DECEMBER 



IRISH GARDENING 



185 



The Green Field. 



By Padraic Coiam. 



THE field I am thinking- of is one of ten 

 thousand. Its fences are neglected, its 

 wooden gate is broken. It is called a 

 pasture field, because grass grows where there 

 were once furrows, but the only creature that 

 pastures there is the horse that is turned out to 

 graze at night. Motionless, perhaps too tired 

 to lie down, he stands under the sign of the 

 plough. The field would be lifeless in the mind, 

 only one remembers that a child once found a 

 hedgehog in its ditch. Then life comes into the 

 field. Out of the hedge the briar shoot came 

 green and slender. Young ash-trees were in 

 the hedge, and they added a span to their growth 

 each year. With the growth of the young ash- 

 tree the child's mind or the youth's mind is in 

 most sympathy. There were other trees in the 

 hedge, and in the good days of sunlight the}' 

 made long shadows across the field. In April 

 the faint sloe-bloom came on the hedge — first 

 sketch, as it were, of the magnificence of haw- 

 thorn. Then came the hawthorn. Before its 

 coming a primrose had been seen in the ditch, 

 and a robin's nest had been found. The rag- 

 wort grew up in the field, making a mass of 

 yellow that became more exuberant, more dis- 

 ordered, as the autumn went on. It was in 

 its fulness of colour when the foxglove had 

 withered down in the ditches. 



As in thousands of others, there was a thorn 

 bush in the middle of this field. When the field 

 was tilled, no one ploughed or dug near its roots, 

 for dread of those who were associated with the 

 tree. It stood undisturbed in a field of corn as 

 it now stands undisturbed in a field of sparse 

 grass— a memento of a forgotten faith, a sur- 

 vival of the primitive cult of trees and tree- 

 spirits. 



The ragwort has withered, leaving sturdy 

 stalks in the field. The grass becomes sparser. In 

 the field the living forces sleep, as the frog sleeps, 

 wrapped in his mud in the bottom of the pond, 

 as the dormouse sleeps in its hole in the ditch. 

 The mist comes down on the field, and the 

 blackbirds, flying along the hedges, shake their 

 metallic notes against the end of the short day. 

 The little field is cold, bleak, and barren. It 

 depresses as the sight of a ruined house de- 

 presses one. Man's interests have forsaken 

 the field. It seems an outcast— a step-child — 



the step-child of nature or of man. The old horse 

 no longer grazes there. In the sunlight a few 

 shiny-plumaged crows go through the field. 



It is part of our pride to hold land, but it is 

 no part of our pride to make use of it. There 

 is an uneconomic distribution of land that leaves 

 stray fields away from the business of the farm. 

 Land is passed on to some who have no interest 

 in working it. Waste and derelict fields are 

 lett to add to the bankrupt look of the country 



e^* 5^* ^^ 



A New Botanical Magazine. -The Royal Botanical 

 Society of London has started the publication of a quar- 

 terly official organ under the name of T/ie Botanical 

 Journal. Judg-ing; from the first number, this new 

 mag-azine should prove of extreme interest to economic 

 botanists and to gardeners in charge of representative 

 collections of plants. The contents include articles on 

 Art in the Garden, The Victoria Regia Lily, The Flora 

 of Victoria, Forcing Plants by Warm Baths, Book 

 Reviews, &c. One great feature of the present issue is 

 a series of four plates, reproduced from colour photo- 

 graphs taken by Mr. E. T, Butler in the society's 

 garden in Regent's Park. Two of them, illus- 

 trating the evolution of the chrysanthemum, are very 

 beautiful, and we hope that the series will be continued. 

 The price of the journal is one shilling. 



Art Calendars.— a Garden Lover's Calendar and a 

 Nature Lover's Calendar, printed in blue and in green 

 with rubrics, on good paper with fancy parchment 

 covers, white with silver lettering, beautiful little books, 

 keepsakes for the year Igri. With coloured frontis- 

 pieces, well done. On the left hand pages, garden 

 poems and garden prose, nature poems and nature 

 prose, well chosen. The pieces in the Nature book are 

 belter than the others. The most original and praise- 

 worthy omission is T. E. Brown's garden poem. 

 The most original quotation is the wonderful llower 

 passage from William Blake, beginning — 



Thou perceivest the flowers put forth their precious 



odours, 

 And none can tell how from so small a centre comes 



such sweet, 

 Forgetting that within that centre eternity expands 

 Its ever during doors . . ." 



and ending — 



" Every tree 



And flower and herb soon fill the air with an innumer- 

 able dance 



Yet all in order sweet and lovely . . ." 



The Nature book has many fine, rarely-quoted poems. 

 For February, to give an example, Coleridge's great 

 sonnet — "It may indeed be Phantasy." It contains also 

 some copyright pieces by modern authors — no less than 

 three poems from Fiona Macleod, including the long and 

 stately " Madonna Natura." These alone give to the 

 booklet a literary value apart. The publishers are 

 Messrs. Hill & Co., London, and the price one shilling. 



