The Seasons

A Celebration of the English Year

Nick Groom

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781848871625
• eBook ISBN: 9781782392064
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and runner-up for Countryfile Book of the Year. For millennia, the passing seasons and their rhythms have marked our progress through the year. But what do they mean to us now that we lead increasingly atomised and urban lives and our weather becomes ever more unpredictable or extreme? In this splendidly rich and lyrical celebration of the English seasons, Nick Groom investigates the trove of strange folklore and often stranger fact they have accumulated over the centuries and shows how tradition and our links with nature still have a vital role to play in all our lives.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Notes on the Text
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Part I	1	Introduction
	2	The Year
	3	Months and Days
	4	The Weather
Part II	5	SPRING
	6	Easter
	7	The Cuckoo
Part III	8	May Day
	9	SUMMER
Part IV	10	A Land Enclosed
	11	AUTUMN
Part V	12	WINTER
	13	Christmas and the Twelve Days
	14	Past, Present, and Future
Notes
Bibliography
Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A book of this magnitude, and which has been in preparation for some years, means that I am indebted to many people who may not even have realized they were providing assistance when I questioned them on some recondite area of expertise. I am grateful to all my colleagues at the University of Exeter who have supported me in this project and responded to work-in-progress in seminars and lectures, in particular Regenia Gagnier, Andrew McNeillie, Ayesha Mukherjee, Henry Power, Angelique Richardson, and Jane Spencer. I would also like to thank library staff at the University of Exeter (both Tremough and Streatham campuses), as well as at the British Library and the Bodleian Library. Parts of this work were aired in early drafts in conferences and seminars at the following universities: Cambridge, Cardiff, Keele, Loughborough, Plymouth, St Andrews, and Sheffield; and I would like to thank the organizers and participants for these opportunities and for discussing the work candidly, most notably Nicholas Allen, John Brannigan, Matthew Campbell, Robert Macfarlane, Dafydd Moore, Becky Munford, Nicholas Roe, Adam Rounce, Jos Smith, Shelley Trower, and Julian Wolfreys. I also spoke on May Day at the Du Maurier Festival, and so would also like to thank the organizers of that event. Margaret Bushell, Revd Anthony Geering, Peter Gilliver, John Goodridge, Jonathon Green, Michael Nath, Steve Roud, Ian Wilson, Richard Wright, Moon Farm (Devon), and Wren Music responded promptly to queries. I am particularly grateful to Helen Parker-Bray, who generously read and commented acutely on several sections, to the meticulous dedication and erudition of Ben Dupré, who copy-edited the text, and to James Nightingale, who carefully guided the book through production.

David Godwin and his team have provided reliable support over the years, and Toby Mundy and all at Atlantic generously backed this project through all its ebbs and flows. The Devonshire Arms, the King’s Arms, the Oxenham Arms, and the Seven Stars have been essential allies, as have The Academy and Elegia (who provided sponsorship for the illustrations).

My most profound debts, however, are to my editor Angus MacKinnon, and the photographer Chris Chapman. Angus was tireless in suggesting revisions to the manuscript – drawing my attention to infelicities of style, inconsistencies in argument, and non sequiturs, while maintaining both his good humour and undimmed faith in the book. Any errors or inaccuracies that remain are my own. Chris’s remarkable images were one of the inspirations for this project and it is a privilege to be able to place his photographs alongside my own text. I am very grateful for his permission to include them. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Joanne, for putting up with my writing when I might have been playing in the garden with our children; I hope that when they read the book they will see why I thought that it was worth the sacrifice of a few summer afternoons.

NOTES ON THE TEXT

References

All sources have been checked against the originals where possible, and therefore quotations in this book can be treated as accurate and reliable; only in a handful of unavoidable instances is primary material taken from secondary sources. For both better and worse, folklore scholarship tends to be collaborative: A finds X and sends it to B, who adds Y and informs C, who publishes it as Z. The problem, of course, is that A might never have intended X to be published without further verification. With this chain of Chinese whispers in mind, I have always tried to trace the earliest and most reliable source. My findings frequently contest accepted scholarship; in such cases, I accept that other evidence elusive to me may subsequently arise – but in the meantime, I trust that readers will accept my citations as primary sources.

First printings have, in the main, been preferred to modern editions for the simple reason that the texts used in this study were often heavily revised. A few modern editions are standard, but some create as many problems as they solve. Thomson’s The Seasons is, appropriately, the watershed text for this book, but while I have often used James Sambrook’s edition, I have also referred to early printings of The Seasons where necessary. Any significant divergences are noted.

Notes are given as simply as possible: author/title/editor, date and (where necessary) volume number, and page number/folium/signature; full citations are given in the bibliography. All quotations from Shakespeare are given as act, scene, and line number from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al (1974), unless otherwise indicated.

Modernization

It is important in a book such as this, which charts the history of the seasons, to impart the literary flavour of earlier epochs and to enjoy the expression and orthography of bygone ages. Consequently, spelling has not been modernized except in cases where not to modernize would make the originals unfamiliar – lines from William Shakespeare being an obvious example. Likewise, typography has been modernized only where obsolete conventions such as the macron would obscure meaning; such revision has been indicated in the notes. After some thought, the ‘vv’ for ‘w’ has been modernized, as have usages such as ‘u’ for ‘v’ and ‘i’ for ‘j’ (and vice versa); this has meant that some of Edmund Spenser’s deliberate archaisms have been lost, but I have reluctantly made this decision in the interests of consistency and accessibility. Despite these changes, it is hoped that the challenge of unfamiliar spellings will still be enjoyed by the reader as part of the puzzle of early English literature. The warning ‘sic’ is very seldom used in direct quotation from historical sources as spelling was fluid before the early nineteenth century; when ‘sic’ does appear, it usually notes a verbatim usage by a modern or contemporary writer, a typographical error, or an exceptional spelling open to misinterpretation. Square brackets ‘[]’ indicate editorial elucidation, such as adding necessary punctuation.

Capitalization

The seasons spring, summer, autumn, and winter are not capitalized except when referring to personifications of the season, or if capitalized in quotations – although here the personification may in any case be ambiguous and the result of printing conventions; likewise ‘nature’ and ‘Nature’, and ‘sun’, ‘moon’, and ‘earth’. Archaic capitalization is retained. ‘Countryside’, ‘nature’, and similar words are used ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Note About the Author