Publishing my Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas, Badgers and the Cull.

Four badger cull protesters arrested by Gloucestershire Police in Redmarley as part of Operation Themis

11:20am Tuesday 10th September 2013 in

Wiltshire and Gloucestershire News 

Four badger cull protesters arrested in Redmarley 

               

FOUR people were arrested in the early hours of Tuesday, September 10 as part of Operation Themis – Gloucestershire Constabulary’s response to the pilot badger cull.
A 46-year-old woman from Evesham, a 46-year-old woman from Cheltenham, a 34-year-old woman from Gloucester and a 23-year-old man from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire were all arrested at around 3.10am on suspicion of theft and aggravated trespass.
They were arrested in Redmarley.
The 34-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon.
All four currently remain in police custody. '




I was struck by the news that protestors against badger culling  have been arrested at Redmarley, near Dymock and Ledbury, scene of Edward Thomas and Robert Frost's altercation with the gamekeeper.




Redmarley is to the right - following the lone 'R'!

'Those few miles distance from Ledington meant a surprising change in the landscape. The soil was an even deeper red – in fact it was known as Redmarley country. It was stony and the fields were rougher and steeper. Instead of orchards, sheep grazed on short-turfed hill-sides, while the valley slopes between were deeply covered with dense beech and oak. The paths through them were lined with the spent stalks of foxgloves and with brambles turning crimson. They turned into Ryton wood where larches waved overhead, murmuring like the sea and showering them with raindrops.' A.C.E.

Edward Thomas had, I believe, a fondness for and admiration for badgers, who he saw as ancient Britons, pre-dating the occupation and bespoiling of the land by human populations. Though he respected gamekeepers on the whole, the poem , 'The Gallows' perhaps shows that his sympathy lay with the persecuted ones.  Then there is this:

 

The Combe by Edward Thomas

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark.

Its mouth is stopped with brambles, thorn, and briar;

And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk

By beech and yew and perishing juniper

Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots

And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter,

The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds

Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper,

Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark

The Combe looks since they killed the badger there,

Dug him out and gave him to the hounds,

That most ancient Briton of English beasts.

 

 

In his essay,'Chalk Pits', he wrote about the steep-sided hollows where chalk had been excavated centuries past:

 

'One of these dells is so broken up by the uneven diggings, the roots of trees and the riot of brambles that a badger is safe in it with a whole pack of children.'

 

 

From 'Save the Badger.'