University of Virginia Library

no previous section The Ingoldsby Legends
next section

I. VOLUME I

43

THE NURSE'S STORY.

THE HAND OF GLORY.

“Malefica quædam auguriatrix in Angliâ fuit, quam demones horribiliter extraxerunt, et imponentes super equum terribilem, per aera rapuerunt. Clamoresque terribiles (ut ferunt) per quatuor fermè miliaria audiebantur.” Nuremb. Chron.

On the lone bleak moor,
At the midnight hour,
Beneath the Gallows Tree,
Hand in hand
The Murderers stand
By one, by two, by three!
And the Moon that night
With a grey, cold light
Each baleful object tips;
One half of her form
Is seen through the storm,
The other half's hid in Eclipse!
And the cold Wind howls,
And the Thunder growls,
And the Lightning is broad and bright;
And altogether
It's very bad weather,
And an unpleasant sort of a Night.
44

“Now mount who list,
And close by the wrist
Sever me quickly the Dead Man's fist!—
Now climb who dare
Where he swings in air,
And pluck me five locks of the Dead Man's hair!”
There's an Old Woman dwells upon Tappington Moor,
She hath years on her back at the least fourscore,
And some people fancy a great many more;
Her nose it is hook'd,
Her back it is crook'd,
Her eyes blear and red:
On the top of her head
Is a mutch, and on that
A shocking bad hat,
Extinguisher-shaped, the brim narrow and flat:
Then, My Gracious! her beard!— it would sadly perplex
A spectator at first to distinguish her sex;
Nor, I'll venture to say, without scrutiny cou'd he
Pronounce her, off-handed, a Punch or a Judy.
Did you see her, in short, that mud-hovel within,
With her knees to her nose, and her nose to her chin,
Leering up with that queer, indescribable grin,
You'd lift up your hands in amazement, and cry,
“—Well! I never did see such a regular Guy!”
And now before
That Old Woman's door,
Where nought that's good may be,
Hand in hand
The Murderers stand,
By one, by two, by three!
45

Oh! 'tis a horrible sight to view,
In that horrible hovel, that horrible crew,
By the pale blue glare of that flickering flame,
Doing the deed that hath never a name!
'Tis awful to hear
Those words of fear!
The pray'r mutter'd backwards, and said with a sneer!
(Matthew Hopkins himself has assured us that when
A Witch says her pray'rs, she begins with Amen.)—
'Tis awful to see
On that Old Woman's knee
The dead, shrivell'd hand, as she clasps it with glee!—
And now, with care,
The five locks of hair
From the skull of the Gentleman dangling up there,
With the grease and the fat
Of a black Tom Cat
She hastens to mix,
And to twist into wicks,
And one on the thumb, and each finger to fix.—
(For another receipt the same charm to prepare,
Consult Mr. Ainsworth and Petit Albert.)
“Now open lock
To the Dead Man's knock!
Fly bolt, and bar, and band!
Nor move, nor swerve
Joint, muscle, or nerve,
At the spell of the Dead Man's hand!
Sleep all who sleep!—Wake all who wake!—
But be as the Dead for the Dead Man's sake!!”
46

All is silent! all is still
Save the ceaseless moan of the bubbling rill
As it wells from the bosom of Tappington Hill;
And in Tappington Hall
Great and Small,
Gentle and Simple, Squire and Groom,
Each one hath sought his separate room,
And Sleep her dun mantle hath o'er them cast,
For the midnight hour hath long been past!
All is darksome in earth and sky,
Save, from you casement narrow and high,
A quivering beam
On the tiny stream
Plays, like some taper's fitful gleam
By one that is watching wearily.
Within that casement narrow and high,
In his secret lair, where none may spy,
Sits one whose brow is wrinkled with care,
And the thin grey locks of his failing hair
Have left his little bald pate all bare;
For his full-bottom'd wig
Hangs, bushy and big,
On the top of his old-fashioned, high-backed chair.
Unbraced are his clothes,
Ungarter'd his hose,
His gown is bedizened with tulip and rose,
Flowers of remarkable size and hue,
Flowers such as Eden never knew;
And there, by many a sparkling heap
Of the good red gold,
The tale is told
What powerful spell avails to keep
That care-worn man from his needful sleep.
47

Haply, he deems no eye can see
As he gloats on his treasure greedily,—
The shining store
Of glittering ore,
The fair Rose-Noble, the bright Moidore,
And the broad Double Joe from ayont the sea,—
But there's one that watches as well as he;
For, wakeful and sly,
In a closet hard by,
On his truckle-bed lieth a little Foot-page,
A boy who's uncommonly sharp of his age,
Like young Master Horner,
Who erst in a corner
Sat eating a Christmans pie;
And, while that old Gentleman's counting his hoards,
Little Hugh peeps through a crack in the boards.
There's a voice in the air,
There's a step on the stair,
The old man starts in his cane-backed chair;
At the first faint sound
He gazes around,
And holds up his dip of sixteen to the pound.
Then half arose
From beside his toes
His little pug-dog with his little pug nose,
But, ere he can vent one inquisitive sniff,
That little pug-dog stands stark and stiff,
For low, yet clear,
Now fall on the ear,
—Where once pronounced for ever they dwell,—
The unholy words of the Dead Man's spell!
48

“Open lock
To the Dead Man's knock!
Fly bolt, and bar, and band!
Nor move, nor swerve
Joint, muscle, or nerve,
At the spell of the Dead Man's hand!
Sleep all who sleep!—Wake all who wake!—
But be as the Dead for the Dead Man's sake!!”
Now lock, nor bolt, nor bar avails,
Nor stout oak panel thick-studded with nails.
Heavy and harsh the hinges creak,
Though they had been oil'd in the course of the week;
The door opens wide as wide may be,
And there they stand,
That murderous band,
Led by the light of the Glorious Hand,
By one! by two! by three!
They have pass'd through the porch, they have pass'd through the hall,
Where the Porter sat snoring against the wall;
The very snore froze
In his very snub nose,
You'd have verily deem'd he had snored his last
When the Glorious Hand by the side of him past!
E'en the little wee mouse, as it ran o'er the mat
At the top of its speed to escape from the cat,
Though half dead with affright,
Paus'd in its flight;
And the cat, that was chasing that little wee thing,
Lay crouch'd as a Statute in act to spring!
49

And now they are there,
On the head of the stair,
And the long crooked whittle is gleaming and bare!
—I really don't think any money would bribe
Me the horrible scene that ensued to describe,
Or the wild, wild glare
Of that old man's eye,
His dumb despair
And deep agony.
The kid from the pen, and the lamb from the fold,
Unmoved may the blade of the butcher behold;
They dream not—ah, happier they !—that the knife,
Though uplifted, can menace their innocent life:
It falls; the frail thread of their being is riven,
They dread not, suspect not the blow till 'tis given.
But, oh! what a thing 'tis to see and to know
That the bare knife is raised in the hand of the foe,
Without hope to repel or to ward off the blow !—
Enough! let's pass over as fast as we can
The fate of that grey, that unhappy old man!
But fancy poor Hugh,
Aghast at the view,
Powerless alike to speak or to do!
In vain doth he try
To open the eye
That is shut, or close that which is clapt to the chink,
Though he'd give all the world to be able to wink!
No !—for all that this world can give or refuse,
I would not be now in that little boy's shoes,
Or indeed any garment at all that is Hugh's!
'Tis lucky for him that the chink in the wall
He has peep'd through so long, is so narrow and small!
50

Wailing voices, sounds of woe
Such as follow departing friends,
That fatal night round Tappington go,
Its long-drawn roofs and its gable-ends:
Ethereal Spirits, gentle and good,
Aye weep and lament o'er a deed of blood.
'Tis early dawn—the morn is grey,
And the clouds and the tempest have pass'd away,
And all things betoken a very fine day;
But, while the lark her carol is singing,
Shrieks and screams are through Tappington ringing!
Upstarting all,
Great and Small,
Each one who's found within Tappington Hall,
Gentle or Simple, Squire or Groom,
All seek at once that old Gentleman's room;
And there on the floor,
Drench'd in its gore,
A ghastly corpse lies exposed to the view,
Carotid and jugular both cut through;
And there by its side,
'Mid the crimson tide,
Kneels a little Foot-page of tenderest years;
Adown his pale cheek the fast-falling tears
Are coursing each other round and big,
And he's staunching the blood with a full-bottom'd wig!
Alas! and alack for his staunching! 'tis plain,
As anatomists tell us, that never again
Shall life revisit the foully slain,
When once they've been cut through the jugular vein.
There's a hue and a cry through the County of Kent,
And in chase of the cut-throats a Constable's sent,
But no one can tell the man which way they went.
51

There's a little Foot-page with that Constable goes,
And a little pug-dog with a little pug nose.
In Rochester town,
At the sign of the Crown,
Three shabby-genteel men are just sitting down
To a fat stubble-goose, with potatoes done brown;
When a little Foot-page
Rushes in, in a rage,
Upsetting the apple-sauce, onions, and sage.
That little Foot-page takes the first by the throat,
And a little pug-dog takes the next by the coat,
And a Constable seizes the one more remote;
And fair rose-nobles, and broad moidores,
The Waiter pulls out of their pockets by scores,
And the Boots and the Chambermaids run in and stare;
And the Constable says, with a dignified air,
“You're wanted, Gen'lemen, one and all,
For that 'ere precious lark at Tappington Hall!”
There's a black gibbet frowns upon Tappington Moor,
Where a former black gibbet has frown'd before;
It is as black as black may be,
And murderers there
Are dangling in air,
By one! by two! by three!
There's a horrid old hag in a steeple-crown'd hat,
Round her neck they have tied to a hempen cravat
A Dead Man's hand, and a dead Tom Cat.
They have tied up her thumbs, they have tied up her toes,
They have tied up her eyes, they have tied up her limbs,
Into Tappington mill-dam souse she goes,
With a whoop and a halloo!—“She swims!—She swims!”
52

They have dragg'd her to land,
And every one's hand
Is grasping a faggot, a billet, or brand,
When a queer-looking horseman, drest all in black,
Snatches up that old harridan just like a sack
To the crupper behind him, puts spurs to his hack,
Makes a dash through the crowd, and is off in a crack
No one can tell,
Though they guess pretty well,
Which way that grim rider and old woman go,
For all see he's a sort of infernal Ducrow;
And she scream'd so, and cried,
We may fairly decide
That the old woman did not much relish her ride!

Moral.

This truest of stories confirms beyond doubt
That truest of adages—“Murder will out!”
In vain may the blood-spiller “double” and fly,
In vain even witchcraft and sorcery try:
Although for a time he may 'scape, by-and-by
He'll be sure to be caught by a Hugh and a Cry!
53

PATTY MORGAN THE MILKMAID'S STORY.

“LOOK AT THE CLOCK!”

FYTTE I.

“Look at the Clock!” quoth Winifred Pryce,
As she open'd the door to her husband's knock,
Then paus'd to give him a piece of advice,
“You nasty Warmint, look at the Clock!
Is this the way, you
Wretch, every day you
Treat her who vow'd to love and obey you?
Out all night!
Me in a fright;
Staggering home as it's just getting light!
You intoxified brute! you insensible block!
Look at the Clock!—Do!—Look at the Clock!”
Winifred Pryce was tidy and clean,
Her gown was a flower'd one, her petticoat green,
Her buckles were bright as her milking cans,
And her hat was a beaver, and made like a man's;
Her little red eyes were deep set in their socket-holes,
Her gown-tail was turn'd up, and tuck'd through the pocket-holes:
A face like a ferret
Betoken'd her spirit:
To conclude, Mrs. Pryce was not over young,
Had very short legs, and a very long tongue.
54

Now David Pryce
Had one darling vice;
Remarkably partial to anything nice,
Nought that was good to him came amiss,
Whether to eat, or to drink, or to kiss!
Especially ale—
If it was not too stale
I really believe he'd have emptied a pail;
Not that in Wales
They talk of their Ales;
To pronounce the word they make use of might trouble you,
Being spelt with a C, two Rs, and a W.
That particular day,
As I've heard people say,
Mr. David Pryce had been soaking his clay,
And amusing himself with his pipe and cheroots,
The whole afternoon at the Goat in Boots,
With a couple more soakers,
Thoroughbred smokers,
Both, like himself, prime singers and jokers;
And, long after day had drawn to a close,
And the rest of the world was wrapp'd in repose,
They were roaring out “Shenkin!” and “Ar hydd y nos;”
While David himself, to a Sassenach tune,
Sang, “We've drunk down the Sun, boys! let's drink down the Moon!”
What have we with day to do?
Mrs. Winifred Pryce, 'twas made for you!”—
At length, when they couldn't well drink any more,
Old “Goat-in-Boots” show'd them the door;
And then came that knock,
And the sensible shock
David felt when his wife cried, “Look at the Clock!”
55

For the hands stood as crooked as crooked might be,
The long at the Twelve, and the short at the Three!
This self-same Clock had long been a bone
Of contention between this Darby and Joan;
And often among their pother and rout,
When this otherwise amiable couple fell out,
Pryce would drop a cool hint,
With an ominous squint
At its case, of an “Uncle” of his, who'd a “Spout.”
That horrid word “Spout”
No sooner came out,
Than Winifred Pryce would turn her about,
And with scorn on her lip,
And a hand on each hip,
“Spout” herself till her nose grew red at the tip.
“You thundering willain,
I know you'd be killing
Your wife,—ay, a dozen of wives,—for a shilling!
You may do what you please,
You may sell my chemise,
(Mrs. P. was too well-bred to mention her stock,)
But I never will part with my Grandmother's Clock!”
Mrs. Pryce's tongue ran long and ran fast;
But patience is apt to wear out at last,
And David Pryce in temper was quick,
So he stretch'd out his hand, and caught hold of a stick;
Perhaps in its use he might mean to be lenient,
But walking just then wasn't very convenient,
So he threw it, instead,
Direct at her head.
It knock'd off her hat;
Down she fell flat;
Her case, perhaps, was not much mended by that:
56

But, whatever it was,—whether rage and pain
Produced apoplexy, or burst a vein,
Or her tumble induced a concussion of brain,
I can't say for certain,—but this I can,
When, sober'd by fright, to assist her he ran,
Mrs. Winifred Pryce was as dead as Queen Anne!
The fearful catastrophe
Named in my last strophe
As adding to grim Death's exploits such a vast trophy,
Soon made a great noise; and the shocking fatality
Ran over, like wild-fire, the whole Principality.
And then came Mr. Ap Thomas, the Coroner,
With his jury to sit, some dozen or more, on her.
Mr. Pryce to commence
His “ingenious defence,”
Made a “powerful appeal” to the jury's “good sense,”
“The world he must defy
Ever to justify
Any presumption of “Malice Prepense;”
The unlucky lick
From the end of his stick
He “deplored,” he was “apt to be rather too quick;”
But, really, her prating
Was so aggravating:
Some trifling correction was just what he meant; all
The rest, he assured them, was “quite accidental!”
Then he called Mr. Jones,
Who deposed to her tones,
And her gestures, and hints about “breaking his bones.”
While Mr. Ap Morgan, and Mr. Ap Rhys
Declared the Deceased
Had styled him “a Beast,”
57

And swore they had witness'd, with grief and surprise,
The allusions she made to his limbs and his eyes.
The jury, in fine, having sat on the body
The whole day, discussing the case, and gin-toddy,
Return'd about half-past eleven at night
The following verdict, “We find, Sarve her right!”
Mr. Pryce, Mrs. Winifred Pryce being dead,
Felt lonely, and moped; and one evening he said
He would marry Miss Davis at once in her stead.
Not far from his dwelling,
From the vale proudly swelling,
Rose a mountain; it's name you'll excuse me from telling,
For the vowels made use of in Welsh are so few
That the A and the E, the I, O, and the U,
Have really but little or nothing to do;
And the duty, of course, falls the heavier by far
On the L, and the H, and the N, and the R.
Its first syllable, “Pen,”
Is pronounceable;—then
Come two L Ls, and two H Hs, two F Fs, and an N;
About half a score Rs, and some Ws follow,
Beating all my best efforts at euphony hollow:
But we shan't have to mention it often, so when
We do, with your leave, we'll curtail it to “Pen.”
Well,—the moon shone bright
Upon “Pen” that night,
When Pryce, being quit of his fuss and his fright,
Was scaling its side
With that sort of stride
A man puts out when walking in search of a bride,
58

Mounting higher and higher,
He began to perspire,
Till, finding his legs were beginning to tire,
And feeling opprest
By a pain in his chest,
He paused, and turn'd round to take breath, and to rest;
A walk all up hill is apt, we know,
To make one, however robust, puff and blow,
So he stopp'd, and look'd down on the valley below.
O'er fell, and o'er fen,
Over mountain and glen,
All bright in the moonshine, his eye roved, and then
All the Patriot rose in his soul, and he thought
Of Wales, and her glories, and all he'd been taught
Of her Heroes of old,
So brave and so bold,—
Of her Bards with long beards, and harps mounted in gold;
Of King Edward the First,
Of memory accurst;
And the scandalous manner in which he behaved,
Killing Poets by dozens,
With their uncles and cousins,
Of whom not one in fifty had ever been shaved.
Of the Court Ball, at which by a lucky mishap,
Owen Tudor fell into Queen Katherine's lap;
And how Mr. Tudor
Successfully woo'd her
Till the Dowager put on a new wedding ring,
And so made him Father-in-law to the King.
He thought upon Arthur, and Merlin of yore,
On Gryffth ap Conan, and Owen Glendour;
On Pendragon, and Heaven knows how many more.
59

He thought of all this, as he gazed, in a trice,
And on all things, in short, but the late Mrs. Pryce;
When a lumbering noise from behind made him start,
And sent the blood back in full tide to his heart,
Which went pit-a-pat
As he cried out, “What's that?”—
That very queer sound?
Does it come from the ground?
Or the air,—from above or below, or around?
It is not like Talking,
It is not like Walking,
It's not like the clattering of pot or of pan,
Or the tramp of a horse,—or the tread of a man,—
Or the hum of a crowd,—or the shouting of boys,—
It's really a deuced odd sort of a noise!
Not unlike a Cart's,—but that can't be; for when
Could “all the King's horses and all the King's men,”
With Old Nick for a waggoner, drive one up “Pen?”
Pryce, usually brimful of valour when drunk,
Now experienced what schoolboys denominate “funk.”
In vain he look'd back
On the whole of the track
He had traversed; a thick cloud, uncommonly black,
At this moment obscured the broad disc of the moon,
And did not seem likely to pass away soon;
While clearer and clearer,
'Twas plain to the hearer,
Be the noise what it might, it drew nearer and nearer,
And sounded, as Pryce to this moment declares,
Very much “like a Coffin a-walking up stairs.”
Mr. Pryce had begun
To “make up” for a run,
As in such a companion he saw no great fun,
60

When a single bright ray
Shone out on the way
He had pass'd, and he saw, with no little dismay,
Coming after him, bounding o'er crag and o'er rock,
The deceased Mrs. Winifred's “Grandmother's Clock!!”
'Twas so!—it had certainly moved from its place,
And come, lumbering on thus, to hold him in chase;
'Twas the very same Head, and the very same Case,
And nothing was alter'd at all—but the Face!
In that he perceived, with no little surprise,
The two little winder-holes turn'd into eyes
Blazing with ire,
Like two coals of fire;
And the “Name of the Maker” was changed to a Lip,
And the Hands to a Nose with a very red tip.
No!—he could not mistake it,—'twas She to the life!
The identical Face of his poor defunct Wife!
One glance was enough,
Completely “Quant. suff.”
As the doctors write down when they send you their “stuff,”—
Like a Weather-cock whirl'd by a vehement puff,
David turn'd himself round;
Ten feet of ground
He clear'd, in his start, at the very first bound!
I've seen people run at West-End Fair for cheeses,
I've seen Ladies run at Bow Fair for chemises,
At Greenwich Fair twenty men run for a hat,
And one from a Bailiff much faster than that;
At foot-ball I've seen lads run after the bladder,
I've seen Irish Bricklayers run up a ladder,
61

I've seen little boys run away from a cane,
And I've seen (that is, read of) good running in Spain;
But I never did read
Of, or witness, such speed
As David exerted that evening.—Indeed
All I ever have heard of boys, women, or men,
Falls far short of Pryce, as he ran over “Pen!”
He reaches its brow,—
He has past it, and now
Having once gain'd the summit, and managed to cross it, he
Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity;
But, run as he will,
Or roll down the hill,
That bugbear behind him is after him still!
And close at his heels, not at all to his liking,
The terrible Clock keeps on ticking and striking,
Till, exhausted and sore,
He can't run any more,
But falls as he reaches Miss Davis's door,
And screams when they rush out, alarm'd at his knock,
“Oh! Look at the Clock!—Do!—Look at the Clock!!”
Miss Davis look'd up, Miss Davis look'd down,
She saw nothing there to alarm her;—a frown
Came o'er her white forehead,
She said, “It was horrid
A man should come knocking at that time of night,
And give her Mamma and herself such a fright;
To squall and to bawl
About nothing at all,
She begg'd “he'd not think of repeating his call,
62

His late wife's disaster
By no means had past her,”
She'd “have him to know she was meat for his Master!”
Then, regardless alike of his love and his woes,
She turn'd on her heel and she turned up her nose.
Poor David in vain
Implored to remain,
He “dared not,” he said, “cross the mountain again.”
Why the fair was obdurate
None knows,—to be sure, it
Was said she was setting her cap at the Curate;—
Be that as it may, it is certain the sole hole
Pryce could find to creep into that night was the Coal-hole!
In that shady retreat,
With nothing to eat,
And with very bruised limbs, and with very sore feet,
All night close he kept;
I can't say he slept;
But he sigh'd, and he sobb'd, and he groan'd, and he wept,
Lamenting his sins
And his two broken shins,
Bewailing his fate with contortions and grins,
And her he once thought a complete Rara Avis,
Consigning to Satan,—viz. cruel Miss Davis!
Mr. David has since had a “serious call,”
He never drinks ale, wine, or spirits, at all,
And they say he is going to Exeter Hall
To make a grand speech,
And to preach, and to teach
People that “they can't brew their malt-liquor too small!”
That an ancient Welsh Poet, one Pyndar ap Tudor,
Was right in proclaiming “Ariston men Udor!”
63

Which means “The pure Element
Is for the belly meant!”
And that Gin's but a Snare of Old Nick the deluder!
And “still on each evening when pleasure fills up,”
At the old Goat-in-Boots, with Metheglin, each cup,
Mr Pryce, if he's there,
Will get into “the Chair,”
And make all his quondam associates stare
By calling aloud to the landlady's daughter,
“Patty! bring a cigar, and a glass of Spring Water!”
The dial he constantly watches; and when
The long hand's at the “XII,” and the short at the “X,'
He gets on his legs,
Drains his glass to the dregs,
Takes his hat and great-coat off their several pegs,
With his President's hammer bestows his last knock,
And says solemnly,—“Gentlemen!
“Look at the Clock!!!”
94

THE GHOST.

