February 22, 2011

They Became What They Beheld


I've currently got a large pile of books that I'm working my way through for my dissertation. 
One of those is 'On Being Human' by G. Marian Kinget. As I was reading through it today I found something that I knew I wanted to share.
In a chapter entitled, The Will to Beauty, she talks about anthropologist Edmund Carpenter's They Became What They Beheld (great title!), published in 1970, in which he asked British children the question "What are the twelve loveliest things you know?"

One boy's list went :
The cold of ice cream.
The scrunch of leaves.
The feel of clean cloze. 
Water running into a bath. 
Cold wind on a hot day. 
Climbing up a hill looking down. 
Hot water bottle in bed. 
Honey in your mouth. 
Smell in a drug store. 
Babies smiling. 
The feeling inside when you sing. 
Baby kittens. 

A little girl's answers were: 
Our dog's eyes.
Street lights on the river. 
Wet stones. 
The smell of rain. 
An organ playing. 
Red roofs in trees. 
Smoke rising. 
Rain on your cheeks. 
The smell of cut grass. 
Red velvet. 
The smell of picnic teas. 
The moon in clouds. 

Maybe I'll think about the twelve loveliest things I know and get back to you.
What are the twelve loveliest things you know? 

4 comments:

HENRY FRY said...

I seriously love this post. One of my favourite things is definitely cheese. Can I include that in a twelve lovliest things I might want to eat list?

Amber Leigh said...

i think you can include it in your list, if it really is one of your twelve loveliest things. but you have to specify which cheese. you must.

HENRY FRY said...

Still unable to shake off my West Country upbringing, I will have to say cheddar. Yes, cheddar is my lovliest thing.

Amber Leigh said...

you need eleven more things henry. unless you want to list 12 different cheeses? i think that is probably allowed.