I've been out blackberrying again, and came back with several pounds of the succulent fruit.
Have you been blackberrying? Blackberrying may appear to be a trivial subject, yes it does appear in Clare's poetry. So do lots of other ‘country activities’… collecting elderberries to make wine, or hazelnuts, or mushrooms, or water-cress, or gathering rotten wood for the cottage-fire. All these were really important to the common people of the time.
In all parts of England -– indeed all of Europe –- the inhabitants had always used the produce of the Commons, the wild land all around them. Even gathering rotten wood. At dusk right across rural areas, you might see silently-moving lines of shadowy figures, their backs bent under the weight of trunks and piled-up wood, as they headed for their cottages.
Here’s Clare on the subject… (he called them ‘stickers’)
Where ‘stickers’ stroll from day to day
And gather loads of rotten wood
And poachers left in safety stray
When midnight wears its deepest mood.
(from 'Walks in the Woods')
Clare's natural sympathies are with the "stickers". Just as the fallen wood belonged by right to the local inhabitants in the forests in all parts of Europe, so, ‘everyone’ knew (didn’t they) that fallen wood belongs to the locals right across the country – in fact, it was crucial in keeping the common people warm in winter.
However, after the Enclosures, there were major problems. The conflict over rotten wood extended to other products of the commons -- rabbits, hares, birds, withies, reeds, cresses, sloes, dewberries, nuts, mushrooms, elderberries, wild strawberries and blackberries, not to mention eggs, snakes, deer, eels, fish, and other edibles. The custom of collecting hedgerow nuts -- nutting -- which Clare celebrates, was particularly disliked by the landowners, their servants and the tenant-farmers.
But when the Enclosure came, the villagers were being legally pauperised by squire, lord and government. What grows on my fenced land… is mine! You are a poacher, or a thief.
Here is Clare in 'The Village Minstrel' :
But who can tell the anguish of his mind
When reformations formidable foes
Wi civil wars on natures peace combind
& desolation struck her deadly blows
As curst improvment gan his fields inclose
O greens & fields & trees farwell farwell
His heart wrung pains his unavailing woes
No words can utter & no tongue can tell
When ploughs destroyd the green when groves of willows fell
There once was springs when daises silver studs
Like sheets of snow on every pasture spread
There once was summers when the crow flower buds
Like golden sunbeams brightest lustre shed
& trees grew once that shelterd lubins head
There once was brooks sweet wimpering down the vale
The brooks no more—king cup & daiseys fled
Their last falln tree the naked moors bewail
& scarce a bush is left around to tell the mournful tale
Am I a thief in 2025 picking pounds and pounds of blackberries from the hedgerows or waste land? And what about the apples, damsons, sloes and rose-hips hanging over the lanes?
Follow for daily #JohnClare posts
Posts
