When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd, blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who – a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
From 'Love's Labour's Lost' by William Shakespeare
The title-page of the first quarto states that Love's Labour's Lost was performed at court before Queen Elizabeth I during the Christmas season 1597-1598. However, the play could also have been played initially in the public theatre rather than at court. Love's Labour's Lost is listed as one of the plays given during the Christmas season of 1604-1605.
The first two lines came into my head yesterday as we set out to take the dogs walking. It has been a long time since we saw icicles in this part of the world. The winters of my childhood on the East coast in Kent were raw and icicles were all too familiar. Jack Frost painted his wonderfully intricate designs on the insides of our bedroom windows and even as we shivered we delighted in their beauty. Chilblains? We endured them with various salves. Nipped toes and noses were commonplace and the thawing-out was painfully wonderful. We 'warmed up' in our winter clothing before we set foot outside to travel in damp buses or trudge on foot to our destinations. Those of a literary bent could be comforted that the environs we trod were familiar to Charles Dickens. Kent could indeed be called 'Dickens Country' even as Hampshire is known as 'Jane Austen country'.
Corksckrew hazel (Avellana contorta) The icicles melt in the sunlight only to freeze again overnight - next year's nuts will be sweet indeed!
But I wonder still, not being a Shakespeare scholar (or indeed any kind of scholar) why Dick blew his nail? Was he simply blowing on his poor chilled fingers or was he making music blowing upon a metal object as one blows on a grass stem to produce a note? Shakespeare scholars, please help . . .
