"Pleasure it is To hear, ywis......."

A glorious summer's morning at the Langstone Cliff Hotel in Devon - our much loved holiday "bolt hole" for many years. The Langstone has been our holiday haven, our "safe place" when times have been a little tough such as when I was diagnosed with heart failure about fifteen years ago, and a major "marker" for our extended family where anniversaries, birthdays and celebrations of all kinds have brought us together from Nottingham, Manchester and Berkshire. And for so many of our visits - even in the depths of winter - we have woken up to see glorious mornings like this from our bedroom window. It'll probably get a bit warm for me later on but at the moment as, Robert Browning said in his poem Pippa's Song, "God's in his heaven all's right with the world".

PIPPA'S SONG

The year’s at the spring,

And day ’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearl'd;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God ’s in His heaven—

All ’s right with the world!

Well, it's high summer not the spring that Browning so beautifully wrote of but this morning as I stepped out onto our room's balcony and stood in the sun beneath a glorious blue sky, watched the seagulls swoop and heard the chorus of other birds singing in the woodland area a few yards from our room the long forgotten words and melody of another poem/song of praise from another time in my life crept mysteriously into my mind; a twitch on the delicate gossamer thread of my life and the web of memory. It was an ancient hymn of praise from the sixteenth-century by William Cornysshe, who was Master of the Chapel Royal at the Courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII:

"Pleasure it is

To hear, iwis,

The birdes sing.

The deer in the dale,

The sheep in the vale,

The corn springing.

God's purveyance

For sustenance,

It is for man.

Then, always

To Him give praise,

And thank Him then,

And thank Him then."

I remember singing this song almost 70 years ago during my own secondary school days and in the mid-1960s and early 70s in the first years of my teaching career. I can remember, too, going home after we first sang it in assembly at Fishwick Secondary Modern School, Preston and searching through my set of Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia and my mother's battered old dictionary to find out what "ywis" meant.

In the days following, my pals Roy May, Stephen Hitchin, Les Churchman and I played our little daily game - seeing how many times we could use each newly learned word - such as "ywis", "purveyance" or "sustenance" in lessons and in our school day conversations. It was a game we four played all through our secondary school years. Each day one of us would find, or we learned at school, a new word and we would then have a competition to see who could use it most in a school day. I suspect it drove our teachers mad! Sadly, both Roy and Les passed away in recent years but this little song reminded me of them and of simpler, and for me, better tiimes.

Fishwick Secondary Mod was a tough place, its role to produce "factory fodder" for Preston's heavy industry and cotton mills. But we were lucky. We lived in an age that youngsters and their parents today could not begin to imagine - where there was real poverty in the immediate post war years, not the faux poverty of which we hear so much of today. But we were rich in other ways. Although we were ordinary tough kids, from families who didn't have "two ha'pennies to rub together" we were brought up to aspire; where our parents and wider families said "Learn thi' lessons at yon' school, and tek note o' thi' teacher - tha' don't want to end up in t'mill like us."

And we did; knowledge and learning was prized - it was our ladder to improvement, to a better world. Our silly word games were part of that. We were proud to do well at school and not vilified as "swots" or our learning mocked as trivial or unworthy. Today exam results are prized as some sort of marker - but that is a false god. Yes, a raft of good grades is to be prized and applauded but should not be conflated and confused with learning and a love of learning for its own sake. Without a love of learning exam results are just bits of paper gathering dust in a drawer.

As I look back now from my 80 years I could weep at the lack of aspiration and ambition for learning from so many. We live in a society increasingly characterised by a race to the bottom mentality, where aspiration consists of becoming a celebrity influencer or where the high point of culture is deemed to be "Strictly come dancing" or "I'm a celebrity get me out of here" or "The Simpsons". Many parents of today's youngsters, whilst they might desire exam success for their offspring, do not set the example that we were set by our own parents but breed a home culture in which the child learns to like only what they know and know only what they like. Increasingly, ignorance and benighted nescience is accepted as alright, the norm. Something to be accepted because it's boring or old fashioned or pretentious or "posh" to be seen as well informed or to speak or write well, or to be interested in and find pleasure the arts, classical music, Shakespeare, poetry, or simply be knowledgeable about the world we all inhabit . And then we read of these same people complaining that others earn more than them, or get opportunities denied them: they have the gall to blame others for their failings in education or lack of success in life - the unfair "system", the school, the government, the teachers, the boss, COVID, or anything else that comes to mind and removes the responsibility for their failings from themselves.

This lovely song from the time of King Henry with its beautiful use of language and its sentiments is still just as relevant today, on a glorious summer morning, as it was five centuries ago when it was first written. It seems to have fallen out of favour in more recent times which is a shame because it captures wonderfully mornings like this and to read the words is to enjoy beautifully written English.

We live today in an age where philistinism is preferred to profundity. Where the correct use of language is sidelined and those who speak or write it are regarded as pedants, weirdos or worse. We live in an age where tasteless tattoos, body piercing, botoxed lips and rainbow coloured hair is deemed worthy and for whole swathes of the population seemingly indicative of the "good judgment" of its wearer; where a coarse or vulgar birthday card sent to a friend is a sign of mature humour. We live in an age where an unmade bed is displayed in an internationally regarded art gallery and regarded as high art. We live in an age where a coarse and talentless heavy metal singer like Ossie Osborne is lauded by many as a worthy of praise and his banal utterances worthy of consideration and recognition. And we live in an age where obscene expletives in social media posts are thought by many to be profound philosophy.

In such a world as this we would do well to heed the words from St Paul's letter to the Philippians :

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

We have lost so much since I learned these verses and sang these songs as a schoolboy and my pals Roy, Stephen, Les and I played our childish word games. We would, indeed, do well to "think on these things". Politically, morally, physically, spiritually and culturally we live in a desperate age where we - and what once passed as a great civilisation - are on the edge of an abyss. Many in our society today have nothing in terms of material goods or wealth but far more worrying for the future health and well being of our society is the rapidly growing numbers who through wilful ignorance, choice or lack of opportunity have little or no spiritual, cultural or intellectual capital - for as history shows, time and time again, that is a marker of a society in terminal decline. When that occurs it is easy for those with evil intentions to step into the void, to manipulate, to confuse the ignorant and the unlearned, to grab power; we are already seeing this in the USA - a short lived but once great civilisation now on its knees politically and morally. We in the UK are close pursuit as unthinking, easily conned sections of society favour the false promises of snake oil salesmen in political parties like Reform. And this made worse as politicians of established, once respected political parties reduce all to lowest common denominator policies and utterances to curry favour with the lowest aspirations of contemporary society and mindset.

We would do well to ponder the words and sentiments in these little verses for they quietly speak of what it is to be human. We should learn them and count the many blessings and gifts that these simple but profound verses and beautiful words speak of and give thanks.