabbards, closing
purses, joining mismatched bits
of leather; burnished buckles; buckles
with a green patina; pock-marked buckles
six feet under; buckles that stopped
swords, held babies in place; chafing
buckles one notch too tight; buckles
at the throats of dogs; dainty buckles;
buckles strong enough to hold
a heavy horse and never buckle.
Give me a buckle fit for function:
of bronze or iron – not of gold –
give me a good black strap of leather,
punched for snugness, and a buckle
to hold my heart together: to stay
intact, though I turn cold.
Inspired by a comparison of the entirely ornamental great gold buckle of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial with a small collection of utilitarian buckles from Watchfield and Didcot (5th to 7th Centuries) in the Vale and Downland Museum.
Shield-Boss
A stump of metal to protect a clenched fist,
a shield-boss is a weapon in itself, aimed
with a well-timed punch at a man’s temple:
it can have the brains out before there’s time
to raise his sword; the round wooden orb
can flatten his head, halo him in death
with its bronze-studded nimbus. It can take
a blade hard on its point, deflect it back
into a man’s guts, then crush him as he
clutches his own intestines, barely grazing
its wielder’s knuckles. It wouldn’t take much
to make an industry out of iron: this already
reads like a string of slogans. Amid the rout,
your fist’ll be safe while you’re slugging it out.
Inspired by an Anglo-Saxon shield-boss.
Spearheads
The spears became: not pruning hooks,
but leaves, pocked with galls and mines,
caterpillar-chewed by that old champer,
rust. First it gnawed the edges, taking
bites out of iron, staining it soil-coloured.
Now even the midribs are cratered,
as though Puccinia has invaded, intent
on rotting old growth back to soil.
Those hollow petioles once were grafted
into shafts: well-whittled poles, hefty
enough to drive a wedge of iron straight
through a shield, and half-way into
a man’s guts. He crunches to his knees,
nurses his impaler in a close embrace,
coughs up blood and a litany of names:
“Poplar, willow, holly, birch, ash, elm:
you and I give leaf, and end in loam.”
Inspired by three fifth-to-seventh century spear-heads from Watchfield cemetery. Puccinia is the generic name of the pathogenic fungi which cause plant rusts.
Wusa’s Balance
What would Wusa want with his balance
in the next world, with all that weighing
in progress, on a so-much larger scale?
And on our own illusory terra-firma,
waiting for that changing-into-dust,
what did he weigh then, against
a stack of coins already defunct,
stamped with heads of dead men,
their teeth unearthed by moles?
Was Wusa weighing gold, dividing
the spoil, when others went to Mass?
Was it then or later that the plague came?
There is no other gold in Wusa’s grave:
only this. And what would Wusa want
with his balance in the next world?
A grave excavated at Watchfield contained the remains of a young man, who died aged 20-25 at some time between A.D. 520 and 570. The balance, the scales of which may have been hammered out of old brooches, was buried with him inside a leather case, along with a selection of coins which would have had no monetary value by the time he was alive, and which must have been used as weights. The metal fitting of the leather case also survives, and has a runic inscription which has been tentatively translated: “These are army account books. Wusa kept them.” Perhaps Wusa was an army official, but it has also been suggested that he was a travelling salesman.
A Watchfield Girl
I stare into the orbs that housed your eyes –
am sucked into the slots for optic nerves,
and try to inhabit the mind of a sixth-century
girl aged twenty-five: how you treasured
that coin strung about your throat – a gift
from your husband – and your brooches,
paired, polished, at the height of fashion,
(twice as far apart as those sockets), adorning
your cloak of herb-dyed wool, fastened
at the neckline with an iron pin – and how
you carried little implements for plucking
hairs and trimming nails. But it is the knife
all gone to rust, with its soiled memories
of paring roots, scaling fish, cutting yarn –
and that rash of algal green upon your right
cheek and jaw – that let me reach you:
one who lived, loved, died in a fall, writhing
on the ground with fractured spine. I see
those eyes cast down, thinking private things:
distracted, diverted by some kinder man
who had no coin. One last and silly lapse
in concentration.
