Fenland Facts and Fancies by Michael Delanoy
BEAUTY & HISTORY
The distant horizon blends
into the sky
No beauty here to the stranger’s eye
They all find it very hard to see
The beauty of a gnarled willow tree.
They say that it all looks very fine
But there is no beauty in a straight line.
There are no mountains, no woods, no lakes
But to realise the beauty — more time it takes.
Fenland Sunsets just can’t be bettered:
Our vision by mountains never fettered.
On the Eastern horizon we can watch the sun
rise;
'Til behind Western horizons it disappears from
our eyes.
No glacial action, volcano or fault;
A landscape created with banks made of gault.
The view that you see looking over the Fen
Was created entirely by the Drainage Men.
The Duke of Bedford and his Adventurer Friends
To drain these lands went to limitless ends.
The Fenman with fish and fowl scraped a living
And with these Drainers they were unforgiving
They realised that when all the land was dry
There would be nowhere to fish, no duck in the
sky.
The lock gates were broken, the banks destroyed.
Beware the Fen Tiger when he gets annoyed.
But alas. their efforts were to no avail
Never again on the meres would they be able to
sail,
For the meres dried up, and the reed beds died -
At last the Adventurers were satisfied.
The Fenmen, they had to admit defeat,
All is now potatoes and sugar beet
BUT .........
The story does not quite end here;
The Fenmen made a prophecy I fear -
“That Captain Flood will have the last say
And the farms and villages will be washed away".
ELY CATHEDRAL
We all know of St. Paul’s
and Sir Christopher Wren -
But there were others, unknown, who were just as
great men.
They built Ely Cathedral, seven hundred years
ago,
Just how they did it we will never know!
How long did it take? How many men died
In order that their God should be glorified?
Their names aren‘t engraved, no stone effigy,
The cathedral their monument for us all to see.
The Lady Chapel, an
architectural delight
With its lofty ceiling and so full of light.
The geometry, triangulation: imagine if you
could
Building the lantern tower, almost entirely of
wood!
But in spite of the years,
storm, rain and gale,
The "Ship of the Fens” continues to sail.
For that is the name by which it is known -
That glorious monument hewn out of stone.
To the lonely traveller in
the night
Midst the yellow sodiums, stands out a white
light;
it’s the lantern tower shining out over the fen
To join as was intended, God and men.
FEN SKIES
A young lad from London
visited the Fens -
He must have had a discerning eye!
His comment when he stepped from the car:
“Cor, int you got a lotta sky!"
He had spotted in that
brief moment
One of the great features of the Fen -
To depict the sunrises and sunsets
With brush or words. defies men.
Even the camera can’t truly
capture
Those brilliant multi-coloured skies.
The effect of the light on the landscape
Can hardly be accepted by one’s eyes.
But there are those who
scurry on,
Never taking time to look so far...
Sunset, alas, only means to them
It’s time to put the lights on in the car!
STRANGE WORDS
We have some strange words
in the Fens -
Lunch is DOCKEY or GRUB.
And when the land gets over-wet,
We say it’s gone to SLUB.
Small potatoes are known as
CHATS!
Others are SPUDS or TATERS;
And when conditions are very wet,
We wear LALLYGAGS. not gaiters!
Wildlife does not escape
strange words -
A HODMEDOD is the name for a snail;
And that little friendly creature
The frog, is the FEN NIGHTINGALE.
And if something belongs to
you
We would say it is YOURN.
SHOCK doesn’t only mean trauma,
It may be sheaves of com.
And if something is very
small
We would say it was DODDY.
There must be others I don't know -
I'd like to hear from anybody!
A WARTIME
CHILDHOOD
From my mother a protective
hug,
Overhead the rumble of a “doodlebug”;
On her face, fear when the engine stopped.
I can’t even recall now where it dropped.
From the RAF Hospital, in
bandages swathed
Came airmen, the results of bombing raids
braved.
The clanking train as it went over the river
Pulling truck-loads of bombs for more airmen to
deliver.
Over the fields by the
stickleback stream
Were men behind barbed wire — prisoners it would
seem.
“B” for banana in my alphabet book;
I was ten when my first bite I took.
Another thing, I thought it
was funny,
That “coupons” appeared more important than
money...
“When the war is over, Daddy will come home” —
But he
didn’t.
These
verses, describing the author’s childhood in
Ely, have been added to the 2015 print to
commemorate the end of World War Two.
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