All Among the Barley

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Truly towering . nature, land, nationalism, war, death, patriarchy and the whole damn thing (Giles Coren) Both a commentary on our world and a reminder of where similar sentiments ended before – with fascism across Europe, WW2 and the Holocaust – this is a book which dramatizes both the insidious pull of repellent politics and the extent to which they depend on skewed storytelling and invented mythologies. While Connie tries to idealise a rural England of bread-making, cheerful peasants and pastoral idealism, real farmers like the narrator’s father are struggling with absentee landlords, debts and confusion over whether they want government subsidies and import tariffs, or free trade. Little stuff: I think "rout" is correct. A rout is a mob of fleeing soldiers, but I think here is it a playful term meaning "you fellows." Melissa Harrison is a dazzlingly gifted writer, and All Among the Barley confirms her as a novelist whose lyrical descriptions of nature and rural English life, harnessed to a gripping plot and varied cast of characters, deserves the widest readership. This is right up with the very best classic novels of inter-War country life - its beauties, sorrows, injustices and realities' - Amanda Craig, author of The Lie of the Land And the key part of the book for me was the portrayal of the rural community as explained earlier in my comments – at a time of great change. Harrison drawing on her nature writing beautifully captures the rhythms of rural life – both the natural rhythm of flora and fauna, as well as the rhythms that man has imposed on the landscape to make a marginal living from it.

All of these presumably to encourage beer rather than whiskey, as the lesser of two evils! The remainder of the text is the same. This is certainly an ambitious book and one which attempts a lot – perhaps not altogether successfully. Like two recent books I have read – “There, There” and “In a Mad and Furious City” ends with what seems an unnecessary dramatic finale. Evie’s confusion as a young woman, haunted by superstition, of witches signs, draws her into a sense that like her mother and grandmother, she has unnatural, and undesirable powers. The consequences are tragic.We are treated to an abundance of wonderful descriptions of the countryside of East Anglia and its wildlife. I adored all of this. One example of the gorgeous writing - ‘ At dawn, dew silvered the spiders’ silk strung between the grass blades in our pastures so that the horses left trails where they walked, like the wakes of slow vessels in still water’. Mudcatter Tradsinger has noted in another thread ( Lyr Req: All Among the Barley) that he collected two versions of the song (one from Hampshire and one from Devon) and I'll see if he can let us know if there are any significant differences from the text above. (As I suspect that the versions collected all derive from the obviously popular Stirling song I don't expect many differences. I'll put up the tunes later, but it's clear that both the tune used by Walter Pardon and the tune posted by Malcolm above are both derived from Stirling's tune).

I don't have access to the online Grove, but will try to have a look at the nearest print copy when I can. Meanwhile, there is a short entry in The Oxford Companion to Music: Call Number: M2.3.U6A44 Digital Id: sm1871 00667 urn:hdl:loc.music/sm1871.00667 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/sm1871.00667 For comparison with the tune above (btw, thanks Malcolm for posting the English Dance and Song stuff!) here is the tune from the 1871 version. This was sheet music for voice and piano:

Acknowledgements

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. It isn’t easy to conceive when you are growing up, that the world could be any different than how you find it, for the things you first encounter are what normality comes to consist of, and only the passage of time teaches you that your childhood could have been otherwise.” One might say that this is first and foremost a coming-of-age story. This has been done many times before, but I do think the reader truly comes to perceive the situation Edie finds herself in. We are given a good characterization of not only Edie but also of others in her family too. Edie is caught in this maelstrom of social and political activity whilst still trying to make the transition herself from child to young woman and she comments as a narrator of the story as an elderly woman at the end of the book. Harrison is readily comparable with Elizabeth Taylor and Penelope Lively; but she has a distinction all her own - and her growing audience must hope to live long enough to read everything she writes' - Spectator