This skeleton of an Anglo-Saxon woman, buried in Watchfield in 525-575 AD, has fractured bones in the right arm, leg and spine, consistent with a fall. She was a woman of some standing, as suggested by her brooches – and she stood tall for her time, at 5 feet, 5 ½ inches.
Her Brooches
Mineralised on the backs of her brooches,
the fabric of her cloak and the corroded
pins are a crust, clinging to the copper:
all sunk into her ribcage as the bones
collapsed. The front-sides are gilded –
bright barriers to decay, glints to catch
the eye of her excavator – engraved
with a wheel, a cross, rippling water.
Bend closer to see the pursed lip as she
struggles with the pin, utters a little curse,
and her warm breath steams the gilding.
These are 5th to 7th Century brooches from Watchfield cemetery – similar to those worn by that “Watchfield Girl”.
The Ducklington Beads
The skeletons are arranged like scribbles,
skulls facing eastwards, disarticulated
echoes of the foetus-curve: a boy, aged
fifteen, front teeth absent; a young woman,
five feet high; a child of three, in fragmentary
state, sex indeterminate. They have been
buried with buckets and spindles, a beaver’s
tooth clenched in gold, fragments of bronze.
she wears a necklace. We strip it from her –
mount it in parts in different museums.
Beautiful beads: how these were treasured!
count them: eleven. Five like flesh, streaked
with fat, cured on a smoky fire. Two are white
with spots of ochre. One is sky, and clouds –
another bright as saffron from a rare flower’s
anther. This drab one is green – as withered
leaves in winter, covered with mould. The last
is all eye and lid and spiral, with a watching
yellow pupil. Watch us out of the dank ground;
ward off the prying eye. Our words are scribbles.
Inspired by beads from the 7th Century Romano-British Ducklington burial.
Amber Beads
If there are flies imprisoned in the resin,
we cannot see them, the amber clouded
over after long inhumation: prehistoric
beads, smoothed by the sea’s primeval
motion. She beachcombed them herself
with a hopeful treasure-seeker’s stoop,
grooming the sand for these frozen,
polished droplets – transfixed each one,
lived a lifetime with them ripening
at her throat – was seeded, ploughed in
with them, and the string that held them
rotted in unison with her spinal cord,
the beads escaping between her ribs
to the space once occupied by lungs,
gradually oxidising. We cannot see them
imprisoned in resin, if there are flies.
Inspired by a sixth century necklace of amber beads, found on the remains of a woman in the Anglo Saxon cemetery at Watchfield.
Comb
Now the comb is jagged-toothed
as stalagmites, and the rivets
leach haloes of rust into the bone.
She held it, whorled and white
and beautiful, and stripped
her glorious hair of lice, shook
it like a mane, transfixed
a flea between her fingernails,
and flirted. Earth piled in
on it, compacted over centuries.
fleas and lice died in soil.
time knocked out the teeth.
Inspired by an Anglo Saxon comb (6th Century, from Wallingford), fashioned out of bone.
Chatelaine
It is a happy marriage between beauty and utility.
All the vain and useful things hang from a string
between her brooches, where her hair can tangle
with them: a fetching little detail, just below
the hollow of her throat. Tweezers, easily detached
for plucking eyebrows, a roll of metal which holds
a brush for blackening lashes, a useful pin,
beads of animal bone, fingered absentmindedly –
and guarding that secret of her heart, a latched
padlock, the key long corroded in mould.
Inspired by 5th-7th Century chatelaine items from Didcot and Watchfield, Oxfordshire.
Spindle-Whorl and Loom-Weights
Wood smoke permeates the room,
seeps into rough-hewn timbers,
leaves its taint on hair and fingers,
the hearth at the centre open
to the sky. Teasel heads, frayed
from carding, kindle on the fire
in sudden flares as the lanolin
ignites, and by its light, she tucks
distaff under arm, sits down,
strings wool to the spindle, runs
its straw-thin shaft from knee
to thigh, plays out as the spinning
gains momentum, and when
the yarn is at arm’s length, pauses,
winds the slack beneath the whorl,
then recommences, her lip pursed
with concentration. Hanging by her:
madder, woad, weld and alkanet –
her dying herbs – will make rusts,
blues, yellows, lilacs. Her husband
saves his urine for the mordant.