There stands a City, neither large nor small,
Its air and situation sweet and pretty;
It matters very little—if at all—
Whether its denizens are dull or witty,
Whether the ladies there are short or tall,
Brunettes or blondes, only, there stands a city;
Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute
That there's a Castle and a Cobbler in it.
A fair Cathedral, too, the story goes,
And kings and heroes lie entomb'd within her;
There pious saints, in marble pomp repose,
Whose shrines are worn by knees of many a sinner;
There, too, full many an aldermanic nose
Roll'd its loud diapason after dinner;
And there stood high the holy sconce of Becket,
Till four assassins came from France to crack it.
The Castle was a huge and antique mound,
Proof against all th' artillery of the quiver,
Ere those abominable guns were found
To send cold lead through gallant warrior's liver.
It stands upon a gently rising ground,
Sloping down gradually to the river,
Resembling (to compare great things with smaller),
A well-scooped, mouldy Stilton cheese, but taller.
96

The Keep, I hear, 's been sadly alter'd lately,
And,'stead of mail-clad knights, of honour jealous,
In martial panoply so grand and stately,
Its walls are fill'd with money-making fellows,
And stuff'd, unless I'm misinform'd greatly,
With leaden pipes, and coke, and coals, and bellows;
In short, so great a change has come to pass,
'Tis now a manufactory of Gas.
But to my tale.—Before this profanation,
And ere its ancient glories were cut short all,
A poor hard-working cobbler took his station
In a small house, just opposite the portal;
His birth, his parentage, and education,
I know but little of—a strange, odd mortal;
His aspect, air, and gait, were all ridiculous;
His name was Mason—he'd been christen'd Nicholas.
Nick had a wife possessed of many a charm,
And of the Lady Huntingdon persuasion;
But, spite of all her piety, her arm
She'd sometimes exercise when in a passion;
And, being of a temper somewhat warm,
Would now and then seize, upon small occasion,
A stick, or stool, or anything that round did lie,
And baste her lord and master most confoundedly.
No matter!—'tis a thing that's not uncommon,
'Tis what we have all heard, and most have read of,—
I mean, a bruizing, pugilistic woman,
Such as I own I entertain a dread of,
And so did Nick, whom sometimes there would come on
A sort of fear his spouse might knock his head off,
Demolish half his teeth, or drive a rib in,
She shone so much in facers and in fibbing.
97

“There's time and place for all things,” said a sage,
(King Solomon, I think,) and this I can say,
Within a well-roped ring, or on a stage,
Boxing may be a very pretty Fancy,
When Messrs. Burke or Bendigo engage;
—'Tis not so well in Susan, Jane, or Nancy:
To get well mill'd by any one's an evil,
But by a lady—'tis the very Devil.
And so thought Nicholas, whose only trouble
(At least his worst) was this his rib's propensity,
For sometimes from the alehouse he would hobble,
His senses lost in a sublime immensity
Of cogitation—then he couldn't cobble—
And then his wife would often try the density
Of his poor skull, and strike with all her might,
As fast as kitchen wenches strike a light.
Mason, meek soul, who ever hated strife,
Of this same striking had the utmost dread,
He hated it like poison—or his wife—
A vast antipathy!—but so he said—
And very often for a quiet life
On these occasions he'd sneak up to bed,
Grope darkling in, and, soon as at the door
He heard his lady—he'd pretend to snore.
One night, then, ever partial to society,
Nick, with a friend (another jovial fellow),
Went to a Club—I should have said Society—
At the “City Arms,” once called the Porto-Bello;
A Spouting party, which, though some decry it, I
Consider no bad lounge when one is mellow;
There they discuss the tax on salt, and leather,
And change of ministers, and change of weather.
98

In short, it was a kind of British Forum,
Like John Gale Jones's, erst in Piccadilly,
Only they managed things with more decorum,
And the Orations were not quite so silly;
Far different questions, too, would come before 'em,
Not always Politics, which, will ye nill ye,
Their London prototypes were always willing,
To give one quantum suff. of—for a shilling.
Here they would oft forget their Rulers' faults,
And waste in ancient lore the midnight taper,
Inquire if Orpheus first produced the Waltz,
How Gas-lights differ from the Delphic Vapour,
Whether Hippocrates gave Glauber's Salts,
And what the Romans wrote on ere they'd paper;
This night the subject of their disquisitions
Was Ghosts, Hobgoblins, Sprites, and Apparitions.
One learned gentleman, “a sage grave man,”
Talked of the Ghost in Hamlet, “sheath'd in steel;”
His well-read friend, who next to speak began,
Said, “That was Poetry, and nothing real;”
A third, of more extensive learning, ran
To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal;
Of sheeted Spectres spoke with shorten'd breath,
And thrice he quoted Drelincourt on Death.”
Nick smoked, and smoked, and trembled as he heard
The point discuss'd, and all they said upon it,
How frequently some murder'd man appear'd,
To tell his wife and children who had done it;
Or how a miser's ghost, with griesly beard,
And pale lean visage, in an old Scotch bonnet,
Wander'd about to watch his buried money!
When all at once Nick heard the clock strike one,—he
99

Sprang from his seat, not doubting but a lecture
Impended from his fond and faithful She;
Nor could he well to pardon him expect her,
For he had promised to come home to tea;
But having luckily the key o' the back door,
He fondly hoped that, unperceived, he
Might creep up stairs again, pretend to doze,
And hoax his spouse with music from his nose.
Vain fruitless hope! The weary sentinel
At eve may overlook the crouching foe,
Till, ere his hand can sound the alarum-bell,
He sinks beneath the unexpected blow;
Before the whiskers of Grimalkin fell,
When slumb'ring on her post, the mouse may go;—
But woman, wakeful woman, 's never weary,
—Above all, when she waits to thump her deary.
Soon Mrs. Mason heard the well known tread,
She heard the key slow creaking in the door,
Spied, through the gloom obscure, towards the bed,
Nick creeping soft, as oft he had crept before;
When bang she threw a something at his head,
And Nick at once lay prostrate on the floor;
While she exclaim'd, with her indignant face on,—
“How dare you use your wife so, Mr. Mason?”
Spare we to tell how fiercely she debated,
Especially the length of her oration,—
Spare we to tell how Nick expostulated,
Roused by the bump into a good set passion,
So great, that more than once he execrated,
Ere he crawl'd into bed in his usual fashion;
The Muses hate brawls; suffice it then to say,
He duck'd below the clothes—and there he lay.
100

'Twas now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards groan, and graves give up their dead,
And many a mischievous enfranchised sprite
Had long since burst his bonds of stone or lead,
And hurried off, with schoolboy-like delight,
To play his pranks near some poor wretch's bed,
Sleeping perhaps serenely as a porpoise,
Nor dreaming of this fiendish Habeas Corpus.
Not so our Nicholas, his meditations
Still to the same tremendous theme recurred,
The same dread subject of the dark narrations,
Which, back'd with such authority, he'd heard;
Lost in his own horrific contemplations,
He ponder'd o'er each well-remember'd word,
When at the bed's foot, close beside the post,
He verily believed he saw—a Ghost!
Plain and more plain the unsubstantial sprite
To his astonish'd gaze each moment grew;
Ghastly and gaunt, it rear'd its shadowy height,
Of more than mortal seeming to the view,
And round its long, thin, boney fingers drew
A tatter'd winding-sheet, of course all white;
The moon that moment peeping through a cloud,
Nick very plainly saw it through the shroud!
And now those matted locks, which never yet
Had yielded to the comb's unkind divorce,
Their long-contracted amity forget,
And spring asunder with elastic force;
Nay, e'en the very cap, of texture coarse,
Whose ruby cincture crown'd that brow of jet,
Uprose in agony—the Gorgon's head
Was but a type of Nick's up-squatting in the bed.
101

From every pore distill'd a clammy dew,
Quaked every limb,—the candle too no doubt,
En regle would have burnt extremely blue,
But Nick unluckily had put it out;
And he, though naturally bold and stout,
In short, was in a most tremendous stew;—
The room was filled with a sulphureous smell,
But where that came from Mason could not tell.
All motionless the Spectre stood, and now
Its rev'rend form more clearly shone confest;
From the pale cheek a beard of purest snow
Descended o'er its venerable breast;
The thin grey hairs, that crown'd its furrow'd brow,
Told of years long gone by.—An awful guest
It stood, and with an action of command,
Beckon'd the Cobbler with its wan right hand.
“Whence, and what art thou, Execrable Shape?”
Nick might have cried, could he have found a tongue,
But his distended jaws could only gape,
And not a sound upon the welkin rung;
His gooseberry orbs seem'd as they would have sprung
Forth from their sockets,—like a frighten'd Ape
He sat upon his haunches, bolt upright,
And shook, and grinn'd, and chatter'd with affright.
And still the shadowy finger, long and lean,
Now beckoned Nick, now pointed to the door;
And many an ireful glance and frown between,
The angry visage of the Phantom wore,
As if quite vex'd that Nick would do no more
Than stare, without e'en asking, “What d'ye mean?”
Because, as we are told,—a sad old joke too,—
Ghosts, like the ladies, never speak till spoke to.
102

Cowards, 'tis said, in certain situations,
Derive a sort of courage from despair,
And then perform, from downright desperation,
Much more than many a bolder man would dare.
Nick saw the Ghost was getting in a passion,
And therefore, groping till he found the chair,
Seized on his awl, crept softly out of bed,
And follow'd quaking where the Spectre led.
And down the winding-stair, with noiseless tread,
The tenant of the tomb pass'd slowly on,
Each mazy turning of the humble shed
Seem'd to his step at once familiar grown,
So safe and sure the labyrinth did he tread
As though the domicile had been his own,
Though Nick himself, in passing through the shop,
Had almost broke his nose against the mop.
Despite its wooden bolt, with jarring sound,
The door upon its hinges open flew;
And forth the Spirit issued, yet around
It turn'd as if its follower's fears it knew,
And, once more beckoning, pointed to the mound,
The antique keep, on which the bright moon threw
With such effulgence her mild silvery gleam,
The visionary form seem'd melting in her beam.
Beneath a pond'rous archway's sombre shade,
Where once the huge portcullis swung sublime,
Mid ivied battlements in ruin laid,
Sole, sad memorials of the olden time,
The Phantom held its way,—and though afraid
Even of the owls that sung their vesper chime,
Pale Nicholas pursued, its steps attending,
And wondering what on earth it all would end in.
103

Within the mouldering fabric's deep recess
At length they reach a court obscure and lone;
It seem'd a drear and desolate wilderness,
The blacken'd walls with ivy all o'ergrown;
The night-bird shriek'd her note of wild distress,
Disturb'd upon her solitary throne,
As though indignant mortal step should dare,
So led, at such an hour, to venture there!
The Apparition paused, and would have spoke,
Pointing to what Nick thought an iron ring,
But then a neighbouring chaunticleer awoke,
And loudly 'gan his early matins sing;
And then “it started like a guilty thing,”
As his shrill clarion the silence broke.
—'Tis known how much dead gentlefolks eschew
The appalling sound of “Cock-a-doodle-do!”
The Vision was no more—and Nick alone—
“His streamers waving” in the midnight wind,
Which through the ruins ceased not to groan;
—His garment, too, was somewhat short behind,—
And, worst of all, he knew not where to find
The ring, which made him most his fate bemoan.
The iron ring,—no doubt of some trap door,
'Neath which the old dead miser kept his store.
“What's to be done?” he cried, “'Twere vain to stay
Here in the dark without a single clue.
Oh for a candle now, or moonlight ray!
'Fore George, I'm vastly puzzled what to do.”
(Then clapp'd his hand behind)—“'Tis chilly too—
I'll mark the spot, and come again by day.
What can I mark it by?—Oh, here's the wall—
The mortar's yielding—Here I'll stick my awl!”
104

Then rose from earth to sky a withering shriek,
A loud, a long-protracted note of woe,
Such as when tempests roar, and timbers creak,
And o'er the side the masts in thunder go;
While on the deck resistless billows break,
And drag their victims to the gulphs below;—
Such was the scream when, for the want of candle,
Nick Mason drove his awl in up to the handle.
Scared by his Lady's heart-appalling cry,
Vanish'd at once poor Mason's golden dream—
For dream it was; and all his visions high,
Of wealth and grandeur, fled before that scream—
And still he listens with averted eye,
When gibing neighbours make “the Ghost” their theme;
While ever from that hour they all declare
That Mrs. Mason used a cushion in her chair!
105

THE CYNOTAPH.

Poor Tray charmant!
Poor Tray de mon Ami!
Dog-bury, and Vergers.

Oh! where shall I bury my poor dog Tray,
Now his fleeting breath has pass'd away?
Seventeen years, I can venture to say,
Have I seen him gambol, and frolic, and play,
Evermore happy, and frisky, and gay,
As though every one of his months was May,
And the whole of his life one long holiday—
Now he's a lifeless lump of clay,
Oh! where shall I bury my faithful Tray?
I am almost tempted to think it hard
That it may not be there, in yon sunny churchyard,
Where the green willows wave
O'er the peaceful grave,
Which holds all that once was honest and brave,
Kind, and courteous, and faithful, and true;
Qualities, Tray, that were found in you.
But it may not be—you sacred ground,
By holiest feelings fenced around,
May ne'er within its hallow'd bound
Receive the dust of a soul-less hound.
I would not place him in yonder fane,
Where the mid-day sun through the storied pane
Throws on the pavement a crimson stain;
106

Where the banners of chivalry heavily swing
O'er the pinnacled tomb of the Warrior King,
With helmet and shield, and all that sort of thing.
No!—come what may,
My gentle Tray
Shan't be an intruder on bluff Harry Tudor,
Or panoplied monarchs yet earlier and ruder,
Whom you see on their backs,
In stone or in wax,
Though the sacristans now are “forbidden to ax”
For what Mister Hume calls “a scandalous tax;”
While the Chartists insist they've a right to go snacks.
No!—Tray's humble tomb would look but shabby
'Mid the sculptured shrines of that gorgeous Abbey.
Besides, in the place
They say there's not space
To bury what wet-nurses call “a Babby.”
Even “Rare Ben Jonson,” that famous wight,
I am told, is interr'd there bolt upright,
In just such a posture, beneath his bust,
As Tray used to sit in to beg for a crust.
The epitaph, too,
Would scarcely do;
For what could it say, but “Here lies Tray,
A very good sort of a dog in his day?”
And satirical folks might be apt to imagine it
Meant as a quiz on the House of Plantagenet.
No! no!—The Abbey may do very well
For a feudal “Nob” or poetical “Swell,”
“Crusaders,” or “Poets,” or “Knights of St. John,”
Or Knights of St. John's Wood, who last year went on
To the Castle of Goode Lorde Eglintonne.
107

Count Fiddle-fumkin, and Lord Fiddle-faddle,
“Sir Craven,” “Sir Gael,” and “Sir Campbell of Saddell,”
(Who, as Mr. Hook said, when he heard of the feat,
“Was somehow knock'd out of his family-seat;”)
The Esquires of the body
To my Lord Tomnoddy;
“Sir Fairlie,” “Sir Lamb,”
And the “Knight of the Ram,”
The “Knight of the Rose,” and the “Knight of the Dragon,”
Who, save at the flagon,
And prog in the waggon,
The Newspapers tell us did little “to brag on;”
And more, though the Muse knows but little concerning 'em,
“Sir Hopkins,” “Sir Popkins,” “Sir Gage,” and “Sir Jerningham.”
All Preux Chevaliers, in friendly rivalry
Who should best bring back the glory of Chi-valry.—
(Pray be so good, for the sake of my song,
To pronounce here the ante-penultimate long;
Or some hyper-critic will certainly cry,
“The word `Chivalry' is but a `rhyme to the eye.”'
And I own it is clear
A fastidious ear
Will be, more or less, always annoy'd with you when you insert any rhyme that's not perfectly genuine.
As to pleasing the “eye,”
'Tisn't worth while to try,
Since Moore and Tom Campbell themselves admit “spinach”
Is perfectly antiphonetic to “Greenwich.”)
108

But stay!—I say!—
Let me pause while I may—
This digression is leading me sadly astray
From my object—A grave for my poor dog Tray!
I would not place him beneath thy walls,
And proud o'ershadowing dome, St. Paul's!
Though I've always consider'd Sir Christopher Wren,
As an architect, one of the greatest of men;
And,—talking of Epitaphs,—much I admire his,
“Circumspice, si Monumentum requiris;”
Which an erudite Verger translated to me,
“If you ask for his Monument, Sir-come-spy-see!”
No!—I should not know where
To place him there;
I would not have him by surly Johnson be;—
Or that Queer-looking horse that is rolling on Ponsonby;—
Or those ugly minxes
The sister Spynxes,
Mix'd creatures, half lady, half lioness, ergo
(Denon says) the emblems of Leo and Virgo;
On one of the backs of which singular jumble,
Sir Ralph Abercrombie is going to tumble,
With a thump which alone were enough to despatch him,
If that Scotchman in front shouldn't happen to catch him.
No! I'd not have him there, nor nearer the door,
Where the Man and the Angel have got Sir John Moore,
112

And are quietly letting him down through the floor,
Near Gillespie, the one who escaped, at Vellore,
Alone from the row;—
Neither he, nor Lord Howe
Would like to be plagued with a little Bow-wow.
109

No, Tray, we must yield,
And go further a-field;
To lay you by Nelson were downright effront'ry;—
We'll be off from the City, and look at the country.
It shall not be there,
In that sepulchred square,
Where folks are interr'd for the sake of the air,
(Though, pay but the dues, they could hardly refuse
To Tray what they grant to Thuggs and Hindoos,
Turks, Infidels, Heretics, Jumpers, and Jews,)
Where the tombstones are placed
In the very best taste,
At the feet and the head
Of the elegant Dead,
And no one's received who's not “buried in lead:”
For, there lie the bones of Deputy Jones,
Whom the widow's tears and the orphan's groans
Affected as much as they do the stones
His executors laid on the Deputy's bones;
Little rest, poor knave!
Would he have in his grave;
Since Spirits, 'tis plain,
Are sent back again,
To roam round their bodies,—the bad ones in pain,—
Dragging after them sometimes a heavy jack-chain;
Whenever they met, alarmed by its groans, his
Ghost all night long would be barking at Jones's.
Nor shall he be laid
By that cross Old Maid,
Miss Penelope Bird, of whom it is said
All the dogs in the Parish were always afraid.
He must not be placed
By one so strait-laced
In her temper, her taste, and her morals, and waist.
110

For, 'tis said, when she went up to heaven, and St. Peter,
Who happened to meet her,
Came forward to greet her,
She pursed up with scorn every vinegar feature,
And bade him “Get out for a horrid Male Creature!”
So, the Saint, after looking as if he could eat her,
Not knowing, perhaps, very well how to treat her,
And not being willing, or able, to beat her,
Sent her back to her grave till her temper grew sweeter,
With an epithet—which I decline to repeat here.
No, if Tray were interr'd
By Penelope Bird,
No dog would be e'er so be-“whelp”ed and be-“cur”red.
All the night long her cantankerous Sprite
Would be running about in the pale moon-light,
Chasing him round, and attempting to lick
The ghost of poor Tray with the ghost of a stick.
Stay !— let me see !—
Ay — here it shall be
At the root of this gnarl'd and time-worn tree,
Where Tray and I
Would often lie,
And watch the light clouds as they floated by
In the broad expanse of the clear blue sky,
When the sun was bidding the world good b'ye;
And the plaintive Nightingale, warbling nigh,
Pour'd forth her mournful melody;
While the tender Wood-pigeon's cooing cry
Has made me say to myself, with a sigh,
“How nice you would eat with a steak in a pie!”
Ay, here it shall be !—far, far from the view
Of the noisy world and its maddening crew.
Simple and few,
Tender and true
111

The lines o'er his grave.—They have, some of them, too,
The advantage of being remarkably new.

Epitaph.

Affliction sore
Long time he bore,
Physicians were in vain!—
Grown blind, alas! he'd
Some Prussic Acid,
And that put him out of his pain!
 

In the autumn of 1824, Captain Medwin having hinted that certain beautiful lines on the burial of this gallant officer might have been the production of Lord Byron's Muse, Mr. Sydney Taylor, somewhat indignantly, claimed them for their rightful owner, the late Rev. Charles Wolfe. During the controversy a third claimant started up in the person of a soi-disant “Dr. Marshall,” who turned out to be a Durham blacksmith, and his pretensions a hoax. It was then that a certain “Doctor Peppercorn” put forth his pretensions, to what he averred was the only “true and original” version, viz:—

Not a sous had he got,—not a guinea or note,
And he look'd confoundedly flurry'd,
As he bolted away without paying his shot,
And the Landlady after him hurry'd.
We saw him again at dead of night,
When home from the club returning;
We twigg'd the Doctor beneath the light
Of the gas-lamps brilliantly burning.
All bare and exposed to the midnight dews,
Reclined in the gutter we found him;
And he look'd like a gentleman taking a snooze,
With his Marshall cloak around him.
“The Doctor's as drunk as the d—,” we said,
And we managed a shutter to borrow;
We raised him and sigh'd at the thought that his head
Would “consumedly ache” on the morrow.
We bore him home, and we put him to bed,
And we told his wife and his daughter
To give him next morning a couple of red
Herrings with soda-water.
Loudly they talk'd of his money that's gone,
And his Lady began to upbraid him;
But little he reck'd, so they let him snore on
'Neath the counterpane just as we laid him.
We tuck'd him in, and had hardly done
When, beneath the window calling,
We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun
Of a watchman “one o'clock!” bawling.
Slowly and sadly we all walk'd down
From his room in the uppermost story;
A rushlight we placed on the cold hearth-stone,
And we left him alone in his glory.
155

LEGEND OF HAMILTON TIGHE.

The Captain is walking his quarter-deck,
With a troubled brow and a bended neck;
One eye is down through the hatchway cast,
The other turns up to the truck on the mast;
Yet none of the crew may venture to hint
“Our Skipper hath gotten a sinister squint!”
The Captain again the letter hath read
Which the bum-boat woman brought out to Spithead—
Still, since the good ship sail'd away,
He reads that letter three times a-day;
Yet the writing is broad and fair to see
As a Skipper may read in his degree,
And the seal is as black, and as broad, and as flat,
As his own cockade in his own cock'd hat:
He reads, and he says, as he walks to and fro,
“Curse the old woman—she bothers me so!”
He pauses now, for the topmen hail—
“On the larboard quarter a sail! a sail!”
That grim old Captain he turns him quick,
And bawls through his trumpet for Hairy-faced Dick.
156

“The breeze is blowing —huzza! huzza!
The breeze is blowing — away! away!
The breeze is blowing — a race! a race!
The breeze is blowing — we near the chase!
Blood will flow, and bullets will fly,—
Oh where will be then young Hamilton Tighe?”—
—“On the foeman's deck, where a man should be,
With his sword in his hand, and his foe at his knee.
Cockswain, or boatswain, or reefer may try,
But the first man on board will be Hamilton Tighe!”
Hairy-faced Dick hath a swarthy hue,
Between a gingerbread-nut and a Jew,
And his pigtail is long, and bushy, and thick,
Like a pump-handle stuck on the end of a stick.
Hairy-faced Dick understands his trade;
He stands by the breech of a long carronade,
The linstock glows in his bony hand,
Waiting that grim old Skipper's command.
“The bullets are flying — huzza! huzza!
The bullets are flying — away! away!”—
The brawny boarders mount by the chains,
And are over their buckles in blood and in brains:
On the foeman's deck, where a man should be,
Young Hamilton Tighe
Waves his cutlass high,
And Capitaine Crapaud bends low at his knee.
Hairy-faced Dick, linstock in hand,
Is waiting that grim-looking Skipper's command:—
A wink comes sly
From that sinister eye—
157

Hairy-faced Dick at once lets fly,
And knocks off the head of young Hamilton Tighe!
There's a lady sits lonely in bower and hall,
Her pages and handmaidens come at her call:
“Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see
How he sits there and glow'rs with his head on his knee!”
The maidens smile, and, her thought to destroy,
They bring her a little, pale, mealy-faced boy;
And the mealy-faced boy says, “Mother dear,
Now Hamilton's dead, I've a thousand a-year!”
The lady has donn'd her mantle and hood,
She is bound for shrift at St. Mary's Rood:—
“Oh! the taper shall burn, and the bell shall toll,
And the mass shall be said for my step-son's soul,
And the tablet fair shall be hung up on high,
Orate pro animâ Hamilton Tighe!”
Her coach and four
Draws up to the door,
With her groom, and her footman, and half a score more;
The lady steps into her coach alone,
And they hear her sigh and they hear her groan;
They close the door, and they turn the pin,
But there's one rides with her that never stept in!
All the way there, and all the way back,
The harness strains, and the coach-springs crack,
The horses snort, and plunge, and kick,
Till the coachman thinks he is driving Old Nick;
And the grooms and the footmen wonder, and say,
“What makes the old coach so heavy to-day?”
But the mealy-faced boy peeps in, and sees
A man sitting there with his head on his knees!
158

'Tis ever the same, in hall or in bower,
Wherever the place, whatever the hour,
That lady mutters and talks to the air,
And her eye is fixed on an empty chair;
But the mealy-faced boy still whispers with dread,
“She talks to a man with never a head!”
There's an old Yellow Admiral living at Bath,
As grey as a badger, as thin as a lath;
And his very queer eyes have such very queer leers,
They seem to be trying to peep at his ears.
That old Yellow Admiral goes to the Rooms,
And he plays long whist, but he frets and fumes,
For all his knaves stand upside down,
And the Jack of Clubs does nothing but frown;
And the kings, and the aces, and all the best trumps
Get into the hands of the other old frumps;
While, close to his partner, a man he sees
Counting the tricks with his head on his knees.
In Ratcliffe Highway there's an old marine store,
And a great black doll hangs out at the door;
There are rusty locks, and dusty bags,
And musty phials, and fusty rags,
And a lusty old woman, call'd Thirsty Nan,
And her crusty old husband's a hairy-faced man!
That hairy-faced man is sallow and wan,
And his great thick pigtail is wither'd and gone;
And he cries, “Take away that lubberly chap
That sits there and grins with his head in his lap!”
And the neighbours say, as they see him look sick,
“What a rum old covey is Hairy-faced Dick!”
159

That Admiral, Lady, and Hairy-faced man
May say what they please, and may do what they can;
But one thing seems remarkably clear,—
They may die to-morrow, or live till next year,—
But wherever they live, or whenever they die,
They'll never get quit of young Hamilton Tighe!
161

THE WITCHES' FROLIC.

