|
The Modern Antiquarian Forum » Rural British strangeness in books, music + films |
Log In to post a reply
|
|
|
|
| Topic View: Flat | Threaded | |
|
Rhiannon 5291 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 09:54
|
||
|
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/10/eeriness-english-countryside-robert-macfarlane I love 'A Field in England' and M R James.. this article has lots of other things I've not heard of. But I rather look forward to looking into them. It's so sunny though. I should probably go outside and collect a few ideas for weird experiences myself. |
|||
|
ruskus 12 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 12:47
|
||
|
Thanks for this great piece. I've definitely have noticed over the years how some of these touchstones of the eerie, including ones mentioned here (such as MR James, HP Lovecraft, These New Puritans, Stanley Donwood,etc), have linked up across my range of interests. Something about the unknown, unsettling, or the melancholic. As a kid I was fascinated by Susan Cooper's the Dark is Rising, Box of Delights (it still gives my shivers watching it now), even Herne the Hunter on Robin of Sherwood. Growing up in Suffolk, I remember how real some of those local weird tales seemed, such as 'Black Shuck', the black hound with burning red eyes which you could never look into, and the deep paw-made cuts in the heavy wooden door at Blythburgh church, looking bleakly out across the marshes. I live not too far from MR James' childhood home at Great Livermere in Suffolk, which gives off the most unsettling vibes, even on the brightest of days. It's so interesting to read how others often have unusual or unexplained feelings at the ancient sites on TMA, just as possibly our ancestors may have done, in certain locations. I'm starting to like Robert MacFarlane even more after reading this. I think his 'Old Ways' was my favourite read of last year.
|
|||
|
GLADMAN 950 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 14:06
|
||
|
ruskus wrote: ....It's so interesting to read how others often have unusual or unexplained feelings at the ancient sites on TMA, just as possibly our ancestors may have done, in certain locations..... Isn't it just? While not a believer in the supernatural - that is something beyond the physical here and now - in a literal sense (don't discount the possibility, but need evidence to entertain a likelihood) I'm becoming more and more convinced that monuments were located with the utmost care so various factors could play upon and manipulate the human psyche to the benefit of whomever controlled local society. To play mind games, take advantage of anticipated weather conditions. The obvious examples are too obvious to name. Why else, for example, would people have toiled erecting cairns upon mountaintops that can't even be seen from valley level? Lead people up there in mist, however, and you've a captive audience to mould to your will through theatrics, autosuggestion.
|
|||
tjj 3606 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 16:44
|
||
|
It's a really good article isn't it. Monganaut posted it over on Village Pump earlier today, I read it then and did comment (which I rarely do on VP). I waffled on a bit about 'projection' but there is no getting away from the spookiness in MR James's "A view from a hill". Hard to explain away. One of my favourite books is 'Witch Light' by Susan Fletcher (also published as Corrag) not spooky as such but quite 'other-worldly', though is a novel set around the Massacre of Glencoe. To quote: I had never liked witch, and I still don’t. But if ever I deserved the name at all, it was then, I reckon. It was having my hair fly in the wind as I stood on the tops, and how I crawled through the woods where the mushrooms grew. It was cloud-watching and stag-seeing, and spending long hours - full afternoons – by the waterfall that I bathed in, watching the autumn leaves fall down and make their way seaward. They bobbed and swirled. I said magick on day. In the gully that led to my valley, I stopped. The wind was in the birches and it felt they were speaking. Each chapter is headed by a little bit of country/folk-lore pertaining to herbs. "Moonwort is a herb (they say) will open locks and unshoe horses as tread upon it ... Country people, that I know call it Unshoe The Horse." Sorry if I'm waffling again.
|
|||
thesweetcheat 6210 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 18:05
|
||
|
Excellent piece. Garner and more especially Cooper (whose Dark Is Rising sequence is still my favourite book of all) imprinted that sense of the possibility of time bleeding through to the present in me at an early age. I'm sure my fondness for upland Wales is at least partly due to The Grey King, set in an often gloomy October around the slopes of Cadair Idris. I'd probably add Watership Down to that, a meticulous depiction of quintessential English countryside and its wildlife, where evil can still be found (the gassings at the original burrow, the burrow with the snares, Efrafa and General Woundwort). Classic Doctor Who played on that too, particularly the stories set on rural or semi-rural Earth locations. I've never read any MR James but really should.
|
|||
|
GLADMAN 950 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 18:29
|
||
Suppose I should mention 'Under the Skin' by Michael Faber, based entirely on/around the A9 between Dornoch and Inverness, an area I've got to know well over the past decade thanks to Greywether, teeming with chambered cairns and such .... probably the most dark, disturbing and thought provoking book I've read since Orwell's 1984. Better than James Smythe's 'The Machine', even. I'll never be able to drive the A9 again without thinking of Isserley.
|
|||
|
thesweetcheat 6210 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 18:36
|
||
|
Sounds good, will check that out. Completely unrelated to this thread really, I recently re-read the 39 Steps for the first time since going to Scotland. I enjoyed the settings in that too.
|
|||
|
GLADMAN 950 posts |
Apr 11, 2015, 19:10
|
||
|
thesweetcheat wrote: Sounds good, will check that out. Completely unrelated to this thread really, I recently re-read the 39 Steps for the first time since going to Scotland. I enjoyed the settings in that too. Be warned... I found it very, er, challenging to find myself identifying with an alien engaged in such a horrific process, looking at humankind through the eyes of another species as just animals. The book is much better than the film in my opinion, since the film is only loosely based on it.... but I reckon the film's excellent as well. And that's got nothing to do with Scarlett Johansson being in it as nature intended. Nothing at all.
|
|||
|
thesweetcheat 6210 posts |
Apr 12, 2015, 12:16
|
||
|
There's an emerging thing of semi-rural writings, focussing on landscapes of pylons,deserted b-roads and abandoned railway lines. I think the term "edgeland" has been coined for it. Here's one website (the creator is an occasional TMA contributor): http://landscapism.blogspot.co.uk/ And another, illustrations on a similar theme: https://maximpetergriffin.wordpress.com/
|
|||
spencer 3070 posts |
Edited Apr 12, 2015, 13:27
Apr 12, 2015, 13:22
|
||
...from a long lineage. Check out some of the travel writing of Hilaire Belloc or Robert Gibbings, who loved British waterways. Very evocative, and unsung, it seems, these days.. RG was a great artist and woodcutter too. The art of Eric Ravilious captures the 'otherness' of the British countryside too, if RG's work appeals..ditto John Piper.
|
| Pages: 3 – [ 1 2 3 | Next ] | Add a reply to this topic |
|
|
|
| The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index | |
