Queen Belle

We are a Queen. There can be no other explanation. And we do not just mean from the easy assumption of the royal 'we'. It is something we have suspected for sometime, though, being of a warm and generous nature we will forgive our subjects for not having noticed.

In the first instance, the town of our inhabitance in one of royal charter. Obviously we did that at a much earlier time when we were much younger. Not that we are old now. Oh no. We are of a very unagéd countenance, we think you will find.

In the second instance, the subject of our current obsession is a tree and trees have long been associated with royal patronage. Charles II enjoyed a spot of hide and seek in an Oak tree, while mad Georgie III warmly greeted a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the King of Prussia.

But final confirmation came from Mr Shakespeare himself. Read this and we think you will find the evidence is irrefutable:

'How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I fighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And husht with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why li'st thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch
A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafing clamour in the slippery clouds,
That with the hurly death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy rude repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a King? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.'
Hen IV:2 3.1.4-31

The Captain has will be pleased to have confirmed that he generates the 'sound of sweetest melody' and provides that Eau de Je Ne Sais Pas for 'the perfum'd chambers'. Unless, of course, he is 'the wet sea-boy'. Hmm.

Right, off to discuss matters of state with our tree. We may bestow a knighthood upon it. But only if it kneels.