Our line comes from Henry V, spoken by Henry during his seige of the French town of Harfleur. He demands the governor to surrender Harfleur in threatening terms:
How yet resolves the Governor of the town?
Henry V 3.3.1-18
This is the latest parle we will admit.
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves
Or, like to men proud of destruction,
Defy us to our worst. For, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the batt’ry once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie burièd.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand, shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants.
What is it then to me if impious war,
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats
Enlinked to waste and desolation?
Replete with imagery of destruction and death, these ominous threats are only the beginning. Henry’s subsequent speech pointedly includes the promised slaughter of townspeople and the violation of their wives and daughters. Yet, his leading picture paints a conjuration of Harfleur “in her ashes…burièd” as the aftermath of war “arrayed in flames like the prince of fiends”. The potent image of ruins smothered in ash is especially effective because the townsfolk have already been told that the French forces will not be arriving to rescue them. In effect, their resistance has already been rendered ashes.
Ash is a by-product of incineration. As we know, fire seldom consumes anything completely. Some residue of the previous substance remains behind, unburned, often (in the case of paper or wood) even retaining some of the original fuel’s structural integrity. Burnt wood or pages may leave behind ashen ‘ghosts’. Ash temporarily holding the shape of items before they burned. The word brings to mind rites for the dead, especially those often spoken at funerals, derived from the The Order for The Burial of the Dead in the Book of Common Prayer which reads in part:
Forasmuch as it hath pleased almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we, therefore, commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life. . .
The Book of Common Prayer, Order for the Burial of the Dead
Couched in the language of hope and promise, the words of the rite move the listener quickly from earth to ashes, and from dissipating dust to resurrection.
Ash has other associations too. Almost all of us know the children’s rhyme of rings and roses. Musically the notes are akin to the children’s taunt here given by Mario’s arch nemesis, Wario:
Musical scholars tell us that this progression of notes as a taunt is found almost everywhere in the world. The taunting chant echoes frequently through popular culture. Here it is in Star Trek as Captain Kirk and his landing party confront the children who are the only survivors of a deadly plague which has killed all the adults on their earthlike world:
In the case of another well known children’s chant, ‘Ring around the Rosie’ seems to be similarly widespread, except that the words tend to differ somewhat across cultures and nations. The most popular British lyrics include sneezing:
Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
Whereas the most popular American lyrics include ashes:
Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.
Currently, the rhyme seems to be noted for its significant ‘creep factor’, its eerie associations derived from the tune, and the idea that the lyrics reflect disease and death. Here’s a video containing both the popular British and American lyrics, which some readers may find a bit creepy in any case:
The prevalent idea that this rhyme was originally about the plague is apparently a misconception, only promulgated after World War II. There have also been suggestions that the rhyme may have been derived from old pagan customs (particularly the sneezing) thought to help ward off evil spirits. However, the first printed version only appears in the Victorian era, around 1855, so there seems to be little real concensus about origins or exact meaning. Perhaps a reader with better knowledge of topics in ethno musicology can shed more light on this. In the past several months, the rhyme has been adopted by some as an ideal chant marking the length of time for hand washing during the current Covid 19 pandemic.
In the Catholic faith, Ash Wednesday is observed as the first day of Lent. Traditionally a day of sacrifice and abstinence, the faithful often mark themselves with ashes as a sign of repentance, and as a reminder of the dictum in Genesis:
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Genesis 3:19 KJV
The verse does not specifically mention ashes, but it does mention dust, and both signify the end or aftermath in the Book of Common Prayer. Shakespeare also relates them in the song from Cymbeline, which Guilderius sings as a liturgy, thinking Imogen has died. The song has been cited in previous blog posts:
Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun,
Cymbeline 4.2.331-6
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Chimney sweepers sweep away ashes, of course, and become dust themselves once their sweeping is finished. And even ‘golden lads and girls all’ come to dust in time.
The song itself is inscribed on the sign (visible in the above photo), by the old brick vault over the damp depression known as ‘Margaret’s Well’ in the Welcombe Hills above Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford upon Avon. Tradition holds that the well was the source of water for the nearby Clopton Manor House, which still exists, now converted into posh condominiums. The Cloptons were a wealthy Stratford family. Shakespeare knew at least some of them, and his final home (the grand New Place in which Shakespeare died in 1616) had been built in 1483 by Sir Hugh Clopton, who had been Lord Mayor of London.
Local legend has it that Margaret’s Well was named for Margaret Clopton, a daughter of the prominent family who drowned herself there around 1580 over a disappointed love affair. In spite of tradition holding that Margaret may have been one inspiration for Shakespeare’s character of Ophelia in Hamlet, such things are difficult to verify. The well itself remains a forlorn spot, boggy and lonely. Margaret’s ghost is said to haunt the area around the well on moonlit nights, pining forever for her lost love.
