. as is their custom, rising first.

p. 67 And wind-enarmourd aspin: the best appreciation and analysis of Clare’s language is Barbara M. H. Strang’s essay, ‘John Clare’s Language’, published as an appendix to RM. Of ‘enarmourd’ she writes, ‘Enarmoured surely “contains” enamoured, but . . . appears in contexts in which the image of armour is also appropriate . . .’ Cf. p. 51, first line.

As wonting: ‘wonting’ or ‘wanting’? Either/or? Or both/ and? As Barbara Strang remarks, ‘It is not the editor’s business to preclude the reader from perceiving these double images.’

p. 72 but where is pleasure gone?: sporadically, even in relatively early poems, Clare surprises his reader with a sudden and unexpected inrush of bleakness, melancholy or disenchantment.

p. 74 While hasty hare: MC reads ‘tasty’.

Emmonsails Heath: otherwise known as Ailsworth Heath, and now a nature-reserve. This is the heath that Clare crossed when, as a boy, he went off in search of the edge of the world.

p. 75 Lolham Brigs: or Bridges. A splendid series of stone arches carries the old Roman road across the flood-plain on either side of the River Welland.

p. 80 Waving the sketching pencil: MC reads ‘sketchy’.

p. 82 Displaying ... at all: this runs fairly close to the kinds of ‘proper’ sentiments that his patrons, especially Admiral Lord Radstock, urged him to express.

Stray Walks: the affirmation of the value of ‘wandering’, and of the serendipitously educative powers of nature that accrue to the wanderer — this occurs frequently in Clare, as in Wordsworth. The contrary values of constraint and calculation were neatly satirized by both Wordsworth (Prelude, Book 5) and Byron {DonJuan,Canto I, stanzas XVI and L). Clare’s commitment to wandering also appears in the next poem in this selection.

p. 93 A Sunday with Shepherds and Herdboys: the oral culture of the shepherds was for Clare a great treasure; in this poem he establishes a contrast between the claims of the Bible and those of traditional romances. At this juncture Clare himself is ambivalent: on the one hand he characterizes the tellers of tales as ‘ignorant’; on the other, he invests such tales with the accolade of ‘Natural’. On Clare’s relationship with oral traditions, see George Deacon’s remarkable book, John Clare and the Folk Tradition (Sinclair Browne), 1983.

p. 97 A Cromwell-trench: a landmark-remnant of the Civil War.

p. 104 Where boys unheeding passed: MC reads ‘past’. Clare tended to use ‘past’ for both ‘passed’ and ‘past’. Where this seems likely to create uncertainty in the modern reader, I have distinguished them.

p.