Oby
Oby is incredibly difficult to find lying, as it
does, in the flat lands bordering the
River Thurne half way
between Acle and Potter
Heigham. It isn't
marked on the Ordnance Survey map and there are few sign
posts on the ground. (Turn off the B1152 and head for Thurne.) It
was, however, mentioned in the Domesday Book and Alan Davison
tells us that its church was abandoned in the late 16th
Century. Today it is classified as one of the county's
deserted village
The road to Oby
Oby Mill by the River Bure It may be insignificant
geographically - however it does have the honour of
having a collection of poems named after it for, in
November 1979, the poet George MacBeth (1932-1992) moved
into the former rectory here with his
wife Lisa St Aubin de Terán. The collection in question
is Poems from Oby (1982) - published by Secker
and Warburg - which features a number of pieces that
were directly inspired by the surrounding Broadland
landscape. One of the best known of these is Yuletide
in Norfolk - a powerful poem which contemplates the
influence of the Vikings in this part of Norfolk - who
left behind them many place names ending in 'by':
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The long-ships drove up the Bure, and the horned men
were
there to rape and to burn,
Seeding their names, Rollesby and Billockby, Fleggburgh,
Clippesby and Thurne,
Ashby and Oby. Our church roofs came from the rot of
each
oak-warped stern.But the Nazarene grip was strong. The surge of
energy in
the whoring blood
Settled for the purpled moan of the organ, the heifer
chewing her cud,
And the cart with its thwarted axle broken and stuck in
December mud.
I drive to the service at Clippesby, a mile along
sugar-beet-sodden-road.
My lights throw up the parishioners, whipped by the
Christian goad
And the hope of Heaven, their faces pinched by a cold,
unearthly woad
Into shapes of bread and wine. Their archangels gloat
and
wither on spruce,
Bald winter's fuel from Norway. The tied surplice is
shaken loose,
And the paean rises, the bitter semen of prayer squeezed
like a juice.
Nothing can alter the sounded heritage from the
throbbing brine,
The keels lifting above the waves. Let humility
be divine.
All arrogance is human, the black ride of the Vikings
is mine. |
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