I've been reading Malcolm Saville's
Country Scrap-Book for Boys and Girls, second (enlarged) edition 1945, which I was lucky enough to pick up at the indoor market in Devizes for £1 (in a torn but reasonable dustwrapper). It's an engaging account of the British countryside, interweaving poems and photos and book recommendations.
The foreword is full of enthusiasm and encouragement but confuses England and Britain, as so many books of that era do:
It may seem strange to tell you at the beginning of a book about the country and wild life that England is yours and that when you are grown-up you will have to look after her. But this is so, because England is one of those countries where the people who live in it have a share in its planning and government...
...This book is to help you to enjoy all the wonderful things which the country has to offer and to understand what life in the country really means. People from all over the world have always come to Britain to see what we are often too busy, too lazy or indifferent to discover for ourselves. They come to see our cathedrals, our little market towns, our rolling English roads and the village churches built with the loving hands of craftsmen of a bygone age. They stand in wonder at the sight of the Scottish lakes and glens, of majestic Snowdon or Cader Idris, or at the green, windswept solitude of the Downs that run down to the southern sea...
...It is often difficult to love and respect something which we do not know very well, and so I hope that this book will send you adventuring out into the fields, forests and hillsides of our own land, to explore and discover for yourself the unchanging spirit of England, which is not so easy to recognise when it is hidden by bricks and mortar.
In the section on farm animals, I was interested to see the word "piglings" getting a mention, as well as the more common "piglets", for baby pigs. Enid Blyton uses "pigling" in
Five Go to Billycock Hill, as does Beatrix Potter in
The Tale of Pigling Bland. Malcolm Saville writes:
The mother pig is a sow and the father a boar. The babies are called piglets or piglings and are called weaners when they are weaned at about ten weeks old. A female weaner is called a gelt until she has had her second litter and then she becomes a sow.
Malcolm Saville also refers to hedgerows being thick with "cow parsnip", which appears to be an alternative name for what I've always known as "cow parsley".
I like the poems that are included and I particularly enjoyed 'Summer Sun' by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven without repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.
The dusty attic spider-clad,
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles,
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.
Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.
Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.
All in all, a welcome addition to my bookshelf!