Against one wall, a rug, half-finished,
hangs from a warp-weighted loom,
held straight by rings of clay: its weft
and warp all twills and herringbones.
in the darkest corner, a baby mewls.
All the wood, leather, wool and herb
turns back to soil, leaving only
loom-weights, a spindle-whorl
and a thigh-length shaft of bone.
Inspired by the collection of spindle-whorls and loom-weights. Textiles were produced as a matter of course in Anglo-Saxon homes, and every house had its own loom, but the only remains of this ubiquitous industry are the clay loom-weights, the stone spindle-whorls, and occasional fragments of mineralised textile on the reverse sides of brooches. Anglo-Saxon clothing would have been quite colourful, the dyes derived from a variety of herbs, lichens and possibly also insects. Mordanting was the process of fixing the dye. This could be achieved by soaking in an iron cauldron, salting, or by using the oxalic acid from wood-sorrel. A still more easy and effective method was to soak the dyed wool in stale urine before weaving.
Cauldron
The copper disintegrates like a fallen leaf
devoured by a mildew of verdigris.
It flakes at the edges, embracing
a clod of soil where a hearty stew
once boiled, and a column of steam
and smoke ascended through the roof
towards the stars. The metal chain
that kedged it to a beam is rusted
into oblivion, the hollow ladle gone
through the guts of worms, after
the wood decayed. Lean in to hear
an echo of ancient conversations,
trapped in the bowels of the cauldron,
the tongues and teeth that formed
the words long-cold, surrendered
to the hungry sovereignty of soil.
Inspired by the remains of a 6th Century copper-alloy cauldron from Watchfield Cemetery. The cauldron would have been suspended over a hearth, either from a roof-beam or from a tripod. Smoke and steam would have escaped the house through a hole in the ceiling.
Dice
The molar of a sheep or cow is layered
like folded pastry, cross-sectioned
by a hacksaw, worn smooth with a rasp.
It only takes a gimlet to gouge holes –
and a horn of ale to whet the taste
for making wagers – and the whole
refectory comes to life. Or perhaps
the game, proscribed, was played
surreptitiously in a shadowed corner
of a scriptorium, the cries of triumph
or of anguish stifled under cowls –
unaccountable delays in illuminating
the latest Rule of Saint Benedict –
the winnings tallied on spare strips
of vellum, with gambling-booty
smuggled out in a pig’s bladder.
The whole tribe of ungulates, utilised
to the last strip of skin and sinew
while sleek monks count their winnings.
Inspired by Anglo-Saxon dice made of animal teeth and bone, from Eynsham Abbey (10th Century) and Didcot (6th- 7th Centuries).
Incisor
Precious as amber: a curved tooth
for cleaving timber, notched
as a worn chisel. This sliver
of calcium peeled the bark,
sliced the grain, channered
as the tree fell, lopped off branches,
helped to clasp the limbless
wooden torso in a chomping
grip; bore the strain as the whole
thing was dragged across
the ground, into the river,
tugged against currents, wedged
the trunk between banks, slung
down other boles for reinforcement –
and ended up clasped in gold,
hung from string around a child’s
exposed and breathing throat.
Blood pulsed through the jugular
just beneath it. Air whistled
through the trachea. Peristalsis
was a surge all down the gullet,
until the child stopped swallowing,
and the breathing rasped its last,
and the corpuscles clumped in clots
all about the valve. Some things
never change: all the amulets
strung for luck will not avert
the irreversible felling.
A beaver’s tooth amulet in a gold setting was one of the grave goods associated with the remains of a small child at the 7th Century Romano-British Ducklington burial.
