[Magdalen] Beneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree.

[Andre and Carol]

Oh my....David, you and I must definitely be in the same age cohort. I can STILL recite most of The Village Blacksmith from memory! Maybe not great poetry, but definitely occupying some bedrock space in my memory. And, yeah, we substituted “rubber bands” too, in south central PA where I grew up. No blacksmith shops were still standing in my hometown, though (with or without Chestnut trees.)

Thanks for the memories.

Carol T.

Sent from XFINITY Connect App



------ Original Message ------

From: cantor03--- via Magdalen
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Cc: cantor03 at aol.com
Sent: July 21, 2018 at 10:36 PM
Subject: [Magdalen] Beneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree.


One of the small town Pennsylvania weekend festivals
in this region featured a blacksmith plying his trade.

This made me recall that our family home in NW Wisconsin
was within sight of a "classical' blacksmith shop.There was
always the familiar clanking noise as the iron was shaped
by the sweaty, blackened blacksmith whose name, of course
was Peer (Peter) Anderson.He would have to have had a
Nordic name to survive in our village.

There was no spreading chestnut tree, however, since the
natural range of the now largely extinct American Chestnut
species did not include the Upper Midwest USA.

The Longfellow poem on this subject was required memorization
for us at the time.We giggled privately about substituting
"...arms were strong as rubber bands" for the original "...strong
as iron bands."


David Strang.