Explorers of the Weird and the Wild
An Introduction from Wyld of the Woodling
We are delighted to share with you the introduction of our latest publication Wyld of the Woodling: A Wayward Canterbury Pilgrimage by William Rowlandson. A mind-expanding exploration of the wild, woodland lore, the ancient tensions of civilization, the ethics of mulch, and the ways we think about our place on this pale blue dot—all set against a pilgrimage to the ancient city of Canterbury.
A pilgrim from afar came to Canterbury. He was a writer by craft, well regarded. The writer’s name was Russell. The date was March 14th, 1974, close to the Spring Equinox.
He spoke about his craft at a gathering of teachers. There were not many people, which did not bother him.
He was taken to the Cathedral. He stood in the Nave, awestruck by the vaulting, ‘so full of lift,’ he recalled some years later, ‘that the columns, rather than supporting it, seemed to be tethering it to the floor.’
He felt the presence of the past, ‘the echoing murmurs and footsteps I felt all around me in the layered fullness of the air the silent hum of centuries.’
He descended to the Crypt and felt the feminine power and mystery.
He stood where Thomas Becket had been murdered.
He ambled the Ambulatory awed by the windows, chapels, niches and tombs.
He moved slowly down the North Aisle and stood before ‘a faint tracery of earth-green lines on a white wall, all that remained of the fifteenth-century wall painting, The Legend of Saint Eustace.’
He turned to the opposite wall and read the text and studied the section-by-section reconstruction of the faded wall painting.
He gazed at the painting a longish while. He felt great sympathy for Eustace. He recognised the trials of Eustace in his own trials. A shared martyrdom. The experience was powerful, transformational. He had a vision.
‘There came to me,’ he recalled, ‘the post-apocalyptic Inland of Riddley Walker, a desolate England regressed to a mostly Iron Age culture, the inhabitants living in fenced-in settlements while packs of killer dogs roam the land and such government as there is makes its policies known through shows performed by itinerant puppeteers.’ It was a powerful vision, vivid and lucid.
Russell held the vision. He set to work, applying his talent to his craft. He wrote and ripped up numerous drafts, with characters coming and going speaking in various ways. He laboured for four and a half years, finally abandoning a near-complete draft and starting, almost entirely, from the beginning. He told the tale of the blasted land surrounding Canterbury, two millennia in the future, and the people who live there. He told of the martyred Eustace and the martyred Eusa. The clevverness and the destruction and the Bad Time that followed. One boy in particular, named Riddley, who on his 12th birthday witnesses the death of his father, kills a boar with his spear, kills a wild dog with his spear, inherits from his father the role as community connexion man and announces his first tel, then leaps the fence and launches himself on an epic journey over the downs and through the dead towns of East Kent, spiralling, eventually, to Cambry, the hart of the wud. A journey of discovery, revelation and transformation. A mystery play. A puppet show. A fool’s journey. A hero’s quest. A work of alchemy. A wayward pilgrimage. A great story.
On Guy Fawkes Day 1979 the book was complete, published some months later. It was successful. People read it, liked it, spoke about it and wrote about it. Different editions followed over the years, with various forewords and essays and illustrations. Mercifully, perhaps, it has not been made into a film, though it did inspire, uncredited, elements of the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
The book is a work of prophecy. Not because it predicts the future, which we cannot know, but because it plunges deep into the present, which is also the past and the future. Because it connects time. The roads are opened. Communication is made. Contact. Connection. Connexion.
St Eustace and Russell connect.
Russell and Riddley connect.
St Eustace and Eusa, his future mythic form, connect.
Their worlds intermingle through this mysterious exchange.
Their words intermingle through this mysterious exchange.
Their tales shared. Their tales interpreted in different worlds.
The roads were opened as Russell stood transfixed by the painting in Canterbury Cathedral. The roads are opened for the reader. Reader, writer, narrator and character meet and dance in and out of each other’s times and worlds. The reader is character. And so is the writer, who is also reader. The reader is writer. The character is writer and reader. Characters all. Writers all. Narrators all. Readers all. Heroes all!
Their words and their worlds intermingle through this mysterious exchange.
It is a merry dance.
The roads were opened for me.
A fewsome years ago, and not for the first time in my life, I fell into fiction.
I gathered with some friends around a fire in a woodling near Canterbury. As the flames flickered and the smoke wafted, the talkturned to Riddley Walker. A fitting fireside focus for us, as the world beyond the woodling was and remains in a state of shifting dynamics, rapid transformation and scary weirdness. Our bosky muster felt furtive, and the long bear-hugs we had given each other charged with emotion.
