Faithlight

More than a decade ago, I submitted my Master's thesis on a mission school. At that time, the scope of my study was small, and it was possible to anonymise the data enough to avoid criticism. Since then, as my investigations have grown, the detail has reached such a level that anonymity is impossible to maintain.

Hence, returning to Faithlight, the pseudonymous school of my earlier endeavour, has been a perilous undertaking. Many have asked questions about it, and I have answered. As the answers accumulate, so do the questions. And investigation has been made even more difficult by the usual foes of investigations.

At times like this, I always have absurdly colonialist images and sounds passing through my head. In this case, for some reason, it's A. E. Housman, with his grand poem 1887 being read out loud by Ted Hughes. The last verse of that poem reads:

Oh, God will save her, fear you not:
Be you the men you've been,
Get you the sons your fathers got,
And God will save the Queen.

I've quoted this poem in this blog before, but for very different reasons, I think.