24 September 2011

Hand ’is heye full hof harrer

Ray Girvan has just put up a JSBlog post entitled ’Arry and ’Arriet. It is, as always, fascinating (to me, anyway, since my interests and curiosities often run closely parallel to Ray's) ... but this post of mine has only the most tenuous connection with its substance. Instead, I found myself flicked back to childhood by the title itself.

My maternal grandfather played endless word games with me1 and would often coach me through tongue twisters. One of my favourites, which he attributed to his friends ’Arry and ’Arriet (there you are – a connection at last!), was this evocation of an iconic moment from English mythology:

’Arold of Hengland
Sat hon ’is ’orse
With ’is ’awk hin ’is ’and
Hand ’is heye full hof harrer.

The specific memory which first slid into my mind when I read Ray's title was of walking along the lines of pea plants in my grandparents' huge garden2, with my grandfather, when I was about four years old, trying to recite the whole thing with every deliberate error in place, whilst simultaneously scrumping peas straight from their pods...


  1. And probably, in doing so, played a very large part in making me the person I am. He teased me unmercifully (but always affectionately; I loved it and him) with things I couldn't understand. One strand was recounting to me conversations with, and the doings of, his friends ’Arry and ’Arriet. They always sounded wonderful people, who lived wonderful and joyous lives, and I wished that I could meet them ... I realise, now, of course, that they were imaginary ... and that they represented his own childhood, before a fluke of history and war shunted him into the military officer class where he adopted protective colouration with which he was never really comfortable.
  2. The same garden which, on another occasion, saw me burying chocolate buttons under its boundary hedge...

4 comments:

Julie Heyward said...

Mmmmmmm .... yum. Peas straight from the pod. Funny how they're no good if they're already shelled, sitting in a bowl (proven via extensive pilfering).

Felix said...

Julie: absolutely. They are so tediously "ho hum" once the pod has been separated from the plant, or the peas from the pod, by anyone else's hands but one's own...

Ray Girvan said...

Clare likes them too. Can't say I do: I'm always pretty suspicious of raw legumes, so many of them being toxic: cyanogens, lathyrogens, whatever.

Dr. C said...

According to Jared Diamond its only the wild peas that leave the pod in a burst; once domesticated, they tended to stay at home. I, for one, prefer the feral ones.