Cantata “The Ebb and the Flow”  

by Derek Hobbs. Libretto by Michael Kirkup.

Commissioned by the Mid-Northumberland Chorus and Alnwick Choral Society, 2000.

 

 The Ebb and the Flow is a celebration of the Venerable Bede, the ‘Father of English History’ and the Northumbrian Saints Benedict Biscop, Oswald, Aidan and Cuthbert who figure in his History of the English Church and People and Lives of the Abbots.

 

In this cantata we have gone beyond Bede’s account in the stories of Aidan and Cuthbert. In Aidan of Lindisfarne we imagine what Aidan’s feelings might have been when he arrived from distant Iona, an Irish speaker for whom King Oswald himself acted as translator. In Cuthbert, Hermit of Farne we recall the legend that, when storm clouds gather, Cuthbert can be heard at his anvil forging ‘Cuddy’s Beads’ - the small jewel-like fossils found in the sand around Lindisfarne.

 

Leo Sherley-Price writes in the introduction to his translation of Bede’s History (Penguin Classics 1955):

“Such is the interest of the subject-matter and the vividness of Bede’s characteristic style that the scenes and folk of long ago live again. We are transported back into the fens and forests, highlands and islands of Celtic Britain and Saxon England, and we feel strangely ‘at home’. These are our own people and our own land, and with a little imagination and historical sense we have little difficulty in imagining the contemporary scene, or in appreciating the viewpoint, plans and problems of the kings, saints and lesser folk whom Bede describes so well. We can stand beside the gallant King Oswald at Heavenfield as he sets up a great oaken cross with his own hands, and summons his army to prayer before engaging the heathen hordes in desperate battle. Above all, we cannot but be impressed and deeply moved by the selfless Christ-like lives of the northern Celtic saints - Cuthbert and Aidan - and their disciples. Men of great personal gifts and radiant faith, they fiercely carried the Gospel alone among alien peoples, gladly accepting lifelong ‘exile for Christ’ as his apostles. Redoutable travellers by sea and land, able scholars, scribes and craftsmen, the loneliness of their hard and holy lives has won the admiration and captured the imagination of all succeeding centuries. When we read Bede’s account of such men and their doings, we realise ever more clearly that the past is not dead and done with, but a force to be reckoned with, silently moulding the present and the future.”