[Scene, the “Snuggery” at Tappington. — Grandpapa in a high-backed cane-bottomed elbow-chair of carved walnut-tree, dozing; his nose at an angle of forty-five degrees,—his thumbs slowly perform the rotatory motion described by lexicographers as “twiddling.”—The “Hope of the family” astride on a walking-stick, with burnt-cork mustachios, and a pheasant's tail pinned in his cap, solaceth himself with martial music.— Roused by a strain of surpassing dissonance, Grandpapa loquitur.]
Come hither, come hither, my little boy Ned!
Come hither unto my knee—
I cannot away with that horrible din,
That sixpenny drum, and that trumpet of tin.
Oh, better to wander frank and free
Through the Fair of good Saint Bartlemy,
Than list to such awful minstrelsie.
Now lay, little Ned, those nuisances by,
And I'll rede ye a lay of Grammarye.
[Grandpapa riseth, yawneth like the crater of an extinct volcano, proceedeth slowly to the window, and apostrophizeth the Abbey in the distance.]
I love thy tower, Grey Ruin,
I joy thy form to see,
Though reft of all,
Cell, cloister, and hall,
Nothing is left save a tottering wall,
162

That, awfully grand and darkly dull,
Threaten'd to fall and demolish my skull,
As, ages ago, I wander'd along
Careless thy grass-grown courts among,
In sky-blue jacket and trowsers laced,
The latter uncommonly short in the waist.
Thou art dearer to me, thou Ruin grey,
Than the Squire's verandah over the way;
And fairer, I ween,
The ivy sheen
That thy mouldering turret binds,
Than the Alderman's house about half a mile off,
With the green Venetian blinds.
Full many a tale would my Grandam tell,
In many a bygone day,
Of darksome deeds, which of old befell
In thee, thou Ruin grey!
And I the readiest ear would lend,
And stare like frighten'd pig;
While my Grandfather's hair would have stood up an end,
Had he not worn a wig.
One tale I remember of mickle dread—
Now lithe and listen, my little boy Ned!
Thou mayest have read, my little boy Ned,
Though thy mother thine idlesse blames,
In Doctor Goldsmith's history book,
Of a gentleman called King James,
In quilted doublet, and great trunk breeches,
Who held in abhorrence tobacco and witches.
163

Well,—in King James's golden days,—
For the days were golden then,—
They could not be less, for good Queen Bess
Had died aged threescore and ten,
And her days, we know,
Were all of them so;
While the Court poets sung, and the Court gallants swore
That the days were as golden still as before.
Some people, 'tis true, a troublesome few,
Who historical points would unsettle,
Have lately thrown out a sort of a doubt
Of the genuine ring of the metal;
But who can believe to a monarch so wise
People would dare tell a parcel of lies?
—Well, then, in good King James's days,—
Golden or not does not matter a jot,—
Yon ruin a sort of a roof had got;
For though, repairs lacking, its walls had been cracking
Since Harry the Eighth sent its friars a-packing,
Though joists, and floors,
And windows, and doors
Had all disappear'd, yet pillars by scores
Remain'd, and still propp'd up a ceiling or two,
While the belfry was almost as good as new;
You are not to suppose matters look'd just so
In the Ruin some two hundred years ago.
Just in that farthermost angle, where
You see the remains of a winding-stair,
One turret especially high in air
164

Uprear'd its tall gaunt form;
As if defying the power of Fate, or
The hand of “Time the Innovator;”
And though to the pitiless storm
Its weaker brethren all around
Bowing, in ruin had strew'd the ground,
Alone it stood, while its fellows lay strew'd,
Like a four-bottle man in a company “screw'd,”
Not firm on his legs, but by no means subdued.
One night—'twas in Sixteen hundred and six—
I like when I can, Ned, the date to fix,—
The month was May,
Though I can't well say
At this distance of time the particular day—
But oh! that night, that horrible night!
Folks ever afterwards said with affright
That they never had seen such a terrible sight.
The Sun had gone down fiery red;
And if that evening he laid his head
In Thetis's lap beneath the seas,
He must have scalded the goddess's knees.
He left behind him a lurid track
Of blood-red light upon clouds so black,
That Warren and Hunt, with the whole of their crew,
Could scarcely have given them a darker hue.
There came a shrill and a whistling sound,
Above, beneath, beside, and around,
Yet leaf ne'er moved on tree!
So that some people thought old Beelzebub must
Have been lock'd out of doors, and was blowing the dust
From the pipe of his street-door key.
165

And then a hollow moaning blast
Came, sounding more dismally still than the last,
And the lightning flash'd, and the thunder growl'd,
And louder and louder the tempest howl'd,
And the rain came down in such sheets as would stagger a
Bard for a simile short of Niagara.
Rob Gilpin “was a citizen;”
But, though of some “renown,”
Of no great “credit” in his own,
Or any other town.
He was a wild and roving lad,
For ever in the alehouse boozing;
Or romping,—which is quite as bad,—
With female friends of his own choosing.
And Rob this very day had made,
Not dreaming such a storm was brewing,
An assignation with Miss Slade,—
Their trysting-place this same grey Ruin.
But Gertrude Slade became afraid,
And to keep her appointment unwilling,
When she spied the rain on her window-pane
In drops as big as a shilling;
She put off her hat and her mantle again,—
“He'll never expect me in all this rain!”
But little he recks of the fears of the sex,
Or that maiden false to her tryst could be,
He had stood there a good half hour
Ere yet commenced that perilous shower,
Alone by the trysting-tree!
166

Robin looks east, Robin looks west,
But he sees not her whom he loves the best;
Robin looks up, and Robin looks down,
But no one comes from the neighbouring town.
The storm came at last, loud roar'd the blast,
And the shades of evening fell thick and fast;
The tempest grew; and the straggling yew,
His leafy umbrella, was wet through and through;
Rob was half dead with cold and with fright,
When he spies in the ruins a twinkling light—
A hop, two skips, and a jump, and straight
Rob stands within that postern gate.
And there were gossips sitting there,
By one, by two, by three:
Two were an old ill-favour'd pair;
But the third was young, and passing fair,
With laughing eyes and with coal-black hair;
A daintie quean was she!
Rob would have given his ears to sip
But a single salute from her cherry lip.
As they sat in that old and haunted room,
In each one's hand was a huge birch broom,
On each one's head was a steeple-crown'd hat,
On each one's knee was a coal-black cat;
Each had a kirtle of Lincoln green—
It was, I trow, a fearsome scene.
“Now riddle me, riddle me right, Madge Gray,
What foot unhallow'd wends this way?
Goody Price, Goody Price, now areed me aright,
Who roams the old ruins this drearysome night?”
167

Then up and spake that sonsie quean,
And she spake both loud and clear:
“Oh, be it for weal, or be it for woe,
Enter friend, or enter foe,
Rob Gilpin is welcome here!—
“Now tread we a measure! a hall! a hall!
Now tread we a measure,” quoth she—
The heart of Robin
Beat thick and throbbing—
“Roving Rob, tread a measure with me!”—
“Ay, lassie!” quoth Rob, as her hand he gripes,
“Though Satan himself were blowing the pipes!”
Now around they go, and around, and around,
With hop-skip-and-jump, and frolicsome bound,
Such sailing and gilding,
Such sinking and sliding,
Such lofty curvetting,
And grand pirouetting;
Ned, you would swear that Monsieur Gilbert
And Miss Taglioni were capering there!
And oh! such awful music!—ne'er
Fell sounds so uncanny on mortal ear,
There were the tones of a dying man's groans
Mix'd with the rattling of dead men's bones:
Had you heard the shrieks, and the squeals, and the squeaks,
You'd not have forgotten the sound for weeks.
And around, and around, and around they go,
Heel to heel, and toe to toe,
Prance and caper, curvet and wheel,
Toe to toe, and heel to heel.
168

“'Tis merry, 'tis merry, Cummers, I trow,
To dance thus beneath the nightshade bough!”—
“Goody Price, Goody Price, now riddle me right,
Where may we sup this frolicsome night?”—
“Mine Host of the Dragon hath mutton and veal!
The Squire hath partridge, and widgeon, and teal;
But old Sir Thopas hath daintier cheer,
A pasty made of the good red deer,
A huge grouse pie, and a fine Florentine,
A fat roast goose, and a turkey and chine.”—
—“Madge Gray, Madge Gray,
Now tell me, I pray,
Where's the best wassail bowl to our roundelay?”
“—There is ale in the cellars of Tappington Hall,
But the Squire is a churl, and his drink is small;
Mine host of the Dragon
Hath many a flaggon
Of double ale, lamb's-wool, and eau de vie,
But Sir Thopas, the Vicar,
Hath costlier liquor,—
A butt of the choicest Malvoisie.
He doth not lack
Canary or Sack;
And a good pint stoup of Clary wine
Smacks merrily off with a Turkey and Chine!”
“Now away! and away! without delay,
Hey Cockalorum! my Broomstick gay,
169

We must be back ere the dawn of the day:
Hey up the chimney! away! away!”—
Old Goody Price
Mounts in a trice,
In showing her legs she is not over nice;
Old Goody Jones,
All skin and bones,
Follows “like winking.” Away go the crones,
Knees and nose in a line with the toes,
Sitting their brooms like so many Ducrows;
Latest and last
The damsel pass'd,
One glance of her coal-black eye she cast;
She laugh'd with glee loud laughters three,
“Dost fear, Rob Gilpin, to ride with me!”—
Oh, never might man unscath'd espy
One single glance from that coal-black eye.
—Away she flew!—
Without more ado
Rob seizes and mounts on a broomstick too,
“Hey! up the chimney, lass! Hey after you!”
It's a very fine thing on a fine day in June
To ride through the air in a Nassau Balloon;
But you'll find very soon, if you aim at the Moon
In a carriage like that you're a bit of a “Spoon,”
For the largest can't fly
Above twenty miles high,
And you're not half way then on your journey, nor nigh;
While no man alive
Could ever contrive,
Mr. Green has declared, to get higher than five.
And the soundest Philosophers hold that, perhaps,
If you reach'd twenty miles your balloon would collapse,
170

Or pass by such action
The sphere of attraction,
Getting into the track of some comet — Good-lack!
'Tis a thousand to one that you'd never come back;
And the boldest of mortals a danger like that must fear,
And be cautious of getting beyond our own atmosphere.
No, no; when I try
A trip to the sky,
I shan't go in that thing of yours, Mr. Gye,
Though Messieurs Monk Mason, and Spencer, and Beazly,
All join in saying it travels so easily.
No; there's nothing so good
As a pony of wood—
Not like that which, of late, they stuck up on the gate
At the end of the Park, which caused so much debate,
And gave so much trouble to make it stand straight,—
But a regular Broomstick—you'll find that the favourite,—
Above all, when, like Robin, you haven't to pay for it.
—Stay—really I dread
I am losing the thread
Of my tale; and it's time you should be in your bed,
So lithe now, and listen, my little boy Ned!
 

Stephen Ingoldsby, surnamed “The Niggard,” second cousin and successor to “The Bad Sir Giles.” (Visitation of Kent, 1666.) For an account of his murder by burglars, and their subsequent execution, see Dodsley's “Remarkable Trials,” &c. Lond. 1776, vol. ii. p. 264, and the present volume, Art. “Hand of Glory.”

The Vicarage walls are lofty and thick,
And the copings are stone, and the sides are brick,
The casements are narrow, and bolted and barr'd,
And the stout oak door is heavy and hard;
Moreover, by way of additional guard,
A great big dog runs loose in the yard,
And a horse-shoe is nail'd on the threshold sill,—
To keep out aught that savours of ill,—
But, alack! the chimney-pot's open still!
—That great big dog begins to quail,
Between his hind-legs he drops his tail,
171

Crouch'd on the ground, the terrified hound
Gives vent to a very odd sort of a sound;
It is not a bark, loud, open, and free,
As an honest old watch-dog's bark should be;
It is not a yelp, it is not a growl,
But a something between a whine and a howl;
And, hark!—a sound from the window high
Responds to the watch-dog's pitiful cry:
It is not a moan,
It is not a groan;
It comes from a nose,—but is not what a nose
Produces in healthy and sound repose.
Yet Sir Thopas the Vicar is fast asleep,
And his respirations are heavy and deep!
He snores, 'tis true, but he snores no more
As he's aye been accustom'd to snore before,
And as men of his kidney are wont to snore;—
(Sir Thopas's weight is sixteen stone four;)
He draws his breath like a man distress'd
By pain or grief, or like one oppress'd
By some ugly old Incubus perch'd on his breast.
A something seems
To disturb his dreams,
And thrice on his ear, distinct and clear,
Falls a voice as of somebody whispering near
In still small accents, faint and few,
“Hey down the chimney-pot!—Hey after you!”
Throughout the Vicarage, near and far,
There is no lack of bolt or of bar,
Plenty of locks
To closet and box,
Yet the pantry wicket is standing ajar!
172

And the little low door, through which you must go,
Down some half-dozen steps, to the cellar below,
Is also unfasten'd, though no one may know,
By so much as a guess, how it comes to be so;
For wicket and door,
The evening before,
Were both of them lock'd, and the key safely placed
On the bunch that hangs down from the Housekeeper's waist.
Oh! 'twas a jovial sight to view
In that snug little cellar that frolicsome crew!—
Old Goody Price
Had got something nice,
A turkey-poult larded with bacon and spice;—
Old Goody Jones
Would touch nought that had bones,—
She might just as well mumble a parcel of stones.
Goody Jones, in sooth, had got never a tooth,
And a New-College pudding of marrow and plums
Is the dish of all others that suiteth her gums.
Madge Gray was picking
The breast of a chicken,
Her coal-black eye, with its glance so sly,
Was fixed on Rob Gilpin himself, sitting by
With his heart full of love, and his mouth full of pie;
Grouse pie, with hare
In the middle, is fare
Which, duly concocted with science and care,
Doctor Kitchener says, is beyond all compare;
And a tenderer leveret
Robin had never ate;
So, in after times, oft he was wont to asseverate.
173

“Now pledge we the wine-cup!—a health! a health!
Sweet are the pleasures obtain'd by stealth!
Fill up! fill up!—the brim of the cup
Is the part that aye holdeth the toothsomest sup!
Here's to thee, Goody Price! Goody Jones, to thee!
To thee, Roving Rob! and again to me!
Many a sip, never a slip
Come to us four'twixt the cup and the lip!”
The cups pass quick,
The toasts fly thick,
Rob tries in vain out their meaning to pick,
But hears the words “Scratch,” and “Old'Bogey,” and “Nick.”
More familiar grown,
Now he stands up alone,
Volunteering to give them a toast of his own.
“A bumper of wine!
Fill thine! Fill mine!
Here's a health to old Noah who planted the Vine!”
Oh then what sneezing,
What coughing and wheezing,
Ensued in a way that was not over pleasing!
Goody Price, Goody Jones, and the pretty Madge Gray,
All seem'd as their liquor had gone the wrong way.
But the best of the joke was, the moment he spoke
Those words which the party seem'd almost to choke,
As by mentioning Noah some spell had been broke,
Every soul in the house at that instant awoke!
And, hearing the din from barrel and bin,
Drew at once the conclusion that thieves had got in.
174

Up jump'd the Cook and caught hold of her spit;
Up jump'd the Groom and took bridle and bit;
Up jump'd the Gardener and shoulder'd his spade;
Up jump'd the Scullion,—the Footman,—the Maid;
(The two last, by the way, occasion'd some scandal,
By appearing together with only one candle,
Which gave for unpleasant surmises some handle;)
Up jump'd the Swineherd,—and up jump'd the big boy,
A nondescript under him, acting as pig boy;
Butler, Housekeeper, Coachman—from bottom to top
Everybody jump'd up without parley or stop,
With the weapon which first in their way chanced to drop,—
Whip, warming-pan, wig-block, mug, musket and mop.
Last of all doth appear,
With some symptoms of fear,
Sir Thopas in person to bring up the rear,
In a mix'd kind of costume, half Pontificalibus,
Half what scholars denominate Pure Naturalibus;
Nay, the truth to express,
As you'll easily guess,
They have none of them time to attend much to dress;
But He or She,
As the case may be,
He or She seizes what He or She pleases,
Trunk-hosen or kirtles, and shirts or chemises.
And thus one and all, great and small, short and tall,
Muster at once in the Vicarage-hall,
With upstanding locks, starting eyes, shorten'd breath,
Like the folks in the Gallery Scene in Macbeth,
When Macduff is announcing their Sovereign's death.
175

And hark! what accents clear and strong,
To the listening throng come floating along!
'Tis Robin encoring himself in a song—
“Very good song! very well sung!
Jolly companions every one!”—
On, on to the cellar! away! away!
On, on, to the cellar without more delay!
The whole posse rush onwards in battle array.
Conceive the dismay of the party so gay,
Old Goody Jones, Goody Price, and Madge Gray,
When the door bursting wide, they descried the allied
Troops, prepared for the onslaught, roll in like a tide,
And the spits, and the tongs, and the pokers beside!—
“Boot and saddle's the word! mount, Cummers, and ride!”—
Alarm was ne'er caused more strong and indigenous
By cats among rats, or a hawk in a pigeon-house;
Quick from the view
Away they all flew,
With a yell, and a screech, and a halliballoo,
“Hey up the chimney! Hey after you!”
The Volscians themselves made an exit less speedy
From Corioli, “flutter'd like doves” by Macready.
They are gone, save one,
Robin alone!
Robin, whose high state of civilization
Precludes all idea of aërostation,
And who now has no notion
Of more locomotion
Than suffices to kick, with much zeal and devotion,
Right and left at the party, who pounced on their victim,
And maul'd him, and kick'd him, and lick'd him, and prick'd him,
176

As they bore him away scarce aware what was done,
And believing it all but a part of the fun,
Hic—hiccoughing out the same strain he'd begun,
“Jol—jolly companions every one!”
Morning grey
Scarce bursts into day
Ere at Tappington Hall there's the deuce to pay;
The tables and chairs are all placed in array
In the old oak-parlour, and in and out
Domestics and neighbours, a motley rout,
Are walking, and whispering, and standing about;
And the Squire is there
In his large arm-chair,
Leaning back with a grave magisterial air;
In the front of his seat a
Huge volume, called Fleta,
And Bracton, both tomes of an old-fashion'd look,
And Coke upon Lyttleton, then a new book;
And he moistens his lips
With occasional sips
From a luscious sack-posset that smiles in a tankard
Close by on a side-table—not that he drank hard,
But because at that day,
I hardly need say,
The Hong Merchants had not yet invented How Qua,
Nor as yet would you see Souchong or Bohea
At the tables of persons of any degreè:
How our ancestors managed to do without tea
I must fairly confess is a mystery to me;
Yet your Lydgates and Chaucers
Had no cups and saucers;
Their breakfast, in fact, and the best they could get,
Was a sort of a déjeûner à la fourchette;
177

Instead of our slops
They had cutlets and chops,
And sack-possets, and ale in stoups, tankards, and pots;
And they wound up the meal with rumpsteaks and 'schalots.
Now the Squire lifts his hand
With an air of command,
And gives them a sign, which they all understand,
To bring in the culprit; and straightway the carter
And huntsman drag in that unfortunate martyr,
Still kicking, and crying, “Come,—what are you arter?”
The charge is prepared, and the evidence clear,
“He was caught in the cellar a-drinking the beer!
And came there, there's very great reason to fear,
With companions,—to say but the least of them,—queer;
Such as Witches, and creatures
With horrible features,
And horrible grins,
And hook'd noses and chins,
Who'd been playing the deuce with his Reverence's binns.”
The face of his worship grows graver and graver,
As the parties detail Robin's shameful behaviour;
Mister Buzzard, the clerk, while the tale is reciting,
Sits down to reduce the affair into writing,
With all proper diction,
And due “legal fiction;”
Viz: “That he, the said prisoner, as clearly was shown,
Conspiring with folks to deponents unknown,
With divers, that is to say, two thousand, people,
In two thousand hats, each hat peak'd like a steeple,
178

With force and with arms,
And with sorcery and charms,
Upon two thousand brooms
Enter'd four thousand rooms;
To wit, two thousand pantries, and two thousand cellars,
Put in bodily fear twenty-thousand in-dwellers,
And with sundry,—that is to say, two thousand,—forks,
Drew divers,—that is to say, ten thousand,—corks,
And, with malice prepense, down their two thousand throttles,
Emptied various,—that is to say, ten thousand,—bottles;
All in breach of the peace, moved by Satan's malignity,
And in spite of King James, and his Crown, and his Dignity.”
At words so profound
Rob gazes around,
But no glance sympathetic to cheer him is found.
—No glance, did I say?
Yes, one!—Madge Gray!—
She is there in the midst of the crowd standing by,
And she gives him one glance from her coal-black eye,
One touch to his hand, and one word to his ear,—
(That's a line which I've stolen from Sir Walter, I fear,)—
While nobody near
Seems to see her or hear;
As his worship takes up, and surveys with a strict eye
The broom now produced as the corpus delicti,
Ere his fingers can clasp,
It is snatch'd from his grasp,
The end poked in his chest with a force makes him gasp,
179

And, despite the decorum so due to the Quorum,
His worship's upset, and so too is his jorum;
And Madge is astride on the broomstick before'em.
“Hocus Pocus! Quick, Presto! and Hey Cockalorum!
Mount, mount for your life, Rob!—Sir Justice, adieu!—
—Hey up the chimney-pot! hey after you!”
Through the mystified group,
With a halloo and whoop,
Madge on the pommel, and Robin en croupe,
The pair through the air ride as if in a chair,
While the party below stand mouth open and stare!
“Clean bumbaized” and amazed, and fix'd, all the room stick,
“Oh! what's gone with Robin,—and Madge,—and the broomstick?”
Ay, “what's gone” indeed, Ned?—of what befell
Madge Gray, and the broomstick I never heard tell;
But Robin was found, that morn, on the ground,
In yon old grey Ruin again, safe and sound,
Except that at first he complain'd much of thirst,
And a shocking bad headach, of all ills the worst,
And close by his knee
A flask you might see,
But an empty one, smelling of eau de vie.
Rob from this hour is an alter'd man;
He runs home to his lodgings as fast as he can,
Sticks to his trade,
Marries Miss Slade,
Becomes a Te-totaller—that is the same
As Te-totallers now, one in all but the name;
Grows fond of Small-beer, which is always a steady sign,
Never drinks spirits except as a medicine;
180

Learns to despise
Coal-black eyes,
Minds pretty girls no more than so many Guys;
Has a family, lives to be sixty, and dies!
Now my little boy Ned,
Brush off to your bed,
Tie your night-cap on safe, or a napkin instead,
Or these terrible nights you'll catch cold in your head;
And remember my tale, and the moral it teaches,
Which you'll find much the same as what Solomon preaches.
Don't flirt with young ladies! don't practise soft speeches;
Avoid waltzes, quadrilles, pumps, silk hose, and kneebreeches;—
Frequent not grey ruins,—shun riot and revelry,
Hocus Pocus, and Conjuring, and all sorts of devilry;—
Don't meddle with broomsticks,—they're Beelzebub's switches;
Of cellars keep clear,—they're the devil's own ditches;
And beware of balls, banquettings, brandy, and—witches!
Above all! don't run after black eyes,—if you do,—
Depend on't you'll find what I say will come true,—
Old Nick, some fine morning, will “hey after you!”
217

THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS.

“Tunc miser Corvus adeo conscientiæ stimulis compunctus fuit, et execratio eum tantopere excarneficavit, ut exinde tabescere inciperet, maciem contraheret, omnem cibum aversaretur, nec ampliùs crocitaret: pennæ præterea ei defluebant, et alis pendulis omnes facetias intermisit, et tam macer apparuit ut omnes ejus miserescerent.”

