Christmas carols and traditional scenes

click photo to enlarge
The formulaic dirge, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night" is, to my ear, one of the worst of Christmas carols. Unless that is, it becomes transmuted into a thing of fun by the substitution of silly schoolboy lyrics beginning, "While shepherds washed their socks by night...!" Equally mind numbing is the cacophonous jangle of "Ding Dong Merrily On High", a song in which the jolliness quotient has been cranked up to 11, making it a veritable Bruce Forsyth among carols - not a good thing! And don't get me started on "Away in a Manger", "Silent Night", or modern carols such as "The Little Drummer Boy", all of which turn sentiment into sentimentality and put me in mind me of Oscar Wilde's observation about Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop" - "One would have to have a heart of stone to read of the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter."

Those comments probably mark me out as a Christmas curmudgeon. And, I suppose, I'm guilty as charged. Except, there are Christmas carols that I absolutely love. They are songs that struck me as beautiful when I was younger, and which I consider beautiful still. Only when I was older, and had a wider interest in music, did I realise that the carols that appealed to me the most were the traditional ones, usually based on English folk tunes, and those that I disliked were, in the main, written by Victorian churchmen and women. So, I can listen to "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlmen", "The Holly and the Ivy", "The Boar's Head Carol", "The Cherry Tree Carol", "The Sussex Carol", "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In", "Sans Day Carol", "The First Nowell" and "Here We Come A-Wassailing" every year, appreciating the beauty of their melodies and the, usually, simplicity and unaffectedness of their words. Any one of them, to my mind, trounces carols of the low calibre of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" or "Once in Royal David's City." And it's not just England that produces fine carols based on folk tunes. One of my favourites is the Basque carol, "Birjina gaztettobat zegoen", translated into English by Sabine Baring Gould as "Gabriel's Message". In fairness I should add that there are some "composed" as opposed to traditional/folk carols that I do actually like, one of which was quoted in yesterday's post, "In the Bleak Midwinter." The pairing of Christina Rossetti (words) and Gustav Holst (music) produced a masterpiece that appeals to my sensibilities, though I understand that some (clearly very strange!) people don't like it. So, whilst I have decided views about what makes a good carol, I'm not altogether a Scrooge as far as Chrismas goes. Honest!

Speaking of Christmas traditions, which carols most certainly are, the recent snow has allowed me to gather a few traditional-looking wintry church photographs, of which one of my best is this view of St Swithun, Bicker. Sharp eyes will note the rounded arches in the short nave, and the unbuttressed crossing tower revealing its origins in the 1100s.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

St Swithun, Bicker

click photo to enlarge
Yesterday found me taking advantage of the most recent fall of snow, the sun and the blue skies, photographing St Swithun, Bicker. This church is an interesting building, and, with St Andrew in the nearby village of Horbling, stands out amongst the tall spired Fenland churches of this area of Lincolnshire.

Bicker church is cruciform, but so too are many others in the vicinity. However, whilst most cross-shaped churches (in fact most churches of whatever shape) have a long nave and a shorter chancel, at Bicker this is reversed. Consequently, if you don't know the direction that you're facing it's easy to think that the west window is the east, and vice versa. Even the traditional cross surmounting the east gable end is no clue, because the west gable and both transepts have them too. The reason for this unusual configuration is that the nave is early and late Norman (early to late 1100s), and would have been part of the first, smaller, stone building on this site that was then extended to become what we see today: the rounded clerestory windows on the distant left of the building reveal the Norman origins. Interestingly the tower probably dates from the 1300s, whilst the chancel is essentially Early English (1200s), so the building was erected in a sequence that is relatively unusual. Of course, quite a few details of the building date from Victorian restorations of 1876 and 1893-4, and these go some way to pulling the disparate elements together stylistically, and making the original work a little more difficult to decipher. The architectural historian, Nikolaus Pevsner, in The Building of England: Lincolnshire, called St Swithun's a "truly amazing church", and so it is.

My photograph was taken from the point that regular readers of this blog will recognise as my preferred angle - the south-east corner of the churchyard. You may also notice that this classic viewpoint (for an English church) is, not unusually, blocked by trees, both a deciduous variety and a conifer, meaning that a full and satisfying view of the church is impossible at any time of year.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The magic of snow

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"snow (noun) - a precipitation in the form of ice crystals, mainly of intricately branched, hexagonal form and often agglomerated into snowflakes, formed directly from the freezing of the water vapour in the air."
Definition at Dictionary.com

The definition of snow quoted above might satisfy the meteorologists but it's no good for me. I know that it falls out of the sky like rain, but the fact is it's much more fun than rain. Snow flakes may be ice crystals but they rarely look like them. Moreover, I've seen the photographs of the hexagonal crystals, every one unique, that combine to form flakes, but I've never looked at snow and seen them with my own eyes. So, whilst I'm prepared to believe all that I'm told about snow by the scientists, I think their definition falls short unless they also admit that it's magical. Now I know that the Enlightenment banished magic and thrust science to the fore, and that no (or rather few) self-respecting modern scientists will admit a place for magic in their explanations of anything. Yet, snow hides its substance from us so well, and confers such a change on the world when it descends that it clearly is, if not magic, then certainly magical.

Perhaps I'd see snow differently if I lived in Canada or Siberia. But, living on a small island, in the path of the Gulf Stream, and subject to only the occasional fall of the white stuff, I have a liking for it. As a photographer I always want a few days of it each year for the transformational effect it has on familiar scenes. The recent extended cold spell that has gripped the UK has produced frosts a-plenty, and snow in several parts of our islands, but only a few desultory flurries in my area. Consequently, today's black and white photograph is one that I took last year. I post it in the hope that it might precipitate a decent "precipitation in the form of ice crystals...agglomerated into snowflakes" that will work its winter magic.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Summer morning churchyard

click photo to enlarge

Twice this year I've made the journey to the top of the tower of St Swithun, Bicker. The first was on a foggy, frosty day, and the second when it was warm and sunny, but slightly hazy. Only on that brighter day did I get a few photographs of the view over the the flat Fenland landscape.

The ascent of the tower starts by entering an internal low, narrow door that leads to steps spiralling up to the ringing floor. This level of the tower is where the bell ringers stand to ring the eight bells of the church's peal. It's a cosy place decked out, as these places often are, with photographs of previous ringers and records of notable ringing feats. A wooden ladder is needed to get to the next level of the tower where the bells are held in an elaborate and solid framework of steel and wood. Once there, contortions are required to get to a steel ladder up to the trap-door that leads out on to the roof itself. This is a shallow, lead-covered pyramid surrounded by the old stone battlements. Successive generations have inscribed names, dates and outlines of of their feet on the lead surface. The oldest date I recall seeing was from the nineteenth century, so I imagine the roof was re-covered in Victorian times.

It's said that from the top of the tower, on a clear day, 14 medieval church towers can be seen. On my second visit I could see (or imagined I could see - I'd forgotten my binoculars!) the big towers of Boston, Swineshead, Donington, Quadring, Heckington, Helpringham, Swaton, and Gosberton. However, I struggled to see others because of the tall churchyard and roadside trees, and the heat haze that hung over the horizon. A clear winter day, when the trees are bare, perhaps will extend the view to Billingborough, Horbling, Threekingham, Surfleet, Sutterton, and maybe Great Hale or Pinchbeck. I think I'll have to choose my day more carefully for my next climb!

Today's photograph was taken on a sunny August morning with the early sun throwing long shadows in the churchyard.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On