2012-04

The Singing Stream
People have always been
attracted to rivers - poets, storytellers
and children particularly
so. And many composers have tried
to write down the music rivers make.
Among the first poems to be written
down were the Psalms, and rivers
run through lots of these. Many of
them were intended to be sung, but
the tunes they had are lost in time as
notation to write them down did not
exist.
But the river sings its own song,
and it is this which many writers have
tried to capture.
The four-year-old composer Edward
Elgar was found by his father among
the reeds by the Severn with pencil
and paper. “What are you doing
here?” he was asked. “I’m trying to
write what the reeds and river are
saying,” came the reply. His father
boxed his ears, “Well, you stupid boy,”
he said, “Don’t you know music is
written on five lines and four spaces,
not four and three like you’ve written?”
But the child already knew better than
his father that the song of the river is
far older than modern notation and he
was writing the language of plainsong,
the first notation of the early Church.
Another writer who captured the
music of the river was Kenneth
Grahame in Wind in the Willows.
Here, Mole learns to live with the
river: “He learnt to swim and to row,
and entered into the joy of running
water; and with his ear to the reedstems
he caught, at intervals,
something of what the wind went
whispering so constantly among
them.”
In Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies,
Tom, the little chimney sweep, also
hears the song of the river and is
drawn irresistibly towards it: “Down he
went... while the church-bells rang so
loud, he began to think that they must
be inside his own head, and the river
chimed and tinkled far below; and this
was the song which it sang:- Clear
and cool, clear and cool, By laughing
shallow, and dreaming pool;...”
Of course there is much more
of it, but you will have to read it for
yourself. So, as Tom went down to
the river and became a water baby,
having many adventures until he grew
up and became a man.
RL Stevenson, wondered where his
paper boats would come home:
“Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore”
And the forbidden Keepsake Mill:
“Years may go by, and the wheel in
the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children,
today,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming
for ever,
Long after all of the boys are away.”
What grown-up doesn’t shed a
tear on re-reading these verses?
Especially “Heroes and soldiers we
all shall come home; ... Honoured
and old and all gaily apparelled, Here
we shall meet and remember the
past.”
But the boys do not always come
home and some that do are deeply
traumatised. It is perhaps the exile
who sings the most poignant song
- like Ivor Gurney in his rat-infested
trench, longing for home and
pleading: “Do not forget me quite, O
Severn meadows.”
Or Edward Elgar, now grown up and
famous, writing from his dark mansion
in London to his friend Ivor Atkins, the
cathedral organist at Worcester: “If it’s
sunshiny just go round to the West
End of the Cathedral, look over the
view towards Malvern and bless my
beloved country for me.”
C Day Lewis’ poem Edward Elgar
ends: “in his music, I hear the famous
river - Always and never the same,
carrying far Beyond our view, reach
after noble reach - That bears its sons
away.”
Like our own life’s journey, that of
the river ends at the estuary, where
it pours its story into the sea, and oh
my, what a story!
Sylvia Bennett
St Chad’s is not the only one to
celebrate its centenary this year.
So too is the Royal Society
of Wildlife Trusts – a charity linking
together 47 individual Wildlife Trusts
with the aim of safeguarding wildlife
and habitats throughout the UK. A
hundred years ago it was formed
as the Society for the Promotion
of Nature Reserves, which marked
the beginning of systematic nature
conservation in our country.
Along with British Waterways, the
Wildlife Trusts are among the main
national organisations responsible
for protecting our rivers and streams,
which provide vital habitats and
food supplies for a diverse range of
animals. We tend to take for granted
mallard ducks and moorhens or
coots, geese and sometimes swans.
But these birds are only a few of the
many species who live in or near
rivers, or who rely on rivers for their
food.
Fish supported by our rivers include
brown trout, eel, stickleback, pike,
grayling, roach, perch and salmon.
These fish also attract other fisheating
predators, such as otters and
herons. A kingfisher is a rare but
delightful sight, skimming along the
river course in a bright blue flash.
The endearing little furry water vole
is sadly an endangered species. One
of the Wildlife Trusts’ projects is to
provide homes for water voles.
Even in upland areas, where
streams can be pretty feeble unless
there is heavy rain or melting snow,
and not much in the way of nutrients,
rivers still support insects such as
mayflies and caddisflies, which
provide food for salmon and brown
trout and birds like dippers. In lowland
areas, rivers tend to be richer in
nutrients and so are able to support
a wider range of species. Here, you
might find chub, dace, roach, and
other coarse fish, and even crayfish.
The rate of flow doesn’t vary so
much in lowland areas, so such parts
provide a more stable habitat. But
the benefit of waterways is that they
act as ‘corridors’, which wildlife can
use to move between fragmented
habitats.
The diversity of UK river habitats
and wildlife is so great that this can
be only a tiny snapshot of what is
there. To discover more, a good
starting point is the Wildlife Trusts’
website (www.wildlifetrusts.org) or the
feature on all sorts of different wildlife
on the British Waterways website
(www.waterscape.com/features-andarticles/features/wildlife).
Amy Hole
River Wildlife
St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats
Church Office: 9 Linden Avenue, Sheffield S8 0GA
Tel: (0114) 274 5086
email: office@stchads.org
St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats
Page 24 website: www.stchads.org
Church Office: 9 Linden Avenue, Sheffield S8 0GA
Page 25
Tel: (0114) 274 5086
email: office@stchads.org
website: www.stchads.org