“Tunc abbas sacerdotibus mandavit ut rursus furem absolverent; quo facto, Corvus, omnibus mirantibus, propediem convaluit, et pristinam sanitatem recuperavit.”

De Illust. Ord. Cisterc.

The Jackdaw sat on the Cardinal's chair!
Bishop, and abbot, and prior were there;
Many a monk, and many a friar,
Many a knight, and many a squire,
With a great many more of lesser degree,—
In sooth, a goodly company;
And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee.
Never, I ween,
Was a prouder seen,
Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams,
Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims!
In and out,
Through the motley rout,
That little Jackdaw kept hopping about;
218

Here and there,
Like a dog in a fair,
Over comfits and cates,
And dishes and plates,
Cowl and cope, and rochet and pall,
Mitre and crosier, he hopped upon all!
With a saucy air,
He perch'd on the chair
Where in state the great Lord Cardinal sat
In the great Lord Cardinal's great red hat;
And he peer'd in the face
Of his Lordship's Grace
With a satisfied look, as if he would say,
“We too are the greatest folks here to-day!”
And the priests, with awe,
As such freaks they saw,
Said, “The devil must be in that little Jackdaw!”
The feast was over, the board was clear'd,
The flawns and the custards had all disappear'd,
And six little singing-boys,—dear little souls!
In nice clean faces, and nice white stoles,
Came, in order due,
Two by two,
Marching that grand refectory through!
A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
Emboss'd, and fill'd with water as pure
As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,
Which a nice little boy stood ready to catch
In a fine golden hand-basin made to match.
Two nice little boys, rather more grown,
Carried lavender-water and eau de Cologne;
And a nice little boy had a nice cake of soap,
Worthy of washing the hands of the Pope.
219

One little boy more
A napkin bore,
Of the best white diaper, fringed with pink,
And a Cardinal's Hat mark'd in permanent ink.
The great Lord Cardinal turns at the sight
Of these nice little boys dress'd all in white:
From his finger he draws
His costly turquoise;
And, not thinking at all about little Jackdaws,
Deposits it straight
By the side of his plate,
While the nice little boys on his Eminence wait;
Till, when nobody's dreaming of any such thing,
That little Jackdaw hops off with the ring.
There's a cry and a shout,
And a deuce of a rout,
And nobody seems to know what they're about,
But the monks have their pockets all turn'd inside out;
The friars are kneeling,
And hunting, and feeling
The carpet, the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling.
The Cardinal drew
Off each plum-colour'd shoe,
And left his red stockings exposed to the view;
He peeps, and he feels
In the toes and the heels.
They turn up the dishes, they turn up the plates,
They take up the poker and poke out the grates,
They turn up the rugs,
They examine the mugs:—
But, no!—no such thing;
They can't find the ring;
220

And the Abbot declared that, “when nobody twigg'd it,
Some rascal or other had popped in, and prigg'd it!”
The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,
He call'd for his candle, his bell, and his book!
In holy anger, and pious grief,
He solemnly curs'd that rascally thief!
He curs'd him at board, he curs'd him in bed;
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head;
He curs'd him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
He curs'd him in eating, he curs'd him in drinking,
He curs'd him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
He curs'd him in sitting, in standing, in lying,
He curs'd him in walking, in riding, in flying,
He curs'd him living, he curs'd him dying!—
Never was heard such a terrible curse;
But, what gave rise
To no little surprise,
Nobody seem'd one penny the worse!
The day was gone,
The night came on,
The monks and the friars they search'd till dawn;
When the Sacristan saw,
On crumpled claw,
Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw!
No longer gay,
As on yesterday;
His feathers all seem'd to be turn'd the wrong way;
His pinions droop'd, he could hardly stand,
His head was as bald as the palm of your hand;
His eye so dim,
So wasted each limb,
That, heedless of grammar, they all cried, “That's him!—
221

That's the scamp that has done this scandalous thing!
That's the thief that has got my Lord Cardinal's ring!”
The poor little Jackdaw,
When the monks he saw,
Feebly gave vent to the ghost of a caw;
And turn'd his bald head, as much as to say,
“Pray, be so good as to walk this way!”
Slower and slower
He limp'd on before,
Till they came to the back of the belfry-door,
Where the first thing they saw,
Midst the sticks and the straw,
Was the ring, in the nest of that little Jackdaw!
Then the great Lord Cardinal call'd for his book,
And off that terrible curse he took;
The mute expression
Served in lieu of confession,
And, being thus coupled with full restitution,
The Jackdaw got plenary absolution.
When those words were heard,
That poor little bird
Was so changed in a moment, 'twas really absurd:
He grew sleek and fat;
In addition to that,
A fresh crop of feathers came thick as a mat!
His tail waggled more
Even than before;
But no longer it wagged with an impudent air,
No longer he perch'd on the Cardinal's chair.
He hopped now about
With a gait devout;
At Matins, at Vespers, he never was out;
And, so far from any more pilfering deeds,
He always seem'd telling the Confessor's beads.
222

If any one lied, or if any one swore,
Or slumber'd in pray'r time and happened to snore,
That good Jackdaw
Would give a great “caw,”
As much as to say, “Don't do so any more!”
While many remarked, as his manners they saw,
That they never had known such a pious Jackdaw!
He long lived the pride
Of that country side,
And at last in the odour of sanctity died;
When, as words were too faint
His merits to paint,
The conclave determined to make him a Saint;
And on newly-made Saints and Popes, as you know,
It's the custom at Rome new names to bestow,
So they cannonized him by the name of Jem Crow!
223

A LAY OF ST. DUNSTAN.

“This holy childe Dunstan was borne in ye yere of our Lorde ix hondred & xxv. that tyme regnynge in this londe Kinge Athelston.

“Whan it so was that Saynt Dunstan was wery of prayer than used he to werke in goldsmythes werke with his owne handes for to eschewe ydelnes.”


Golden Legend.
St. Dunstan stood in his ivy'd tower,
Alembic, crucible, all were there;
When in came Nick to play him a trick,
In guise of a damsel passing fair.
Every one knows
How the story goes:
He took up the tongs and caught hold of his nose.
But I beg that you won't for a moment suppose
That I mean to go through, in detail, to you
A story at least as trite as it's true;
Nor do I intend
An instant to spend
On the tale, how he treated his monarch and friend,
When, bolting away to a chamber remote,
Inconceivably bored by his Witen-gemote,
Edwy left them all joking,
And drinking, and smoking,
So tipsily grand, they'd stand nonsense from no King,
But sent the Archbishop
Their Sovereign to fish up,
224

With a hint that perchance on his crown he might feel taps,
Unless he came back straight and took off his heel-taps.
You don't want to be plagued with the same story twice,
And may have seen this one, by W. Dyce,
In last year's Exhibition—'t was very well done,
And stood mark'd in the catalogue Four, seven, one.
You might there view the Saint, who in sable array'd is,
Coercing the Monarch away from the Ladies;
His right hand has hold of his Majesty's jerkin,
The left points to the door, and he seems to say, “Sir King,
Your most faithful Commons won't hear of your shirking;
Quit your tea, and return to your Barclai and Perkyn,
Or, by Jingo, ere morning, no longer alive, a
Sad victim you'll lie to your love for Elgiva!”
No farther to treat
Of this ungallant feat,
What I mean to do now is succinctly to paint
A particular fact in the life of the Saint,
Which somehow, for want of due care, I presume,
Has escaped the researches of Rapin and Hume,
In recounting a miracle, both of them men who a
Great deal fall short of Jaques Bishop of Genoa,
An Historian who likes deeds like these to record—
See his Aurea Legenda, by Wynkyn de Worde.
St. Dunstan stood again in his tower,
Alembic, crucible, all complete;
225

He had been standing a good half hour,
And now he utter'd the words of power,
And call'd to his Broomstick to bring him a seat.
The words of power!—and what be they
To which e'en Broomsticks bow and obey?
Why, 'twere uncommonly hard to say,
As the prelate I named has recorded none of them,
What they may be,
But I know they are three,
And ABRACADABRA, I take it, is one of them:
For I'm told that most Cabalists use that identical
Word, written thus, in what they call “a Pentacle:”
illustration
However that be,
You'll doubtless agree
It signifies little to you or to me,
As not being dabblers in Grammarye;
Still, it must be confess'd, for a Saint to repeat
Such language aloud is scarcely discreet;
226

For, as Solomon hints to folks given to chatter,
“A bird of the air may carry the matter;”
And, in sooth,
From my youth
I remember a truth
Insisted on much in my earlier years,
To wit, “Little Pitchers have very long ears!”
Now, just such a “Pitcher” as those I allude to
Was outside the door, which his “ears” appear'd glued to.
Peter, the Lay-brother, meagre and thin,
Five feet one in his sandal-shoon,
While the Saint thought him sleeping,
Was listening and peeping,
And watching his master the whole afternoon.
This Peter the Saint had pick'd out from his fellows,
To look to his fire, and to blow with the bellows,
To put on the Wall's-Ends and Lambton's whenever he
Chose to indulge in a little orfeverie;
For, of course, you have read
That St. Dunstan was bred
A Goldsmith, and never quite gave up the trade;
The Company—richest in London, 'tis said—
Acknowledge him still as their Patron and Head;
Nor is it so long
Since a capital song
In his praise—now recorded their archives among—
Delighted the noble and dignified throng
Of their guests, who, the newspapers told the whole town,
With cheers “pledged the wine-cup to Dunstan's renown,”
When Lord Lyndhurst, The Duke, and Sir Robert, were dining,
At the Hall some time since with the Prime Warden Twining.
227

I am sadly digressing—a fault which sometimes
One can hardly avoid in these gossiping rhymes—
A slight deviation's forgiven; but then this is
Too long, I fear, for a decent parenthesis,
So I'll rein up my Pegasus sharp, and retreat, or
You'll think I've forgotten the Lay-brother Peter,
Whom the Saint, as I said,
Kept to turn down his bed,
Dress his palfreys and cobs,
And do other odd jobs,—
As reducing to writing
Whatever he might, in
The course of the day or the night, be inditing,
And cleaning the plate of his mitre with whiting;
Performing, in short, all those duties and offices
Abbots exact from Lay-brothers and Novices.
It occurs to me here
You'll perhaps think it queer
That St. Dunstan should have such a personage near,
When he'd only to say
Those words,—be what they may,—
And his Broomstick at once his commands would obey.—
That's true—but the fact is
'Twas rarely his practice
Such aid to resort to, or such means apply,
Unless he'd some “dignified knot” to untie,
Adopting, though sometimes, as now, he'd reverse it,
Old Horace's maxim, “Nec Broomstick intersit.”
Peter, the Lay-brother, meagre and thin,
Heard all the Saint was saying within;
Peter, the Lay-brother, sallow and spare,
Peep'd through the key-hole, and—what saw he there?—
Why,—A Broomstick BRINGING A RUSH-BOTTOM'D CHAIR!
228

What Shakspeare observes, in his play of King John,
Is undoubtedly right,
That “ofttimes the sight
Of means to do ill deeds will make ill deeds done.”
Here's Peter, the Lay-brother, pale-faced and meagre,
A good sort of man, only rather too eager
To listen to what other people are saying,
When he ought to be minding his business, or praying,
Gets into a scrape,—and an awkward one too,
As you'll find, if you've patience enough to go through
The whole of the story
I'm laying before ye,
Entirely from having “the means” in his view
Of doing a thing which he ought not to do!
Still rings in his ear
Distinct and clear
Abracadabra! that word of fear!
And the two which I never yet happen'd to hear.
Still doth he spy
With Fancy's eye
The Broomstick at work, and the Saint standing by;
And he chuckles, and says to himself with glee,
“Aha! that Broomstick shall work for me!”
Hark!—that swell
O'er flood and o'er fell,
Mountain, and dingle, and moss-cover'd dell!
List!—'tis the sound of the Compline bell,
And St. Dunstan is quitting his ivy'd cell;
Peter, I wot,
Is off like a shot,
Or a little dog scalded by something that's hot,
For he hears his Master approaching the spot
229

Where he'd listen'd so long, though he knew he ought not:
Peter remember'd his Master's frown—
He trembled—he'd not have been caught for a crown;
Howe'er you may laugh,
He had rather, by half,
Have run up to the top of the tower and jump'd down.
 

St. Jingo, or Gengo (Gengulphus), sometimes styled ``The LivingJingo,” from the great tenaciousness of vitality exhibited by his severed members. See his Legend, as recorded in p. 237 of the present volume.

The Compline hour is past and gone,
Evening service is over and done;
The monks repair
To their frugal fare,
A sung little supper of something light
And digestible, ere they retire for the night.
For, in Saxon times, in respect to their cheer,
St. Austin's Rule was by no means severe,
But allow'd, from the Beverley Roll 'twould appear,
Bread and cheese, and spring onions, and sound table-beer,
And even green peas, when they were not too dear;
Not like the rule of La Trappe, whose chief merit is
Said to consist in its greater austerities;
And whose monks, if I rightly remember their laws,
Ne'er are suffer'd to speak,
Think only in Greek,
And subsist as the Bears do, by sucking their paws.
Astonish'd I am
The gay Baron Geramb,
With his head sav'ring more of the Lion than Lamb,
Could e'er be persuaded to join such a set—I
Extend the remark to Signor Ambrogetti.—
For a monk of La Trappe is as thin as a rat,
While an Austin Friar was jolly and fat;
Though, of course, the fare to which I allude.
With as good table-beer as ever was brew'd,
Was all “caviare to the multitude,”
230

Extending alone to the clergy, together in
Hall assembled, and not to Lay-brethren.
St. Dunstan himself sits there at his post,
On what they say is
Called a Dais,
O'erlooking the whole of his clerical host,
And eating poach'd eggs with spinach and toast;
Five Lay-brothers stand behind his chair,
But where is the sixth? Where's Peter? — Ay, WHERE?
'Tis an evening in June,
And a little half moon,
A brighter no fond lover ever set eyes on,
Gleaming, and beaming,
And dancing the stream in,
Has made her appearance above the horizon;
Just such a half moon as you see, in a play,
On the turban of Mustapha Muley Bey,
Or the fair Turk who weds with the “Noble Lord Bateman;”
—Vide plate in George Cruikshank's memoirs of that great man.
She shines on a turret remote and lone,
A turret with ivy and moss overgrown,
And lichens that thrive on the cold dank stone;
Such a tower as a Poet of no mean calibre
I once knew and loved, poor, dear Reginald Heber,
Assigns to Oblivion —a den for a She bear;
231

Within it are found,
Strew'd above and around,
On the hearth, on the table, the shelves and the ground,
All sorts of instruments, all sorts of tools,
To name which and their uses would puzzle the Schools,
And make very wise people look very like fools;
Pincers, and hooks,
And black-letter books,
All sorts of pokers, and all sorts of tongs,
And all sorts of hammers, and all that belongs
To Goldsmiths' work, chemistry, alchymy, all,
In short, that a Sage
In that erudite age
Could require, was at hand, or at least within call.
In the midst of the room lies a Broomstick!—and there
A Lay-brother sits in a rush-bottom'd chair!
Abracadabra, that fearful word,
And the two which, I said, I have never yet heard,
Are utter'd.—'Tis done!
Peter, full of his fun,
Cries “Broomstick! you lubberly son of a gun!
Bring ale! bring a flagon—a hogshead—a tun!
'Tis the same thing to you;
I have nothing to do;
And, 'fore George, I'll sit here, and I'll drink till all's blue!”
No doubt you've remark'd how uncommonly quick
A Newfoundland puppy runs after a stick,
Brings it back to his master, and gives it him—Well,
So potent the spell,
The Broomstick perceived it was vain to rebel,
So ran off like that puppy;—some cellar was near,
For in less than ten seconds 'twas back with the beer.
232

Peter seizes the flagon; but ere he can suck
Its contents, or enjoy what he thinks his good luck,
The Broomstick comes in with a tub in a truck;
Continues to run
At the rate it begun,
And, au pied de lettre, next brings in a tun!
A fresh one succeeds, then a third, then another,
Discomfiting much the astounded Lay-brother;
Who, had he possess'd fifty pitchers or stoups,
They had all been too few; for, arranging in groups
The barrels, the Broomstick next started the hoops;
The ale deluged the floor,
But, still, through the door,
Said Broomstick kept bolting, and bringing in more.
E'en Macbeth to Macduff
Would have cried “Hold! enough!”
If half as well drench'd with such “perilous stuff,”
And Peter, who did not expect such a rough visit,
Cried lustily, “Stop! That will do, Broomstick!—Sufficit!”
But ah, well-a-day!
The devil, they say,
'Tis easier at all times to raise than to lay.
Again and again
Peter roar'd out in vain
His Abracadabra, and t' other words twain:
As well might one try
A pack in full cry
To check, and call off from their headlong career,
By bawling out “Yoicks!” with one's hand at one's ear.
The longer he roar'd, and the louder and quicker,
The faster the Broomstick was bringing in liquor.
The poor Lay-brother knew
Not on earth what to do—
233

He caught hold of the Broomstick and snapt it in two.—
Worse and worse!—Like a dart
Each part made a start,
And he found he'd been adding more fuel to fire,
For both now came loaded with Meux's entire;
Combe's, Delafield's, Hanbury's, Truman's—no stopping—
Goding's, Charenton's, Whitbread's continued to drop in,
With Hodson's pale ale, from the Sun Brewhouse, Wapping.
The firms differ'd then, but I can't put a tax on
My memory to say what their names were in Saxon.
To be sure the best beer
Of all did not appear;
For I've said 'twas in June, and so late in the year
The “Trinity Audit Ale” is not come-at-able,
As I've found to my great grief when dining at that table.
Now extremely alarm'd, Peter scream'd without ceasing,
For a flood of Brown-stout he was up to his knees in,
Which, thanks to the Broomstick, continued increasing;
He fear'd he'd be drown'd,
And he yell'd till the sound
Of his voice, wing'd by terror, at last reach'd the ear
Of St. Dunstan himself, who had finish'd his beer,
And had put off his mitre, dalmatic, and shoes,
And was just stepping into his bed for a snooze.
His Holiness paused when he heard such a clatter;
He could not conceive what on earth was the matter.
Slipping on a few things, for the sake of decorum,
He issued forthwith from his sanctum sanctorum,
And calling a few of the lay-brothers near him,
Who were not yet in bed, and who happen'd to hear him,
234

At once led the way,
Without farther delay,
To the tower where he'd been in the course of the day.
Poor Peter!—alas! though St.Dunstan was quick,
There were two there before him—Grim Death and Old Nick!—
When they open'd the door out the malt-liquor flow'd,
Just as when the great Vat burst in Tot'nam Court Road;
The Lay-brothers nearest were up to their necks
In an instant, and swimming in strong double X;
While Peter, who, spite of himself, now had drank hard,
After floating awhile, like a toast in a tankard,
To the bottom had sunk,
And was spied by a monk,
Stone-dead, like poor Clarence, half drown'd and half drunk.
In vain did St. Dunstan exclaim, “Vade retro
Strongbeerum! discede a Lay-frate Petro!”—
Queer Latin, you'll say
That præfix of “Lay,”
And Strongbeerum! — I own they'd have call'd me a blockhead if
At school I had ventured to use such a Vocative,
'Tis a barbarous word, and to me it's a query
If you'll find it in Patrick, Morell, or Moreri;
But, the fact is, the Saint was uncommonly flurried,
And apt to be loose in his Latin when hurried;
The Brown-stout, however, obeys to the letter,
Quite as well as if talk'd to, in Latin much better,
By a grave Cambridge Johnian,
Or graver Oxonian,
Whose language, we all know, is quite Ciceronian.
It retires from the corpse, which is left high and dry;
But, in vain do they snuff and hot towels apply,
235

And other means used by the faculty try.
When once a man's dead
There's no more to be said:
Peter's “Beer with an e” was his “Bier with an i!!”
 

And cold oblivion, midst the ruin laid, Folds her dank wing beneath the ivy shade. Palestine.

Moral.

By way of a moral, permit me to pop in
The following maxims:—Beware of eaves-dropping!—
Don't make use of language that isn't well scann'd!—
Don't meddle with matters you don't understand!—
Above all, what I'd wish to impress on both sexes
Is,—Keep clear of Broomsticks, Old Nick, and three XXXs.

L'Envoye.

In Goldsmith's Hall there's a handsome glass case,
And in it a stone figure found on the place,
When, thinking the old Hall no longer a pleasant one,
They pull'd it all down, and erected the present one.
If you look, you'll perceive that this stone figure twists
A thing like a broomstick in one of its fists.
It's so injured by time, you can't make out a feature;
But it is not St. Dunstan,—so doubtless it's Peter.
237

A LAY OF ST. GENGULPHUS.

“Non multò post, Gengulphus, in domo suâ dormiens, occisus est à quodam clerico qui cum uxore suâ adulterare solebat. Cujus corpus dum in feretro in sepulturam portaretur, multi infirmi de tactu sanati sunt.”

“Cum hoc illius uxori referretur ab ancillâ suâ, scilicet dominum suum quam martyrem sanctum miracula facere, irridens illa, et subsurrans, ait, “Ita Gengulphus miracula facitat ut pulvinarium meum cantat,” &c. &c.

Wolfii Memorab.

