However some sources do indicate that Elmet was actually peacefully annexed by Northumbria and that there was no direct military confrontation. [5]

According to a genetic study published in Nature (19 March 2015), the local population of West Yorkshire is genetically distinct from the rest of the population of Yorkshire. [12] The 2015 Oxford University study compared the current genetic distribution in Britain to the geographical maps of its historic Kingdoms, and found that the distinct West Yorkshire genetic cluster closely corresponds to Elmet’s known territories. This suggests Elmet may have maintained a regional identity through the centuries. [13] Aliotus Stone [ edit ]landscape that both creates and is inured to its people, whose moors 'Are a stage for the performance of heaven. Man Booker Prize 2017: shortlist makes room for debuts alongside big names". The Guardian. 13 September 2017 . Retrieved 13 September 2017.

Hughes’ ability to give abstract ideas a concrete form and to present ancient philosophies in a modern context was exercised to its full in the poems of Remains of Elmet. Even the smallest detail of Hughes’ landscape is frequently both realistically evoked and of symbolic importance. Just as the first poem captures the harsh wildness of the weather in this region and the sense of exhilaration which it can sometimes bring, so the “ lark–song just out of hearing / Hidden in the wind” describes a phenomenon common on these moors where the faint, high song of the lark reaches the listener in wind–blown snatches. This detail suggests an ephemeral joy which tempers the violence of Hughes’ scene, but the ground–dwelling lark which soars so high into the heavens to sing is also a suitable symbol by which to link Heaven and Earth, immortal and mortal, just as the lines themselves mark the moment of embodiment in the text of the poem. Hughes’ poems in Remains of Elmet chronicle this process of reclamation, but he also attempted a re–creation of his own; and the shaping influence which he brought to bear in structuring the sequence makes this work Hughes’ own very personal account of an apocalyptic vision of the kind which Blake presented in Jerusalem. The lark is not a common bird in myth or folklore, but it is worth noting that Shakespeare and Blake also made similar symbolic use of this bird. The lark, in Cymbeline, sings “ at heaven’s gate” (‘Song’.2:3); and, for Blake, the lark was “ a mighty Angel” (Mil.40:12) which mounts to “ a Crystal Gate … the entrance of the First Heaven” (Mil.39:61–2). Kathleen Raine writes that Blake used the lark as a symbol for the “ dimensionless point where eternity flows into time” (Raine.159), a symbolism which is particularly apt for Hughes’ poem. The major work which closely followed Cave Birds and Gaudete in publication was Remains of Elmet. It was the third long sequence of Hughes’ poems to be published by Faber and Faber between 1977 and 1979 and although Hughes first suggested the Elmet project to Fay Godwin in 1970 and she took some photographs of the area, it was not until 1976 that the book was seriously discussed ( Letters 378–80). Only in 1977 did the first of the Elmet poems began to appear in print 1. It seems likely, therefore, that the whole Elmet sequence was written within this short three year period and subsequent to Cave Birds and Gaudete. It is a measure of Hughes’ skill that such retrospective interpretations of his early feelings and actions did not interfere with his ability to re–create his initial spontaneity. In ‘Under the World’s Wild Rims’, for example, we share the boy’s impressions of the weird, “ desecrated”, dust–filled landscape through which he walks to school. Compared to the world’s ‘wild rims’, this was a strange world, deathly and unnatural, strewn with “ steel objects” that seemed “ magical” and “ futuristic” in their unfamiliarity, and leaking a “ warm horror”, so that it both repelled and fascinated him. Instinctively the boy responded to these conflicting emotions with a campaign of stealthy and pleasurable destruction, smashing, “ one by one”, the regimented, guardian rows of “ glass skylights” that seemed to watch him.

