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Home page APPEAL The operas and other works Green Branch productions Photographs Samples from the scores Listen to extracts Sitemap of this site Links to other sites Contact details	The Entertaining of the Noble Head by Tim Porter Composer's note I am uneasily aware that three of my operas have a particularly sharp bearing on my own experiences and views. “Deirdre” and “Children of the Dark Star" focus on particular situations. But “The Entertaining of the Noble Head” is a more general view of things. It was written, very quickly, in the month of June 1973. For that month I shut myself away from everything and everybody. Nothing disturbed me; no persons from Porlock called. I find it difficult to explain how I wrote this play, and what exactly it is about. I am fairly sure that what started my mental processes was a catalyst. I noticed certain parallels, particularly between the stories of Bran and Arthur, the similar motion of which seems also to follow the seasons; and between the characters of Alfred Watkins, the discoverer of ley lines, and Cole Hawlings, a character in John Masefield’s “Box of Delights”. How much the play is based on parallels will become apparent after a glance at the spiral below (which I offer as an object helpful, but not I hope vital, to the understanding of what is going on). My greatest fear is that the play should seem to be directed only at an esoteric minority. Hence the following minimal notes, which I hope most sincerely you will bear with me and read, as they do explain one or two issues that might otherwise appear puzzling. As to the rest (and there is plenty more which one could say) it is best left to the words and music, and the fact that at least one of the characters, Katy, is supposed to be a perfectly real person. Bran and Gwydion If we refer to the shadowy entities of Celtic mythology as “gods” we are guilty of over-simplification. No one knows with certainty who Bran and Gwydion are. They are each associated with a particular tree, but who can say what potency derives from that? Bran’s tree is the Alder, G-wydion’s the Ash. Some people maintain that the cult ot the Alder was supplanted by that of the Ash. The once mighty Bran is reduced to a husk by the power of Gwydion, and is no longer even dignified by his true name and sex. The Discovery of Names So Alder’s true name is Bran. It was by discovering this that Gwydion gained power over him. It is a common magical practice to use the properties of a person’s name against him. Spelt names are deeply embedded in the music of this play. The Spiral The mythical story of Bran, whose severed head was buried under the White Mount in London, joins onto the semi-historical story of Arthur. For Arthur, scorning the aid of the Head, which was believed to defend Britain magically, had it exhumed. And Arthur’s story joins onto recorded history, for he himself, or something in his likeness, was exhumed at Giastonbury in 1190. These circles of myth, semi-history and recorded history joined end to end form the spiral which holds this play together. Alfred Watkins (1855-1935) One final word, about a person who is not shadowy at all. He was an enthusiastic amateur archeologist and photographer living in Herefordshire. His discovery of the alignments between antiquities, which he called leys, is still treated as sheer heresy in some quarters. Watkins considered the leys to have been trackways (as argued in his book “The Old Straight Track”) but some who have developed his ideas more recently seem to have other views. Dedication and Motto Alfred Watkins draws attention in his book to an inscription on a Roman altar in Britain: GENIO TERRAE BRITANNICAE. I should also like to point out that I headed my score with a line from Edward Thomas: “The Past is the only dead thing that smells sweet”. Tim Porter Back to Operas
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