The Bucket
There is no kicking it: it takes some craftsmanship
to make it watertight – to tongue-and-groove
those strips of yew, screw them all together
with copper bands, and the iron handle is worth
more than some men’s lives – so we only bury it
with those who could afford it. Most people
make do with an unglazed pot, a hollowed scoop
of oak, a cupped pair of hands – or drink straight
from the stream; they are resourceful enough
to find water in the next world by themselves.
Dig it in deep with Aethelwold: he’ll need it.
He never lifted cup to lip without assistance,
still less fetched it and lugged it a mile, slopping
at the brim. Who knows? It may be a different
matter, on the other side, now his heart has given
out.
Buckets are rare in the archaeological record, suggesting that they were luxury items, and they are only ever found in well-equipped graves. It seems likely that they were status symbols. Only the metal parts survive in this specimen, along with enough traces of the mineralised wood for us to be confident that the bucket was made of wood from a yew tree.
Turnshoe
To walk with God, take shoes which look
seamless as the robe of Christ
and cross the parched and endless lake.
Leave no footprints in the dust,
and if the stitches chafe your heel,
you must not flag or turn about:
take off your britches and your cloak,
pause to don them inside-out.
Walk away, both torn and whole,
from where your bones lie under clods.
all the souls who die and wake
get blisters when they walk with God.
Turnshoes, like this 9th Century example, were turned inside-out after they were made, in order to preserve the stitches from wear. Shoes of this design may well have been worn by King Alfred the Great. Anglo-Saxon Christian burials perpetuated the pagan custom of interment with grave goods.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Owing to problems with copyright on my photos of West Stow Anglo-Saxon village, these poems were never published. This is the whole collection:
Turnshoes:
Remnants of Anglo-Saxon Life
in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage and West Stow village, Suffolk.
Giles Watson
All poems © Giles Watson, 2012
Prologue: The Hanney Brooch
The earth is a deep red womb.
They lie her back in it, arms limp
at her sides. Perhaps there is a wound,
or a blench of disease, a bluing lip,
and beautiful eyes already sinking
in her skull, which will cave in
with the weight of loam. A spindle
is wrapped in lifeless fingers.
There are glazed pots, jars of glass
and a useful knife. Fertile soil
clogs her ears, enters her sagging
mouth. Ground waters leach and spoil
Her braided hair. And when she is reborn
into air, the brooch that held her cloak
glints with garnets. The old brown
Dust clogs the cloisons in their concentric
rings of gold. A boss of cuttlefish bone
gleams white amongst the mould,
the foil and filigree broken
by the plough. All that heart and mind
waiting among the worms and mud
to be shovelled up: she was twenty-five.
Will she spin again? Will some smith mend
the gildings, some god make her alive?
The Hanney brooch was found in 2009 amongst the remains of a female aged around twenty-five years in a field near West Hanney, Oxfordshire. Its owner lived in the seventh century, and was possibly a high-ranking member of the local Saxon Gewisse tribe. Whilst the pattern on her brooch is cruciform, and conforms to the height of Christian Anglo-Saxon fashion, her mourners also followed the more pagan custom of inhuming a range of other, more useful burial goods alongside her body. It visited the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage, for a short period in 2012.
The Cremation
After the fire was raked, and the embers were only warm,
she knelt to pick out the porous chalk of his fingers, dust
on her palms. Scraps of charred cloth, melted brooches:
all went into the urn, along with the smoke-dry bones
of his skull, and all remnants of his appetites and lusts.
She bit off a sob, wiped away smuts, breathed a charm,
bade something from beyond to make him whole.
a peace came over her: a sacred trust. Her breaths
grew calmer. She dropped trinkets in the ashes,
like keepsakes for a shepherd-doll – tiny metal shears,
gleaming in the wind-stirred powder of his bones –
embraced the urn beneath her cloak of wool.
Inspired by the collection of pagan (6th Century) Anglo Saxon cremation urns, one of which contained a miniature pair of shears.
Saxon Man
Please do not touch the Saxon man:
he is worn enough already,
his eyeballs getting out of hand,
his face no longer ruddy.
