Reserch findings

I found this picture of a weathermen, bargemen and lightermen workers union photo which gives valuble insight into what the dress sense was like back in those days.

Old English Words

Here is some of the Old English Language we will be using in the songs for our final performance.

art - are
bequeath - To give or leave by will; to hand down.
beseech - request, ask.
besought – asked, made request. (past tense of beseech)
betwixt – between.
canst - can.
cometh – comes, or coming.
dearth - (durth) scarcity or scant supply of anything; want or lack.
dost - do, does.
durst– Dare; to have the necessary boldness or courage for something.
fere - friend, companion.
fullsome - rich, plentiful.
hath - equivalent of modern has.
henceforth - from now on.
hither - here.
huzzah - Huzza or huzzah is first recorded in 1573. According to a number of writers in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was originally a sailor's cheer or salute. (Old French, huzzer, “to shout aloud;” German, hussah!)
mere - An expanse of water; lake; pool.
midst– Middle, or among. e.g., "in the midst of the storm…
nary - None; absolutely nothing; not even close to anything.
The good Jester also included an example of the word's usage:
"Thou dost hast nary an inkling on coveting thine lady."
naught – Nothing. (Did you know our modern word “not” is actually an abbreviated form of this Olde-English word, which was itself a shortened form of “no whit” or “not a whit”?)
onuppan - above.
overmany - a lot.
pece - silverware, fork.
prithee - contracted form of "I pray thee", i.e., I ask of you, I beseech thee, etc.
proby - apprentice.
pudh - horrible.
shall or shalt - will
seek - (O.E. secan, to seek) To go in search or quest of; to look or search for.
syllan - sell.
tallt - to stand above others in a snobby way.
tarry - to linger, deliberate, wait, stay, or pause.
thou - you
thee - you
thine - your
thither - there.
thy - your
trow– To think or suppose. e.g., "Wilt thou labor for naught? I trow not!"
whence - From where, e.g., "Whence, comest thou?" would translate to the modern "Where do you come from?"
wax - to grow, to become.
whither - To where, e.g., "Whither thou goest, I shall go." translates in modern English as "Where you go, I will go."
wilt – This one is tricky. It can mean very simply, will; but then it could also mean what a flower does without water, or what I do when asked to cook - it all depends on the context…
wist - knew; past tense of wit, e.g. He wist that his love was coming...
wit– To know, e.g., Canst thou wit what the day shall bring?
wrought - done, made, created; e.g. "...see what God hath wrought..."
ye - polite form of thou.
yore - years ago.

Progress...

Right! So we've came up with what format the final piece will be, we'll be performing songs using words that are not in use nowadays words such as ''Toerag'' (a piece of cloth poor dockworkers wrapped around the foot for comfort and protection, having no shoes) and ''prithee'' (i pray to thee, an endearing request)

For this to work well, we will need:

1. A Guitarist to play along whilst we recite our songs.
2. A Table to lay out all the key words and pictures so tht people can decode our songs and gain further understnding of the lyrics.
3. A morris dancers uniform (makeshift probably).
4. Printed photo's
5. A Tamborine

We made it our first step to find a guitarist as this was a feature we could not do without and it seemed like a good idea to tackle this first so i called up my friend who plays guitar and proposed the idea to him offering a small reward for which he accepted, so we began our plan of action.

Delayed Museum Trip

Last week the class went on a trip to the London docklands museum but i unfortunately missed it due to being unorganised. We both understood that this was a very important trip and that if we missed it we would have a HUGE disadvantage in starting our assignments and blog so we decided that after the class we were in we would go to the museum, its a lovely day outside so why not.

Here are some photos of things we saw which inspired us to come up with the 'final' idea for our piece.



1: The opening of st-Katherine's docks

2: An Ancient torture device

3: The reconstruction of 'sailortown'




My initial understanding of what the meseum would be like was that i would be somewhat bored the entire time, much like the previous Tate Modern trip we had taken prior to this. But to my suprise I really enjoyed this trip as it helped me understand what it was like to live in the early days of the docks and what the average persons routine and daily life entailed. We took lots of pictures at the museum but mostly o words as we knew that the direction we wanted to go (incorporating songs into a performance) but didn't quite have an idea exactly planned out in our heads just yet. I learned a lot about 'Apprentecips' which were basically a socially accepted form of slavery.

A Sudden brainwave

On the woolich audiotrail tracks there was a song that was played that was an old 1927 song by John McCormack http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viW5rT2duoc&feature=player_embedded  that we found ourselfes singing with our own silly lyrics in place of the ones already in the song and this gave us an idea, lets make our stall, installation, acting peice (we hadn't decided on the format just yet) with music!

Audio walk around the Docks

I missed the walk on the day that it was arranged as i had work, however myself and another from our group went and completed the walk a few days after. As we stopped at each of the 11 locations we listened to a track detailing a personal account of how things used to be. These tracks were people talking about the history of the docks.

A -  Accents
B -  Burning
C -  Cease-fire
D -  Development
E -  Environment

F -  Factories
G -  Gallions
H -  Housing Estates
I -  Industrial
J -  Job Prospects
K -  King George V
L -  London
M -  Maritime
N -  New
O -  Olden

P -   Pubs
Q -  Quay
R -  Residents
S -  Sign

T -  Trenches
U -  Union

V -  Victorian
W - War

X -   

Y -  Yeast
Z - Zebra  crossing

We couldnt find anything for x that related to our walk, we weretempted to cheat off the other groups bu we decided to leave it out beacuse it shows that not everything goes to plan in the way you had expected and you sometimes need to let somethings go and move on to the next task.

The research begins....

I was absent from class today due to lack of funds so i decided to do a bit of research on the docks and their story and i found this website which seems to be dedicated to all things related to londons history of the docks, a valuble rescource for future planning methinks.

http://www.parishregister.com/londons_docks.asp

Lippard Reading

 

After reading through this with raz when he got back from uni I felt that lippard was trying to tell the reader that how ones surroundings can give them the sense of belonging and sentiment; I believe this relates to how the people in the docks lived in the past and how the community used working together as a valuable tool in etching their lives and forming a new society, the people of the docklands.

I believe a lot of the class struggled on the knowhow of the use in terminology and what lippard meant by this, but after some brainstorming on it we found it clear and productive towards the task we had to do for our project. (below is a photo of the brainstorming process)