Gengulphus comes from the Holy Land,
With his scrip, and his bottle, and sandal shoon;
Full many a day has he been away,
Yet his Lady deems him return'd full soon.
Full many a day has he been away,
Yet scarce had he crossed ayont the sea,
Ere a spruce young spark of a Learned Clerk
Had called on his Lady and stopp'd to tea.
This spruce young guest, so trimly drest,
Stay'd with that Lady, her revels to crown;
They laugh'd; and they ate, and they drank of the best,
And they turn'd the old Castle quite upside down.
They would walk in the park, that spruce young Clerk,
With that frolicsome Lady so frank and free,
Trying balls and plays, and all manner of ways,
To get rid of what French people call Ennui.
238

Now the festive board, with viands is stored,
Savoury dishes be there, I ween,
Rich puddings and big, and a barbecued pig,
And oxtail soup in a China tureen.
There's a flagon of ale as large as a pail—
When, cockle on hat, and staff in hand,
While on nought they are thinking save eating and drinking,
Gengulphus walks in from the Holy Land!
“You must be pretty deep to catch weazels asleep,”
Says the proverb: that is, “take the Fair unawares;”
A maid, o'er the banisters chancing to peep,
Whispers, “Ma'am, here's Gengulphus a-coming upstairs.”
Pig, pudding, and soup, the electrified group,
With the flagon, pop under the sofa in haste,
And contrive to deposit the Clerk in the closet,
As the dish least of all to Gengulphus's taste.
Then oh! what rapture, what joy was exprest,
When “poor dear Gengulphus” at last appear'd!
She kiss'd, and she press'd “the dear man” to her breast,
In spite of his great, long, frizzly beard.
Such hugging and squeezing! 'twas almost unpleasing,
A smile on her lip, and a tear in her eye;
She was so very glad, that she seem'd half mad,
And did not know whether to laugh or to cry.
Then she calls up the maid, and the table cloth's laid,
And she sends for a pint of the best Brown Stout;
On the fire, too, she pops some nice mutton chops,
And she mixes a stiff glass of “Cold Without.”
239

Then again she began at the “poor dear” man;
She press'd him to drink, and she press'd him to eat,
And she brought a foot-pan with hot water and bran,
To comfort his “poor dear” travel-worn feet.
“Nor night nor day since he'd been away,
Had she had any rest” she “vow'd and declared.”
She “never could eat one morsel of meat,
For thinking how ‘poor dear’ Gengulphus fared.”
She “really did think she had not slept a wink
Since he left her, although he'd been absent so long.”
He here shook his head,—right little he said;
But he thought she was “coming it rather too strong.”
Now his palate she tickles with the chops and the pickles,
Till, so great the effect of that stiff gin grog,
His weaken'd body, subdued by the toddy,
Falls out of the chair, and he lies like a log.
Then out comes the Clerk from his secret lair;
He lifts up the legs, and she raises the head,
And, between them, this most reprehensible pair
Undress poor Gengulphus, and put him to bed.
Then the bolster they place athwart his face,
And his night-cap into his mouth they cram;
And she pinches his nose underneath the clothes,
Till the “poor dear soul” went off like a lamb.
And now they try'd the deed to hide;
For a little bird whisper'd, “Perchance you may swing;
Here's a corpse in the case with a sad swell'd face,
And a ‘Crowner's Quest’ is a queer sort of thing!”
240

So the Clerk and the Wife, they each took a knife,
And the nippers that nipp'd the loaf-sugar for tea;
With the edges and points they sever'd the joints
At the clavicle, elbow, hip, ankle, and knee.
Thus, limb from limb, they dismember'd him
So entirely, that e'en when they came to his wrists,
With those great sugar nippers they nipp'd off his “flippers,”
As the Clerk, very flippantly, term'd his fists.
When they'd cut off his head, entertaining a dread
Lest folks should remember Gengulphus's face,
They determined to throw it, where no one could know it,
Down the well, and the limbs in some different place.
But first the long beard from the chin they shear'd,
And managed to stuff that sanctified hair,
With a good deal of pushing, all into the cushion,
That filled up the seat of a large arm-chair.
They contrived to pack up the trunk in a sack,
Which they hid in an osier-bed outside the town,
The Clerk bearing arms, legs, and all on his back,
As the late Mr. Greenacre served Mrs. Brown.
But to see now how strangely things sometimes turn out,
And that in a manner the least expected!
Who could surmise a man ever could rise
Who'd been thus carbonado'd, cut up, and dissected?
No doubt 'twould surprise the pupils at Guy's;
I am no unbeliever—no man can say that o' me—
But St. Thomas himself would scarce trust his own eyes,
If he saw such a thing in his School of Anatomy.
241

You may deal as you please with Hindoos or Chinese,
Or a Mussulman making his heathen salaam, or
A Jew or a Turk, but it's other guess work
When a man has to do with a Pilgrim or Palmer.
By chance the Prince Bishop, a Royal Divine,
Sends his cards round the neighbourhood next day, and urges his
Wish to receive a snug party to dine
Of the resident clergy, the gentry, and burgesses.
At a quarter past five they are all alive
At the palace, for coaches are fast rolling in;
And to every guest his card had expressed
“Half past” as the hour for “a greasy chin.”
Some thirty are seated, and handsomely treated
With the choicest Rhine wines in his Highness's stock;
When a Count of the Empire, who felt himself heated,
Requested some water to mix with his Hock.
The Butler, who saw it, sent a maid out to draw it,
But scarce had she given the windlass a twirl,
Ere Gengulphus's head from the well's bottom said
In mild accents, “Do help us out, that's a good girl!”
Only fancy her dread when she saw a great head
In her bucket;—with fright she was ready to drop:—
Conceive, if you can, how she roar'd and she ran,
With the head rolling after her bawling out “Stop!”
She ran and she roar'd till she came to the board
Where the Prince Bishop sat with his party around,
When Gengulphus's poll, which continued to roll
At her heels, on the table bounced up with a bound.
242

Never touching the cates, or the dishes or plates,
The decanters or glasses, the sweetmeats or fruits,
The head smiles, and begs them to bring him his legs,
As a well-spoken gentleman asks for his boots.
Kicking open the casement, to each one's amazement,
Straight a right leg steps in, all impediment scorns,
And near the head stopping, a left follows hopping
Behind,—for the left Leg was troubled with corns.
Next, before the beholders, two great brawny shoulders,
And arms on their bent elbows dance through the throng,
While two hands assist, though nipped off at the wrist,
The said shoulders in bearing a body along.
They march up to the head, not one syllable said,
For the thirty guests all stare in wonder and doubt,
As the limbs in their sight arrange and unite,
Till Gengulphus, though dead, looks as sound as a trout.
I will venture to say, from that hour to this day,
Ne'er did such an assembly behold such a scene;
Or a table divide fifteen guests of a side
With a dead body placed in the centre between.
Yes, they stared—well they might at so novel a sight:
No one uttered a whisper, a sneeze, or a hem,
But sat all bolt upright, and pale with affright;
And they gazed at the dead man, the dead man at them.
The Prince Bishop's Jester, on punning intent,
As he view'd the whole thirty, in jocular terms
Said, “They put him in mind of a Council of Trente
Engaged in reviewing the Diet of Worms.”
243

But what should they do?—Oh! nobody knew
What was best to be done, either stranger or resident.
The Chancellor's self read his Puffendorf through
In vain, for his books could not furnish a precedent.
The Prince Bishop muttered a curse and a prayer,
Which his double capacity hit to a nicety;
His Princely, or Lay half induced him to swear,
His Episcopal moiety said “Benedicite!”
The Coroner sat on the body that night,
And the jury agreed,—not a doubt could they harbour,—
“That the chin of the corpse — the sole thing brought to light—
Had been recently shaved by a very bad barber.”
They sent out Von Taünsend, Von Bürnie, Von Roe,
Von Maine, and Von Rowantz—through châlets and châteaux,
Towns, villages, hamlets, they told them to go,
And they stuck up placards on the walls of the Stadthaus.

“MURDER!!”

Whereas, a dead Gentleman, surname unknown,
Has been recently found at his Highness's banquet,
Rather shabbily drest in an Amice, or gown
In appearance resembling a second-hand blanket;
“And Whereas, there's great reason indeed to suspect
That some ill-disposed person or persons, with malice
Aforethought, have kill'd and begun to dissect
The said Gentleman, not very far from the palace;
244

“This is to give notice!—Whoever shall seize,
And such person or persons to justice surrender,
Shall receive—such Reward—as his Highness shall please
On conviction of him, the aforesaid offender.
“And, in order the matter more clearly to trace
To the bottom, his Highness, the Prince Bishop, further,
Of his clemency, offers free Pardon and Grace
To all such as have not been concern'd in the murther.
“Done this day, at our palace,—July twenty-five,—
By Command,
(Signed)
Johann Von Rüssell.
N.B.
Deceased rather in years—had a squint when alive;
And smells slightly of gin—linen mark'd with a G.”
The Newspapers, too, made no little ado,
Though a different version each managed to dish up;
Some said “the Prince Bishop had run a man through,”
Others said “an assassin had kill'd the Prince Bishop.”
The “Ghent Herald” fell foul of the “Bruxelles Gazette,”
The “Bruxelles Gazette,” with much sneering ironical,
Scorn'd to remain in the “Ghent Herald's” debt,
And the “Amsterdam Times” quizzed the “Nuremberg Chronicle.”
In one thing, indeed, all the journals agreed,
Spite of “politics,” “bias,” or “party collision;”
Viz: to “give,” when they'd “further accounts” of the deed,
“Full particulars” soon, in “a later Edition.”
245

But now, while on all sides they rode and they ran,
Trying all sorts of means to discover the caitiffs,
Losing patience, the holy Gengulphus began
To think it high time to “astonish the natives.”
First, a Rittmeister's Fran, who was weak in both eyes,
And supposed the most short-sighted woman in Holland,
Found greater relief, to her joy and surprize,
From one glimpse of his “squint” than from glasses by Dollond.
By the slightest approach to the tip of his Nose,
Meagrims, headach, and vapours were put to the rout;
And one single touch of his precious Great Toes
Was a certain specific for chilblains and gout.
Rheumatics, sciatica, tic-douloureux!
Apply to his shin-bones—not one of them lingers;—
All bilious complaints in an instant withdrew,
If the patient was tickled with one of his fingers.
Much virtue was found to reside in his thumbs;
When applied to the chest, they cured scantness of breathing,
Sea-sickness, and colick; or, rubbed on the gums,
Were remarkably soothing to infants in teething.
Whoever saluted the nape of his neck,
Where the mark remained visible still of the knife,
Notwithstanding east winds perspiration might check,
Was safe from sore-throat for the rest of his life.
Thus, while each acute, and each chronic complaint,
Giving way, proved an influence clearly divine,
246

They perceived the dead Gentleman must be a Saint,
So they lock'd him up, body and bones, in a shrine.
Through country and town his new Saintship's renown,
As a first-rate physician, kept daily increasing,
Till, as Alderman Curtis told Alderman Brown,
It seemed as if “wonders had never done ceasing.”
The Three Kings of Cologne began, it was known,
A sad falling off in their off' rings to find;
His feats were so many—still the greatest of any,—
In every sense of the word, was—behind;
For the German Police were beginning to cease
From exertions which each day more fruitless appear'd,
When Gengulphus himself, his fame still to increase,
Unravell'd the whole by the help of—his beard!
If you look back you'll see the aforesaid barbe gris,
When divorced from the chin of its murder'd proprietor,
Had been stuffed in the seat of a kind of settee,
Or double-arm'd chair, to keep the thing quieter.
It may seem rather strange, that it did not arrange
Itself in its place when the limbs join'd together;
P'rhaps it could not get out, for the cushion was stout,
And constructed of good, strong, maroon-colour'd leather.
Or, what is more likely, Gengulphus might choose,
For Saints, e'en when dead, still retain their volition,
It should rest there, to aid some particular views
Produced by his very peculiar position.
247

Be that as it may, the very first day
That the widow Gengulphus sat down on that settee,
What occurr'd almost frighten'd her senses away,
Beside scaring her hand-maidens, Gertrude and Betty.
They were telling their mistress the wonderful deeds
Of the new Saint, to whom all the Town said their orisons;
And especially how, as regards invalids,
His miraculous cures far outrivall'd Von Morison's.
“The cripples,” said they, “fling their crutches away,
And people born blind now can easily see us!”—
But she, (we presume, a disciple of Hume,)
Shook her head, and said angrily, “Credat Judæus!”
“Those rascally liars, the Monks and the Friars,
To bring grist to their mill, these devices have hit on.—
He works miracles!—pooh!—I'd believe it of you
Just as soon, you great Geese, or the chair that I sit on!”
The Chair!—at that word—it seems really absurd,
But the truth must be told,—what contortions and grins
Distorted her face!—She sprang up from the place
Just as though she'd been sitting on needles and pins!
For, as if the Saint's beard the rash challenge had heard
Which she utter'd, of what was beneath her forgetful,
Each particular hair stood on end in the chair,
Like a porcupine's quills when the animal's fretful.
That stout maroon leather, they pierced altogether,
Like tenter-hooks holding when clenched from within,
And the maids cried “Good gracious! how very tenacious!”—
—They as well might endeavour to pull off her skin!
248

She shriek'd with the pain, but all efforts were vain;
In vain did they strain every sinew and muscle,—
The cushion stuck fast!—From that hour to her last
She could never get rid of that comfortless “Bustle!”
And e'en as Macbeth, when devising the death
Of his King, heard “the very stones prate of his where-abouts;”
So this shocking bad wife heard a voice all her life
Crying “Murder!” resound from the cushion,—or thereabouts.
With regard to the Clerk, we are left in the dark,
As to what his fate was; but I cannot imagine he
Got off scot-free, though unnoticed it be
Both by Ribadaneira and Jacques de Voragine:
For cut-throats, we're sure, can be never secure,
And “History's Muse” still to prove it her pen holds,
As you'll see, if you look in a rather scarce book,
“God's Revenge aaainst Murder,” by one Mr. Reynolds.

Moral

Now, you grave married Pilgrims, who wander away,
Like Ulysses of old, (vide Homer and Naso,)
Don't lengthen your stay to three years and a day!
And when you are coming home, just write and say so!
And you, learned Clerks, who're not given to roam,
Stick close to your books, nor lose sight of decorum;
Don't visit a house when the master's from home!
Shun drinking,—and study the “Vitæ Sanctorum!”
249

Above all, you gay Ladies, who fancy neglect
In your spouses, allow not your patience to fail;
But remember Gengulphus's wife!—and reflect
On the moral enforced by her terrible tale!
 

Ενι δακρυσι γελασασα. Homer

Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes.

251

THE LAY OF ST. ODILLE.

Odille was a maid of a dignified race;
Her father, Count Otto, was lord of Alsace;
Such an air, such a grace,
Such a form, such a face,
All agreed 'twere a fruitless endeavour to trace
In the Court, or within fifty miles of the place.
Many ladies in Strasburg were beautiful, still
They were beat all to sticks by the lovely Odille.
But Odille was devout, and, before she was nine,
Had “experienced a call” she consider'd divine,
To put on the veil at St. Ermengarde's shrine.—
Lords, Dukes, and Electors, and Counts Palatine
Came to seek her in marriage from both sides the Rhine;
But vain their design,
They are all left to pine,
Their oglings and smiles are all useless; in fine,
Not one of these gentlefolks, try as they will,
Can draw “Ask my papa” from the cruel Odille.
At length one of her suitors, a certain Count Herman,
A highly respectable man as a German,
Who smoked like a chimney, and drank like a merman,
Paid his court to her father, conceiving his firman
Would soon make her bend,
And induce her to lend
An ear to a love-tale in lieu of a sermon.
252

Hegained the old Count, who said, “Come, Mynheer, fill!—
—Here's luck to yourself and my daughter Odille!”
The lady Odille was quite nervous with fear
When a little bird whisper'd that toast in her ear;
She murmur'd “Oh, dear!
My papa has got queer,
I am sadly afraid, with that nasty strong beer!
He's so very austere, and severe, that it's clear
If he gets in his ‘tantrums,’ I can't remain here;
But St. Ermengarde's convent is luckily near;
It were folly to stay,
Pour prendre congé,
I shall put on my bonnet, and e'en run away!”
She unlock'd the back door, and descended the hill,
On whose crest stood the towers of the sire of Odille.
When he found she'd levanted, the Count of Alsace
At first turn'd remarkably red in the face;
He anathematized, with much unction and grace,
Every soul who came near, and consign'd the whole race
Of runaway girls to a very warm place.
With a frightful grimace
He gave orders for chase.
His vassals set off at a deuce of a pace,
And of all whom they met, high or low, Jack or Jill,
Ask'd, “Pray, have you seen anything of Odille?”—
Now I think I've been told,—for I'm no sporting man,—
That the “knowing-ones” call this by far the best plan,
“Take the lead and then keep it!”—that is if you can.—
Odille thought so too, so she set off and ran;
Put her best leg before,
Starting at score,
As I said some lines since, from that little back door,
253

And not being missed until half after four,
Had what hunters call “law” for a good hour and more;
Doing her best,
Without stopping to rest,
Like “young Lochinvar who came out of the West,”
“'Tis done! I am gone!—over briar, brook, and rill!
They'll be sharp lads who catch me!” said young Miss Odille.
But you've all read in Æsop, or Phædrus, or Gay,
How a tortoise and hare ran together one day,
How the hare, “making play,
Progress'd right slick away,”
As “them tarnation chaps” the Americans say;
While the tortoise, whose figure is rather outré
For racing, crawled straight on, without let or stay,
Having no post-horse duty or turnpikes to pay,
Till ere noon's ruddy ray
Changed to eve's sober grey,
Though her form and obesity caused some delay,
Perseverance and patience brought up her lee-way,
And she chased her fleet-footed “praycursor,” until
She o'ertook her at last;—so it fared with Odille.
For although, as I said, she ran gaily at first,
And show'd no inclination to pause, if she durst;
She at length felt opprest with the heat, and with thirst
Its usual attendant; nor was that the worst,
Her shoes went down at heel;—at last one of them burst.
Now a gentleman smiles
At a trot of ten miles;
But not so the Fair; then consider the stiles,
And as then ladies seldom wore things with a frill
Round the ancle, these stiles sadly bother'd Odille.
254

Still, despite all the obstacles placed in her track,
She kept steadily on, though the terrible crack
In her shoe made of course her progression more slack,
Till she reached the Swartz Forest (in English The Black);
I cannot divine
How the boundary line
Was passed which is somewhere there formed by the Rhine.
Perhaps she'd the nack
To float o'er on her back.
Or perhaps crossed the old bridge of boats at Brisach,
(Which Vauban some years after secured from attack,
By a bastion of stone which the Germans call “Wacke,”)
All I know is she took not so much as a snack,
Till hungry and worn, feeling wretchedly ill,
On a mountain's brow sank down the weary Odille.
I said on its “brow,” but I should have said “crown,”
For 'twas quite on the summit, bleak, barren, and brown,
And so high that 'twas frightful indeed to look down
Upon Friburg, a place of some little renown,
That lay at its foot; but imagine the frown
That contracted her brow, when full many a clown
She perceived coming up from that horrid post-town.
They had followed her trail,
And now thought without fail,
As little boys say, to “lay salt on her tail;”
While the Count, who knew no other law but his will,
Swore that Herman that evening should marry Odille.
Alas, for Odille; poor dear! what could she do?
Her father's retainers now had her in view,
As she found from their raising a joyous halloo;
While the Count, riding on at the head of his crew,
255

In their snuff-coloured doublets and breeches of blue,
Was huzzaing and urging them on to pursue.—
What, indeed, could she do?
She very well knew
If they caught her how much she should have to go through;
But then — she'd so shocking a hole in her shoe!
And to go further on was impossible;—true
She might jump o'er the precipice; still there are few
In her place who could manage their courage to screw
Up to bidding the world such a sudden adieu:
Alack! how she envied the birds as they flew;
No Nassau balloon with its wicker canoe
Came to bear her from him she loathed worse than a Jew;
So she fell on her knees in a terrible stew,
Crying “Holy St. Ermengarde!
Oh, from these vermin guard
Her whose last hope rests entirely on you!
Don't let papa catch me, dear Saint!—rather kill
At once, sur le champ, your devoted Odille!”
Its delightful to see those who strive to oppress
Get baulk'd when they think themselves sure of success.
The Saint came to the rescue! I fairly confess
I don't see, as a Saint, how she well could do less
Than to get such a votary out of her mess.
Odille had scarce closed her pathetic address
When the rock, gaping wide as the Thames at Sheerness,
Closed again, and secured her within its recess,
In a natural grotto,
Which puzzled Count Otto,
Who could not conceive where the deuce she had got to.
'Twas her voice!—but 'twas Vox et præterea Nil!
Nor could any one guess what was gone with Odille.
256

Then burst from the mountain a splendour that quite
Eclipsed in its brilliance the finest Bude light,
And there stood St. Ermengarde drest all in white,
A palm-branch in her left hand, her beads in her right;
While with faces fresh gilt, and with wings burnish'd bright,
A great many little boys' heads took their flight
Above and around to a very great height,
And seem'd pretty lively considering their plight,
Since every one saw,
With amazement and awe,
They could never sit down, for they hadn't de quoi.
All at the sight,
From the knave to the knight,
Felt a very unpleasant sensation called fright;
While the Saint, looking down,
With a terrible frown,
Said, “My Lords you are done most remarkably brown!—
I am really ashamed of you both; my nerves thrill
At your scandalous conduct to poor dear Odille!
Come, make yourselves scarce! it is useless to stay,
You will gain nothing here by a longer delay.
‘Quick! Presto! Begone!’ as the conjurors say;
For as to the lady, I've stow'd her away
In this hill, in a stratum of London blue clay;
And I shan't, I assure you, restore her to day
Till you faithfully promise no more to say Nay,
But declare, ‘If she will be a nun, why she may.’
For this you've my word, and I never yet broke it,
So put that in your pipe, my Lord Otto, and smoke it!—
One hint to your vassals,—a month at ‘the Mill’
Shall be nuts to what they'll get who worry Odille!”
257

The Saint disappear'd as she ended, and so
Did the little boys' heads, which, above and below,
As I told you a very few stanzas ago,
Had been flying about her, and jumping Jem Crow;
Though, without any body, or leg, foot, or toe,
How they managed such antics, I really don't know;
Be that as it may, they all “melted like snow
Off a dyke,” as the Scotch say in sweet Edinbro'.
And there stood the Count,
With his men on the mount,
Just like “twenty-four jackasses all on a row.”
What was best to be done?—'twas a sad bitter pill;
But gulp it he must, or else lose his Odille.
The lord of Alsace therefore alter'd his plan,
And said to himself, like a sensible man,
“I can't do as I would,—I must do as I can;”
It will not do to lie under any Saint's ban,
For your hide, when you do, they all manage to tan;
So Count Herman must pick up some Betsey or Nan,
Instead of my girl,—some Sue, Polly, or Fan;—
If he can't get the corn he must do with the bran,
And make shift with the pot if he can't have the pan.
After words such as these
He went down on his knees,
And said, “Blessed St. Ermengarde just as you please—
They shall build a new convent,—I'll pay the whole bill,
(Taking discount,)—its Abbess shall be my Odille!”
There are some of my readers, I'll venture to say,
Who have never seen Friburg, though some of them may,
And others 'tis likely may go there some day.
Now if ever you happen to travel that way
I do beg and pray,—'twill your pains well repay,—
That you'll take what the Cockney folks call a ‘po-shay,’
258

(Though in Germany these things are more like a dray);
You may reach this same hill with a single relay,—
And do look how the rock,
Through the whole of its block,
Is split open as though by some violent shock
From an earthquake, or lightning, or horrid hard knock
From the club-bearing fist of some jolly old cock
Of a Germanized giant, Thor, Woden, or Lok;
And see how it rears
Its two monstrous great ears,
For when once you're between them such each side appears;
And list to the sound of the water one hears
Drip, drip from the fissures, like rain-drops or tears:
—Odille's, I believe,—which have flow'd all these years;
—I think they account for them so;—but the rill
I'm sure is connected some way with Odille.

Moral.

Now then for a moral, which always arrives
At the end, like the honey bees take to their hives,
And the more one observes it the better one thrives.—
We have all heard it said in the course of our lives
“Needs must when a certain old gentleman drives,”
'Tis the same with a lady,—if once she contrives
To get hold of the ribands, how vainly one strives
To escape from her lash, or to shake off her gyves.
Then let's act like Count Otto, and while one survives
Succumb to our She-Saints—videlicet wives.
(Aside.)
That is if one has not a “good bunch of fives.”—
(I can't think how that last line escaped from my quill,
For I am sure it has nothing to do with Odille.)
259

Now young ladies to you!—
Don't put on the shrew!
And don't be surprised if your father looks blue
When you're pert, and won't act as he wants you to do!
Be sure that you never elope;—there are few,—
Believe me you'll find what I say to be true,—
Who run restive, but find as they bake they must brew,
And come off at the last with “a hole in their shoe;”
Since not even Clapham, that sanctified ville,
Can produce enough Saints to save every Odille.
261

A LAY OF ST. NICHOLAS.

“Statim sacerdoti apparuit diabolus in specie puellæ pulchritudin is miræ, et ecce Divus, fide catholicâ et cruce et aquâ benedictâ armatus, venit, et aspersit aquam in nomine Sanctæ et Individuæ Trinitatis, quam, quasi ardentem, diabolus, nequaquam sustinere valens, mugitibus fugit.” Roger Hoveden.