His nose is ground into a snout.
Beneath his jutting chin,
cloth of limestone binds his throat;
shell-fossils crust his skin.
He rebuilt Dorchester and Chichester,
threw up earth and timber ramparts
at Wareham, Wallingford and Cricklade,
repelled the Vikings, worked in iron,
copper, gold, amber – mastered
filigree and interlace – assembled
garnets in the eyes of dragons,
forged brick-heavy buckles, buried
men in ships, helmeted himself,
glowering beneath his visor, turned
scholar, worked in enamels, made
aestels magnified with crystal,
wrapped them with intricate gildings,
engraving even the hidden parts
with leafwork, left the inscription:
AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN.
Shell-fossils crust his skin.
Cloth of limestone binds his throat
beneath his jutting chin.
His nose is ground into a snout,
his face no longer ruddy,
his eyeballs getting out of hand.
He’s worn and you’re not ready:
you cannot touch the Saxon man.
Inspired by a 7th to 8th Century Anglo-Saxon stone carving from Eynsham, now on display in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage, and that most exquisite of English treasures, the aestel known as the Alfred Jewel, in the Ashmolean Museum.
His Knife
My cord was cut with this, when this and I were young.
With this I wore my whetstone; beside this I grew strong.
This impaled an apple; I skinned a boar with this.
This shaved me when I was a man, wanting my first kiss.
This carved the hunk of bread, spread the butter thickly.
This killed the goat I’d grown to love; this did it quickly.
This fed me hand to mouth – was rarely in its sheath:
I whittled, gouged and stabbed with this; this picked my teeth.
When they come to bury me, with this I shall find bliss –
and when they come to dig me up, they’ll find my bones
and this.
Inspired by two knife blades (Abingdon, 5th-7th Century) and a whetstone (Oxford, 10th Century). For Anglo-Saxon people, there was no more essential possession than a knife. The same tool might be used for eating (forks were not used), shaving, carving and killing animals for food, and at the end of life, one could expect to also be buried with one’s knife. The handles of the knives would have been made of wood or bone.
Buckles
A buckle for a king is no buckle at all:
an ornamental token sewn on where
a buckle might have been. It recalls
a dragon with interlacing scales, eyes
that never tarnish. It takes a whole
boat to bury its owner, but the tongue
of his buckle is silent, welded in place.
Lesser buckles have ways of speaking:
buckles that puckered tucked garments;
buckles on shoes; functional buckles
at the ends of belts, half way down
leather straps for slinging satchels;
buckles for attaching scabbards, closing
purses, joining mismatched bits
of leather; burnished buckles; buckles
with a green patina; pock-marked buckles
six feet under; buckles that stopped
swords, held babies in place; chafing
buckles one notch too tight; buckles
at the throats of dogs; dainty buckles;
buckles strong enough to hold
a heavy horse and never buckle.
Give me a buckle fit for function:
of bronze or iron – not of gold –
give me a good black strap of leather,
punched for snugness, and a buckle
to hold my heart together: to stay
intact, though I turn cold.
Inspired by a comparison of the entirely ornamental great gold buckle of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial with a small collection of utilitarian buckles from Watchfield and Didcot (5th to 7th Centuries) in the Vale and Downland Museum.
Shield-Boss
A stump of metal to protect a clenched fist,
a shield-boss is a weapon in itself, aimed
with a well-timed punch at a man’s temple:
it can have the brains out before there’s time
to raise his sword; the round wooden orb
can flatten his head, halo him in death
with its bronze-studded nimbus. It can take
a blade hard on its point, deflect it back
into a man’s guts, then crush him as he
clutches his own intestines, barely grazing
its wielder’s knuckles. It wouldn’t take much
to make an industry out of iron: this already
reads like a string of slogans. Amid the rout,
your fist’ll be safe while you’re slugging it out.
Inspired by an Anglo-Saxon shield-boss.
Spearheads
The spears became: not pruning hooks,
but leaves, pocked with galls and mines,
caterpillar-chewed by that old champer,
rust. First it gnawed the edges, taking
bites out of iron, staining it soil-coloured.
