69 - Cricket
E.V. Lucas on cricket, Bernard Cornwell on nationalism, and This Week's Wine
Cricket
Leather – the heart o’ me, leather – the rind o’ me,
O but the soul of me’s other than that!
Else, should I thrill as I do so exultingly
Climbing the air from the thick of the bat?
Leather – the heart o’ me: ay, but in verity
Kindred I claim with the sun in the sky.
Heroes, bow all to the little red ball,
And bow to my brother ball blazing on high.
Pour on us torrents of light, good Sun,
Shine in the hearts of my cricketers, shine;
Fill them with gladness and might, good Sun,
Touch them with glory, O Brother of mine.
Brother of mine,
Brother of mine!
We are the lords of them, Brother and Mate,
I but a little ball, thou but a Great!
Give me the bowler whose fingers embracing me
Tingle and throb with the joy of the game,
One who can laugh at a smack to the boundary,
Single of purpose and steady of aim.
That is the man for me; striving in sympathy,
Ours is a fellowship sure to prevail.
Willow must fall in the end to the ball–
See, like a tiger I leap for the bail.
Give me the fieldsman whose eyes never stray from me,
Eager to clutch me, a roebuck in pace:
Perish the unalert, perish the “buttery,”
Perish the laggard I strip in the race.
Grand is the ecstasy soaring triumphantly,
Holding the gaze of the meadow is grand,
Grandest of all to the soul of the ball
Is the finishing grip of the honest brown hand.
Give me the batsman who squanders his force on me,
Crowding the strength of his soul in a stroke;
Perish the muff and the little tin Shewsbury,
Meanly contented to potter and poke.
He who would pleasure me, he must do doughtily,–
Bruises and buffetings stir me like wine.
Giants, come all, do your worst with the ball,
Sooner or later you’re mine, sirs, you’re mine.
Pour on us torrents of light, good Sun,
Shine in the hearts of my cricketers, shine,
Fill them with gladness and might, good Sun,
Touch them with glory, O Brother of mine,
Brother of mine,
Brother of mine!
We are the lords of them, Brother and Mate:
I but a little ball, thou but a Great.
- “The Cricket Ball Sings” by E.V. Lucas
I talk about cricket regularly here, and take it pretty seriously; this poem, perhaps, does not take it so seriously, but perhaps also this is a mere layer of irony over something more sincerely felt. Either way, there are many aspects of this poem which feel peculiarly English to me, from the subject to the tone to the metre and scheme itself.
First, the title itself is, really, a pun. The cricket ball is the narrator; but also, we common use aural and musical metaphor when describing the game, and we are minded to suspect that Lucas has that in mind here too. It is hard not to see the whole main metre – the four unindented verses – as a gag, too: these are…what…elegiac quatrains? I cannot think of another poem that uses this exact metre, though there must be some or many. We have hexasyllabics followed by decasyllabics, and really the decasyllabics are usually tending to being pentameters. The hexasyllabics are more fiddly. Please metrically parse:
Else, should I thrill as I do so exultingly
It’s perfectly readable, it scans, but the comma and the natural caesura around “so” make you almost think you’re looking at stressed monosyllables, making this something like: - / ~~~ / ~~~ / - / ~~~. But then there are half-stresses on several of what feel like trisyllables – so are these amphibrachs, jumping up in the middle? Are they secret slightly warped iambs? (ELSE should // I thrill // as I // do SO – but then there’s that comma…) And most of these hexasyllabics scan differently – to me, at least.
That’s a technical way of suggesting that this is playful, especially when you look at the semi-balladic chorus, which points us to a more lyrical reading of the metres here. The subject is obviously playful, too: a cricket ball, comparing itself to the Sun itself, comments upon the game. The conclusion of the refrain:
We are the lords of them, Brother and Mate:
I but a little ball, thou but a Great.
This is obviously comic bathos.
The English habit of self-effacement is not historically permanent – it is not in Chaucer and Shakespeare and Jonson and Dryden – but it starts whilst the Sun of the Empire (symbolized by the cricket ball, one imagines, if one were to ask the cricket ball…) is high. A silly squib like this has an element whereby any real sentiment must be masked by the slightly camp or comic; thus the choice of narrator, thus the comparison to the Sun, thus the RISING and falling metre (Sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat), which can only heighten the bathetic tone given the subject.
Yet there is a serious sentiment, or aesthetic point, hidden in here. Let us consider but one verse here to explore this:
Give me the bowler whose fingers embracing me
Tingle and throb with the joy of the game,
One who can laugh at a smack to the boundary,
Single of purpose and steady of aim.
