Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgements
- 1 When I was young
- 2 A Modern Mythology
- 3 The Magic Shop
- 4 Portraits
- 5 The Fair
- 6 Letters
- 7 The Waxworks
- 8 A Matter of Size
- 9 Facts and Figures
- 10 Tall Tales
- 11 Painting with Words
- 12 Telling a Tale
- 13 Brandon
- 14 Seeing and Observing
- 15 In the Dark
- 16 Strange Creatures
- 17 MACHINES
- 18 No Noses
- 19 Diaries
- 20 The Fox's Foray
20 - The Fox's Foray
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2016
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgements
- 1 When I was young
- 2 A Modern Mythology
- 3 The Magic Shop
- 4 Portraits
- 5 The Fair
- 6 Letters
- 7 The Waxworks
- 8 A Matter of Size
- 9 Facts and Figures
- 10 Tall Tales
- 11 Painting with Words
- 12 Telling a Tale
- 13 Brandon
- 14 Seeing and Observing
- 15 In the Dark
- 16 Strange Creatures
- 17 MACHINES
- 18 No Noses
- 19 Diaries
- 20 The Fox's Foray
Summary
Do you know a poem called ‘The Fox and the Goose’?
The fox jumped up on a moonlight night,
The stars they were shining and all things bright;
‘ Oh, ho!’ said the fox, ‘ it's a very fine night For me to go over the down, O.’
The fox soon came to a farmer's yard,
Where the ducks and the geese were sore afeared;
‘The best of you all shall grease my beard When I trot home to my den, O.’
Old Gammer Hippie-Hopple hopped out of bed,
She opened the casement and popped out her head;
‘ Oh, husband! oh, husband! the grey goose is dead, And the fox is gone through the town, O.’
The fox and his wife, without any strife,
They cut up the goose without fork and knife,
And said 'twas the best they had eat in their life,
And the young ones picked the bones, O.
A class I was teaching a few years ago liked it so much that we decided to turn it into a radio play.
Their first task was to set the scene. There is not, you may say, much clue to it in the poem. We learn that it is a bright moonlight night, and that is all. However, it did not require much effort to begin to imagine the scene. This is how their play opens:
First Narrator. The moon, breaking out from behind the scudding clouds, illuminates the clock on the tower of the village church. The clock, old as it is, tells truly that it is midnight.
The silver light of the moon shows us, too, a grey ribbon stretching endlessly across the undulating moors; it is the road leading to the isolated farm of Farmer Hippie-Hopple, far from the hustle and bustle of town and city.
Second Narrator. Here an unnerving quiet lingers, broken only by the groaning of the gnarled and weatherbeaten trees, grotesque figures standing in a semi-circle behind the farm.
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- Read Write Speak , pp. 133 - 138Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013