 | Poems, original and translated |  |
A PLEA FOR FLOOD IRESON.
Splitting to pieces beside his door
A boat hauled up on the rocky shore?
Are his sunken cheeks, and his fluttering hair
Is white, and wasted with age and care.
For fifty years the children had sung
A false and taunting song, that wrung
With the memory of that wild refrain
Burning into his very brain;
Neighbor to neighbor whispereth:
“The poor old man is cowed to death.”
Have jeer and gibe and ribald song
Done thy memory cruel wrong.
Under the weight of years and woe,
Crept to his refuge long ago.
Who in the dory dragged him along,
Hooting and tooting with ribald song.
Yet old Flood Ireson's ghost to-day
Is hunted still down Time's highway.
Hooting and tooting the same old air,
Drags him along the old thoroughfare.
Skilfully wrought to a tuneful strain,
Jingling and jolting he comes again
Fair broad avenue, leading down
Through South Fields to Salem town;
Mounted high on the ear of song,—
Sight that cries, O Lord! how long!
With the poor old man and his fluttering heart,—
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart?
Wipes away, with tears of shame,
Stains from many an injured name,
Beams of Truth and of Mercy shine
Bright through the clouds that darken thine?
Very familiar to my childhood was the “Chant of Flood Ireson,” and thus it ran:—
“Old Flood Oirson, for his hord hort,Was tor'd and futher'd and corried in a cort.
Old Flood Oirson, for his bad behavior,
Was tor'd and futher'd and corried into Salem.
Old Flood Oirson, for leaving a wrack,
Was torred and futher'd all over his back.”
The people of Marblehead have been for years entirely satisfied that Ireson suffered unjustly, and very indignant that their ancestors and ancestresses should be eulogized in the glowing strains of poesy for what was only the momentary ebullition of the rage of a parcel of wharf boys. John W. Chadwick, a native of Marblehead, in his charming paper on the old town in the July number of “Harper's Magazine” for 1874, says: “It was in the night that the wreck was discovered. In the darkness and the heavy sea, it was impossible to give assistance. When the skipper went below he ordered the watch to lie by the wreck till dorning; but the watch wilfully disobeyed, and afterward, to shield themselves, laid all the blame upon the skipper. I asked one of the skipper's contemporaries what the effect was on the skipper. ‘Cowed him to death,’ said he.”
| Poems, original and translated | |