Darkest England by Christopher Hope

Author:Christopher Hope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

Beth’s transformation began innocently.

She would visit my campfire, sit beside me and listen to tales of Kaggen the mantis and of how he, turning his eyes, big as saucers, on the sky, created the moon who is our father and also our mother.

How could this be? my student demanded. Father and mother in one? Unless the moon were also our God and so contained female and male in one person.

They have literal minds and become confused very easily when expected to think on several planes. Explanations must at all times be gentle, clear, yet firm, and present often difficult facts in an elementary, or what they call a ‘sensible’, fashion. This can be taxing and often frustrating, but I can assure anyone who should follow me to these shores that your average native, with careful and patient direction, can be coaxed towards enlightenment, always provided that swift progress is not expected.

By my fireside, of an evening, I would explain, as simply as I knew how, the very complex belief of the Red People that the moon was not our God but that by the moon’s light people could observe the work of God in a world which would otherwise be too dark to discern His high and holy ways. Our father the moon and our mother the sun. The lights of the great sky, lay together each night and gave birth the next day to a new sun and moon.

Who gave birth? she demanded.

I replied, the moon, and she was instantly cast down because that did not sound very sensible to her, as I had said the moon was our father.

You cannot give to people who have lacked essential religion for centuries the elements of the true faith in a few encounters beside a campfire. In my estimation, the reintroduction of these people to the essentials of true polytheism is possible. It can be done. But it will take many years. Missionaries. Dedication. In that English country garden, I preferred to concentrate on my own expedition, which showed alarming signs of having become bogged down.

Beth asked about dancing, and I explained to her the beauties of the Eland Dance, which she immediately proposed that I should teach her. Now, this presented certain practical difficulties, since the dance in question is usually held at the hut of a girls maternal grandmother, at the moment when she is ready to be initiated into the customs of the band.

To the resourceful Beth the missing grandmother would be no problem. She cheerily assured me that she knew just the person to stand in for her.

He came. He sat in Beth’s blue pup tent, and he agreed to wear a shawl over his shoulders to signify his age and sex, but he refused point-blank to smoke a pipeful of strong, black tobacco, even though I pointed out that, in real life, Beth’s grandmother would have been doing so, as she awaited the arrival of the eland bull. At this eminently sensible encouragement, I am afraid that Mr Farebrother quite broke down.

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