Eye - 20 January 2023

From Time to play to On this day

Time to play

It made Eye’s day when the first paper creation crafted from these pages appeared in the mailbag last week!

Joanna Parker told Eye: ‘The proportions of the paper house in the 23 & 30 December issue of the Friend reminded me of the Meeting house at North Walsham, Norfolk. It’s eighteenth-century, with a twentieth-century kitchen extension, and looks a bit like the photo [see right].’

Friendly delights

Quakers in Liverpool held a ‘Bring a Delight’ event on 17 December. Bernie Kennedy sent Eye its own delight in the form of a report he wrote about the get-together for his Local Meeting newsletter.

He sketched out how the day unfolded: ‘After a bring and share lunch, Friends brought many delights – poetry and carols and balloon chuckling. And for the finale, we were treated to the world premier of a brand new carol.’

Then he delved deeper into the musical offerings: ‘First up were Mil and Ke with performances of two carols. They roared up the audience with “Carol of the Bells”, sung in two, rather than the usual four parts. I must say, their timing was spot on and they give their all with gusto and panache, their audience joining in gladly. Ke is the perfect foil to Mil. His hilarious tale of candles held the audience in stitches. One Friend later commented she thought we were heading into a Two Ronnies’ sketch, but no! To everyone’s surprise, they led us to a candlelight carol.

‘The pair finished with a heartwarming rendition of “We wish you a Merry Christmas!” And, if they didn’t always appear to sing all of the words in the right places, nobody seemed to mind. They kept going, rousing the whole room to a glorious climax.’

A tough act to follow! But Friends rose to the challenge, with more carols: ‘One was a version of “While Shepherds Watched” to the tune of “Ilkla Moor Baht ’at”. That was followed with readings of three Christmas poems by Wendy Cope. But, top of the bill and a world premier, no less, was young P, who composed and sang his own moving carol. The words and tune cheered every one of us…

‘As to those previously affected by bad communal singing in public spaces, there were board games, washing up and mince pies to make them happy. We thank them all!’

On this day

A much dinkier magazine awaited Eye when diving into 20 January 1950 edition, whose pages were smaller than an A5 sheet of paper. Those pages were still packed full of articles, letters, and notices though!

One entry in particular caught Eye’s attention. Tucked away at the bottom of the births, marriages and deaths column was an announcement from a Children’s Meeting:

‘Four young members of the First-Day School at Blackburn, Peter and David Leather, Beryl Strack and Elizabeth Murray, have sent £2 15s. to the F.S.C. [Friends Service Council], the result of carolling at Christmas.’

Eye wonders how much seeing their contribution in print meant to those young Friends, and marvels at how one small paragraph can shed light on personal history and our Society’s.

The term ‘First Day School’ may not be familiar to many Friends now, Eye suspects it is more generally known as Children’s Meeting. It is a Quaker term that equates to other denominations’ Sunday School.

Why ‘First Day’? Quakers used to refer to days and months by numbers rather than by common names, some of which derive from the names of pagan gods. They started their week’s with Sunday, so this became First Day, Monday was Second Day, etc.

As we learned last week, the Friends Service Council is now known as Quaker Peace & Social Witness.

Eye loves how the Friend has been able to reflect the big issues of the day alongside the activities of individual Quakers over the years. Are there readers, of any age, who have similar snippets they’d like to share with readers now?

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