A DREAM OF JOHN BARLEYCORN
- A Ballad in X Verses -
- i -
The long, soft grass danced in the dappled light as clouds scooted nimbly above. Bird song floated on the breeze, a limber descant for a midsummer’s day. John Barleycorn stood at the edge of a glade. The perfume of rosehip and bluebell mingled with the murmur of a spring, its issue forming a rippling stream that tumbled through the clearing. He sat on the bank and plunged his feet into the water. It was cool and refreshing, a mirror of icy dark. He felt the current against his flesh, the caress of the fronds of pondweed and starwort animated by its eddies and flows. The chill was a balm, easing the aches of his journey, and the babbling water whispered to him. It was a capillary of ichor, a vessel of memory; a slow, sacred signature carved through soil and stone. John Barleycorn cupped his hands and slaked his thirst with its tidings, then threw his face back to bathe in the limpid light. He felt alive, ripe, ready.
- ii -
John Barleycorn strode through a meadow, leaving footprints in the sward, a trail that marked his passage. He paused and ran a leaf through his fingers, feeling its waxen texture against his skin and its warmth from the sun. A caterpillar sat on its underside; black, red, yellow, alien. An ant scurried across the leaf and prodded at it gently. The caterpillar's tiny hairs prickled in response, and a droplet of sugary nectar weeped from its skin. The ant carried its bounty back into the undergrowth, and John Barleycorn walked on, the wake of green stretching behind him, a path of pigment painted by his steps.
- iii -
A long field of bearded grain stretched ahead, rising to embrace the sky in a shallow crest. Someone had been here before him. A stripe of trampled crop traced a winding path through the flaxen tapestry, disappearing over the horizon. John Barleycorn followed its course, treading gently, taking care not to disturb the rows of cereal further. When he reached the crown of the hill he was rewarded with a panorama of the country around. The stubble of woodland and brush. Cattle grazing in moss green pasture. Ragstone walls describing a patchwork of myrtle, mint and jade, the nap punctured by pristine eruptions of white chalk escarpment. John Barcleycorn swelled his chest with honest, native air, and wondered what would be his Avalon.
- iv -
The path of trodden crop continued, a meandering leyline bidding him on. John Barleycorn followed it to the corner of the field, where a grand mansion stood. It was empty now, magnificent and desolate, its eaves casting diagonal shadows across the half timbered facade. He stepped across its threshold, feeling goose pimples dance on his arms and neck as he moved into the coolness. A must filled the hallway, and a stillness hung augural in the air. The high ceiling was marked by rainwater, and amongst the jaundice stains dangled dusty cobwebs, baroque candelabras sculpted by truant fingers. Shriveled leaves carpeted the floor in ochre and russet, and the walls were covered in peeling paper. The deep blue was faded now, but the knotted pattern of vines and verdure was still visible, a tangle of growth captured grasping through time.
- v -
He walked up a staircase to a grand landing. A door keened like a tender creature as he opened it, and stones echoed with his steps as he climbed to the attic bower of a lonely tower; stone, square and proud. A wooden loom and an oval mirror framed with gilt stood still and silent as motes stirred into a lazy jig to announce his presence. Ragged curtains and an ornate lintel made a proscenium for the scene beyond - clear of the valley thick with corn expanded an acre of buttercup meadow. At the centre of its blossom galaxy stood a young woman, looking back at him across the distance. She was tall and long limbed, with hair like poured honey and a dress that floated white in the wind. She held his gaze for a long moment, and then turned and stepped lightly away, glancing back over her shoulder as if to beckon him on. John Barleycorn descended the stairs and set out after her. Inside the room, as the door creaked shut, the pane of the mirror cracked in two.
- vi -
John Barleycorn came upon an orchard, heavy with fruit and deep with shade. He tilted his head, chancing that he scented the woman's fragrance, or glimpsed her shadow on the sod, but she was here no longer. At the orchard's middle stood a grandfather oak. Its skin was ancient, gnarled and knotted. Its branches burrowed back into the dust, taking root again and sprouting anew, sculpting a rood loft that still pulsed with sap, a henge of weald design. Into the cardinal trunk was carved a perfect triangle, blood red where the bark had come away. John Barleycorn reached out and touched it. A cloud of golden pollen erupted, surrounding him with a sunbeam mist. John Barleycorn sneezed, and fell into a sleep as deep and fair as a petal-dressed well.
- vii -
John Barleycorn dreamed that the woman came to him in his velvet bower. Her eyes were wild and her kiss was sweet and he made a garland of flowers for her head. She sang softly to him of shining crowns, of alabaster horses and harts and swans, of red lions rampant and of ploughs that cleaved the soil. She gifted him visions of dancing men with antlered heads and sackclothed mollies lifting hoodening horses for antic bands of mummers. They lay together until bee orchids bloomed and hazel twigs twitched where waters pooled in a secret hollow. The adder had slipped into Eden. Tomorrow, she pined, on the solstice day, while pipe and tabor play; you proud John, shall march along, to the fayre where they stack the dray. The merrie mix, with you we'll fix, and all shall toast your spray; then through the night, until morn's light, we'll sup on your IPA...
- viii -
And then it was dawn, a brilliant clear morning. The field was merrie with rejoicing. Middle-aged men fiddled the middles ages, whirling in bellpads and baldrics. They waved crabtree sticks like totems whilst girls in lace and bonnets skipped circles around a wooden shaft, weaving red and white ribbons into a spiral. From an ivory marquee spilled a crowd, their fat pink hands lifting toby jug sluices to toby jug faces, slopping froth-topped elixir carted in casks from across the kingdom. It was a Camelot, a CAMRA lot, a jubilee for kith and kin. John Barleycorn stood rooted as their heads turned towards him. A hush descended, and gingivitic grins spread slowly across clotted cream features.
- ix -
His fair-haired queen stepped from the throng and presented herself before him. The daisies he had picked still decorated her brow and wrists and ankles. Her lips were ardent, and her laugh sang a madrigal on his heart-chords. She linked her arm with his and squeezed with affection, leading him forward as the crowd parted, forming an old drove road of brawn. She walked him to a copper kettle, and peeled her dress from her skin. Her pale flesh sighed as she shut his eyes with kisses, and she led him by the hand into the liquid. A man in a long white coat lit a fire beneath, and others with thatch on their chins gathered around braying and laughing, raising pewter tankards in exaltation as the mash began to bubble. John Barleycorn felt oblivion come. His vision whirled and his heartbeat raced as he reached to his love for deliverance. As she disappeared past his reach, fading back through the burning haze, he saw that her smile was still gentle perfidy. He glimpsed the sky as he sank into the brew, and saw at the last that the sun’s lustrous disk had begun to set. Bridal bells pealed in the distance.
- x -
He was back in the orchard. It was different now. Its shade was sepulchral and a bouquet of sweet decay seeped through the gloom, as though the bunting had been left to hang too long. He picked a red apple, but it was shrivelled and rotten, turning foul and wormy and his mouth. He spat it away in disgust, and saw that it was blue now, a shiny small book with a golden sigil on the front, a vouchsafe to realms now forsaken. It began to rain. Sedge turned sepia on a lake and the songbird chorus fell mute. The map of the empire stained to claret from pink, and pearly bleached bones lay shallow in the loam, cradled with the flint arrowhead that had made them. Deeper yet hunkered a red and white heart, turning nightshade black, still beating.
