A Somerset Lad

On Monday, it will be the first day of May, a bank holiday Monday

The last time May Day fell on  Monday, a trip to Glastonbury brought an encounter with a large crowd gathered to mark the pagan festival of Beltane. Their faces were painted green, their head dresses woven from ivy, they wore outlandish clothes, many of those gathered might have stepped out a scene from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. 

There was an air of celebration, laughter, joy. People were smiling and animated in their participation in the activities. Proclamations by a man in the costume of a town crier were greeted with loud acclamation. Sounds of drumming and chants were followed by a procession down the high street by musicians and a group carrying a large wooden pole. Reaching the bottom of the street, the procession moved into the middle of the crowd, where there was a loud declamation, before the whole assembly moved off, making slow progress back up the street, with the pole in the middle, followed by those carrying a long dragon made from fabric and held aloft on sticks. The pole was a tree trunk into which various symbols had been carved; when the procession reached its destination, it would be erected as a maypole.

The gathering radiated energy and enthusiasm, people of all ages had come to participate in the Beltane ceremonies, but also to enjoy themselves as they did so.

Posting on Facebook, a couple of dozen photographs of those gathered for the celebration, a friend from an evangelical church in England immediately posted a comment saying ‘heathen.’  A retort posted by someone else said that said that at least they didn’t bomb people in the name of Jesus. Further discussion ensued, including the suggestion that most of those present were probably anarchists or libertarians and were probably not so far removed in their attitudes from the apostles in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, who regarded even personal property as something that could be sold to help the poor.

If one had talked to the ‘hippies’ who comprised the majority of the crowd, their values would have included a respect for the Earth; a commitment to living environmentally responsible lives; a favouring of vegetarianism or veganism so that animals did not suffer cruelty, and so that there would be a more efficient use of agricultural land; a commitment to peace and an end to the spending of trillions on weapons of destruction; a natural acceptance of the equality of women; an attitude of inclusion towards strangers and towards minorities; a tolerance of those whose views differed from their own.

Being a Financial Times-reading, rugby going, white, middle class Protestant male, I would have had little in common with those in the parade, but I couldn’t help envying their happiness.

‘Where are you from, sir?’

I have given up saying that I have lived thirty-six of the last forty years of my life in Ireland.

‘England,’ I said.

‘Where in England?’

‘Somerset,’ I said.

Except when I was back in Somerset for four years, the same question was asked. Standing in a classroom in Weston-Super-Mare, I was asked. ‘Where are you from, sir?’

‘I’m from here.’

‘I know you are now, but what about before?’

‘I was born in Taunton, I grew up in Langport, I did my A Levels at Strode College in Street. I’m from here.’

‘But you’re not really from here, sir.’

‘Where am I from, then?’

‘Are you American?’

‘No, I’m definitely not American. I lived in Ireland.’

‘My friend said he thought you were Irish. I thought you were American.’

The bell had gone and the class had moved to their next lesson. The teacher whose room I had occupied had come to set up for the class that was to arrive.

‘One of that class thought I was American,’ I said.

He had laughed, and, in his soft Texas voice, had added, ‘some people think any accent they don’t recognise is American.’

To be honest, the first time I encountered a Dublin accent, when riding on a train through England, I thought it was American.

Except that I don’t have a Dublin accent. A colleague who served with the British forces in Northern Ireland thinks there is an occasional trace of an Ulster accent, but nothing further south.

When I used to make pieces for radio programmes and listened back to them, I was always convinced I had lost little of the West Country burr with which I had grown up. I always imagined that it would not have been a problem to walk into the livestock market or into a village pub and to immediately blend in with the local conversation.

The Somerset accent is one of the regional accents that has withstood the spread of so-called Estuary English. Apparently the flat vowels of the south-east came to Bristol and could go no further, it was something to do with the way particular sounds are formed.

Whilst the Somerset accent has remained in Langport, the dialect has almost disappeared. The local vocabulary has become standardised English. The words may be spoken with an intonation different from that of Estuary English, but they are the same words.

Perhaps it is too late now for me to hope for a recovery of the dialect, perhaps holding onto enough of a burr to appear foreign in Co Meath has been an achievement in itself. My primary school teacher would be delighted that it is many years since I last used the word ‘baint’ to declare unwillingness.