Now even the midribs are cratered,
as though Puccinia has invaded, intent
on rotting old growth back to soil.
Those hollow petioles once were grafted
into shafts: well-whittled poles, hefty
enough to drive a wedge of iron straight
through a shield, and half-way into
a man’s guts. He crunches to his knees,
nurses his impaler in a close embrace,
coughs up blood and a litany of names:
“Poplar, willow, holly, birch, ash, elm:
you and I give leaf, and end in loam.”
Inspired by three fifth-to-seventh century spear-heads from Watchfield cemetery. Puccinia is the generic name of the pathogenic fungi which cause plant rusts.
Wusa’s Balance
What would Wusa want with his balance
in the next world, with all that weighing
in progress, on a so-much larger scale?
And on our own illusory terra-firma,
waiting for that changing-into-dust,
what did he weigh then, against
a stack of coins already defunct,
stamped with heads of dead men,
their teeth unearthed by moles?
Was Wusa weighing gold, dividing
the spoil, when others went to Mass?
Was it then or later that the plague came?
There is no other gold in Wusa’s grave:
only this. And what would Wusa want
with his balance in the next world?
A grave excavated at Watchfield contained the remains of a young man, who died aged 20-25 at some time between A.D. 520 and 570. The balance, the scales of which may have been hammered out of old brooches, was buried with him inside a leather case, along with a selection of coins which would have had no monetary value by the time he was alive, and which must have been used as weights. The metal fitting of the leather case also survives, and has a runic inscription which has been tentatively translated: “These are army account books. Wusa kept them.” Perhaps Wusa was an army official, but it has also been suggested that he was a travelling salesman.
A Watchfield Girl
I stare into the orbs that housed your eyes –
am sucked into the slots for optic nerves,
and try to inhabit the mind of a sixth-century
girl aged twenty-five: how you treasured
that coin strung about your throat – a gift
from your husband – and your brooches,
paired, polished, at the height of fashion,
(twice as far apart as those sockets), adorning
your cloak of herb-dyed wool, fastened
at the neckline with an iron pin – and how
you carried little implements for plucking
hairs and trimming nails. But it is the knife
all gone to rust, with its soiled memories
of paring roots, scaling fish, cutting yarn –
and that rash of algal green upon your right
cheek and jaw – that let me reach you:
one who lived, loved, died in a fall, writhing
on the ground with fractured spine. I see
those eyes cast down, thinking private things:
distracted, diverted by some kinder man
who had no coin. One last and silly lapse
in concentration.
This skeleton of an Anglo-Saxon woman, buried in Watchfield in 525-575 AD, has fractured bones in the right arm, leg and spine, consistent with a fall. She was a woman of some standing, as suggested by her brooches – and she stood tall for her time, at 5 feet, 5 ½ inches.
Her Brooches
Mineralised on the backs of her brooches,
the fabric of her cloak and the corroded
pins are a crust, clinging to the copper:
all sunk into her ribcage as the bones
collapsed. The front-sides are gilded –
bright barriers to decay, glints to catch
the eye of her excavator – engraved
with a wheel, a cross, rippling water.
Bend closer to see the pursed lip as she
struggles with the pin, utters a little curse,
and her warm breath steams the gilding.
These are 5th to 7th Century brooches from Watchfield cemetery – similar to those worn by that “Watchfield Girl”.
The Ducklington Beads
The skeletons are arranged like scribbles,
skulls facing eastwards, disarticulated
echoes of the foetus-curve: a boy, aged
fifteen, front teeth absent; a young woman,
five feet high; a child of three, in fragmentary
state, sex indeterminate. They have been
buried with buckets and spindles, a beaver’s
tooth clenched in gold, fragments of bronze.
she wears a necklace. We strip it from her –
mount it in parts in different museums.
