An Antique Drum

The Battle of Hastings is now fought annually- and we were there for yesterday's re-enactment. We had flags to wave- I bought one for each team and shouted "Normandie!" and "Godwinsson!" indiscriminately. My granddaughter asked me which were the goodies and I said they both had points in their favour. I reckon that after a thousand years (nearly) all English people must have both Norman and Saxon blood running in their veins.

As Eliot said about a much later conflict,

"We cannot revive old factions...
Or follow an antique drum.
These men and those who opposed them
Accept the constituency of silence
And are folded in a single party."

Incidentally, when the battle was over and the survivors and resurrected dead marched past to applause I was pleased to see that a goodish percentage of them were women.