Time wipes away human life and achievement. The moving finger touched United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this past week, precipitating an ensuing political uproar over her now vacant seat. Many of us remain deeply concerned about who might be appointed to fill her court position (by a current administration that has repeatedly shown itself to be inclined towards profit, at the notable expense of the greater world. The Covid pandemic also rages, with over 200,000 people dead in the United States alone, and that number rises daily. In addition, the ravages of climate change loom large on the horizon, casting our planet’s ability to continue to sustain human life in doubt. In the midst of such massive changes, many people have become nearly giddy with despair.
A few hundred feet from where these words are being typed, a seasonal creek bisects a grassy field behind the house. Home to stray cats, opossum, and the occasional skunk, the creek also fills with frogs during the rainy season, and their winter songs twine through the tall grass and the nearby trees, a humming soundscape of lush chirrupping. In what rains there are these past few years, the creek bed has channeled water running down from the neighbouring mountain, across small parks and beneath several urban streets, until the flow eventually makes confluence with the local river. Largely responsible for the local valley’s initial formation, the river generates that part of the evening fog that doesn’t sweep in from the coast. The combined effect often submerges the valley in mist. Even now, nights may bring fog across the marshlands bordering the greater bay. Fog pools over hillside grapevines and laps at the feet of local hills. Sometimes the fog layer mounts behind the hilltops until it flows over them in pillowy cascades.
The creek boasts no pool like Margaret’s Well (which, although one cannot tell by the picture, is deep enough that it has been sealed off with heavy metal bars to prevent accidents). Of drownings in the local river or local ghosts, aside from a local tavern at some distance from downtown, and the old theatre (notable for its 2019 production of Macbeth), there seem to be few. And what ghosts there are seem to be quiet sorts, still and subdued like the old docks where the local fishing fleet once harbored. The fleet is long gone, but a few pilings remain, obstinately punctuating the mud at low tide.
Not that the place isn’t old enough for ghosts. A Native village before being settled by city dwellers seeking a more salubrious summer climate, many of the older houses date from the Victorian era. Because much of the town rests on bedrock, many structures survived the 1906 earthquake which levelled swathes of the cities to the south and north. Perhaps complacency has made the town as sleepy as it is. For although a major faultline slumbers only a couple of miles away, the most immediate threat on most local minds is fire.
Summers were hot before climate change, but lately the intense heat evaporates the little creek to a dry bone bed of pebbles. The town periodically mows the tangle of vegetation along the creek bed to reduce the likelihood of fire, but people live on tenterhooks nonetheless. The wisest keep bags packed in case of evacuation, waiting for the intense summer heat, and the likelihood of lightning, to pass. Quiet as it is, quiet as its ghosts seem to be, the sleepy town lies under seige as does so much of the American West–under the seige of the extremes of shifting weather. Any spark could leave the region buried in its ashes.
That the current U.S. federal administration tends to try to shift the blame for said fires away from its own appalling record of climate neglect is no surprise. Politics has always been thus. Human lives have always struggled beneath our seige of ongoing circumstance. Seasons and climates shift as do human lives, with the individual melting into the large. Eventually, we all follow Macbeth’s “way to dusty death”, and only in the meantime do we fashion our lives and future out of memory. Dust, ashes. Diamonds, rust. Raincoats and love affairs. Human lives reflect an ongoing engagement with decision and remembrance.
Yet, that our lives also remain an ongoing process of becoming memories does not absolve us of our responsibilities to speak our conscience. We cannot forgo our fight for the betterment for ourselves, and for others. In our lives, it becomes too easy to justify setting the larger world aside, partly because we leave it so quickly and so soon. But living only for oneself strikes most reasonable people as extremely misguided. The Great Law of the Haudenosaunee, the foundation of the Iriquois Confederacy (perhaps the oldest participatory Democracy on earth), tell us:
“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”
“The thickness of your skin shall be seven spans — which is to say that you shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Your heart shall be filled with peace and good will and your mind filled with a yearning for the welfare of the people of the Confederacy. With endless patience you shall carry out your duty and your firmness shall be tempered with tenderness for your people. Neither anger nor fury shall find lodgement in your mind and all your words and actions shall be marked with calm deliberation. In all of your deliberations in the Confederate Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self interest shall be cast into oblivion. Cast not over your shoulder behind you the warnings of the nephews and nieces should they chide you for any error or wrong you may do, but return to the way of the Great Law which is just and right. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground — the unborn of the future Nation.”
–The Great Law of the Haudenosaunee
My guess is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg might have agreed with much of this sentiment, at least in the general sense that, in spite of what we seem to think, we owe others a debt of care. The seige will always stand at our gates. It seems most prudent, it seems best, to remember the whole. Where we’ve been. Where we might be going. Soon enough, our faces will return to a place ‘beneath the surface of the ground’. Ashes bury us even now. Our little human lives fall to ashes and dust even as we think and speak, even as we cast our eyes to the horizon. Yet, our future retains a solidity that belies the passing current. What we build out of memory, will be our legacy. If we have any true effectiveness, it lies in the rising shapes we leave within our wake. Leave the town or its ashes. Teaching or ignorance. Love or rage. It is not about what we think we are, or what we hope to be. It is what we leave behind us that makes the world.
Thank you for another great post!
Thank you, Paul!