Lord abbot! Lord Abbot! I'd fain confess;
I am a-weary, and worn with woe;
Many a grief doth my heart oppress,
And haunt me whithersoever I go!”
On bended knee spake the beautiful Maid;
“Now lithe and listen, Lord Abbot, to me!”—
“Now naye, Fair Daughter,” the Lord Abbot said,
“Now naye, in sooth it may hardly be;
“There is Mess Michael, and holy Mess John,
Sage Penitauncers I ween be they!
And hard by doth dwell, in St. Catherine's cell,
Ambrose, the anchorite old and grey!”
“—Oh, I will have none of Ambrose or John,
Though sage Penitauncers I trow they be;
Shrive me may none save the Abbot alone.
Now listen, Lord Abbot, I speak to thee.
262

“Nor think foul scorn, though mitre adorn
Thy brow, to listen to shrift of mine.
I am a Maiden royally born,
And I come of old Plantagenet's line.
“Though hither I stray in lowly array,
I am a Damsel of high degree;
And the Compte of Eu, and the Lord of Ponthieu,
They serve my father on bended knee!
“Counts a many, and Dukes a few,
A suitoring came to my father's Hall;
But the Duke of Lorraine, with his large domain,
He pleased my father beyond them all.
“Dukes a many, and Counts a few,
I would have wedded right cheerfullie;
But the Duke of Lorraine was uncommonly plain,
And I vow'd that he ne'er should my bridegroom be!
“So hither I fly, in lowly guise,
From their gilded domes and their princely halls;
Fain would I dwell in some holy cell,
Or within some Convent's peaceful walls!”
—Then out and spake that proud Lord Abbot,
“Now rest thee, Fair Daughter, withouten fear;
Nor Count nor Duke but shall meet the rebuke
Of Holy Church an he seek thee here:
“Holy Church denieth all search
'Midst her sanctified ewes and her saintly rams;
And the wolves doth mock who would scathe her flock,
Or, especially, worry her little pet lambs.
263

“Then lay, Fair Daughter, thy fears aside,
For here this day shalt thou dine with me!”—
“Now naye, now naye,” the fair maiden cried;
“In sooth, Lord Abbot, that scarce may be!
“Friends would whisper, and foes would frown,
Sith thou art a Churchman of high degree,
And ill mote it match with thy fair renown
That a wandering damsel dine with thee!
“There is Simon the Deacon hath pulse in store,
With beans and lettuces fair to see;
His lenten fare now let me share,
I pray thee, Lord Abbot, in charitie!”
—“Though Simon the Deacon hath pulse in store,
To our patron Saint foul shame it were
Should wayworn guest, with toil oppress'd,
Meet in his abbey such churlish fare.
“There is Peter the Prior, and Francis the Friar,
And Roger the Monk shall our convives be;
Small scandal I ween shall then be seen;
They are a goodly companie!”
The Abbot hath donn'd his mitre and ring,
His rich dalmatic, and maniple fine;
And the choristers sing as the lay-brothers bring
To the board a magnificent turkey and chine.
The turkey and chine, they are done to a nicety;
Liver, and gizzard, and all are there:
Ne'er mote Lord Abbot pronounce Benedicite
Over more luscious or delicate fare.
264

But no pious stave he, no Pater or Ave
Pronounced, as he gazed on that maiden's face:
She ask'd him for stuffing, she ask'd him for gravy,
She ask'd him for gizzard;—but not for Grace!
Yet gaily the Lord Abbot smiled and press'd,
And the blood-red wine in the wine-cup fill'd;
And he help'd his guest to a bit of the breast,
And he sent the drumsticks down to be grill'd.
There was no lack of old Sherris sack,
Of Hippocras fine, or of Malmsey bright;
And aye, as he drained off his cup with a smack,
He grew less pious and more polite.
She pledged him once, and she pledged him twice,
And she drank as a Lady ought not to drink;
And he press'd her hand 'neath the table thrice,
And he wink'd as an Abbot ought not to wink.
And Peter the Prior, and Francis the Friar,
Sat each with a napkin under his chin;
But Roger the Monk got excessively drunk,
So they put him to bed, and they tuck'd him in!
The lay-brothers gazed on each other, amazed;
And Simon the Deacon, with grief and surprise,
As he peep'd through the key-hole could scarce fancy real
The scene he beheld, or believe his own eyes.
In his ear was ringing the Lord Abbot singing,—
He could not distinguish the words very plain,
But 'twas all about “Cole,” and “jolly old Soul,”
And “Fiddlers,” and “Punch,” and things quite as profane.
265

Even Porter Paul, at the sound of such revelling,
With fervour began himself to bless;
For he thought he must somehow have let the devil in,—
And perhaps was not very much out in his guess.
The Accusing Byers “flew up to Heaven's Chancery,”
Blushing like scarlet with shame and concern;
The Archangel took down his tale, and in answer he
Wept—(See the works of the late Mr. Sterne.)
Indeed, it is said, a less taking both were in
When, after a lapse of a great many years,
They book'd Uncle Toby five shillings for swearing,
And blotted the fine out at last with their tears!
But St. Nicholas' agony who may paint?
His senses at first were well-nigh gone;
The beatified Saint was ready to faint
When he saw in his Abbey such sad goings on!
For never, I ween, had such doings been seen
There before, from the time that most excellent Prince,
Earl Baldwin of Flanders, and other Commanders,
Had built and endow'd it some centuries since.
—But, hark!—'tis a sound from the outermost gate!
A startling sound from a powerful blow.
Who knocks so late?—it is half after eight
By the clock,—and the clock's five minutes too slow.
Never, perhaps, had such loud double raps
Been heard in St. Nicholas' Abbey before;
All agreed “it was shocking to keep people knocking,”
But none seem'd inclined to “answer the door.”
266

Now a louder bang through the cloisters rang,
And the gate on its hinges wide open flew;
And all were aware of a Palmer there,
With his cockle, hat, staff, and his sandal shoe.
Many a furrow, and many a frown,
By toil and time on his brow were traced;
And his long loose gown was of ginger brown,
And his rosary dangled below his waist.
Now seldom, I ween, is such costume seen,
Except at a stage-play or masquerade;
But who doth not know it was rather the go
With Pilgrims and Saints in the second Crusade?
With noiseless stride did that Palmer glide
Across that oaken floor;
And he made them all jump, he gave such a thump
Against the Refectory door!
Wide open it flew, and plain to the view
The Lord Abbot they all mote see;
In his hand was a cup, and he lifted it up,
“Here's the Pope's good health with three!!”—
Rang in their ears three deafening cheers,
“Huzza! huzza! huzza!”
And one of the party said, “Go it, my hearty!”—
When out spake that Pilgrim grey—
“A boon, Lord Abbot! a boon! a boon!
Worn is my foot, and empty my scrip;
And nothing to speak of since yesterday noon
Of food, Lord Abbot, hath pass'd my lip.
267

“And I am come from a far countree,
And have visited many a holy shrine;
And long have I trod the sacred sod
Where the Saints do rest in Palestine!”—
“An thou art come from a far countree,
And if thou in Paynim lands hast been,
Now rede me aright the most wonderful sight,
Thou Palmer grey, that thine eyes have seen.
“Arede me aright the most wonderful sight,
Grey Palmer, that ever thine eyes did see,
And a manchette of bread, and a good warm bed,
And a cup o' the best shall thy guerdon be!”—
“Oh! I have been east, and I have been west,
And I have seen many a wonderful sight;
But never to me did it happen to see
A wonder like that which I see this night!
“To see a Lord Abbot, in rochet and stole,
With Prior and Friar,—a strange mar-velle!—
O'er a jolly full bowl, sitting cheek by jowl,
And hob-nobbing away with a Devil from Hell!”
He felt in his gown of ginger brown,
And he pull'd out a flask from beneath;
It was rather tough work to get out the cork,
But he drew it at last with his teeth.
O'er a pint and a quarter of holy water
He made the sacred sign;
And he dash'd the whole on the soi-disante daughter
Of old Plantagenet's line!
268

Oh! then did she reek, and squeak, and shriek,
With a wild unearthly scream;
And fizzled and hiss'd, and produced such a mist,
They were all half-choked by the steam.
Her dove-like eyes turn'd to coals of fire,
Her beautiful nose to a horrible snout,
Her hands to paws with nasty great claws,
And her bosom went in, and her tail came out.
On her chin there appear'd a long Nanny-goat's beard,
And her tusks and her teeth no man mote tell;
And her horns and her hoofs gave infallible proofs
'Twas a frightful Fiend from the nethermost Hell!
The Palmer threw down his ginger gown,
His hat and his cockle; and, plain to sight,
Stood St. Nicholas' self, and his shaven crown
Had a glow-worm halo of heavenly light.
The Fiend made a grasp, the Abbot to clasp;
But St. Nicholas lifted his holy toe,
And, just in the nick, let fly such a kick
On his elderly Namesake, he made him let go.
And out of the window he flew like a shot,
For the foot flew up with a terrible thwack,
And caught the foul demon about the spot
Where his tail joins on to the small of his back.
And he bounded away, like a foot-ball at play,
Till into the bottomless pit he fell slap,
Knocking Mammon the meagre o'er pursy Belphegor,
And Lucifer into Beelzebub's lap.
269

Oh! happy the slip from his Succubine grip,
That saved the Lord Abbot,—though, breathless with fright,
In escaping he tumbled, and fractured his hip,
And his left leg was shorter thenceforth than his right!
On the banks of the Rhine, as he's stopping to dine,
From a certain Inn-window the traveller is shown
Most picturesque ruins, the scene of these doings,
Some miles up the river, south-east of Cologne.
And, while “saur-kraut” she sells you, the Landlady tells you
That there, in those walls, now all roofless and bare,
One Simon, a Deacon, from a lean grew a sleek one,
On filling a çi-devant Abbot's state chair.
How a çi-devant Abbot, all clothed in drab, but
Of texture the coarsest, hair shirt, and no shoes,
(His mitre and ring, and all that sort of thing
Laid aside,) in you Cave lived a pious recluse;
How he rose with the sun, limping, “dot and go one,”
To you rill of the mountain, in all sorts of weather,
Where a Prior and a Friar, who lived somewhat higher
Up the rock, used to come and eat creasses together;
How a thirsty old codger, the neighbours call'd Roger,
With them drank cold water in lieu of old wine!
What its quality wanted he made up in quantity,
Swigging as though he would empty the Rhine!
270

And how, as their bodily strength fail'd, the mental man
Gain'd tenfold vigour and force in all four;
And how, to the day of their death, the “Old Gentleman”
Never attempted to kidnap them more.
And how, when at length, in the odour of sanctity,
All of them died without grief or complaint;
The Monks of St. Nicholas said 'twas ridiculous
Not to suppose every one was a Saint.
And how, in the Abbey, no one was so shabby
As not to say yearly four masses a head,
On the eve of that supper, and kick on the crupper
Which Satan received, for the souls of the dead!
How folks long held in reverence their reliques and memories,
How the ci-devant Abbot's obtain'd greater still,
When some cripples, on touching his fractured os femoris,
Threw down their crutches, and danced a quadrille.
And how Abbot Simon, (who turn'd out a prime one,)
These words, which grew into a proverb full soon,
O'er the late Abbot's grotto, stuck up as a motto,
“Who suppes with the Devylle sholde have a long spoone!!”
283

THE TRAGEDY.

Quæque ipse miserrima vidi.—Virgil.

Catherine of Cleves was a Lady of rank,
She had lands and fine houses, and cash in the Bank;
She had jewels and rings,
And a thousand smart things;
Was lovely and young,
With a rather sharp tongue,
And she wedded a Noble of high degree
With the star of the order of St. Esprit;
But the Duke de Guise
Was, by many degrees,
Her senior, and not very easy to please;
He'd a sneer on his lip, and a scowl with his eye,
And a frown on his brow,—and he look'd like a Guy,—
So she took to intriguing
With Monsieur St. Megrin,
A young man of fashion, and figure, and worth,
But with no great pretensions to fortune or birth;
He would sing, fence, and dance
With the best man in France,
And took his rappee with genteel nonchalance;
He smiled, and he flatter'd, and flirted with ease,
And was very superior to Monseigneur de Guise.
Now Monsieur St. Megrin was curious to know
If the Lady approved of his passion or no;
So without more ado,
He put on his surtout,
284

And went to a man with a beard like a Jew.
One Signor Ruggieri,
A Cunning-man near, he
Could conjure, tell fortunes, and calculate tides,
Perform tricks on the cards, and Heaven knows what besides,
Bring back a stray'd cow, silver ladle, or spoon,
And was thought to be thick with the Man in the Moon.
The Sage took his stand
With his wand in his hand,
Drew a circle, then gave the dread word of command,
Saying solemnly—“Presto!—Hey, quick!—Cock-alorum!!”
When the Duchess immediately popped up before 'em.
Just then a Conjunction of Venus and Mars,
Or something peculiar above in the stars,
Attracted the notice of Signor Ruggieri,
Who “bolted,” and left him alone with his deary.—
Monsieur St. Megrin went down on his knees,
And the Duchess shed tears large as marrow-fat peas,
When,—fancy the shock,—
A loud double-knock,
Made the Lady cry “Get up, you fool!—there's De Guise!”—
'Twas his Grace, sure enough;
So Monsieur, looking bluff,
Strutted by, with his hat on, and fingering his ruff,
While, unseen by either, away flew the Dame
Through the opposite key-hole, the same way she came;
But, alack! and alas!
A mishap came to pass,
In her hurry she, somehow or other, let fall
A new silk Bandana she'd worn as a shawl;
285

She had used it for drying
Her bright eyes while crying,
And blowing her nose, as her Beau talk'd of “dying!”
Now the Duke, who had seen it so lately adorn her,
And knew the great C with the Crown in the corner;
The instant he spied it smoked something amiss,
And said with some energy, “D---it! what's this?”
He went home in a fume,
And bounced into her room,
Crying, “So, Ma'am, I find I've some cause to be jealous;
Look here!—here's a proof you run after the fellows!
—Now take up that pen,—if it's bad choose a better,—
And write, as I dictate, this moment a letter
To Monsieur—you know who!”
The Lady look'd blue;
But replied with much firmness—“Hang me if I do!”
De Guise grasped her wrist
With his great bony fist,
And pinch'd it, and gave it so painful a twist,
That his hard, iron gauntlet the flesh went an inch in,—
She did not mind death, but she could not stand pinching;
So she sat down and wrote
This polite little note:—
“Dear Mister St. Megrin,
The Chiefs of the League in
Our house mean to dine
This evening at nine;
I shall, soon after ten,
Slip away from the men,
And you'll find me up stairs in the drawing-room then;
Come up the back way, or those impudent thieves
Of Servants will see you; Yours,
Catherine of Cleves.”
286

She directed and sealed it, all pale as a ghost,
And De Guise put it into the Twopenny Post.
St. Megrin had almost jumped out of his skin
For joy that day when the post came in;
He read the note through,
Then began it anew,
And thought it almost too good news to be true.—
He clapped on his hat,
And a hood over that,
With a cloak to disguise him, and make him look fat;
So great his impatience, from half after four
He was waiting till Ten at De Guise's back-door.
When he heard the great clock of St. Genevieve chime
He ran up the back staircase six steps at a time;
He had scare made his bow,
He hardly knew how,
When alas! and alack!
There was no getting back,
For the drawing-room door was bang'd to with a whack;—
In vain he applied
To the handle and tried,
Somebody or other had locked it outside!
And the Duchess in agony mourn'd her mishap,
“We are caught like a couple of rats in a trap.”
Now the Duchess's Page,
About twelve years of age,
For so little a boy was remarkably sage;
And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement,
Popp'd the Gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement.
But all would not do,—
Though St. Megrin got through
The window,—below stood De Guise and his crew,
287

And though never man was more brave than St. Megrin,
Yet fighting a score is extremely fatiguing;
He thrust carte and tierce
Uncommonly fierce,
But not Belzebub's self could their cuirasses pierce,
While his doublet and hose,
Being holiday clothes,
Were soon cut through and through from his knees to his nose.
Still an old crooked sixpence the Conjuror gave him
From pistol and sword was sufficient to save him,
But, when beat on his knees,
That confounded De Guise
Came behind with the “fogle” that caused all this breeze,
Whipp'd it tight round his neck, and, when backward he'd jerk'd him,
The rest of the rascals jump'd on him and Burk'd him.
The poor little Page too himself got no quarter, but
Was served the same way,
And was found the next day
With his heels in the air and his head in the water-butt.
Catherine of Cleves
Roar'd “Murder!” and “Thieves!”
From the window above
While they murder'd her love;
Till, finding the rogues had accomplish'd his slaughter,
She drank Prussic acid without any water,
And died like a Duke and a Duchess's daughter!

Moral.

Take warning, ye Fair, from this tale of the Bard's,
And don't go where fortunes are told on the cards!
But steer clear of Conjurors,—never put query
To “Wise Mrs. Williams,” or folks like Ruggieri.
288

When alone in your room shut the door close, and lock it;
Above all,—keep your handkerchief safe in your pocket!
Lest you too should stumble, and Lord Leveson Gower, he
Be call'd on,—sad poet!—to tell your sad story!
289

MR. BARNEY MAGUIRE'S ACCOUNT OF THE CORONATION.

[_]

Air—“The Groves of Blarney.”

Och! the Coronation! what celebration
For emulation can with it compare?
When to Westminster the Royal Spinster,
And the Duke of Leinster, all in order did repair!
'Twas there you'd see the New Polishemen
Making a skrimmage at half after four,
And the Lords and Ladies, and the Miss O'Gradys,
All standing round before the Abbey door.
Their pillows scorning, that self-same morning
Themselves adorning, all by the candle light,
With roses and lilies, and daffy-down-dillies,
And gould, and jewels, and rich di'monds bright.
And then approaches five hundred coaches,
With Giniral Dullbeak.—Och! 'twas mighty fine
To see how asy bould Corporal Casey,
With his swoord drawn, prancing, made them kape the line.
Then the Guns' alarums, and the King of Arums,
All in his Garters and his Clarence shoes,
Opening the massy doors to the bould Ambassydors,
The Prince of Potboys, and great haythen Jews;
290

'Twould have made you crazy to see Esterhazy
All jew'ls from jasey to his di'mond boots,
With Alderman Harmer, and that swate charmer,
The famale heiress, Miss Anj(a-)-ly Coutts.
And Wellington walking with his swoord drawn, talking
To Hill and Hardinge, haroes of great fame;
And Sir De Lacy, and the Duke Dalmasey,
(They call'd him Sowlt afore he changed his name,)
Themselves presading Lord Melbourne, lading
The Queen, the darling, to her Royal chair,
And that fine ould fellow, the Duke of Pell-Mello,
The Queen of Portingal's Chargy-de-fair.
Then the Noble Prussians, likewise the Russians,
In fine laced jackets with their goulden cuffs,
And the Bavarians, and the proud Hungarians,
And Everythingarians all in furs and muffs.
Then Misthur Spaker, with Misthur Pays the Quaker,
All in the Gallery you might persave,
But Lord Brougham was missing, and gone a fishing,
Ounly crass Lord Essex would not give him lave.
There was Baron Alten himself exalting,
And Prince Von Swartzenburg, and many more,
Och! I'd be bother'd, and entirely smother'd
To tell the half of 'em was to the fore;
With the swate Peeresses, in their crowns and dresses,
And Aldermanesses, and the Boord of Works;
But Mehemet Ali said, quite gintaly,
“I'd be proud to see the likes among the Turks!”
Then the Queen, Heaven bless her! och! they did dress her
In her purple garaments, and her goulden Crown;
291

Like Venus or Hebe, or the Queen of Sheby,
With eight young Ladies houlding up her gown.
Sure 'twas grand to see her, also for to he-ar
The big drums bating, and the trumpets blow,
And Sir George Smart! Oh! he play'd a Consarto,
With his four-and-twenty fidlers all on a row!
Then the Lord Archbishop held a goulden dish up,
For to resave her bounty and great wealth,
Saying “Plase your Glory, great Queen Vict-ory!
Ye'll give the Clargy lave to dhrink your health!”
Then his Riverence, retrating, discoorsed the mating,
“Boys! Here's your Queen! deny it if you can!
And if any bould traitour, or infarior craythur,
Sneezes at that, I'd like to see the man!”
Then the Nobles kneeling to the Pow'rs appealing,
“Heaven send your Majesty a glorious reign!”
And Sir Claudius Hunter he did confront her,
All in his scarlet gown and goulden chain.
The great Lord May'r, too, sat in his chair too,
But mighty sarious, looking fit to cry,
For the Earl of Surrey, all in his hurry
Throwing the thirteens, hit him in his eye.
Then there was preaching, and good store of speeching,
With Dukes and Marquises on bended knee;
And they did splash her with raal Macasshur,
And the Queen said, “Ah! then, thank ye all for me!”—
Then the trumpets braying, and the organ playing,
And sweet trombones with their silver tones,
But Lord Rolle was rolling;—'twas mighty consoling
To think his Lordship did not break his bones.
292

Then the crames and the custards, and the beef and mustard,
All on the tombstones like a poultherer's shop,
With lobsters and white-bait, and other swate-meats,
And wine, and nagus, and Imparial Pop!
There was cakes and apples in all the Chapels,
With fine polonies, and rich mellow pears,
Och! the Count Von Strogonoff, sure he got prog enough,
The sly ould Divil, underneath the stairs.
Then the cannons thunder'd, and the people wonder'd,
Crying, “God save Victoria, our Royal Queen!”
Och! if myself should live to be a hundred,
Sure it's the proudest day that I'll have seen!
And now I've ended, what I pretended,
This narration splendid in swate poe-thry,
Ye dear bewitcher, just hand the pitcher,
Faith, it's meself that's getting mighty dhry!
293

THE “MONSTRE” BALLOON.

Oh! the balloon, the great balloon!
It left Vauxhall one Monday at noon,
And every one said we should hear of it soon
With news from Aleppo or Scanderoon.
But very soon after, folks changed their tune:
“The netting had burst—the silk—the shalloon;
It had met with a trade-wind—a deuced monsoon—
It was blown out to sea—it was blown to the moon—
They ought to have put off their journey till June;
Sure none but a donkey, a goose, or baboon,
Would go up, in November, in any balloon!”
Then they talk'd about Green—“Oh! where's Mister Green?
And where's Mister Hollond who hired the machine?
And where is Monk Mason, the man that has been
Up so often before—twelve times or thirteen—
And who writes such nice letters describing the scene?
And where's the cold fowl, and the ham, and poteen?
The press'd beef, with the fat cut off—nothing but lean?
And the portable soup in the patent tureen?
Have they got to Grand Cairo? or reach'd Aberdeen?
Or Jerusalem—Hamburgh—or Ballyporeen?—
No! they have not been seen! Oh! they haven't been seen!”
Stay! here's Mister Gye—Mr. Frederick Gye.
“At Paris,” says he, “I've been up very high,
294

A couple of hundred of toises, or nigh,
A cockstride the Tuilleries' pantiles, to spy,
With Dollond's best telescope stuck at my eye,
And my umbrella under my arm like Paul Pry,
But I could see nothing at all but the sky;
So I thought with myself 'twas of no use to try
Any longer: and feeling remarkably dry
From sitting all day stuck up there, like a Guy,
I came down again, and—you see—here am I!”
But here's Mr. Hughes!—What says young Mr. Hughes?
“Why, I'm sorry to say, we've not got any news
Since the letter they threw down in one of their shoes,
Which gave the Mayor's nose such a deuce of a bruise,
As he popp'd up his eye-glass to look at their cruise
Over Dover; and which the folks flock'd to peruse
At Squier's bazaar, the same evening, in crews,
Politicians, newsmongers, town council, and blues,
Turks, heretics, infidels, jumpers, and Jews,
Scorning Bachelor's papers, and Warren's reviews;
But the wind was then blowing towards Helvoetsluys,
And my father and I are in terrible stews,
For so large a balloon is a sad thing to lose!”
Here's news come at last! Here's news come at last!
A vessel's come in, which has sail'd very fast;
And a gentleman serving before the mast,
Mister Nokes, has declared that “the party has past
Safe across to the Hague, where their grapnal they cast
As a fat burgomaster was staring aghast
To see such a monster come borne on the blast,
And it caught in his waistband, and there it stuck fast!”
295

Oh! fie! Mister Nokes,—for shame, Mister Nokes!
To be poking your fun at us plain-dealing folks—
Sir, this isn't a time to be cracking your jokes,
And such jesting, your malice but scurvily cloaks;
Such a trumpery tale every one of us smokes,
And we know very well your whole story's a hoax!
“Oh! what shall we do? Oh! where will it end?
Can nobody go? Can nobody send
To Calais—or Bergen-op-zoom—or Ostend?
Can't you go there yourself? Can't you write to a friend,
For news upon which we may safely depend?
Huzzah: huzzah! one and eight-pence to pay
For a letter from Hamborough, just come to say
They descended at Weilburg about break of day;
And they've lent them the palace there, during their stay,
And the town is becoming uncommonly gay,
And they're feasting the party, and soaking their clay
With Johannisberg, Rudesheim, Moselle, and Tokay;
And the landgraves, and margraves, and counts beg and pray
That they won't think, as yet, about going away;
Notwithstanding, they don't mean to make much delay,
But pack up the balloon in a waggon or dray,
And pop themselves into a German “po-shay,”
And get on to Paris by Lisle and Tournay;
Where they boldly declare, any wager they'll lay,
If the gas people there do not ask them to pay
Such a sum as must force them at once to say “Nay,”
They'll inflate the balloon in the Champs Elysées,
And be back again here, the beginning of May.
296

Dear me! what a treat for a juvenile fête!
What thousands will flock their arrival to greet!
There'll be hardly a soul to be seen in the street,
For at Vauxhall the whole population will meet,
And you'll scarcely get standing-room, much less a seat,
For this all preceding attraction must beat:
Since, there they'll unfold, what we want to be told,
How they cough'd, how they sneezed, how they shiver'd with cold,
How they tippled the “cordial,” as racy and old
As Hodges, or Deady, or Smith ever sold,
And how they all then felt remarkably bold:
How they thought the boil'd beef worth its own weight in gold;
And how Mister Green was beginning to scold
Because Mister Mason would try to lay hold
Of the moon, and had very near overboard roll'd.
And there they'll be seen—they'll be all to be seen!
The great-coats, the coffee-pot, mugs, and tureen!
With the tight-rope, and fire-works, and dancing between,
If the weather should only prove fair and serene,
And there, on a beautiful transparent screen,
In the middle you'll see a large picture of Green,
Mr. Hollond on one side, who hired the machine,
Mr. Mason on t' other, describing the scene;
And Fame, on one leg in the air, like a queen,
With three wreaths and a trumpet will over them lean;
While Envy, in serpents and black bombazine,
Looks on from below with an air of chagrin.
Then they'll play up a tune in the Royal Saloon,
And the people will dance by the light of the moon,
297

And keep up the ball till the next day at noon;
And the peer and the peasant, the lord and the loon,
The haughty grandee, and the low picaroon,
The six-foot life-guardsman, and little gossoon,
Will all join in three cheers for the “monstre” balloon.
299

HON. MR. SUCKLETHUMBKIN'S STORY.