Beautiful beads: how these were treasured!
count them: eleven. Five like flesh, streaked
with fat, cured on a smoky fire. Two are white
with spots of ochre. One is sky, and clouds –
another bright as saffron from a rare flower’s
anther. This drab one is green – as withered
leaves in winter, covered with mould. The last
is all eye and lid and spiral, with a watching
yellow pupil. Watch us out of the dank ground;
ward off the prying eye. Our words are scribbles.
Inspired by beads from the 7th Century Romano-British Ducklington burial.
Amber Beads
If there are flies imprisoned in the resin,
we cannot see them, the amber clouded
over after long inhumation: prehistoric
beads, smoothed by the sea’s primeval
motion. She beachcombed them herself
with a hopeful treasure-seeker’s stoop,
grooming the sand for these frozen,
polished droplets – transfixed each one,
lived a lifetime with them ripening
at her throat – was seeded, ploughed in
with them, and the string that held them
rotted in unison with her spinal cord,
the beads escaping between her ribs
to the space once occupied by lungs,
gradually oxidising. We cannot see them
imprisoned in resin, if there are flies.
Inspired by a sixth century necklace of amber beads, found on the remains of a woman in the Anglo Saxon cemetery at Watchfield.
Comb
Now the comb is jagged-toothed
as stalagmites, and the rivets
leach haloes of rust into the bone.
She held it, whorled and white
and beautiful, and stripped
her glorious hair of lice, shook
it like a mane, transfixed
a flea between her fingernails,
and flirted. Earth piled in
on it, compacted over centuries.
fleas and lice died in soil.
time knocked out the teeth.
Inspired by an Anglo Saxon comb (6th Century, from Wallingford), fashioned out of bone.
Chatelaine
It is a happy marriage between beauty and utility.
All the vain and useful things hang from a string
between her brooches, where her hair can tangle
with them: a fetching little detail, just below
the hollow of her throat. Tweezers, easily detached
for plucking eyebrows, a roll of metal which holds
a brush for blackening lashes, a useful pin,
beads of animal bone, fingered absentmindedly –
and guarding that secret of her heart, a latched
padlock, the key long corroded in mould.
Inspired by 5th-7th Century chatelaine items from Didcot and Watchfield, Oxfordshire.
Spindle-Whorl and Loom-Weights
Wood smoke permeates the room,
seeps into rough-hewn timbers,
leaves its taint on hair and fingers,
the hearth at the centre open
to the sky. Teasel heads, frayed
from carding, kindle on the fire
in sudden flares as the lanolin
ignites, and by its light, she tucks
distaff under arm, sits down,
strings wool to the spindle, runs
its straw-thin shaft from knee
to thigh, plays out as the spinning
gains momentum, and when
the yarn is at arm’s length, pauses,
winds the slack beneath the whorl,
then recommences, her lip pursed
with concentration. Hanging by her:
madder, woad, weld and alkanet –
her dying herbs – will make rusts,
blues, yellows, lilacs. Her husband
saves his urine for the mordant.
Against one wall, a rug, half-finished,
hangs from a warp-weighted loom,
held straight by rings of clay: its weft
and warp all twills and herringbones.
in the darkest corner, a baby mewls.
All the wood, leather, wool and herb
turns back to soil, leaving only
loom-weights, a spindle-whorl
and a thigh-length shaft of bone.
Inspired by the collection of spindle-whorls and loom-weights. Textiles were produced as a matter of course in Anglo-Saxon homes, and every house had its own loom, but the only remains of this ubiquitous industry are the clay loom-weights, the stone spindle-whorls, and occasional fragments of mineralised textile on the reverse sides of brooches. Anglo-Saxon clothing would have been quite colourful, the dyes derived from a variety of herbs, lichens and possibly also insects. Mordanting was the process of fixing the dye. This could be achieved by soaking in an iron cauldron, salting, or by using the oxalic acid from wood-sorrel. A still more easy and effective method was to soak the dyed wool in stale urine before weaving.
Cauldron
The copper disintegrates like a fallen leaf
devoured by a mildew of verdigris.
