So I looked it up....

The Wanderer

by WH Auden

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
Upon what man it fall
In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing,
Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face,
That he should leave his house,
No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women;
But ever that man goes
Through place-keepers, through forest trees,
A stranger to strangers over undried sea,
Houses for fishes, suffocating water,
Or lonely on fell as chat,
By pot-holed becks
A bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird.
There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,
And dreams of home,
Waving from window, spread of welcome,
Kissing of wife under single sheet;
But waking sees
Bird-flocks nameless to him, through doorway
voices
Of new men making another love.

Save him from hostile capture,
From sudden tiger's leap at corner;
Protect his house,
His anxious house where days are counted
From thunderbolt protect,
From gradual ruin spreading like a stain;
Converting number from vague to certain,
Bring joy, bring day of his returning,
Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.

dingle noun literary or dialect a deep wooded valley or dell.

ORIGIN Middle English (denoting a deep abyss): of unknown origin. The current sense dates from the mid 17th cent.

Anon, anon....

A wonderful new book has just been published that I can’t afford to buy right now but I downloaded some reviews and samples from it to share with you. “Landmarks” is a book on language and landscape by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Books). Billed as ‘a celebration and defence of the language of landscape’, Landscapes ‘goes further by enriching not only our vocabulary of land terms, but also our ways of seeing.’ A reviewer calls it ‘part outdoor adventure story, part literary criticism, part philosophical disquisition, part linguistic excavation project, part mash note - a celebration of nature, of reading, of writing, of language and of people who love those things as much as the author does’ and you and I and word-lovers everywhere. Oh, and there’s more: ‘it’s an argument for sitting down with a book; it’s also an argument for going outside and payIng attention.’

I’m trying to walk more for the sake of my back and regaining my strength and stamina. However, willing as I am, I’m not sure where i can walk in Toronto to get the inspiration that Macfarlane and his readers enjoy in the places they discover, or know well. He has a host of devoted followers who send him words, expressions and dialect terms for the varieties of the natural world that he and they encounter and love. He was inspired to write Landmarks by a “Peat Glossary”, a collection of words used in three townships on the island of Lewis in England to describe the moor. Take a look at mòine dubh - the heavier and darker peats that lie deeper and older into the moor and lèig-chruthaich - quivering bog with water trapped beneath it, and an intact surface.

Landscape and language, you see?

- currel is an east Anglian term for a small stream

- drindle - a diminutive run of water, smaller than a currel

-smeuse is a dialect noun for the gap in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal (I doubt if I’ll ever need to use this word but it’s nice to know it’s there.)

I’ll stop with a few words that fans have sent to Macfarlane for his own glossaries. My favourite is glossamer: “shining filaments of web spun across huge areas of landscape by small spiders in autumn, usually only perceptible near dawn or dusk when the light is slant”. I can use that one, perhaps with less specificity, but I can see the need for it arising.

More;

-coire - high, scooped hollow on a mountainside, usually cliff-girt (Geaelic)

-fizmer - the whispering sound of wind in reeds or grass (Fenland)

-grumma - a mirage caused by mist or haze (Shetland)

-zwer - the whizzing noise made by a covey of partridge as they break suddenly from cover

Don’t you love them?

"The world is so full of a number of things/I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)