THE EXECUTION. A SPORTING ANECDOTE.

My Lord Tomnoddy got up one day;
It was half after two,
He had nothing to do,
So his lordship rang for his cabriolet.
Tiger Tim
Was clean of limb,
His boots were polish'd, his jacket was trim;
With a very smart tie in his smart cravat,
And a smart cockade on the top of his hat;
Tallest of boys, or shortest of men,
He stood in his stockings just four foot ten;
And he ask'd, as he held the door on the swing,
“Pray, did your lordship please to ring?”
My Lord Tomnoddy he raised his head,
And thus to Tiger Tim he said,
“Malibran's dead,
Duvernay's fled,
Taglioni has not yet arrived in her stead;
Tiger Tim, come tell me true,
What may a Nobleman find to do?”
300

Tim look'd up, and Tim look'd down,
He paused, and he put on a thoughtful frown,
And he held up his hat, and he peep'd in the crown,
He bit his lip, and he scratch'd his head,
He let go the handle, and thus he said,
As the door, released, behind him bang'd,
“An't please you, my Lord, there's a man to be hang'd!”
My Lord Tomnoddy jump'd up at the news,
“Run to M`Fuze,
And Lieutenant Tregooze,
And run to Sir Carnaby Jenks, of the Blues.
Rope-dancers a score
I've seen before—
Madame Sacchi, Antonio, and Master Blackmore;
But to see a man swing
At the end of a string,
With his neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing!”
My Lord Tomnoddy stept into his cab—
Dark rifle green, with a lining of drab;
Through street, and through square,
His high-trotting mare,
Like one of Ducrow's, goes pawing the air.
Adown Piccadilly and Waterloo Place
Went the high-trotting mare at a very quick pace;
She produced some alarm,
But did no great harm,
Save frightening a nurse with a child on her arm,
Spattering with clay
Two urchins at play,
Knocking down—very much to the sweeper's dismay—
An old woman who wouldn't get out of the way,
301

And upsetting a stall
Near Exeter Hall,
Which made all the pious Church-Mission folks squall.
But eastward afar,
Through Temple Bar,
My Lord Tomnoddy directs his car;
Never heeding their squalls,
Or their calls, or their bawls,
He passes by Waithman's Emporium for shawls,
And, merely just catching a glimpse of St. Paul's,
Turns down the Old Bailey,
Where, in front of the gaol, he
Pulls up at the door of the gin-shop, and gaily
Cries, “What must I fork out to-night, my trump,
For the whole first-floor of the Magpie and Stump?”
The clock strikes Twelve—it is dark midnight—
Yet the Magpie and Stump is one blaze of light.
The parties are met;
The tables are set;
There is “punch,” “cold without,” “hot with” “heavy wet,”
Ale-glasses and jugs,
And rummers and mugs,
And sand on the floor, without carpets or rugs,
Cold fowl and cigars,
Pickled onions in jars,
Welsh rabbits and kidneys—rare work for the jaws!—
And very large lobsters, with very large claws;
And there is M`Fuze,
And Lieutenant Tregooze,
And there is Sir Carnaby Jenks of the Blues,
All come to see a man “die in his shoes!”
302

The clock strikes One!
Supper is done,
And Sir Carnaby Jenks is full of his fun,
Singing “Jolly companions every one!”
My Lord Tomnoddy
Is drinking gin-toddy,
And laughing at ev'ry thing, and ev'ry body.
The clock strikes Two!—and the clock strikes Three!
—“Who so merry, so merry as we?”
Save Captain M`Fuze,
Who is taking a snooze,
While Sir Carnaby Jenks is busy at work,
Blacking his nose with a piece of burnt cork.
The clock strikes Four!
Round the debtors' door
Are gathered a couple of thousand or more;
As many await
At the press-yard gate,
Till slowly its folding doors open, and straight
The mob divides, and between their ranks
A waggon comes loaded with posts and with planks.
The clock strikes Five!
The sheriffs arrive,
And the crowd is so great that the street seems alive;
But Sir Carnaby Jenks
Blinks, and winks,
A candle burns down in the socket, and stinks.
Lieutenant Tregooze
Is dreaming of Jews,
And acceptances all the bill-brokers refuse;
My Lord Tomnoddy
Has drunk all his toddy,
303

And just as the dawn is beginning to peep,
The whole of the party are fast asleep.
Sweetly, oh! sweetly, the morning breaks,
With roseate streaks,
Like the first faint blush on a maiden's cheeks;
Seem'd as that mild and clear blue sky
Smiled upon all things far and nigh,
On all—save the wretch condemned to die!
Alack! that ever so fair a Sun
As that which its course has now begun,
Should rise on such scene of misery!
Should gild with rays so light and free
That dismal, dark-frowning Gallows-tree!
And hark!—a sound comes, big with fate;
The clock from St. Sepulchre's tower strikes—Eight!—
List to that low funereal bell:
It is tolling, alas! a living man's knell!
And see!—from forth that opening door
They come—He steps that threshold o'er
Who never shall tread upon threshold more.
—God! 'tis a fearsome thing to see
That pale wan man's mute agony,
The glare of that wild despairing eye,
Now bent on the crowd, now turn'd to the sky,
As though 'twere scanning, in doubt and in fear,
The path of the Spirit's unknown career;
Those pinion'd arms, those hands that ne'er
Shall be lifted again,—not ev'n in prayer;
That heaving chest!—Enough—'tis done!
The bolt has fallen!—the Spirit is gone—
For weal or for woe is known but to One!—
Oh! 'twas a fearsome sight!—Ah me!
A deed to shudder at,—not to see.
304

Again that clock!—'tis time, 'tis time!
The hour is past:—with its earliest chime
The cord is severed, the lifeless clay
By “dungeon villains” is borne away:
Nine!—'twas the last concluding stroke!
And then—my Lord Tomnoddy awoke!
And Tregooze and Sir Carnaby Jenks arose,
And Captain M`Fuze, with the black on his nose;
And they stared at each other, as much as to say
“Hollo! Hollo!
Here's a Rum Go!
Why, Captain!—myLord!—Here's the Devil to pay!
The fellow's been cut down and taken away!
What's to be done?
We've missed all the fun!
Why, they'll laugh at, and quiz us all over the town,
We are all of us done so uncommonly brown!”
What was to be done?—'twas perfectly plain
That they could not well hang the man over again:—
What was to be done?—The man was dead!—
Nought could be done—nought could be said;
So—my Lord Tomnoddy went home to bed!
305

SOME ACCOUNT OF A NEW PLAY
[_]

IN A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW, LIEUT. SEAFORTH, H.P. LATE OF THE HON. E.I.C.'S 2D REGT. OF BOMBAY FENCIBLES.

“The play's the thing!”—Hamlet.
Tavistock Hotel, Nov. 1839.
Dear Charles,
—In reply to your letter, and Fanny's,
Lord Brougham, it appears, isn't dead,—though Queen Anne is;
'Twas a “plot” and a “farce”—you hate farces, you say—
Take another “plot,” then, viz. the plot of a Play.
The Countess of Arundel, high in degree,
As a lady possess'd of an earldom in fee,
Was imprudent enough at fifteen years of age,
A period of life when we're not over sage,
To form a liaison—in fact, to engage
Her hand to a Hop-o' my-thumb of a Page.
This put her Papa—
She had no Mamma—
As may well be supposed, in a deuce of a rage.
Mr. Benjamin Franklin was wont to repeat,
In his budget of proverbs, “Stolen Kisses are sweet;”
306

But they have their alloy—
Fate assumed, to annoy
Miss Arundel's peace, and embitter her joy,
The equivocal shape of a fine little Boy.
When, through “the young Stranger,” her secret took wind,
The Old Lord was neither “to haud nor to bind.”
He bounced up and down,
And so fearful a frown
Contracted his brow, you'd have thought he'd been blind.
The young lady, they say,
Having fainted away,
Was confined to her room for the whole of that day;
While her beau—no rare thing in the old feudal system—
Disappear'd the next morning, and nobody miss'd him.
The fact is, his Lordship, who hadn't, it seems,
Form'd the slightest idea, not ev'n in his dreams,
That the pair had been wedded according to law,
Conceived that his daughter had made a faux pas;
So he bribed at a high rate
A sort of a Pirate
To knock out the poor dear young Gentleman's brains,
And gave him a handsome douceur for his pains.
The Page thus disposed of, his Lordship now turns
His attention at once to the Lday's concerns;
And, alarm'd for the future,
Looks out for a suitor,
One not fond of raking, nor giv'n to “the pewter,”
But adapted to act both the husband and tutor;
Finds a highly respectable middle-aged widower,
Marries her off, and thanks Heaven that he's rid o' her.
307

Relieved from his cares,
The old Peer now prepares
To arrange in good earnest his worldly affiars;
Has his will made new by a Special Attorney,
Sickens, takes to his bed, and sets out on his journey.
Which way he travell'd
Has not been unravell'd;
To speculate much on the point were too curious,
If the climate he reach'd were serene or sulphureous.
To be sure in his balance-sheet all must declare
One item—The Page—was an awkward affair;
But, per contra, he'd lately endow'd a new Chantry
For Priests, with ten marks and the run of the pantry.
Be that as it may,
It's sufficient to say
That his tomb in the chancel stands there to this day,
Built of Bethersden marble, a dark bluish grey.
The figure, a fine one of pure alabaster,
A cleanly churchwarden has cover'd with plaster;
While some Vandal or Jew,
With a taste for virtu,
Has knock'd off his toes, to place, I suppose,
In some Pickwick Museum, with part of his nose;
From his belt and his sword
And his misericorde
The enamel's been chipp'd out, and never restored;
His ci-gît in old French is inscribed all around,
And his head's in his helm, and his heel's on his hound,
The palms of his hands, as if going to pray,
Are join'd and upraised o'er his bosom—But stay!
I forgot that his tomb's not described in the Play.
308

Lady Arundel, now in her own right a Peeress,
Perplexes her noddle with no such nice queries,
But produces in time, to her husband's great joy,
Another remarkably “fine little boy.”
As novel connections
Oft change the affections,
And turn all one's love into different directions,
Now to young “Johnny Newcome” she seems to confine hers,
Neglecting the poor little dear out at dry-nurse;
Nay, far worse than that,
She considers “the brat”
As a bore—fears her husband may smell out a rat.
As her legal adviser
She takes an old Miser,
A sort of “poor cousin.” She might have been wiser;
For this arrant deceiver,
By name Maurice Beevor,
A shocking old scamp, should her own issue fail,
By the law of the land stands the next in entail.
So, as soon as she ask'd him to hit on some plan
To provide for her eldest, away the rogue ran
To that self-same unprincipled sea-faring man;
In his ear whisper'd low —“Bully Gaussen” said “done!—
I Burked the papa, now I'll Bishop the son!”
'Twas agreed; and, with speed
To accomplish the deed,
He adopted a scheme he was sure would succeed.
By long cock-and-bull stories
Of Candish and Noreys,
Of Drake and bold Raleigh, then fresh in his glories,
Acquired 'mongst the Indians and Rapparee Tories,
309

He so work'd on the lad,
That he left, which was bad,
The only true friend in the world that he had,
Father Onslow, a priest, though to quit him most loth,
Who in childhood had furnish'd his pap and his broth.
At no small risk of scandal, indeed, to his cloth.
The kidnapping crimp
Took the foolish young imp
On board of his cutter so trim and so jimp,
Then, seizing him just as you'd handle a shrimp,
Twirl'd him thrice in the air with a whirligig motion,
And soused him at once neck and heels in the ocean.
This was off Plymouth Sound,
And he must have been drown'd,
For 'twas nonsense to think he could swim to dry ground,
If “A very great Warman,
Call'd Billy the Norman,”
Had not just at that moment sail'd by, outward bound.
A shark of great size,
With his great glassy eyes,
Sheer'd off as he came, and relinquish'd the prize;
So he pick'd up the lad, swabb'd, and dry-rubb'd, and mopp'd him,
And, having no children, resolved to adopt him.
310

Full many a year
Did he hand, reef, and steer,
And by no means consider'd himself as small beer,
When old Norman at length died and left him his frigate,
With lots of pistoles in his coffers to rig it.
A sailor ne'er moans;
So, consigning the bones
Of his friend to the locker of one Mr. Jones,
For England he steers.—
On the voyage it appears
That he rescued a maid from the Dey of Algiers;
And at length reached the Sussex coast, where in a bay,
Not a great way from Brighton, most cosey-ly lay
His vessel at anchor, the very same day
That the Poet begins,—thus commening his play.
 

An incident very like one in Jack Sheppard, A work some have lauded and others have pepper'd, Where a Dutch pirate kidnaps and tosses Thames Darrell Just so in the sea, and he's saved by a barrel,— On the coast, if I recollect rightly, it's flung whole, And the hero, half-drown'd, scrambles out of the bung-hole. [It aint no sich thing!—the hero aint bung'd in no barrel at all. He's picked up by a Captain, jest as Norman was arterwards.—Print. Dev.]

ACT I.

Giles Gaussen accosts old Sir Maurice de Beevor,
And puts the poor Knight in a deuce of a fever,
By saying the boy, whom he took out to please him,
Is come back a Captain on purpose to tease him.—
Sir Maurice, who gladly would see Mr. Gaussen
Breaking stones on the highway, or sweeping a crossing,
Dissembles—observes, It's of no use to fret,—
And hints he may find some more work for him yet;
Then calls at the castle, and tells Lady A.
That the boy they had ten years ago sent away
Is return'd a grown man, and, to come to the point,
Will put her son Percy's nose clean out of joint;
But adds, that herself she no longer need vex,
If she'll buy him (Sir Maurice) a farm near the Ex.
“Oh! take it,” she cries; “but secure every document.”—
“A bargain,” says Maurice,—“including the stock you meant?”
311

The Captain, meanwhile,
With a lover-like smile,
And a fine cambric handkerchief, wipes off the tears
From Miss Violet's eyelash, and hushes her fears.
(That's the Lady he saved from the Dey of Algiers.)
Now arises a delicate point, and this is it—
The young lady herself is but down on a visit.
She's perplex'd; and, in fact,
Does not know how to act.
It's her very first visit—and then to begin
By asking a stranger—a gentleman, in—
One with mustaches too—and a tuft on his chin—
She “really don't know—
He had much better go,”
Here the Countess steps in from behind, and says “No!—
Fair sir, you are welcome. Do, pray, stop and dine—
You will take our pot-luck—and we've decentish wine.”
He bows,—looks at Violet,—and does not decline.

ACT II.

After dinner the Captain recounts, with much glee,
All he's heard, seen and done, since he first went to sea,
All his perils, and scrapes,
And his hair-breadth escapes,
Talks of boa-constrictors, and lions, and apes,
And fierce “Begnal Tigers,” like that which you know,
If you've ever seen any respectable “Show,”
“Carried off the unfortunate Mr. Munro.”
Then, diverging a while, he adverts to the mystery
Which hangs, like a cloud, o'er his own private history—
How he ran off to sea—how they set him afloat,
(Not a word, though, of barrel or bung hole—See Note)
How he happen'd to meet
With the Algerine fleet,
312

And forced them by sheer dint of arms to retreat,
Thus saving his Violet—(One of his feet
Here just touched her toe, and she moved on her seat,)—
How his vessel was batter'd—
In short, he so chatter'd,
Now lively, now serious, so ogled and flatter'd,
That the ladies much marvell'd a person should be able,
To “make himself,” both said, “so very agreeable.”
Captain Norman's adventures were scarcely half done,
When Percy Lord Ashdale, her ladyship's son,
In a terrible fume,
Bounces into the room,
And talks to his guest as you'd talk to a groom,
Claps his hand on his rapier, and swears he'll be through him—
The Captain does nothing at all but “pooh! pooh!” him.
Unable to smother
His hate of his brother,
He rails at his cousin, and blows up his mother.
“Fie! fie!” says the first. Says the latter, “In sooth,
This is sharper by far than a keen serpent's tooth!”
(A remark, by the way, which King Lear had made years ago,
When he ask'd for his Knights, and his Daughter said “Here's a go!')
This made Ashdale ashamed;
But he must not be blamed
Too much for his warmth, for, like many young fellows, he
Was apt to lose temper when tortured by jealousy.
Still speaking quite gruff,
He goes off in a huff;
Lady A., who is now what some call “up to snuff,”
313

Straight determines to patch
Up a clandestine match
Between the Sea-Captain she dreads like Old Scratch,
And Miss, whom she does not think any great catch
For Ashdale; besides, he won't kick up such shindies
Were she once fairly married and off to the Indies.

ACT III.

Miss Violet takes from the Countess her tone;
She agrees to meet Norman “by moonlight alone,”
And slip off to his bark,
“The night being dark,”
Though “the moon,” the Sea-Captain says, rises in Heaven
“One hour before midnight,”—i.e. at eleven.
From which speech I infer,
—Though perhaps I may err—
That, though weatherwise, doubtless, midst surges and surf, he
When “capering on shore,” was by no means a Murphy.
He starts off, however, at sunset to reach
An old chapel in ruins, that stands on the beach,
Where the Priest is to bring, as he's promised by letter, a
Paper to prove his name, “birthright,” &c.
Being rather too late,
Gaussen, lying in wait,
Has just given Father Onslow a knock on the pate,
But bolts, seeing Norman, before he has wrested
From the hand of the Priest, as Sir Maurice requested,
The marriage certificate duly attested.
Norman kneels by the clergyman fainting and gory,
And begs he won't die till he's told him his story;
314

The Father complies,
Re-opens his eyes,
And tells him all how and about it—and dies!

ACT IV.

Norman, alias Le Mesnil, instructed of all,
Goes back, though it's getting quite late for a call,
Hangs his hat and his cloak on a peg in the hall,
And tells the proud Countess it's useless to smother
The fact any longer—he knows she's his mother!
His Pa's wedded Spouse,—
She questions his vovy,
And threatens to have him turn'd out of the house.
He still perseveres,
Till, in spite of her fears,
She admits he's the son she had cast off for years,
And he gives her the papers “all blister'd with tears,”
When Ashdale, who chances his nose in to poke,
Takes his hat and his cloak,
Just as if in a joke,
Determined to put in his wheel a new spoke,
And slips off thus disguised, when he sees by the dial it
's time for the rendezvous fix'd with Miss Violet.
—Captain Norman, who, after all, feels rather sore
At his mother's reserve, vows to see her no more,
Rings the bell for the servant to open the door,
And leaves his Mamma in a fit on the floor.

ACT V.

Now comes the Catastrophe—Ashdale, who's wrapt in
The cloak, with the hat and the plume of the Captain,
Leads Violet down through the grounds to the chapel,
Where Gaussen's concealed—he springs forward to grapple
The man he's erroneously led to suppose
Captain Norman himself, by the cut of his clothes.
315

In the midst of their strife,
And just as the knife
Of the Pirate is raised to deprive him of life,
The Captain comes forward, drawn there by the squeals
Of the Lady, and, knocking Giles head over heels,
Fractures his “nob,”
Saves the hangman a job,
And executes justice most strictly, the rather,
'Twas the spot where the rascal had murder'd his father
Then in comes the mother,
Who, finding one brother
Had the instant before saved the life of the other,
Explains the whole case.
Ashdale puts a good face
On the matter; and since he's obliged to give place,
Yields his coronet up with a pretty good grace;
Norman vows he won't have it—the kinsmen embrace,—
And the Captain, the first in this generous race,
To remove every handle
For gossip and scandal,
Sets the whole of the papers alight with the candle;
An arrangement takes place—on the very same night, all
Is settled and done, and the points the most vital
Are, N. takes the personals; A., in requital,
Keeps the whole real property, Mansion, and Title.
V. falls to the share of the Captain, and tries a
Sea-voyage as a Bride in the “Royal Eliza.”
Both are pleased with the part they acquire as joint heirs,
And old Maurice Beevor is bundled down stairs!

MORAL.

The public, perhaps, with the drama might quarrel
If deprived of all epilogue, prologue, and moral,
This may serve for all three then:—
316

“Young Ladies of property,
Let Lady A.'s history serve as a stopper t' ye;
Don't wed with low people beneath your degree,
And if you've a baby, don't send it to sea!
“Young Noblemen! shun every thing like a brawl;
And be sure when you dine out, or go to ball,
Don't take the best hat that you find in the hall,
And leave one in its stead that's worth nothing at all!
“Old Knights, don't give bribes! above all, never urge a man
To steal people's things, or to stick an old Clergyman!
“And you, ye Sea-Captains! who've nothing to do
But to run round the world, fight, and drink till all's blue,
And tell us tough yarns, and then swear they are true,
Reflect, notwithstanding your sea-faring life,
That you can't get on well long, without you've a wife;
So get one at once, treat her kindly and gently,
Write a Nautical novel,—and send it to Bentley!”
317

MR. PETERS'S STORY.

THE BAGMAN'S DOG.

Stant littore Puppies!—Virgil.

