Twinn
A Dowser's Tale
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It’s not every day that you get to be the sideshow for a saint.
The St Neot Village Festival 2012 (that’s the one in Cornwall) was built around a bespoke musical drama, A Daughter’s Tale, which was written by musician and composer Nick Hart, and directed by impresario Olwyn Foot, both of whom live locally. It describes the life of the well-known monk through a series of theatrical scenes - and was staged in the parish church over three days, to sell-out audiences. Think Phantom of the Opera - albeit on a Cornish community scale. To give the festival a more rounded feel, a number of workshops, featuring local crafts that would have been much in evidence in the 9th Century, Neot’s era, were also commissioned - including one about dowsing.
Coming up with a dowsing format that linked in with a theologian, about which next to nothing is actually recorded, wasn’t as difficult as it might seem at first. The ‘saints’ or monks, who came to Cornwall from Wales, Ireland and even Saxon Wessex had no maps or sat navs - and probably no real idea of the geography of the land that they felt drawn to convert. They would have had no reliable knowledge of who was friendly and who was to be avoided: who would welcome them and who would seek to kill them. They may have had some rudimentary knowledge of herbal remedies, but no concept of medicine, as we know it today. They wouldn’t have known where to find drinkable water, let alone any source of protein or carbohydrate. They were men (and occasionally women) who had just one multi-purpose tool to assist them - their intuition. That they survived at all, and were often later canonised by the host population, is evidence enough that they were not only aware of intuitive knowledge, but that they must have been able to delve into it frequently, and in a structured manner. In essence, they would have been dowsers - maybe not of the stick-wielding variety, but intuitive practitioners nonetheless.
My workshop adopted a pretty standard format, aimed at complete beginners - even sceptics. We started at the parish church. I was able to demonstrate the role of water and earth energy in determining the importance of the site and, to some extent, in aligning and influencing the architecture. A wide energy ley crosses the nave diagonally, running under the bell tower - the oldest part of the current structure. I am sure that Neot would also have sensed these features, when he chose to establish his base here. Naturally, he probably took over an existing pre-Christian site, but that too would have been placed on the same energy pattern. The original name of the village, Lanweryr, indicates the presence of the Celtic Llan, or mound, on which the modern building now stands. There is a reference in the guidebook to a ‘lost’ earlier building in the Christian era - pre-dating the 12th - 14th century structure we see today. I was able to find the remanence of this wooden church - interestingly, one more closely aligned to the ley, which links the present building to the celebrated Holy Well, a few hundred yards away.
We then moved to the former farmhouse, which is now the home of Nick and Jenny Hart. After an hour or so of practical work, all those attending had found water, utilities, springs, leys and earth energy for themselves. We even managed a bit of archaeological dowsing around a recently rediscovered standing stone that had been hiding in a field bank for rather a long time. People taught, BSD leaflets distributed, questions asked and answered, even a few books sold, a good time had by all - job done. Well, almost.
The success of the first night of the performance of A Daughter’s Tale was a triumph and, no doubt, a significant relief to Nick, Olwyn and all concerned - and the standing ovation they received at the end was thoroughly deserved.
Rearranging the church pews into a horseshoe, and using the nave as the performance area, was a masterstroke of direction that allowed the Canoryon Lowen Choir, around whom the whole event has crystallised, to enfold the audience with a natural surround-sound experience. It made me realise just how impressive the acoustics of a humble parish church can be, when working with the intrinsic architectural design.
Nick’s score managed to include Alfred (as Prince, later to be the king of cake- burning fame) and Donierth (the last of the Cornish Kings) as well as Neot himself, who was afforded a daughter - and hence the title of the performance - as a literary vehicle. It was a classic, if customised, tale of the tension between destiny and desire: the conflict and mutual mistrust between the Cornish Celts and their new Saxon neighbours: the uneasy paradoxes of philosophy and pragmatism, played out in a real, if ancient, arena. Neot’s daughter becomes a pawn in the interplay of control between Alfred, Donierth and Neot - and all three end up looking somewhat tarnished as a result.
A theme of this story is that we should only take what we need - not everything that we want (which is attributed to the historical Neot in his biography). While this was also the zeitgeist of everyone from Jesus to Buddha and Gandhi to Marx, it seemed a strangely apt tenet in the wake of the bankers’ pillage. Another thread in the musical tapestry was the way in which positions of responsibility carry with them certain duties and expectations - and not necessarily the ones the post-holders sought or desired. Again, everyone from Confucius to any local councillor has had to try to square that particularly uncomfortable circle.
Amongst the joyous entanglement of community spirit and artistic delivery, there are also undercurrents that the dowser can appreciate. It is Neot’s ability as a hands-on healer that gains him sainthood and eventually provides the work with its much-sought-after happy ending. It is the ‘voice’ of the water at the Holy Well that attracts Neot to the site and provides him with advice in times of need. Most of all, it is the realisation that the thought-provoking performance is about an essentially historical figure, on the site of his personal significance, twelve centuries after the event. The fact that both participants and audience were interacting with the same energies underfoot that Neot himself would have felt and used, added real spice to the idea of a ‘spirit of place’ that transcends time.
Congratulations to Nick, Olwyn and the cast on their considerable achievement.
Nigel Twinn March 2012
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