13 Mar Revolving into light – once again

To live in this place, we put up with winters that sometimes seem never-ending. But end they do—eventually. Winter isn’t over yet, but Sunday brought a kindly foretaste of the warmth to come. That triggered my annual dip into Ray Guy’s 1975 collection of newspaper columns, You May Know Them as Sea Urchins, Ma’am, and its final essay, “This Dear and Fine Country (Spina Sanctus).”

Well, we made it once again, boys! Winter is over.

Oh, but there is still snow on the ground.

So what? It hasn’t got a chance. It is living in jeopardy from day to day. We should pity it because it will soon be ready for the funeral parlour. It is only a matter of another few paltry weeks and we shall see it disappear into brown and foaming brooks; we shall see the meadows burning green and spangled with little piss-a-beds like tiny yellow suns. Winter is over.

Oh, but there is still ice on the water.

So what? The globe is turning and nothing can stop it. We are revolving into light. The fisherman tars his boat on the beach and is heated by two suns, one in the sky and another reflected from the water, and the ice on the cliff behind him drips away to a poor skeleton.

It is only a matter of a few more paltry weeks and we shall see the steam rising from the ponds and from the damp ground behind the plow; we shall see the grandmother sitting out by the doorstep for a few minutes watching the cat; we shall see the small boats a’bustle, piled high with lobster pots in the bow, and the days melting further and further into the night.

Winter is over now.

Praise God and all honour to our forefathers through generations who did never forsake this dear and fine country.

Hard to believe these lyrics first took flight in a newspaper column. The writer, Ray Guy,  a Newfoundlander, calls to mind Don Marquis, the early 20th century columnist for the New York Evening Sun who created  the poetic cockroach Archy and his dissolute feline pal Mehitabel.

The joke underlying Guy’s book title is that Newfoundlanders sometimes call sea urchins whore’s eggs. The Latin phrase Spina Sanctus (sanctified by the thorn) was a motto used by George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, an early settler on Newfoundland’s Southern Shore. Until Ray objects, I’ll make This Dear and Fine Country a March Contrarian tradition. It gives hope.