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The Life of Cathróe of Metz mentions Loidam Civitatem as the boundary between the Norsemen of Scandinavian York and the Britons of the Kingdom of Strathclyde: if this refers to Leeds, it suggests that some or all of Elmet may have been returned to Brittonic rule for a brief period in the first half of the 10th century before Anglo-Saxon reconquest, but not as an independent state. After the unification of the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria, the Northumbrians invaded and overran Elmet in 616 or 617. It is not known definitely what prompted the invasion, but it has been suggested that the causus belli was the death by poisoning of the Northumbrian nobleman Hereric, who was an exiled member of the Northumbrian royal house residing in Elmet. It may have been that Hereric had been poisoned by his hosts and Edwin of Northumbria invaded in retaliation; or perhaps Edwin himself had Hereric poisoned and invaded Elmet to punish Ceredig for harbouring him. Ted Hughes is a poet whose work, although I dislike him from the outset as any self-respecting Sylvia Plath fan does, I have tried to read some of, and simply haven't enjoyed. Nevertheless I thought I would give him another go and read a full collection of his poetry, here presented stunningly with photos of areas described by Fay Godwin. The theme of ‘The Mothers’, too, is established here and is reinforced by Hughes’ dedication of the book to the memory of his own mother, Edith Farrar (who died in 1969) and by his prefatory poem ( ROE.7) in which his mother lives on briefly for him through her brother. The recent history of the Calder Valley, the dreams and aspirations of its people –“ the arguing immortal dead / The hymns rising past farms” which Hughes records in this book, are her memories and her brother’s: “ Archaeology of the mouth” which Hughes has attempted to record before the “ frayed, fraying hair–fineness” of the thread linking their lives to his is finally broken. Yet, as has already been suggested, there is more to the theme of ‘The Mothers’ than this. It encompasses, also, the philosophical, alchemical ‘Mothers’ and, most importantly, Nature (the Mother Goddess herself) and the regenerative cycles by which she redresses the errors of humankind and restores universal harmony. The Celtic pre–history of the West Yorkshire, too, is an essential part of this theme, for The Mothers (Matres or Matronea) were an important triad of Celtic fertility goddesses, and Brig (Brigid) the patron goddess of poets, gave her name to the Celtic Brigantian people who once inhabited Elmet. After the unification of the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria, King Edwin of Northumbria led an invasion of Elmet, and overran it in 616 or 617. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People says that a Northumbrian noble, Hereric (father of Hilda of Whitby), an exiled member of the Northumbrian royal house was killed with poison, while living at the court of King Ceretic of Elmet. It has been suggested that this was either the casus belli for the invasion, if Hereric was poisoned by his hosts, or a pretext for a Northumbrian annexation of Elmet, if Edwin himself had Hereric poisoned. The Historia Brittonum says that Edwin "occupied Elmet and expelled Certic[ sic], king of that country". It is generally presumed that Ceretic was the same person known in Welsh sources as Ceredig ap Gwallog, king of Elmet. A number of ancestors of Ceretic are recorded in Welsh sources: one of Taliesin's poems is for his father, Gwallog ap Lleenog, who may have ruled Elmet near the end of the 6th century. Bede mentions that "subsequent kings made a house for themselves in the district, which is called Loidis".

Godwin was born Fay Simmonds in Berlin, Germany, the daughter of Sidney Simmonds, a British diplomat, and Stella MacLean, an American artist. She attended nine different schools before beginning a career as a travel representative. She moved to London in the 1950s. [4] She married publisher Tony Godwin in 1961; the couple had two sons, Jeremy and Nicholas. They split up in 1969 and later divorced. [5]Murphy, Richard. "Last Exit to Nature by Richard Murphy". The New York Review of Books. Nybooks.com . Retrieved 29 January 2014. Hughes, himself, said in a BBC Radio 3 broadcast that he did not want “ to write a history” (BBC 3 May 1980); but, apart from that, he did nothing to expand these views of his Elmet sequence, claiming only that Godwin’s photographs “ moved me to write the accompanying poems” ( ROE. Introduction). Similarly, in his note in Selected Poems 1957–81, he described the poems as “ texts to accompany photographs, by Fay Godwin, of the Calder Valley and environs in West Yorkshire, where I spent my early years, and where I have lived occasionally since” ( SP.238).

Award from Northern Arts for the Year of the Visual Arts, and from the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation to work on the contribution of small farmers to the character of the Cumbrian landscape.What a crying disservice to once of the fiercest female writers and poets, not to mention a feminist icon, to open a poem about her, in THIS of all poetry collections, by talking about some totally, totally irrelevant love interest man??? Not to mention that the second and third lines are SO cringey they genuinely sound like lines from a fanfic by a 14-year-old girl? Dumville, D.N. (2001). "St Cathróe of Metz and the hagiography of exoticism". In John Carey, Máire Herbert and Pádraig Ó Riain (ed.). Studies in Irish Hagiography. Dublin. p.177. ISBN 978-1851824861. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link)