We Need To Teach Children The Old Words...

"We need to teach the children the old words, words like brabble and grubble, twitter-light and clinkerbell; words which dance and trip and slip and drip like honey off the tongue Teach them that a hazy halo of cloud around the moon is called a moonbroch and that swiftly moving clouds are named cairies; how a vixen’s wedding is a sunny shower of rain, and that a single sunbeam breaking through thick cloud is known as a messenger Teach them to know the seasons and scents of queen of the meadow and bride of the sun, how to tell Jupiter’s staff from fairy fingers and which roses bloom with the strawberry moon Teach them to spot pricklebacks in the tottlegrass, how to recognise a smeuse or a bishop-barnaby, when to watch the sky for flittermice and yaffles, and to pay attention to the dumbeldore and mousearnickle as she graces the lazy leahs of summer Teach them a few of the old Sussex words for mud, like gubber and slub and stodge and pug, so they know that the precious soil beneath their toes is anything but worthless dirt Teach them to be users and keepers and makers of the words which bring the land alive: a storybook, where everything has its rightful place, including us; where the wilds are fearful and filled with magic and people do noble things, and nothing is impossible In this world of harsh new words — words like planetary dysmorphia and solastalgia, extinction debt and grief mitigation, megadrought and megafire, anthropogenic, pyrocene, words which alarm and get stuck in our throats describing a world which our hearts cannot grasp — we need to teach the children the old words, so that if they should feel lost, the old words might colour for them a warm and breathing, living map, a light to guide them safely home." - Caroline Mellor [Image: A Light to Guide Them Safely Home (2016) fairy illustration for Forestys by Jim Colorex (aka Emmanuel Fallet).] ~"Poetry, Tea and Me"