That is the man for me; striving in sympathy,
Ours is a fellowship sure to prevail.
Willow must fall in the end to the ball–
See, like a tiger I leap for the bail.
Well, “joy of the game” – that seems like a perfectly serious sentiment here. There is no irony attached in this verse to the idea of actually enjoying things; irony has not seeped so far into the British character at this point that even a silly cricket ball singing cannot end up lauding real pleasure and enjoyment. And the seeking of “One who can laugh at a smack to the boundary” – only a few weeks ago we considered “If”:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
Lucas’ comic squib is not very far from Kipling’s aretical peroration on this.
Of course, Lucas deflates the balloon by the end – the cricket ball comparing itself to the hunting tiger! Yet even that is a recognizable aesthetic or moral experience when watching cricket; the batsman alone, surrounded by the pack of fielders, the hunting bowler probing, perhaps beginning to bounce the ball in hard to frighten the batsman, the rather fragile protection offered the stumps by the single slab of willow. There is just a touch of memento mori hidden in the game, and in Lucas’ line. The end of an innings, and the end of a career, are small deaths.
I think the ironical turn in the British character and in our art has gone on rather too long, and is indeed dying; self-loathing taken too far ends in suicide, after all. Yet a little dash is enough to raise a smile, especially when it seasons something more robust.
Quote of the Week – Uhtred Uhtredson on Christian (??) Nationalism
“I was a lord of Northumbria, but [Ragnar] was a Dane, and to a Dane all Saxons are lesser men, and so he had demanded an oath. If I gave him an oath he would be generous, but I would be expected to show gratitude, and I could only ever hold Bebbanburg because he allowed me to hold it. I had never thought it all through before, but suddenly, on that cold day, I understood that among the Danes I was important as my friends, and without friends I was just another landless, masterless warrior. But among the Saxons I was another Saxon, and among the Saxons I did not need another man’s generosity.” – from Bernard Cornwell’s The Pale Horseman
Uhtred does not much like his fellow Saxons, at least some of the time; he dislikes the Wessex-men for their being Southern Softies, and for their pusillanimous religion which is only going to make them softer. He was raised by Danes, by Ragnar’s father in fact, and he accepts and usually copies their way of life – an explicitly pagan, explicitly non-Saxon way of life.
Yet in meeting Ragnar again in Chippenham, escorting the disguised King Alfred – happy as he is to see Ragnar, annoyed as he is by Alfred – Uhtred has this rather universal, and perhaps discomforting, realization. Amongst the Danes he is a Saxon and, really, a Christian – and for a pagan Dane that means both a foreigner and a man of inferior culture, if the two are not taken to be identical. Amongst the Saxons, he may be called all manner of names, and in Wessex he may be a Northumbrian as well as a pagan, but they are his people, as truly as your brother is your brother and your mother is your mother. The biological link is not a wholly unspiritual one; it creates unchosen duties we all know exist, even if we claim they do not, even if we abjure them.
The Pale Horseman was published in 2005, and now this sort of conceptual discussion feels like it can only be coded by contemporary, vituperative politics. Yet – fiction as this – precisely the lesson of the background history, of Britons and Saxons and Danes, is that contemporary politics do not own this great and rather difficult subject. We may find more useful ways of speaking about it elsewhere.
This Week’s Wine
Two wines this week.
Von Hovel Monopollage Oberemmeler Hutte Riesling Kabinett 2020 (Pradikatswein Mosel): Surprisingly old for something being sold “new” when it’s this light and in this style, but it’s not suffering from the age. A gentle nose with fresh water notes, leading into a honey white fruit palate. There is something very summer’s day about this kind of wine; not summer’s day in the boozy and big way, but rather a quiet cooling elegance to enjoy in the garden or in the evening as the cool air comes in through the window. Nothing utterly exceptional but very nice. 6.5/10 [4/9, 7.5%; £17 The Wine Society]
Louis Jadot Domaine Gagey Marsannay Clos du Roy 2018 (Appellation Marsannay Clos du Roy Controlée): Finely-structured and serious Burgundy which will continue to develop in the bottle. It has a gentle violet perfume – the nose dissipates with time – but the palate is concentrated and robust, medium-bodied, with some sappy acid and mature but vibrant tannins. The flavours include ripening black fruit, a high note of raspberry, and perhaps just a herbal touch, but in a refined rather than rustic manner – the delicate seasoning on a fine meat course, as it were. Needs time, but good now. 7.5/10 [13.5%; £28, The Wine Society]