UP THE AIRY MOUNTAIN 
Lesley Coe (Nee McWhirter)

One morning at Piesse Brook School I was puzzled over The Dog Has a Ball when a light went on in my head and I could READ – what a gift! A whole new world opened up to me – from Kitty and Rover to Ivanhoe, via The Hokyahs, Lambkin in the Drumkin, The Gingerbread Man, The Brothers Grimm, Blinky Bill, The Magic Pudding and The King of Golden River. (I believe the Politically Correct have now discarded many of our stories – e.g. Little Black Sambo, The Brave Little Boy Who Vanquished Tigers, is now considered racist and therefore unacceptable.)

On Friday afternoons we ran the whole gamut of emotions when our teacher read to us – the pathos of the poor cow fenced off from the water in Manshy, the loneliness of the Drovers Wife, the horror of Blind Pew and the black spot, the trials and triumphs of Lassie coming home. We walked home with our heads full of images of places far removed from our isolated little world.

The arrival of the Hadley Travelling Library was like Christmas and Birthdays and Aladdin’s Cave all in one small wooden box and I read every book in it. From it I learned one of life’s most valuable lessons – never judge a book by it’s cover. I really badly yearned to be first to read a particular book with an alluring brightly coloured dust jacket. Instead I was given a dull, drab, boring, dark green book – “You’ll love it they said. The drab book introduced me to Anne of Green Gables and the brightly coloured book? – I can’t even remember it’s name! I’ve never since then, judged a book or people or situations by first appearances.

The poetry we learned taught me to appreciate the power and beauty of words, well used :-
‘the moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas’ …………………..
‘Four and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark’ ……………….
‘Someone’s heart is aching, and someone’s heart still bleeds.’
‘In sorrow the drover who sleeps among the reeds’………
‘The morning star paled slowly’…………..
‘Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen’……………
‘Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair, he cursed himself in his despair’………
‘When the morning light beams on the fern matted streams, and the waterfalls flash in it’s glow’…………

I could go on forever and I can still recite most of the poems we learned, though there is one bit of ‘I had a disappointment’ that eludes me!

I learned of the human capacity for optimism even in the face of dismal experience from my battle with the Copy Book. This instrument of torture set out in line of exquisite script which the victim was supposed to copy faithfully line after line. For me it was a kind of written ‘Chinese Whispers’! By the end of the first sweating hard-breathing line, my slope was already deviating, by the second, my loops were wildly astray and blots filled in the A’s and O’s. Each line multiplied the faults of the one above till the last one resembles the original copy as much as ‘Blue Poles’ resembles the ‘Mona Lisa’. BUT! Every time the copy Books came out I truly believed that THIS TIME I’M GOING TO SUCCEED – IF I REALLY TRY I CAN DO IT RIGHT. I couldn’t, but at least I learned to accept my limitations while always hoping to overcome them. You know, if someone would just give me a Copy Book now, I’m sure I could knock out half a dozen perfect lines of ‘Queens eat quinces quietly’ …………..

I loved the songs we learned. Someone standing by me always sang:
‘When gallant Cook from Albion sailed, to trace wide oceans o’er.
True British courage BORED him on till he landed on our shore’…………..
‘Sing a song of golden grain, and of rivers flow-ow-ing’. We carolled, and
‘Little Mr. Baggy Britches, I love you ……’ and ‘I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above’ and ‘Old Bumpety-jumpety-hop-go one’ and ‘Once a Jolly Swagman’ and “There is a land where summer skies ………’ and ‘Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon’ ……….

And fifty years later, perhaps that’s the most appropriate one to remember:
‘Ye’ll break my heart, ye warbling bird,
     that warbles on the flowery thorn.
Ye mind me of departed days.
    Departed never to return.

Article:           Lesley Coe (Nee McWhirter)

Copyright : Gordon Freegard  2008 - 2023