#15: Natural History Playlist #1: The Cottager's Reply

This is a rather fine piece of music - one of many performed by the folk musician Chris Wood. The song was originally written as a poem by Frank Mansell.

It describes a farmer in the Cotswolds, who has a visitor from London who wants to buy his house, perhaps as a second home. Chris Wood updated the cost of the house from the original of course, which was written by Frank Mansell.

The lyrics are spot on for exploring the deep connections that people develop with a place when their family spends time there over the generations, but even then they are perhaps only temporary visitors when looking at the different temporal scales of geology, soil formation and conservation, changing animal species or the slow changes that take place as a result of geomorphological processes. 

It's also a reminder of how farmers have shaped the landscape of the country over generations of changes - whether it is by clearing stones and then using them to construct walls, or through their decisions on what to plant in particular fields, where to drain marshy areas, plant woodlands, rear game or remove species they fear may spread disease.

In one section, the lyrics describe the links with the local wildlife, which is in some ways independent of the work of humans, but very much influenced by these decisions when they impact on habitat and food and water supply.

And at dusk the badger travels still

Ancestral highways on the hill.

I am as Cotswold bred as these

And I still need these field and trees,

And I need the soil that bore my race

And holds their bones beneath this place.

Cynefin is a related term here.

It is something which I have written about and used with my own students, and which is also part of the work of the GA's Welsh Special Interest Group.

It is also potentially being lost according to this research paper.

I have also made a Spotify playlist for GCSE Natural History, to which I will add other related songs as the blog grows and relevant music reveals itself, or I am reminded of it. There are a few songs already. The Chris Wood version of the Cottager's reply is not available, but there is a version on there by Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith instead.

Visit the Spotify playlist here.

If you have a suggestion for a song that could be added to the list, please feel free to let me know - it's not currently opened for others to add songs, but will be once the specification is out and preparations are a bit further down the line.