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Thinking of Fair Rosamund


Thinking of Fair Rosamund
Photo Information
Copyright: Eugene Gorny (e_g) Silver Star Critiquer/Silver Note Writer [C: 34 W: 1 N: 21] (1127)
Genre: People
Medium: Color
Date Taken: 2004-10-07
Categories: Portrait
Camera: Olympus C-765 UZ
Photo Version: Original Version
Date Submitted: 2005-02-28 5:54
Viewed: 563
Points: 2
[Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note
Taken at the ruins of Godstow Nunnery.

“Little remains of the 12th-century building, except some perimeter walls an the shell of a chapel with windows opening out to the sky: yet its legend of Fair Rosamund gives the silent walls a romantic air. Rosamund Clifford, a woman of exceptional beauty and intellect, was being educated here when Henry II visited and fell in love with her at once. He took her as his concubine and built an underground labyrinth at Woodsock in which to hide her from his jealous queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. According to the legend, Queen Eleanor discovered the hiding place and poisoned her rival. Rosamund died in 1176 and was buried at Godsow.

However, the story did not end there. Rosamund’s tomb became an object of veneration, much to the fury of the Bishop Lincoln. After Henry II’s death, he had her bones removed from the hallowed ground and interred elsewhere, so that the other woman might be dissuaded from following her example of unlawful love.”

(Ron Emmons. Walks along the Thames Path. London: New Holland Publishers, 2001, p. 51.)

See also:
- Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765): Fair Rosamond.
- Peggy Seeger. Fair Rosamund Clifford
- Queen Eleanor's Confession. (Child #156; collected by Motherwell in 1827.)
- Robert Southey. For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery
- Andy Anderson. Oxford, Binsey, Godstow and Wolvercote
- Haunted Oxford
- Arthur Huges. Fair Rosamund (1854)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Fair Rosamund (1861)
- Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Fair Rosamund and Queen Eleanor (1862)
- John William Waterhouse. Fair Rosamund (1917)
- Evelyn de Morgan. Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund
- Kim Nelson. Fair Rosumand
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Nice portrait - very good note :)

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