Porlock

From Free net encyclopedia

Porlock is a quiet coastal village in Somerset, England, situated in a deep hollow below Exmoor, five miles west of Minehead. The village has a population of 1,377 (2002 estimate). It adjoins a salt marsh nature reserve created when the lowland behind a high shingle embankment was breached by the sea in the 1990s. Copses of white dead trees remind the visitor of when this was fresh water pasture.

A picturesque, wooded combe called Hawkcombe leads about three miles from the village up to high open moorland. The stream from Hawkcombe runs underground beneath the Overstream Hotel in the center of the village.

The South West Coast Path goes through Porlock, many walkers stopping rather than continuing on the gargantuan walk to Lynton. There is also a Coleridge Way walk.

Culbone church is said to be the smallest church in England. The main structure is 12th century. Services are still held there, despite the lack of road access - it is a two-mile walk from Porlock Weir.

A new toll road bypasses the 1-in-4 gradient on Porlock Hill. There is an ancient stone circle on the hill.

The area has links with several Romantic poets, and R. D. Blackmore the author of Lorna Doone.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the "man from Porlock"

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived nearby at Nether Stowey (between Bridgwater and Minehead). He and Wordsworth (who lived nearby at Alfoxden) would often roam the hills and coast on long night walks; leading to local gossip that they were 'spies' for the French. The Government sent an agent to investigate, but found they were, indeed, "mere poets". Their friend Robert Southey had published a poem titled "Porlock" in 1798.

Porlock is perhaps best-known in literature as source of the "man from Porlock". The man interrupted Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Ash Farm, some two miles from Porlock, on some matter of business. According to Coleridge this caused him to forget the rest of the poem Kubla Khan from the dream it had come to him in. Kubla Khan thus contains only 54 lines, and yet was acclaimed as a peak of Romanticism. Coleridge described the situation thus...

"On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!"

The "man from Porlock", "person from Porlock", or simply "Porlock" thus acquired a distinct literary meaning. Some examples of its use are...

Vincent Starrett, Persons from Porlock & Other Interruptions. (1938)
Stevie Smith, Thoughts about the Person from Porlock. (1960s)
Louis MacNeice, Persons from Porlock, and other plays for radio. (1969)
A.N. Wilson, Penfriends from Porlock. (1988)

Douglas Adams featured Porlock in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The "man from Porlock" is in fact an agent from the future, who must stop Coleridge from remembering his dream about how to construct a time machine.

In Vladimir Nabokov's famous novel Lolita, a character checks into a motel under the pseudonym A. Person, Porlock, England.

In JK Rowling's Harry Potter novels, a porlock is a small creature with an exceptionally large nose that acts as a guardian to horses. Strangely, they are supposedly found in Dorset, rather than the Somerset of their namesake, even though the two counties are right next to each other.

In Arthur Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, Holmes is warned about a possible murder by an informant assuming the name 'Porlock'. However, Porlock's identity is not revealed, and there is not necessarily any reason to connect him with the town of Porlock. Holmes contacts him through a post office in Camberwell, in London, so the informant cannot be in Porlock. It is likely that Conan Doyle merely borrowed the name from Coleridge.

"Porlock" is an instrumental track on the album 6PM (2004) by Phil Manzanera.

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