‘the vain errand of a dream’ John Chapman

The Pedlar’s Dog on Swaffham Church Pew.

I’m carved from that time of meandering byways, of trinkets and gee-gaws on star-puddled nights.

Pothering markets that hoof-clomped and chin-wagged where troshels were white with the scrub of day’s niff. When John’s moon tinkered voices it led to illusions and his apple-tree spading gave not bones but new gold. Whet your hand on my flank as I sniff bygone seasons, how lives ripened till death under slow circling skies. Look how hurtling landscapes have now lost their quiet journeys, people and places falling stonily away. Do chill glints of fool’s-gold not bury your present, do their coursing and hounding not have you as the prey? Reflect on the lasting of sweet countryside light, a pause in its slant as you sit here today. I’m a memory in oak polished with palming, a simple wisdom of dog for your tight-tethered age.

(troshel – Norfolk dialect for doorstep)

John Chapman, a tinker from Swaffham in the 15th century, heard a voice night after night, saying that if he went to London Bridge he would have good news. After fruitless days, a man asked him what he wanted and he told him of his dream. The man said that he too dreamt, but of a place called Swaffham with an apple tree at the back of a house, and underneath it was a pot of gold, but he wasn’t going to believe in anything so silly. John hurried home, and dug up the pot of gold in his own garden. He became a benefactor of Swaffham Church, and he, his wife and the dog that accompanied him everywhere, are carved on pew finials.