St. Clement's Day Many legends surround Saint Clement, some suggest he was the first man to refine iron from ore, and to shoe a horse. Clementine customs may be survivals of earlier pagan rituals, a confusion of Saint Clement with the early Saxon Wayland, or Wayland the smith, a mythical metalworker. He shares this feast day, which marks the beginning of winter, with the saint. In Charles Dickens’s "Great Expectations" Miss Havisham insists Pip sing for her and her ward Estella, and Pip responds with a ditty from Joe’s forge ‘that imitated the measure of beating upon iron’: ‘... hammer boys round -
Mariana (Dickens novel) Mariana (Dickens novel) Mariana (1940) is the first novel by Monica Dickens. "Mariana" is a coming of age novel, which describes the growth and experience of Mary Shannon, a young English girl in the 1930s as the first hints of war begin to permeate English domestic life. First published by Michael Joseph, it was reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999 and is the second in their collection. The title is a reference to the poem of the same name by Alfred, Lord Tennyson The novel starts with an adult Mary spending a weekend in an isolated cottage on the Essex