It flakes at the edges, embracing
a clod of soil where a hearty stew
once boiled, and a column of steam
and smoke ascended through the roof
towards the stars. The metal chain
that kedged it to a beam is rusted
into oblivion, the hollow ladle gone
through the guts of worms, after
the wood decayed. Lean in to hear
an echo of ancient conversations,
trapped in the bowels of the cauldron,
the tongues and teeth that formed
the words long-cold, surrendered
to the hungry sovereignty of soil.
Inspired by the remains of a 6th Century copper-alloy cauldron from Watchfield Cemetery. The cauldron would have been suspended over a hearth, either from a roof-beam or from a tripod. Smoke and steam would have escaped the house through a hole in the ceiling.
Dice
The molar of a sheep or cow is layered
like folded pastry, cross-sectioned
by a hacksaw, worn smooth with a rasp.
It only takes a gimlet to gouge holes –
and a horn of ale to whet the taste
for making wagers – and the whole
refectory comes to life. Or perhaps
the game, proscribed, was played
surreptitiously in a shadowed corner
of a scriptorium, the cries of triumph
or of anguish stifled under cowls –
unaccountable delays in illuminating
the latest Rule of Saint Benedict –
the winnings tallied on spare strips
of vellum, with gambling-booty
smuggled out in a pig’s bladder.
The whole tribe of ungulates, utilised
to the last strip of skin and sinew
while sleek monks count their winnings.
Inspired by Anglo-Saxon dice made of animal teeth and bone, from Eynsham Abbey (10th Century) and Didcot (6th- 7th Centuries).
Incisor
Precious as amber: a curved tooth
for cleaving timber, notched
as a worn chisel. This sliver
of calcium peeled the bark,
sliced the grain, channered
as the tree fell, lopped off branches,
helped to clasp the limbless
wooden torso in a chomping
grip; bore the strain as the whole
thing was dragged across
the ground, into the river,
tugged against currents, wedged
the trunk between banks, slung
down other boles for reinforcement –
and ended up clasped in gold,
hung from string around a child’s
exposed and breathing throat.
Blood pulsed through the jugular
just beneath it. Air whistled
through the trachea. Peristalsis
was a surge all down the gullet,
until the child stopped swallowing,
and the breathing rasped its last,
and the corpuscles clumped in clots
all about the valve. Some things
never change: all the amulets
strung for luck will not avert
the irreversible felling.
A beaver’s tooth amulet in a gold setting was one of the grave goods associated with the remains of a small child at the 7th Century Romano-British Ducklington burial.
The Bucket
There is no kicking it: it takes some craftsmanship
to make it watertight – to tongue-and-groove
those strips of yew, screw them all together
with copper bands, and the iron handle is worth
more than some men’s lives – so we only bury it
with those who could afford it. Most people
make do with an unglazed pot, a hollowed scoop
of oak, a cupped pair of hands – or drink straight
from the stream; they are resourceful enough
to find water in the next world by themselves.
Dig it in deep with Aethelwold: he’ll need it.
He never lifted cup to lip without assistance,
still less fetched it and lugged it a mile, slopping
at the brim. Who knows? It may be a different
matter, on the other side, now his heart has given
out.
Buckets are rare in the archaeological record, suggesting that they were luxury items, and they are only ever found in well-equipped graves. It seems likely that they were status symbols. Only the metal parts survive in this specimen, along with enough traces of the mineralised wood for us to be confident that the bucket was made of wood from a yew tree.
Turnshoe
To walk with God, take shoes which look
seamless as the robe of Christ
and cross the parched and endless lake.
Leave no footprints in the dust,
and if the stitches chafe your heel,
you must not flag or turn about:
take off your britches and your cloak,
pause to don them inside-out.
Walk away, both torn and whole,
from where your bones lie under clods.
all the souls who die and wake
get blisters when they walk with God.
Turnshoes, like this 9th Century example, were turned inside-out after they were made, in order to preserve the stitches from wear. Shoes of this design may well have been worn by King Alfred the Great. Anglo-Saxon Christian burials perpetuated the pagan custom of interment with grave goods.
