Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 22
A Nature Book Reader
LAURA CANNELL
A musician & songwriter based in rural East Anglia, Laura Cannell’s work
draws on the emotional influences of the landscape and the sometimes
dissonant chords of early and medieval music.
The Pattern Under The Plough
George Ewart Evans
This book is one of the most
evocative and descriptive
books of rural life in East
Anglia. My favourite chapter
is about horse bones being
used for their acoustic
properties in the medieval
flooring of houses and
under choir stalls. Some
were discovered in Bungay,
a small town near where I
grew up, and where I played
for medieval banquets in a
haunted minstrels gallery as
a teenager.
At this time my bedroom
had a strange wooden frame
set into the wall, it was the
original medieval window
of the timber framed house.
It had a scorch mark in the
wood to ward off spirits and
witchcraft, and Evans talks
about the symbols and beliefs
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of protecting the homestead
including hag stones and
other magic.
Reading this book also
stirs strong memories of
The Threshing Fair, which
is where I first heard people
playing traditional folk
music on penny whistles and
fiddles. My sister, cousins and
I would go to the orchard of
a local Quaker family to pick
Discovery apples to sell for
charity at the fair held in a
stubble field. The stalls were
made with straw bales and
tilts and the fair changed field
every year, which field was
dependent on the weather
and the harvest. People
would play music, drink,
play games and make dens in
the mountains of straw.
What is odd to me is that
