Advent 3 – 3 December 2021
Good morning,
Behind today’s window, a meditation on two bays in winter.
The Madrigal Group’s Christmas Concert, called In Dulci Jubilo, will take place this evening at St Salvator’s Chapel at 7.30 pm. Details are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/586970692533373?ref=newsfeed
I make no apology for mentioning again one of their signature pieces, Frobisher Bay, as I have a number of time in Companionship emails. It’s a song by James Gordon about the experience of being on a whaling boat in the depths of winter, in rough seas, then in the grip of ice, far from home and loved ones, fearful of perishing before winter is out. Part of Advent’s hope is that warmth, nourishment and new life are coming.
Frobisher Bay
Cold is the Arctic sea
Far are your arms from me
Long will this winter be
Frozen in Frobisher Bay
Frozen in Frobisher Bay
“One more whale,” our captain cried
“One more whale and we’ll beat the ice.”
But the winter star was in the sky
The seas were rough, the winds were high.
Deep were the crashing waves
That tore our whaler’s mast away
Dark are these sunless days
Waiting for the ice to break.
Strange is a whaler’s fate
To be saved from the raging waves
Only to waste away
Frozen in this lonely grave.
Here is the Madrigal Group (2013 vintage) singing this moving song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3DHJij_L4M
We may be a long way from Frobisher Bay in Canada, but our own St Andrews Bay can be a cold windswept place. In 1915, Mrs Herkless (wife of Principal Sir John Herkless) “and the Ladies of the University” sent a poetry pamphlet at Christmas, including a poem by Andrew Lang (1844–1912). Lang, poet, re-teller of fairy tales, novelist and much more had been a student in St Andrews, part-time resident in the town and was buried in the cathedral grounds. The poem of Lang’s printed in the Christmas pamphlet captures St Andrews Bay by night and day, and gives us a sense of hope that day follows night, that laughter follows melancholy, that colour will return after a time of darkness. The refrain of Forget… forget… may seem to encourage us to look away from the troubles of the world and of our lives. But forgetting can be healthy, letting the past go, a necessary return to believing that life is good
St Andrews Bay
NIGHT.
Ah, listen through the music, from the shore.
The ‘melancholy long-withdrawing roar’;
Beneath the Minster, and the windy caves,
The wide North Ocean, marshalling his waves.
Even so forlorn–in worlds beyond our ken–
May sigh the seas that are not heard of men;
Even so forlorn, prophetic of man’s fate,
Sounded the cold sea-wave disconsolate,
When none but God might hear the boding tone,
As God shall hear the long lament alone,
When all is done, when all the tale is told,
And the grey sea-wave echoes as of old!
MORNING.
This was the burden of the Night,
The saying of the sea,
But lo! the hours have brought the light,
The laughter of the waves, the flight
Of dipping sea-birds, foamy white,
That are so glad to be!
“Forget!” the happy creatures cry,
“Forget Night’s monotone,
With us be glad in sea and sky,
The days are thine, the days that fly,
The days God gives to know him by,
And not the Night alone!”
If you would like to see the pamphlet which is in our Special Collections, it can be accessed here: http://special-collections.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2016/12/uy37781-f-4-poetry-pamphlet-1915.pdf
And to finish, the bay below St Andrews Castle during the snows of February earlier this year.
Yours,
Donald.