Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Principles: Towards the Ecocritical Editing of Renaissance Texts
- Introduction
- PART I Cosmologies
- PART II The Tangled Chain
- PART III Time and Place
- PART IV Interactions
- PART V Environmental Problems in Early Modern England
- Population
- Enclosure
- Deforestation
- The Draining of the Fens
- Pollution
- PART VI Disaster and Resilience in the Little Ice Age
- Appendix A Industrialization and Environmental Legislation in the Early Anthropocene: A Timeline
- Appendix B Further Reading: A Bibliography of Environmental Scholarship on the English Renaissance
Deforestation
from PART V - Environmental Problems in Early Modern England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Principles: Towards the Ecocritical Editing of Renaissance Texts
- Introduction
- PART I Cosmologies
- PART II The Tangled Chain
- PART III Time and Place
- PART IV Interactions
- PART V Environmental Problems in Early Modern England
- Population
- Enclosure
- Deforestation
- The Draining of the Fens
- Pollution
- PART VI Disaster and Resilience in the Little Ice Age
- Appendix A Industrialization and Environmental Legislation in the Early Anthropocene: A Timeline
- Appendix B Further Reading: A Bibliography of Environmental Scholarship on the English Renaissance
Summary
The 1536–1542 Acts of Unification with England facilitated the exploitation of Welsh woodlands to supply charcoal for iron-making, silver-mining, and lead-smelting. The following extraordinary poem presumes to speak on behalf of squirrels, and imagines them, according to a prefixed description in the Welsh manuscript, journeying to London to “file and make an affidavit on the bill for the cutting down of Marchan Wood near Rhuthyn.” The poem thus decries the impact of habitat loss, and implicitly links it to territorial annexation.
Source: The Burning Tree, trans. Gwyn Williams (1956), 163–5.
Odious and hard is the law
And painful to little squirrels.
They go the whole way to London
With their cry and their matron before them.
This red squirrel° was splendid,
Soft-bellied and able to read;
She conversed with the Council
And made a great matter of it.
W hen the Book was put under her hand
In the faith that this would shame her,
She spoke thus to the bailiff:
“Sir Bribem, you're a deep one!”
Then on her oath she said,
“All Rhuthyn's woods are ravaged;
My house and barn were taken
One dark night, and all my nuts.
The squirrels all are calling
For the trees; they fear the dog.
Up there remains of the hill wood
Only grey ash of oak trees;
There's not a stump unstolen
Nor a crow's nest left in our land.
The owls are always hooting
For trees; they send the children mad.
The poor owl catches cold,
Left cold without her hollow trunk.
Woe to the goats, without trees or hazels,
And to the sow-keeper and piglets!
Pity an old red-bellied sow
On Sunday, in her search for an acorn.
The chair of the wild cats,
I know where that was burnt.
Goodbye hedgehog! No cow-collar
Nor pig trough will come from here anymore.
If a plucked goose is to be roasted,
It must be with bracken from Rhodwydd Gap.
No pot will come to bubbling,
No beer will boil without small twigs;
And if peat comes from the mountain
In the rain, it's cold and dear.
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- Literature and Nature in the English RenaissanceAn Ecocritical Anthology, pp. 413 - 447Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019