Will Ye No Come Back Again?

The Rest Is History

The rest is history, or Arthur Mee legend.
A lost summer country hollow Inn,
The Green Man, cheering on a Great British win,
An Avalon that isn’t there in the morning;
A dream awoken to this light’s cold day
Where in spite of my shin-struck, wounded need
For thundering hooves in defence of these islands,
He doesn’t come back. And he was never
Called Arturus Rex, whoever he was,
And in some accounts, not even ‘Arthur’.
And he was never mediaeval and never a king.
And who cares? Not Me. I stand on this tumulus
Of boyhood, layers of chalk written on clay,
Craters and knolls, his monk-buried legend
Scarred in my flesh, his doubt-defying
Desperate defence of wonder (which
Is what he was) an earth ditch like mine;
His weapons, toys of tin and
strapped wood and skin,
Like mine, on a May hill that may have been Badon
And may have not, blades
of peaceful grass troubled only -
And not just now - by rain, wind and ghosts
And a White Horse, God-large in memory,

God-large still.

This is from The Lost Land, the text (or libretto if we're being arty) of Arthur; Britain's Making. The show premiéres at the Holt Festival on Monday 25 July. High noon. 45 minutes. Free but you gotta book. boxoffice@holtfestival.org 01263 711284 website www.holtfestival.org - look in the ubergrandanomium section. I put together various Celtic British voices for Arthur and his knights and goddesses and ladies for the show and this particular one - suggested by the romantic vision that vanishes with the morning mist 'he does not come back' comes out as Scottish and with a Skye boat song lilt. I grew up in Somerset and visited Westbury White Horse frequently. The prehistoric White Horse carved in the hillside was indeed as large as God and when I went back to Frome on the train a few years ago the horse, seen from the railway line, seemed just as epic. So a fair amount of the show comes out in a West country voice but there is much Scottish material in this great British legend and the hero fights as many battles from the north as he does from the West. Sir Gawain of Orkney, Arthur's Seat and all that Celtic jazz. This continuing defence of daring and wonder travels to Edinburgh and the Celtic fringe to join its sister show, Boudicca; Britain's Dreaming, at venue 53 theSpace@Surgeons' Hall on 6 August.