Silas Marner

The other evening we needed a change of diet from ITV3 and lighted upon the BBC version of 'Silas Marner', now more than thirty years old - although still quite young compared with the book, now more than 150 years old.

We were very impressed with the quality of the dramatisation. With a special mention for whoever it was who played Godfrey Cass, whom we thought caught well what a weak, but decent man might have become when born into both a broken home and a position of hereditary authority, out in the country.

So impressed, that I charged up the kindle and started reading the book - to be reminded what a good writer George Eliot is - if a little dense after Simenon & Maigret. I share a couple of thoughts.

First, it seems that country people of a couple of hundred years ago did not put all their faith in regular doctors and were apt to go to healers - mostly old women - when the going got rough. One of the things that the old women sold were amulets in the form of little bags full of some concoction of chopped dried herbs, to be worn from the neck, under one's clothes. The example given was of a young woman who might want some protection, a charm, against the contingency of having an idiot child. It was striking that a sensitive person like George Eliot saw fit to use the word idiot, which I imagine is not correct at all these days. A lay person might say mentally handicapped or special, but a professional would almost certainly talk about someone with learning and communications difficulties. I am unsure on the point, but I worry that the professional euphemism does not mislead the laity into thinking that the person concerned is pretty much full functioning, with just a few problems around the edges.

I recall reading of the use of similar amulets by native Americans, not that many years later, possibly in Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' - and I would have thought McCarthy was quite careful on period details of that sort.

Second, it seems that these same country people were apt to spin flax into linen thread to make a bit of pin money. Which is fair enough, but were did they grow the stuff? How much thread did you need to get the price of a breast of lamb or a pot of porter? Where was the water to steep the raw flax in? So far, apart from learning that Ireland was once the centre of the world in so as far as the flax and linen trade was concerned, I have not made much progress.

Beyond recalling the presence of a handsome Linen Hall in Belfast. Which recollection turned out to be a bit wide of the mark. The Linen Hall in question does exist, a famous & old established library, located in what used to be the linen quarter of Belfast - but beyond that I am not clear what, if any, the connection to linen is. Nor do I recognise the images turned up by google. Has the brain got in a muddle with Belfast City Hall, which is a very serious building indeed?

PS: I was not impressed with the bobbins of linen offered by the BBC. Whatever was on the bobbins they filmed looked far too fine to be homespun linen thread. Did the props department cut a few corners?