The Ingoldsby Legends :: :: University of Virginia Library

“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,

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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,

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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,

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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,

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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!