IT BLOWS SO HARD – T’WILL SOON BE GONE
Evans D. Martin, Evans D. Morgan and
If I remember right -There was a third 'Juffy' Evans at class roll call.
We also had a D.J Roberts and an A.W. Roberts.
Chester is very Welsh for an English city
The surnames said it all -But then again not using first names is very English.
I once went to school with a rose
In my lapel for St George’s Day –I was a strange child.
So it was with fascination
That I find Dai Morgan Evans hosting:
‘Rome wasn’t built in a Day’.
It was a long time ago but
We both loved archaeology -Our heroes were
Glyn Daniel and Mortimer Wheeler.
As D.M. said a couple of years back:
‘I'm fairly ancient - I'm 66, so I've been around for a while. I became interested in the Romans by being brought up in Chester’.
As his classmate, I was super impressed that he studied Anglo-Saxon
At Robin Alden’s Georgian townhouse in Abbey Street -
After school!
As a country bumpkin, I had 90 minutes travel either way
And had to talk to the cows along the Long Lane -
As I biked home to the farm from the C84 bus.
But Dai and I
[or David as I remember him] -Were bonded by relics, ruins and inheritance.
Again I was super impressed that he was one of the Ordovices
Who was still living near the Land of his Fathers - Wales[‘A place of bards, bigots, tenors, drapers, milkmen and journalists’] -
When I was a sort of war orphan who was a bit of a
Spare wheel.
But I hung on to the fact
That my step-dad was an English yeoman:
‘Cheshire born
And Cheshire bred
Strong in the arm
Quick in the head’.
One time, D.M. and I took part in a dig
In Watergate Street -Hoping for evidence of the Roman docks.
We got down about 10 feet
And found planking – but it was still fresh -The ground had been used in WW1
As a training area for digging trenches.
Nothing changes that much.
The Ordovices got a pasting
When Caractacus or Caradoc ap CunobellinLost the Battle of the Wrekin or Caer Caradoc -
around AD 51.
Craddock took refuge with the Brigantes
[My lot, I have since found out Through YDNA testing] -
And our Queen handed him over to -
Publius Ostorius Scapula in chains.
Paraded as a trophy in the Eternal city,
He had this to say: 'Does it really follow that everyone should accept your slavery?
And can you, then, who have got such possessions and so many of them –
Covet our poor tents?’
After that the Cornovii, who wore bulls' horns and had hill forts
[My Cheshire relatives],Used the Pax Romana to build Uriconium into
Britain’s fourth city.
They were descendants of Himilco
The Carthaginian -So they knew their
Elephants [and cows] as far as the Romans were concerned.
They were a cunning lot, with an eye for
A bargain and what is practical –
And reinvented themselves again under the AnglesAs the Wrekin Set -
With Chester and Shrewsbury
And their department stores and tea houses -
Browns and Quaintways -
Very nice too!
And 'the gardens of Blandings Castle
Are that original garden -
From which we are all exiled'.
And so it goes.
My uncle had a farm and then a pub in South Shropshire.
And my cousin [another David] and I My uncle had a farm and then a pub in South Shropshire.
Cycled over once from Wenlock Edge to Wroxeter -
And brought back some shards of Samian ware.
'What’s that rubbish?’ his dad said.
That David died of AIDS in the 1990s.
As Housman has it:
‘On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon’.
NOTE
For more on D.M's Roman Villa reconstruction at Wroxeter / Uriconium, see:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/rome-wasnt-built-in-a-day
For an update on the Cornovii at Blandings, see Carol Midgely’s article at:
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