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"Fern Hill" (1945) is a poem by the Welsh poet
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...
, first published in ''Horizon'' magazine in October 1945, with its first book publication in 1946 as the last poem in '' Deaths and Entrances''. Thomas had started writing ''Fern Hill'' in
New Quay New Quay ( cy, Cei Newydd) is a seaside town (and electoral ward) in Ceredigion, Wales, with a resident population of around 1,200 people, reducing to 1,082 at the 2011 census. Located south-west of Aberystwyth on Cardigan Bay with a harbour a ...
,
Cardiganshire Ceredigion ( , , ) is a county in the west of Wales, corresponding to the historic county of Cardiganshire. During the second half of the first millennium Ceredigion was a minor kingdom. It has been administered as a county since 1282. Cere ...
, where he lived from September 4, 1944, to July 1945. Further work was done on the poem in July and August 1945 at Blaencwm, the family cottage in
Carmarthenshire Carmarthenshire ( cy, Sir Gaerfyrddin; or informally ') is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as ...
,
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
. A draft was sent to a friend in late August, and then the completed poem to his publisher on September 18, 1945. The house Fernhill is a Grade 2 listed residence just outside
Llangain Llangain is a village and community in Carmarthenshire, in the south-west of Wales. Located to the west of the River Towy, and south of the town of Carmarthen, the community contains three standing stones, and two chambered tombs as well as the ...
in Carmarthenshire. In Thomas' day, it had an orchard and fifteen acres of farmland, most of it of poor quality. Thomas had extended stays here in the 1920s with his aunt Annie and her husband, Jim Jones. They had lived at Fernhill from about 1908 to 1928, renting it from the daughter of Robert Ricketts Evans (also known as Robert Anderson Evans), an occasional hangman and public executioner who once lived in Fernhill. Thomas’ own notes about Fernhill confirm that he knew the various stories about Evans the Hangman. Thomas wrote about Fernhill (calling it Gorsehill) in his short story, ''The Peaches'', in which he describes it as a ramshackle house of hollow fear. Fernhill's dilapidated farmyard and buildings are also described in ''The Peaches''. Jim Jones had shown little interest in farming, as his neighbours had noticed: there was “no work in him...left Fernhill farm to ruins.” Jim had sold most of his farming machinery, implements and livestock before moving to Fernhill. He'd also been convicted for allowing decomposing animal carcasses to lie around his fields. Fernhill, said an official survey, had an outside earth closet, water was carried in from a well in the farmyard, washing oneself was done in the kitchen, whilst meals were cooked on an open fire. Its two living rooms were lit by candles and paraffin lamps. The house, said the survey, had “extreme rising dampness” and smelt, wrote Thomas in ''The Peaches'', "of rotten wood and damp and animals". Thomas' holidays here have been recalled in interviews with his schoolboy friends and with Annie and Jim's neighbours. A further account describes both Thomas’ childhood and later years on the family farms between Llangain and
Llansteffan Llansteffan, is a village and a community situated on the south coast of Carmarthenshire, Wales, lying on the estuary of the River Tywi, south of Carmarthen. Description The community includes Llanybri and is bordered by the communities of: L ...
, as well as suggesting that the poem ''Fern Hill'' was inspired not just by the house Fernhill but by another farm as well.


Linguistic considerations

The poem starts as a straightforward evocation of his childhood visits to his Aunt Annie's farm: :Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs :About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, :The night above the dingle starry, In the middle section, the idyllic scene is expanded upon, reinforced by the lilting rhythm of the poem, the dreamlike,
pastoral A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
metaphors and allusion to Eden. :All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay :Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air... :With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all :Shining, it was Adam and maiden, By the end, the poet's older voice has taken over, mourning his lost youth with echoes of the opening: :Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, :Time held me green and dying :Though I sang in my chains like the sea. The poem uses
internal Internal may refer to: *Internality as a concept in behavioural economics *Neijia, internal styles of Chinese martial arts *Neigong or "internal skills", a type of exercise in meditation associated with Daoism *''Internal (album)'' by Safia, 2016 ...
half rhyme Perfect rhyme—also called full rhyme, exact rhyme, or true rhyme—is a form of rhyme between two words or phrases, satisfying the following conditions: *The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent s ...
and full rhyme as well as
end rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
. Thomas was very conscious of the effect of spoken or intoned verse and explored the potentialities of sound and rhythm, in a manner reminiscent of
Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovato ...
. He always denied having conscious knowledge of
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
, but "his lines chime with internal consonantal correspondence, or ''
cynghanedd In Welsh-language poetry, ''cynghanedd'' (, literally " harmony") is the basic concept of sound-arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration and rhyme. The various forms of ''cynghanedd'' show up in the definitions of all formal Welsh ...
'', a prescribed feature of Welsh versification".


Legacy

''Fern Hill'' has been set to music by the American composer
John Corigliano John Paul Corigliano Jr. (born February 16, 1938) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. His scores, now numbering over one hundred, have won him the Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, an ...
, for
SATB SATB is an initialism that describes the scoring of compositions for choirs, and also choirs (or consorts) of instruments. The initials are for the voice types: S for soprano, A for alto, T for tenor and B for bass. Choral music Four-part harm ...
chorus with orchestral accompaniment. Samples of the ''Fern Hill'' poem read by Dylan Thomas himself are used in the track ''Apple Towns'' by the one-man act ''Reflection Nebula''. '' Happy as the Grass Was Green'' became the title of a 1973
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
. Canadian performer
Raffi Raffi Cavoukian, ( hy, Րաֆֆի, born July 8, 1948), known professionally by the mononym Raffi, is a Canadian singer-lyricist and author of Armenian descent born in Egypt, best known for his children's music. He developed his career as a " ...
transformed the poem as a song called "Up on Fernhill" on his 2002 album: "Let's Play!"


References


External links


Annie Fernhill: Dylan's favourite aunt

Dylan Thomas: A True Childhood

Discover Dylan ThomasFern Hill
(Telegram Channel)
Llangain history
{{Dylan Thomas Poetry by Dylan Thomas Modernist poems