The cut worm forgives the plow

I was admiring the classic scene of gulls following the plough when the farmer invited me aboard for a turn up and down the field that he was preparing for a spring sowing of barley.

William Blake's proverb is usually taken to mean that the worm 'understands' its severing results from the necessity to cultivate the land and not from a deliberate act of aggression. Of course it used to be thought that the two parts of a bisected worm would both regenerate but in fact only one does, and then only if it amounts to about two thirds of the whole. Obviously the birds are not going to spare either portion.

Blake's saying was adopted by the writer John Stewart Collis as the title of his book The Worm Forgives the Plough about his experience, as an educated townsman, of working on the land during World War Two. It's a classic of rural literature that extols the value of hard physical labour and the daily grind of routine farm tasks. Ploughing was done with horses then of course but it's still a skilled job and my neighbour explained to me how he would leave a 'well' up the middle of the field and by a carefully judged pattern of furrows ensure that the ground remained level, not bulked up along one side. He also observes as he ploughs, looking back as you have to, that some gulls are maimed, for example with only one leg or caught up with bits of plastic litter.

I like it that the same quotation has been borrowed again recently for this song

In my heart I can still feel
Every turn of the tractor wheel
But as furrows cut across the hillside
Over the fields in the sunshine
And it hurt but I still grew
With every clumsy punch I threw
Up in anger at the empty summer sky
I saw the world from the underside
And when the worm began to turn
As it squirmed in the palm of my hand
I began to understand
Why it is the worm forgives the plough
In my heart I can still feel
Every turn of the tractor wheel
As we cower in the shadow of the plough
Chewing us up and spitting us out
As we fall our way back down
Into the earth and underground
I discover that even a little worm
Has its ways of taking revenge on the world
And when the worm began to turn
As it squirmed in the palm of my hand
I began to understand
Why it is the worm forgives the plough
Why it is the worm forgives the plough
(Lyrics by The Boy Least Likely To)