Ornate chair fit for a poet
QUESTION Was a chair carved for Longfellow from the spreading chestnut tree mentioned in his famous poem The Village Blacksmith?
For his 72nd birthday in 1879, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was given a chair made from the wood of the spreading chestnut tree.
It was designed by his nephew, William Pitt Preble Longfellow, and paid for by 599 schoolchildren, thus earning its nickname The Children’s Chair.
Longfellow lived at 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When the road was widened, the tree that stood in front of the home of local blacksmith Dexter Pratt, the inspiration for the poem, was cut down.
Longfellow had vigorously protested against its removal, but in vain.
He was delighted with the chair. All the children who had contributed were invited to visit his home and see it in its place of honour — beside the fireplace in his study.
The following year he received a red, leather-bound manuscript book signed by the children. Inside the cover was a wooden bas relief scene of the children looking in the door of the smithy.
To thank the children for their gift, Longfellow wrote the poem From My Arm-Chair:
‘Am I a king, that I should call my own This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason, or what right divine Can I proclaim it mine?’
Longfellow was the best-loved American poet in his lifetime. His poems Paul revere’s ride, The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline are on the school curriculum. Admired by Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria, he is one of the few American writers honoured in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Arthur Simmons, Chesterfield, Derbys.
QUESTION Was a poem to John the Baptist the origin of the Do-Re-Mi musical scale?
roDgErS and Hammerstein’s song Dore-Mi is based on solfege, in which every note of a musical scale is given a unique syllable. This is used to sing that note every time it appears, in this case: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, and then back to ‘do’.
This system was derived from the 8th century hymn Ut Queant Laxis, in honour of St John the Baptist, written by Italian Benedictine monk Paul the Deacon.
In the 11th century, music theorist guido of Arezzo created a solfege that named the six notes of the hexachord after the first syllable of each line of Paul the Deacon’s hymn:
Ut queant laxis,/resonare fibris, Mira gestorum,/famuli tuorum, Solve polluti,/labii reatum, Sancte Iohannes — ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Each successive line of the hymn begins
on the next scale degree, so the note’s name was the syllable sung at that pitch.
‘Ut’ was changed in the 1600s to the open syllable ‘ do’ at the suggestion of musicologist giovanni Battista Doni — it was based on the first syllable of his surname.
‘Si’, from the initials for Sancte Iohannes (Holy John), was added to complete the scale. This was changed to ‘ti’ by Norwich music educator Sarah Anna glover in the 1820s, so that every syllable would begin with a different letter.
Alan Guest, Norwich, Norfolk.
QUESTION Do other countries have an equivalent to the Land’s End to John O’Groats physical challenge?
LAND’S End to John o’groats is a 603mile cross-country journey that connects the two end points of mainland Britain, from Cornwall to Caithness.
An equivalent route is the Pieterpad, a long- distance hike that traverses the Netherlands. The trail runs 309 miles from Pieterburen in the northern part of groningen to just south of Maastricht, on top of the 358 ft Mount Saint Peter (St Pietersberg).
The Israel National Trail is a path that stretches the length of the country. Its northern end is at Dan, near the Lebanese border, and it extends 620 miles to Eilat on the red Sea.
The trail is not direct as it is designed to take in Jewish, Christian and Muslim ancient holy sites such as Mount Tabor, Mount Carmel and the Elah Valley.
The Swiss Alpine Pass route is a 211- mile trail that spans the country. Starting in Sargans on the border with Liechtenstein, it passes over 16 mountain passes before reaching Montreux on Lake geneva.
Te Araroa is New Zealand’s longdistance route, stretching 1,865 miles on the two main islands, from Cape reinga in the north to Bluff in the south.
Debbie Heale, Croydon, Surrey.
QUESTION What is the strangest cover version of a song?
FUrTHEr to earlier answers, there is a surprising and strange cover of the theme tune to the television sitcom Are You Being Served?
The version by the group Coil was the antithesis to the upbeat song — it’s an eerie, eight-minute experimental piece of music. What in the original was a list of items on offer at a department store — ‘ground floor: perfumery, stationery and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food . . . going up’ — became a meditation upon death and the leaving behind of the material world.
Coil was founded by John Balance and Peter Christophersone, both no longer with us. Their influence on experimental and industrial music lives on.
Jamie Pickering, Neath, West Glamorgan.
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