Under the Greenwood Tree, or The Melstock Quire
Thomas Hardy
Wordsworth Classics. First published 1872.
The most immediate thing I got from this book was the fact that 'choir' is pronounced 'quire'. I remember being corrected on this by an irritated Chitra when I repeatedly said 'cau-year'. I didn't really believe her then, but have to now admit that she was (and is) right.
Apart from that extremely valuable nugget of information, there is nothing much really in this slim book (146 pages) either entertaining or informative. It is a portrait, more a landscape painting, of a piece of English time and space that certainly can't exist anymore. In the truly rural 'Wessex' village of Melstock, a few simple men assemble with some rudimentary musical instruments on the days before Christmas and go carol singing. In the course of these exercises, a young man from among the carol singers is attracted to a fresh young school teacher who is one of the audience. Love blossoms during the spring and the summer, is mildly beset by some setbacks in the form of relatively rich rival, but finally, by the next winter, finds a way and culminates in marriage.
English people would love this book, as it paints a picture of a quiet and peaceful England, going about its gentle ways and not wishing or doing any harm to anyone. The reality was of course different, but, perhaps, the people Hardy describes had no role in the aggression - unless they were press-ganged into it, as Hardy himself describes in one of his other books.
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