Anonymous was a Woman

Pandemic Memory

During the Pandemic, anxiety, naturally, ran very high. Our future suddenly became very uncertain. I can remember feeling very sobered by the knowledge that the whole world was united in suffering and anxiety. The pace of life slowed as movement and activity was curbed, it felt like living under water, everything was arduous, painstaking care had to be taken with everything; the notion of kindness arose, meaning consideration for the well being of others as well as one's own. This was good, but it heightened one's awareness to the point of fear and imbued every day with a sense of trepidation. Sleep was no longer as restful as it had been. 

I read somewhere some time before about people dividing sleeping into two halves in Medieval times. The first sleep, around 9 o'clock, probably linked to natural tiredness, or exhaustion, according to your standing in society, lasted for a couple of hours, after which, there followed a period of wakefulness, called The Watch. 

During this short interval, people would do all kinds of things, some rather surprising like visiting friends in other houses apparently, according to research by the historian Roger Ekirch, others nefarious, like stealing or even committing murders, though thankfully more commonly, people would spend it in much more productive ways like attending to bread making, beer brewing and other preparations for the following day, or simply having sex, which is probably the reason most of us are here. 

I came across this rather lovely piece which I read as a poem but later discovered was an aire written by John Dowland, Court Musician to Elizabeth 1 and it evokes the care and worry one might have about someone one loves in wakeful, fretful dark hours of the night. An exquisite lullaby, a musical spell with the intention of bestowing restful sleep on the person in receipt of it.  It can be read, I think, both as a gift from John Dowland to his beloved benefactor, in the certain knowledge that she was unwell and likely to die soon, ( for she did indeed die soon after he wrote it ), but also as something Queen Bess might want to gift someone who she knows would be missing in her absence;

Anonymous was a Woman

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|                                                                       |
|   Weep you no more sad fountaines,             |
|   What need you flow so fast,                       |
|   Looke how the snowie mountaines,           |
|   Heav'ns sunne doth gently waste.               |
|   But my sunnes heav'nly eyes                      |
|   View not your weeping,                              |
|   That now lies sleeping                                |
|   Softly now softly lies sleeping.                  |
|                                                                       |
|  Sleepe is a reconciling,                                |
|  A rest that peace begets:                              |
|  Doth not the sunne rise smiling,                 |
|  When faire at ev'n he sets,                          |
|  Rest you, then rest sad eyes,                       |
|  Melt not in weeping,                                   |
|  While she lies sleeping                               |
|  Softly now softly lies sleeping.                  |
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I reimagined it to be written by a woman, or at least, imagined a woman, ( perhaps Queen Bess ? ) lying awake, unable to sleep for worrying about her lover and how lost he will feel without her;

In 1603 she 

wrote a poesy;

Anonymous, a woman awake

in the watches of the night,

worrying, wanting

comfort

for someone she's thinking of.


As the wolf time arrives,

she has dispelled the

uht-cearu

with her patch of a poem,

and perhaps her sunne rise

saw a secret smile upon

her lips.


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