NASH

In Black Hearts And Blue Devils, the Livelys were originally from Nash, at the foot of the Clee hills in Shropshire, before being forced to settle in the Black Country. There is not much to see today in Nash, the village houses do not conglomerate but are spread out. In former times the church (St. John The Baptist, picture attached) would have been at the centre of social life. Clearly visible on maps is the corn brook which gets a mention in Black Hearts when Abe Lively relates an episode from his youth. He describes a May-day celebration in which he competes for and wins the title of King Of The Woods, or King Of The May. May-day celebrations have pagan origins connected with tree spirit, or the spirit of vegetation, worship. In the scene in the book, Abe describes how on May-day the villagers would symbolically kill last year’s king: because kings get old and their strength fails; such an eventuality is obviously no good in the case of those revered leaders whose strength it was believed ensured the fertility of next year’s crop – be that of grain, cattle, or warriors. That’s why, in the case of the old priest kings, including the priests of Diana, kings of the woods, incumbents only lasted for a finite time. In many cases that meant until a younger challenger could physically defeat and kill them (Boris Johnson consider yourself lucky!) In later times these themes were enacted in mime to shadow the seasons. Thus, May-day, the beginning of spring was the time to renew the land with new blood (it is rumoured that some folk still use real blood!) by killing the old king/spirit and endowing the May tree with another. Adonis is one such famous and once very popular Near East (Canaanite) god of fertility and renewal – there are some who point out that the Christian calendar puts Jesus into the same general pattern of vegetation gods (? archaeologists have maintained that the Church Of The Nativity in Bethlehem is built on the site of a temple to Adonis – others say no, take your pick.) If you are interested in exploring the history of myth and religion, Sir James Frazer’s Golden Bough is a fascinating if lengthy read.

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