I was falling for a language that I couldn’t understand, prying it open to examine the pieces, coaxing out its secrets, desperate to make sense of its riddle. Jumped the fox brown. Strange, inverted. Always elusive. Learnt phrases, repeated in a mind obsessive, forcing myself to take them in, to remember, for God’s sake.
I spent my evenings in that chalk-dusted hall, beside students and young men in motley uniforms, their hurls resting at their feet, unable to afford riffles. Not yet. Lessons began with a mumbled prayer, head bowed, knuckles clasped until white, my mouth moving, wordless. Lulled by the words spoken in unison. A chorus of disjointed voices ringing out in the makeshift classroom. Something to be feared, something to be adored.
Well into the night I stole back the hours, I stole back those unfamiliar sounds, under the dimming incandescence of the oil lamp. I stumbled over syllables, whispering them into the being alone in my room. That corner, my hedge school, the desk, a sacred altar for worshipping uncommon tongue, each new word a triumph.
I awaited that flash of recognition, that swell of pride, a familiar word nestled into a stanza of some 18th century verse I bought in a frenzy of ambition on a stall on Aston Quay. Morning, country, fox, flame. Collecting with magpie haste, scribbling down on loose paper, barely enough to form meaning, yet I held them dearly upon my tongue.
It was not a patriotic endeavour, although for many it was pure politics. I was under no illusion that it will make me more of anything. I needed this language. I was hungry for it. Beyond the material, the practical, I longed to speak of poetry and old songs, transformed with every performance. I wanted to talk to those I loved in their mother tongue, too long disused, to be part of something bigger than myself, not just declare my age.
Yet I was drowning in lists; in lenitions and tenses. Waiting for when I knew more, enough to really begin. I was falling for a language that I couldn’t understand, but someday I would.
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