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Pinning down the presence of the past
– by Tom Hill
One good sign that a columnist has
too much time on his hands is when
he starts writing about stuff nobody
ever thinks about; if they ever thought
about it, there’d be nothing they could
do about it; and if there were nothing they could do
about it, they wouldn’t care.
So what is it this time?
Yore.
Yes, yore. As in days of. Apparently there used
to be lots of them, but we don’t seem to have them
anymore.
Days of yore, that is.
So what is, or was, yore?
It was the past, of course. Everybody knows that.
But how far into the past? How was it measured?
Were people who experienced yore even aware of it?
Can you dwell in days of yore without knowing it? Is
not knowing it one of the fundamental properties of
yore?
First of all, yore seems to have come only in 24-
hour increments, and only in multiples. Nobody talks
about hours of yore, or a single day of yore.
“Well, there was this day of yore, see, and a
grasshopper walked into a bar... “
Nope. It’ll never fly.
Were there nights of yore? All we ever hear about
is days. People must have been doing something after
the sun went down, but nobody talks about it much.
To me, yore summons up the Middle Ages: knights
clanking around in pursuit of grails, that sort of thing.
But that’s just me; somebody else might include the
American Revolution, or even the Civil War.
So when did yore end? Did anybody see it coming?
Were there loose ends to be tied up? Did people look
at the calendar and think, “Jeez – only five days of
yore left. I’ll never finish thatching the roof in time.”?
Maybe the unwashed masses were fed up with
yore. So someone appointed a commission to
figure out how to put yore out of its misery. The Yore
Commission cranked out a report several hundred
pages long – at taxpayers’ expense, naturally
– specifying in detail how yore would be ended.
There were lively arguments around the conference
table (maybe even a few fist fights, and a couple
of duels; picture the South Korean Legislature in
knickers, tights, and breastplates) about whether yore
should end abruptly or be phased out gradually – and,
if so, how long that should take. Some tradespersons
would probably have to be compensated for their
financial losses. Armor makers, for sure.
I’m betting it was a five-year plan, or the like. It
happened incrementally: every day there was a little
less yore, until it just sort of petered out.
When yore finally coughed up its last hairball of
yoreness, did people feel different? Did they wake
up the morning after the last day of yore and think,
“Hmmm – something’s changed. I can’t put my finger
on it, but things seem a lot less yorey than they did
yesterday.”
Were they sad or ecstatic? I see yore as something
you’d be glad to put behind you: “Well, it’s about time.
I’ve had about all the yore I could stand.”
But first came the celebrations: bonfires, boars
roasted over open pits, tankards of ale, and all that
stuff. The most widely shared common experience
on the first morning after the last day of yore was
probably a whanging hangover. Some people
probably decided yore hadn’t been so bad after all.
Which begat a “Restore Yore” movement: activists
pestering voters to sign petitions to get yore restored.
Maybe there were protest marches, but in the end it
came to nothing. Yore was a dead duck, and good
riddance.
Once yore was history, it probably took a while for
people to get nostalgic about it again – but boy, they
certainly did. Some of them, anyway. That’s what
Renaissance festivals are: yore orgies. Everybody
dresses up in yorewear, talks in yorespeak, hires
a lute player to pluck in a yorey sort of way (when
it comes to music, I think you’ll agree that the lute
represents the very apotheosis of yore chic) and
yoredances their brains out.
Refreshment stands serve pale imitations of
yoregrub, but you wouldn’t want to eat the real thing.
Do you have any idea where that haggis came from,
or where it has been?
As for the future, I suppose it could be considered
proto-yore. Which can only mean one thing:
Today is the first day of the rest of yore life.
***
Writer/musician Tom Hill, who summers at
Foot Cape, is wintering in Vermont. He can be
reached at thillvt@ns.sympatico.ca. Visit www.
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