It was a litter, a litter of five,
Four are drown'd and one left alive,
He was thought worthy alone to survive;
And the Bagman resolved upon bringing him up,
To eat of his bread, and to drink of his cup,
He was such a dear little cock-tail'd pup.
The Bagman taught him many a trick;
He would carry and fetch, and run after a stick,
Could well understand
The word of command,
And appear to doze
With a crust on his nose,
Till the Bagman permissively waved his hand:
Then to throw up and catch it he never would fail,
As he sat up on end, on his little cock-tail.
Never was puppy so bien instruit,
Or possess'd of such natural talent as he;
And as he grew older,
Every beholder
Agreed he grew handsomer, sleeker, and bolder.—
Time, however, his wheels we may clog,
Wends steadily still with onward jog,
And the cock-tail'd puppy's a curly-tail'd dog!
318

When just at the time,
He was reaching his prime,
And all thought he'd be turning out something sublime,
One unlucky day,
How, no one could say,
Whether some soft liaison induced him to stray,
Or some kidnapping vagabond coax'd him away,
He was lost to the view
Like the morning dew;
He had been, and was not—that's all that they knew;
And the Bagman storm'd, and the Bagman swore,
As never a Bagman had sworn before;
But storming or swearing but little avails,
To recover lost dogs with great curly tails.—
In a large paved court, close by Billiter Square,
Stands a mansion old, but in thorough repair,
The only strange thing, from the general air
Of its size and appearance, is, how it got there;
In front is a short semicircular stair
Of stone steps,—some half score,—
Then you reach the ground floor,
With a shell-pattern'd architrave over the door.
It is spacious, and seems to be built on the plan
Of a Gentleman's house in the reign of Queen Anne;
Which is odd, for although,
As we very well know,
Under Tudors and Stuarts the City could show
Many Noblemen's seats above Bridge and below,
Yet that fashion soon after induced them to go
From St. Michael Cornhill, and St. Mary le Bow,
To St. James, and St. George, and St. Anne in Soho.
Be this as it may, at the date I assign
To my tale,—that's about Seventeen Sixty Nine,—
319

This mansion, now rather upon the decline,
Had less dignified owners, belonging in fine,
To Turner, Dry, Weipersyde, Rogers, and Pyne,
A respectable House in the Manchester line.
There were a score
Of Bagmen and more,
Who had travell'd full oft for the firm before;
But just at this period they wanted to send
Some person on whom they could safely depend,
A trustworthy body, half agent, half friend,
On some mercantile matter as far as Ostend;
And the person they pitch'd on, was Anthony Blogg,
A grave steady man not addicted to grog,—
The Bagman, in short, who had lost this great dog.
“The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!—
That is the place where we all wish to be,
Rolling about on it merrily!”
So all sing and say,
By night and by day,
In the boudoir, the street, at the concert, and play,
In a sort of coxcombical roundelay;
You may roam through the City, transversely or straight,
From Whitechapel turnpike to Cumberland gate,
And every young Lady who thrums a guitar,
Ev'ry mustachio'd Shopman who smokes a cigar,
With affected devotion,
Promulgates his notion,
Of being a “Rover” and “child of the Ocean”—
Whate'er their age, sex, or condition may be,
They all of them long for the “Wide, Wide Sea.”
But, however they dote,
Only set them afloat
In any craft bigger at all than a boat,
320

Take them down to the Nore
And you'll see that before
The “Wessel” they “Woyage” in has half made her way
Between Shell-Ness Point and the pier at Herne Bay,
Let the wind meet the tide in the slightest degree,
They'll be all of them heartily sick of “the Sea.”
I've stood in Margate, on a bridge of size
Inferior far to that described by Byron,
Where “palaces and pris'ns on each hand rise,—”
That too's a stone one, this is made of iron—
And little donkey-boys your steps environ,
Each proffering for your choice his tiny hack,
Vaunting its excellence; and should you hire one,
For sixpence, will he urge, with frequent thwack,
The much-enduring beast to Buenos Ayres and back.
And there, on many a raw and gusty day,
I've stood and turn'd my gaze upon the pier,
And seen the crews, that did embark so gay
That self-same morn, now disembark so queer;
Then to myself I've sigh'd and said, “Oh dear!
Who would believe yon sickly looking man's a
London Jack Tar,—a Cheapside Buccaneer!—”
But hold my Muse! for this terrific stanza,
Is all too stiffly grand for our Extravaganza.
“So now we'll go up, up, up,
And now we'll go down, down, down,
And now we'll go backwards and forwards,
And now we'll go roun' roun' roun'.”
I hope you've sufficient discernment to see,
Gentle Reader, that here the discarding the d,
321

Is a fault which you must not attribute to me;
Thus my Nurse cut it off when, “with counterfeit glee,”
She sung, as she danced me about on her knee,
In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and three:
All I mean to say is that the Muse is now free
From the self-imposed trammels put on by her betters,
And no longer like Filch, midst the felons and debtors
At Drury Lane, dances her hornpipe in fetters.
Resuming her track,
At once she goes back,
To our hero the Bagman — Alas! and Alack!
Poor Anthony Blogg
Is as sick as a dog,
Spite of sundry unwonted potations of grog,
By the time the Dutch packet is fairly at sea,
With the sands called the Goodwin's a league on her lee.
And now, my good friends, I've a fine opportunity
To obfuscate you all by sea terms with impunity,
And talking of “caulking”
And “quarter deck walking,”
“Fore and aft,”
And “abaft”
“Hookers,” “barkeys,” and “craft,”
(At which Mr. Poole has so wickedly laught,)
Of binnacles,—bilboes,—the boom called the spanker,
The best bower cable,—the jib,—and sheet anchor;
Of lower-deck guns,—and of broadsides and chases,
Of taffrails and topsails, and splicing main-braces,
And “Shiver my timbers!” and other odd phrases
Employ'd by old pilots with hard-featured faces;
Of the expletives seafaring Gentlemen use,
The allusions they make to the eyes of their crews,
How the Sailors too swear,
How they cherish their hair,
322

And what very long pigtails a great many wear.—
But, Reader, I scorn it — the fact is, I fear,
To be candid, I can't make these matters so clear
As Marryat, or Cooper, or Captain Chamier,
Or Sir E. Lytton Bulwer, who brought up the rear
Of the “Nauticals,” just at the end of last year,
With a well written preface, to make it appear
That his play, the Sea-Captain, 's by no means Small beer;—
There!—“broughtup the rear”—you see there's a mistake
Which not one of the authors I've mentioned would make,
I ought to have said, that he “sail'd in their wake.”—
So I'll merely observe, as the water grew rougher
The more my poor hero continued to suffer,
Till the Sailors themselves cried in pity, “Poor Buffer!”
Still rougher it grew,
And still harder it blew,
And the thunder kick'd up such a halliballoo,
That even the Skipper began to look blue;
While the crew, who were few,
Look'd very queer too,
And seem'd not to know what exactly to do,
And they who'd the charge of them wrote in the logs,
“Wind N.E.—blows a hurricane,—rains cats and dogs.”
In short it soon grew to a tempest as rude as
That Shakspeare describes near the “still vext Bermudas,”
When the winds, in their sport,
Drove aside from its port
The King's ship, with the whole Neapolitan Court,
And swamp'd it to give “the King's Son, Ferdinand,” a
Soft moment or two with the Lady Miranda,
323

While her Pa met the rest, and severely rebuked 'em
For unhandsomely doing him out of his Dukedom.
You don't want me however to paint you a Storm,
As so many have done and in colours so warm;
Lord Byron, for instance, in manner facetious,
Mr. Ainsworth more gravely,—see also Lucretius,
A writer who gave me no trifling vexation
When a youngster at school on Dean Colet's foundation.
Suffice it to say
That the whole of that day,
And the next, and the next, they were scudding away
Quite out of their course,
Propelled by the force
Of those flatulent folks known in Classical story as
Aquilo, Libs, Notus, Auster, and Boreas;
Driven quite at their mercy
Twixt Guernsey and Jersey,
Till at length they came bump on the rocks and the shallows,
In West longitude, one, fifty seven, near St. Maloes;
There you'll not be surprized
That the vessel capsized,
Or that Blogg, who had made, from intestine commotions,
His specifical gravity less than the Ocean's,
Should go floating away,
Midst the surges and spray,
Like a cork in a gutter, which, swoln by a shower,
Runs down Holborn hill about nine knots an hour.
You've seen, I've no doubt, at Bartholomew fair,
Gentle Reader,—that is if you've ever been there,—
With their hands tied behind them, some two or three pair
Of boys round a bucket set up on a chair,
Skipping, and dipping
Eyes, nose, chin, and lip in,
324

Their faces and hair with the water all dripping,
In an anxious attempt to catch hold of a pippin,
That bobs up and down in the water whenever
They touch it, as mocking the fruitless endeavour;
Exactly as Poets say,—how though they can't tell us,—
Old Nick's Nonpareils play at bob with poor Tantalus.
—Stay—I'm not clear,
But I'm rather out here;
'Twas the water itself that slipp'd from him, I fear;
Faith, I can't recollect—and I haven't Lempriere.
No matter,—poor Blogg went on ducking and bobbing,
Sneezing out the salt water, and gulping and sobbing,
Just as Clarence, in Shakspeare, describes all the qualms he
Experienced while dreaming they'd drown'd him in Malmsey.
“O Lord, he thought, what pain it was to drown!”
And saw great fishes, with great goggling eyes
Glaring, as he was bobbing up and down,
And looking as they thought him quite a prize,
When, as he sank, and all was growing dark,
A something seized him with its jaws!—A Shark?
No such thing, Reader:—most opportunely for Blogg,
T'was a very large web-footed curly-tail'd Dog!
 
Since penning this stanza, a learn'd Antiquary
Has put my poor Muse in no trifling quandary,
By writing an essay to prove that he knows a
Spot which, in truth, is
The real “Bermoothes,”
In the Mediterranean,—now called Lampedosa;
For proofs, having made, as he farther alleges, stir,
An entry was found in the old Parish Register,
The which at his instance the excellent Vicar extracted:
viz. “Caliban, base son of Sycorax.”—
—He had rather by half
Have found Prospero's “Staff;”
But twas useless to dig, for the want of a pick or axe.—
Colonel Paisley, however, 'tis everywhere said,
When he's blown up the whole Royal George at Spit-head,
Takes his new apparatus, and goes out to look
And see if he can't try and blow up “the Book.”—
—Gentle Reader, farewell!—If I add one more line,
He'll be, in all likelihood, blowing up mine!
I'm not much of a trav'ler, and really can't boast
That I know a great deal of the Brittany coast,
But I've often heard say
That, e'en to this day,
The people of Granville, St. Maloes, and thereabout
Are a class that Society doesn't much care about,
Men who gain their subsistence by contraband dealing,
And a mode of abstraction strict people call “stealing;”
325

Notwithstanding all which, they are civil of speech,
Above all to a Stranger who comes within reach;
And they were so to Blogg,
When the curly-tail'd Dog
At last dragg'd him out, high and dry on the beach.
But we all have been told
By the proverb of old,
By no means to think “all that glitters is gold;”
And, in fact, some advance
That most people in France
Join the manners and air of a Maître de Danse,
To the morals—(as Johnson of Chesterfield said)—
Of an elderly Lady, in Babylon bred,
Much addicted to flirting and dressing in red.—
Be this as it might,
It embarrass'd Blogg quite
To find those about him so very polite.
A suspicious observer perhaps might have traced
The petites soins, tender'd with so much good taste,
To the sight of an old fashion'd pocket-book, placed
In a black leather belt well secured round his waist,
And a ring set with diamonds, his finger that graced,
So brilliant, no one could have guess'd they were paste.
The group on the shore
Consisted of four;
You will wonder perhaps, there were not a few more;
But the fact is they've not, in that part of the nation,
What Malthus would term, a “too dense population,”
Indeed the sole sign there of man's habitation
Was merely a single
Rude hut, in a dingle
That led away inland direct from the shingle,
Its sides clothed with underwood, gloomy and dark,
Some two hundred yards above high-water mark;
326

And thither the party,
So cordial and hearty,
Viz. an old man, his wife, and two lads make a start, he,
The Bagman, proceeding,
With equal good breeding,
To express, in indifferent French, all he feels,
The great curly-tail'd Dog keeping close to his heels.
They soon reach'd the hut, which seem'd partly in ruin,
All the way bowing, chattering, shrugging, Mon-Dieuing,
Grimacing, and what Sailors call parley-vooing.
Is it Paris or Kitchener, Reader, exhorts
You, whenever your stomach's at all out of sorts,
To try, if you find richer viands wont stop in it,
A basin of good mutton broth with a chop in it?
(Such a basin and chop as I once heard a witty one
Call, at the Garrick “a c—d Committee one,”
An expression, I own, I do not think a pretty one.)
However it's clear
That, with sound table beer,
Such a mess as I speak of is very good cheer;
Especially too
When a person's wet through,
And is hungry, and tired, and don't know what to do.
Now just such a mess of delicious hot pottage
Was smoking away when they enter'd the cottage,
And casting a truly delicious perfume
Through the whole of an ugly, old, ill-furnish'd room;
“Hot, smoking hot,”
On the fire was a pot
Well replenish'd, but really I can't say with what;
For, famed as the French always are for ragouts,
No creature can tell what they put in their stews,
327

Whether bull-frogs, old gloves, or old wigs, or old shoes;
Notwithstanding, when offer'd I rarely refuse,
Any more than poor Blogg did, when, seeing the reeky
Repast placed before him, scarce able to speak, he
In ecstacy mutter'd “By Jove, Cocky-leeky!”
In an instant, as soon
As they gave him a spoon,
Every feeling and faculty bent on the gruel, he
No more blamed Fortune for treating him cruelly,
But fell tooth and nail on the soup and the bouilli.
Meanwhile that old man standing by,
Subducted his long coat tails on high,
With his back to the fire, as if to dry
A part of his dress which the watery sky
Had visited rather inclemently.
Blandly he smiled, but still he look'd sly,
And a something sinister lurk'd in his eye.
Indeed had you seen him, his maritime dress in,
You'd have own'd his appearance was not prepossessing,
He'd a “dreadnought” coat, and heavy sabots
With thick wooden soles turn'd up at the toes,
His nether man cased in a striped quelque chose,
And a hump on his back, and a great hook'd nose,
So that nine out of ten would be led to suppose
That the person before them was Punch in plain clothes.
Yet still, as I told you, he smiled on all present,
And did all that lay in his power to look pleasant.
The old woman too
Made a mighty ado,
Helping her guest to a deal of the stew;
She fish'd up the meat, and she help'd him to that,
She help'd him to lean, and she help'd him to fat,
And it look'd like Hare — but it might have been Cat.
328

The little garçons too strove to express,
Their sympathy towards the “Child of distress”
With a great deal of juvenile French politesse;
But the Bagman bluff
Continued to “stuff”
Of the fat, and the lean, and the tender and tough,
Till they thought he would never cry “Hold, enough!”
And the old woman's tones became far less agreeable,
Sounding like peste! and sacre! and diable!
I've seen an old saw which is well worth repeating,
That says,
“Goode Eatynge
Deservyth goode Drynkynge.”
You'll find it so printed by Carton, or Wynkyn,
And a very good proverb it is to my thinking.
Blogg thought so too;—
As he finished his stew,
His ear caught the sound of the word “Morbleu!”
Pronounced by the old woman under her breath.
Now, not knowing what she could mean by “Blue Death!”
He concieved she referr'd to a delicate brewing
Which is almost synonymous,—namely “Blue Ruin.”
So he pursed up his lip to a smile, and with glee,
In his cockneyfy'd accent, responded “Oh, Vee!”
Which made her understand he
Was asking for brandy;
So she turn'd to the cupboard, and, having some handy,
Produced, rightly deeming he would not object to it,
An orbicular bulb with a very long neck to it;
In fact you perceive her mistake, was the same as his,
Each of them “reasoning right from wrong premises;”
And here, by the way,
Allow me to say
—Kind Reader, you sometimes permit me to stray—
329

'Tis strange the French prove, when they take to aspersing,
So inferior to us in the science of cursing:
Kick a Frenchman down stairs,
How absurdly he swears!
And how odd 'tis to hear him, when beat to a jelly,
Roar out in a passion, “Blue Death!” and “Blue Belly!”—
“To return to our sheep” from this little digression:—
Blogg's features assumed a complacent expression
As he emptied his glass, and she gave him a fresh one;
Too little he heeded
How fast they succeeded.
Perhaps you or I might have done, though, as he did;
For when once Madam Fortune deals out her hard raps,
It's amazing to think
How one “cottons” to drink!
At such times, of all things in nature, perhaps,
There's not one that's half so seducing as Schnaps.
Mr. Blogg, beside being uncommonly dry,
Was, like most other Bagmen, remarkably shy,
—“Did not like to deny”—
—“Felt obliged to comply”—
Every time that she ask'd him to “wet t' other eye;”
For 'twas worthy remark that she spared not the stoup,
Though before she had seem'd so to grudge him the soup.
At length the fumes rose
To his brain; and his nose
Gave hints of a strong disposition to doze,
And a yearning to seek “horizontal repose.”
His queer-looking host,
Who, firm at his post,
During all the long meal had continued to toast
330

That garment 'twere rude to
Do more than allude to,
Perceived, from his breathing and nodding, the views
Of his guest were directed to “taking a snooze:”
So he caught up a lamp in his huge dirty paw,
With (as Blogg used to tell it) “Mounseer, swivvy maw!”
And “marshalled” him so
“The way he should go,”
Upstairs to an attic, large, gloomy, and low,
Without table or chair,
Or a moveable there,
Save an old-fashion'd bedstead, much out of repair,
That stood at the end most removed from the stair.—
With a grain and a shrug
The host points to the rug,
Just as much as to say, “There!—I think you'll be snug!”
Puts the light on the floor,
Walks to the door,
Makes a formal Salaam, and is then seen no more;
When, just as the ear lost the sound of his tread,
To the Bagman's surprise, and, at first, to his dread,
The great curly-tail'd Dog crept from under the bed!
It's a very nice thing when a man's in a fright,
And thinks matters all wrong, to find matters all right;
As, for instance, when going home late-ish at night
Through a Churchyard, and seeing a thing all in white,
Which, of course, one is led to consider a Sprite,
To find that the Ghost
Is merely a post,
Or a miller, or chalky-faced donkey at most;
Or, when taking a walk as the evenings begin
To close, or, as some people call it, “draw in,”
331

And some undefined form, “looming large” through the haze,
Presents itself, right in your path, to your gaze,
Inducing a dread
Of a knock on the head,
Or a sever'd carotid, to find that, instead
Of one of those ruffians who murder and fleece men,
It's your Uncle, or one of the “Rural Policemen;”
Then the blood flows again
Through artery and vein;
You're delighted with what just before gave you pain;
You laugh at your fears—and your friend in the fog
Meets a welcome as cordial as Anthony Blogg
Now bestow'd on his friend—the great curly-tail'd Dog.
For the Dog leap'd up, and his paws found a place
On each side his neck in a canine embrace,
And he lick'd Blogg's hands, and he lick'd his face,
And he waggled his tail as much as to say,
“Mr. Blogg, we've foregather'd before to-day!”
And the Bagman saw, as he now sprang up,
What beyond all doubt
He might have found out
Before, had he not been so eager to sup,
'Twas Sancho!—the Dog he had rear'd from a pup!
The Dog who when sinking had seized his hair,—
The Dog who had saved, and conducted him there,—
The Dog he had lost out of Billiter Square!!
It's passing sweet,
An absolute treat,
When friends, long sever'd by distance, meet,—
With what warmth and affection each other they greet!
332

Especially, too, as we very well know,
If there seems any chance of a little cadeau,
A “Present from Brighton,” or “Token,” to show,
In the shape of a work-box, ring, bracelet, or so,
That our friends don't forget us, although they may go
To Ramsgate, or Rome, or Fernando Po.
If some little advantage seems likely to start,
From a fifty-pound note to a two-penny tart,
It's surprising to see how it softens the heart,
And you'll find those whose hopes from the other are strongest,
Use, in common, endearments the thickest and longest.
But it was not so here;
For although it is clear,
When abroad, and we have not a single friend near,
E'en a cur that will love us becomes very dear,
And the balance of interest 'twixt him and the Dog
Of course was inclining to Anthony Blogg,
Yet he, first of all, ceased
To encourage the beast,
Perhaps thinking “Enough is as good as a feast;”
And besides, as we've said, being sleepy and mellow,
He grew tired of patting, and crying “Poor fellow!”
So his smile by degrees harden'd into a frown,
And his “That's a good dog!” into “Down, Sancho! down!”
But nothing could stop his mute fav'rite's caressing,
Who, in fact, seem'd resolved to prevent his undressing,
Using paws, tail, and head,
As if he had said,
“Most beloved of masters, pray, don't go to bed;
You had much better sit up and pat me instead!”
333

Nay, at last, when, determined to take some repose,
Blogg threw himself down on the outside the clothes,
Spite of all he could do,
The Dog jump'd up too,
And kept him awake with his very cold nose;
Scratching and whining,
And moaning and pining,
Till Blogg really believed he must have some design in
Thus breaking his rest; above all, when at length
The Dog scratch'd him off from the bed by sheer strength.
Extremely annoy'd by the “tarnation whop,” as it
's call'd in Kentuck, on his head and its opposite,
Blogg show'd fight;
When he saw, by the light
Of the flickering candle, that had not yet quite
Burnt down in the socket, though not over bright,
Certain dark-colour'd stains, as of blood newly spilt,
Revealed by the dog's having scratch'd off the quilt,
Which hinted a story of horror and guilt!
'Twas “no mistake,”—
He was “wide awake”
In an instant; for, when only decently drunk,
Nothing sobers a man so completely as “funk.”
And hark!—what's that?—
They have got into chat
In the kitchen below—what the deuce are they at?—
There's the ugly old Fisherman scolding his wife—
And she!—by the Pope! she's whetting a knife!—
At each twist
Of her wrist,
And her great mutton fist,
334

The edge of the weapon sounds shriller and louder!—
The fierce kitchen fire
Had not made Blogg perspire
Half so much, or a dose of the best James's powder.—
It ceases — all's silent! — and now, I declare
There's somebody crawls up that rickety stair!
The horrid old ruffian comes, cat-like, creeping;
He opens the door just sufficient to peep in,
And sees, as he fancies, the Bagman sleeping!
For Blogg, when he'd once ascertain'd that there was some
“Precious mischief” on foot, had resolved to “play 'Possum:”—
Down he went, legs and head,
Flat on the bed,
Apparently sleeping as sound as the dead;
While, though none who look'd at him would think such a thing,
Every nerve in his frame was braced up for a spring.
Then, just as the villain
Crept, stealthily still, in,
And you'd not have insured his guest's life for a shilling,
As the knife gleam'd on high, bright and sharp as a razor,
Blogg, starting upright, “tipped” the fellow “a facer:”
Down went man and weapon.—Of all sorts of blows,
From what Mr. Jackson reports, I suppose
There are few that surpass a flush hit on the nose.
Now, had I the pen of old Ossian or Homer,
(Though each of these names some pronounce a misnomer,
And say the first person
Was called James M`Pherson,
335

While, as to the second, they stoutly declare
He was no one knows who, and born no one knows where,)
Or had I the quill of Pierce Egan, a writer
Acknowledged the best theoretical fighter
For the last twenty years,
By the lively young Peers,
Who, doffing their coronets, collars, and ermines, treat
Boxers to “Max,” at the One Tun in Jermyn Street;—
—I say, could I borrow these Gentlemen's Muses,
More skill'd than my meek one in “fibbings” and bruises,
I'd describe now to you
As “prime a Set-to,”
And “regular turn-up,” as ever you knew;
Not inferior in “bottom” to aught you have read of
Since Cribb, years ago, half knock'd Molyneux' head off.
But my dainty Urania says, “Such things are shocking!”
Lace mittens She loves,
Detesting “The Gloves;”
And turning, with air most disdainfully mocking,
From Melpomene's buskin, adopts the silk stocking.
So, as far as I can see,
I must leave you to “fancy”
The thumps, and the bumps, and the ups and the downs,
And the taps, and the slaps, and the raps on the crowns,
That pass'd 'twixt the Husband, Wife, Bagman, and Dog,
As Blogg roll'd over them, and they roll'd over Blogg;
While what's called “The Claret”
Flew over the garret:
Merely stating the fact,
As each other they whack'd,
The Dog his old master most gallantly back'd;
Making both the garcons, who came running in, sheer off,
With “Hippolyte's” thumb, and “Alphonse's” left ear off;
336

Next, making a stoop on
The buffeting group on
The floor, rent in tatters the old woman's jupon;
Then the old man turn'd up, and a fresh bite of Sancho's
Tore out the whole seat of his striped Callimancoes.
Really, which way
This desperate fray
Might have ended at last, I'm not able to say,
The dog keeping thus the assassins at bay:
But a few fresh arrivals decided the day;
For bounce went the door,
In came half a score
Of the passengers, sailors, and one or two more
Who had aided the party in gaining the shore!
It's a great many years ago—mine then were few—
Since I spent a short time in the old Courageux;—
I think that they say
She had been, in her day,
A First-rate, but was then what they term a Rasée,—
And they took me on board in the Downs, where she lay.
(Captain Wilkinson held the command, by the way.)
In her I pick'd up, on that single occasion,
The little I know that concerns Navigation,
And obtained, inter alia, some vague information
Of a practice which often, in cases of robbing,
Was adopted on shipboard — I think 'twas called “Cobbing.”
How 'twas managed exactly I really can't say,
But I think that a Boot-jack was brought into play—
That is, if I'm right: — it exceeds my ability
To tell how 't is done;
But the system is one
Of which Sancho's exploit would increase the facility.
337

And, from all I could learn, I'd much rather be robb'd
Of the little I have in my purse, than be “cobb'd;”—
That's mere matter of taste:
But the Frenchman was placed—
I mean the old scoundrel whose actions we've traced—
In such a position, that on this unmasking,
His consent was the last thing the men thought of asking.
The old woman, too,
Was obliged to go through,
With her boys, the rough discipline used by the crew,
Who, before they let one of the set see the back of them,
“Cobb'd” the whole party,—ay, “every man Jack of them.”

Moral.

And now, Gentle Reader, before that I say
Farewell for the present, and wish you good day,
Attend to the moral I draw from my law!—
If ever you travel, like Anthony Blogg,
Be wary of strangers! — don't take too much grog! —
And don't fall asleep, if you should, like a hog:
Above all — carry with you a curly-tail'd Dog!
Lastly, don't act like Blogg, who, I say it with blushing,
Sold Sancho next month for two guineas at Flushing,
But still on these words of the Bard keep a fixt eye,
Ingratum si dixeris, omnia dixti!!!
338

L'Envoye.

I felt so disgusted with Blogg, from sheer shame of him,
I never once thought to inquire what became of him;
If you want to know, Reader, the way, I opine,
To achieve your design,—
Mind, it's no wish of mine,—
Is,—(a penny will do 't,)—by addressing a line
To Turner, Dry, Weipersyde, Rogers, and Pyne.
THE END.
no previous section The Ingoldsby Legends
next section