The more you look at this landscape ... the more you can feel it, looking back at you.
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DEBORAH CURTIS WRITER
Writer, theatre director and author based in East Anglia
As a writer, theatre maker, film-maker and story maker, I take my inspiration from the landscape, people and places of the Fens.
This region inspires a great deal of my work.
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Flat, brooding under vast skies, with horizons stretching into infinity, the place has its own unique atmosphere.
This is a harsh and haunted place. Poverty has walked hand-in-hand with the people here since time began.
Perhaps that's why Fen folk clung to the old ways for so long.
Putting their faith in folk magic, home remedies, and of course, the white blooming opium poppy.
Fen folk are still a race apart. Proud, independent, and famously pig-headed!
They don't call them 'Fen Tigers' for nothing. But make a friend of one of them, and you'll have a friend for life.
The lilting, sing-song Fen accent is becoming rarer these days.
A reminder of the time when this part of England was ruled by the Viking Danes.
And the old dialect words are becoming rarer, too. Diluted by the influence of TV and the ever-widening spread of Estuarine English.
You can still hear traces of it now though, in goo, froze, frit, bor, and hum.
And the Danes have left their mark in place names such as Toft.
In spite of all the changes to this region I still find the people and places an endless source of inspiration.
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CONTACT
thefieldtheatregroup@hotmail.co.uk
FaceBook:
Deborah Curtis Writer
Field Theatre Group
Littleport Riot 200
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The Black Fens
The Black Fen. Once it was the half-place. Neither water nor land nor sky.
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Where shadows bred shadows, and old ghosts walked the dirt droves.
The Fen was dark then, and full of bottomless black pools; with only the treacherous flicker of the marsh lights to guide your steps.
‘Walking fires’, igiius fatua .... bubbles of marsh gas that rose and drifted on the wind, blooming into an unearthly blue light.
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Before the waters were drained … the ‘walking fires’ were often glimpsed, flickering over rivers and pathways.
The eerie lights appeared in churchyards too, hovering over water logged graves … corpse-candles.
Many a night walker in the Fen has been led to a slow, sinking death by the, deceitful, dancing ‘will o’ the wisp’.
Were they the souls of the dead and the drowned … who lured unwary travellers to a watery end?
Fen folk said the lights led the good to safety…. and the sinful to their doom!
And strange things bred in the depths of the peaty water.
‘Old Yallery’ ... that old Fenland bogeyman, crept out of the water to curl his long, yellow fingers round the necks of unsuspecting night walkers.
And there was Black Shuck, Odin’s faithful hound of death: pad, pad, padding along the drove.
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If you're thinking of taking a stroll on the Fen after dark…. you’d better check your pockets. Just to be on the safe side! Have you got a luck piece about you? Do you have your ‘safe-keep’ handy? A rabbit’s foot will do.
Or a verse from the Bible tucked into a nutshell? Best of all, a coin from a dead man’s pocket.
Oh, and don’t forget your eel-skin garter, to ward off the fen ague. Better take them all …. just in case.
Good luck.
Oh, and if you should glimpse the unlovely Jenny Burnt Arse, bobbing towards you, or if you hear the unmistakable sound of a giant hound padding along behind you ….
‘Like one who on a lonesome road, doth walk in fear and dread.
Because he knows, a fearful fiend, doth close behind him tread’.
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Don’t look round. Just run as though all the fiends in hell were after you… because they probably will be!
walking fire … fire damp
jack o’ lantern ... will o’ the wisp.
jenny burnt-arse!