We gazed through the trees flickering in the firelight at Riddley’s wild lands. His people nomadic within the wildlands of East Kent, increasingly coming up against settled farming communities – forms. There is a government, called the Mincery, based in The Ram (Thanet) who hire hevvies (thugs). There are land disputes and power games, alliances and conflicts. There’s the search for the lost technology of gunpowder and for the power that ultimately led to the nuclear catastrophe of the 1 Big 1, which led to the Bad Time of poisoned land and pestilence.
We are Riddley’s ancestors. Riddley’s kin our kin, our heirs, our descendants. Their wild land growing from our wild land. These trees, this night, this fire, this smoke, these stories and these bottles of Kentish ale. We are Riddley’s ancestors. Ancestors of future beings from a fiction from the past. Riddley lives. Riddley’s companions live. Their land lives. Riddley joined us around the fire that night. That’s what prophetic works do.
Riddley’s story is a reckoning with the wild. The dogs are wild. The people are wild. Their language is wild. I’ve been reckoning with the wild. I’ve been reckoning with Riddley. I’ve been riddling the wild and roading with Riddley. We’re in connexion.
Exploring the wild and its multiple meanings, I set out on my bicycle, following the route Riddley followed, riddling with Riddley, riddling my way across the landscape, moving from downland to upland, river valley to white cliff, village to city, barrow to mound, temple to castle, culminating in the ruins of the Roman city of Durovernum Cantiacorum, the Jutish stronghold of Cantwareburh, today’s Canterbury, tomorrow’s Cambry. A wayward pilgrimage of comings and goings. A weird, wayward, widdershins pilgrimage of riddles. Riddles of the wild. Wild riddles. Twisting pathways that wind out from these words. Tangled tales.
The pilgrimage lasts three days. It is told in three parts. This is an account of the first day of the pilgrimage. It begins early on a rainy morning close to the winter solstice, what Riddley calls Shorsday – the shortest day – when Riddley’s adventures begin. I leave Canterbury and head south-west along the North Downs Way to an Iron Age hillfort, an ancient orchard, a village, down to the river and up to the downs, through woodlands and more villages and to the chalk escarpment above Wye, then down to explore the unplanned rewilding of abandoned buildings. The day ends at a friend’s farmhouse, fireside companionship and a cold night in a tipi.
As connexion man Riddley interprets the legends and tells his tel and makes connexion with deeper layers. He’s made connexion with me. I’ve made connexion with him. Connexion through the web of space-time. In this mode of connexion other roads open. I allow the past to connect with the present, the present with the future, the future with the past. Open the connexions.
Ancient ones who followed the migrating herds, gathered the acorns and knapped their flint arrowheads when these lands were still connected to the continent. Barrow builders and megalith movers. Julius Caesar, who tramped these roads with his legionaries. Jutes, Angles, Saxons and Danes. Augustine, who did not bring Christianity to Britain but the authority of Rome. William, Duke of Normandy, who built castles and churches with the same design and the same objective. Pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas. Henry VIII’s great plunder and the ruins that followed. 18th century cityaldermen. 20th century town planners. 21st century developers and landscalpers. Ardships of Cambry and Archbishops of Canterbury. Novelists, poets, film makers, rowdy orators. Explorers of the weird and the wild.
This is a slow book, a consciously slow book, free of deadlines, sprouting wildly, branching out, entangling, budding, flowering, growing in the mulchy moments between seminar preparation, meetings, emails, essay marking, more meetings and more emails, washing up and washing down, wood sawing, wood splitting, wood stacking, wood burning, woodland wandering, allotment pottering, bicycling along the ancient streets and country lanes.
A dawdling book in a time of haste. A lingering, loitering, tarrying, rambling book. A wild book. No fixed route and no time pressure. Dirt beneath the fingernails.
If the way gets a little too weird, if the woods too dense and the trees too gnarly, remember that just along the path, just around the corner, there’s a pen-and-ink illustration by ælfthryth. A space to breathe, unlace your boots, remove your socks, let your toes dance in the breeze.
Since that moment with my friends around the woodling fire Riddley has been walking with me. Walking and riddling, tracing weird walks and roving routes through the towns and downs towards the city. Riddley and I road and riddel together. He gives us his view of this land from the future. I give him my view of this land from today.
These are the riddles. These are the rambles. This is my roading.
This is my tel.
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