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Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: ‘Ghostly Galleons’ and ‘Dark-Red Love Knots’ for the Ages
Well.
There I was, noodling around a few hours ago during a hydration break (it’s been in the mid-90s today, and I have three rather large trees to plant), looking for something to write about so I could sit inside, turn on the air conditioner for a bit, and allow the sweat to dry up. And as I often do, I had a look at Wikipedia’s page for “this day”; in this case, June 25.
I was quite surprised, in my bit of research, to find that the author of one of my favorite childhood poems, Alfred Noyes, died only 64 years ago, on June 25, 1958, when I must have been a little over three-and-a-half years old. Unbeknownst to me, he’d led rather an interesting life, having been born in 1880 in Wolverhampton, just down the road from some of my early stomping grounds in the UK, having grown up near Aberystwyth in Wales (beautiful country), moved to the States to marry and lecture at Princeton (his students included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson), and live to become (like another of my heroes, Rudyard Kipling) both decried as a jingoist, at the same time as he showed himself something of a pacifist.
I’m pretty clear that there were several formative experiences in my early life, and that many of them involved books. For example, I think Beatrix Potter, Gerald Durrell, and James Herriot pointed me towards the life in which I find myself living on 30 acres with a (couple of) mechanical mules, doing my best to scratch out something of a country life, here in the early years of the third decade of the twenty-first century.
But I also give the nod to this book, which my parents gave me when I was five or six, and which might have presaged my love of literature, and my ending up as an English major, and–Lord knows–led the way to the love of my life and my marriage to (shock, horror!) my professor, in the days when such a thing was still possible without the concomitant self-involved sense of victimhood and inevitable litigation:
A totally unwoke exploration of the poetry of my civilization which–remarkably–instilled in me no hatred for the “other,” and no unbounden feelings of superiority. Just the joy of life. (I think I probably do have a first edition, but there are others cheaper and just as good.)
One of the choice morsels which I discovered (at a young age) in my perusal of the book was Alfred Noyes’s The Highwayman. It’s a magnificent ballad, and I could discourse for hours on its techniques, including–but not limited to–alliteration, repetition, simile, metaphor, lyricism, and rhythm. Like another of my favorite poems, The Lady of Shalott, it propels the reader into the story and along for the ride.
And, yeah, this is the early experience I blame for my lifelong attachment to what I call “tasteful bodice-rippers.” Jane Austen. The Georgette Heyer novels. Some of A.S. Byatt’s oeuvre. Corelli’s Mandolin. And a number of others. All of which–when it boils down to it, deal with love, sacrifice, struggle, and–sometimes, unfortunately–betrayal. None of which things (other than the betrayal bit), over the course of my life, I’ve found it necessary to be angry about or ashamed of. Love, especially.
And so, I give you, at the end, the story of The Highwayman and “Bess, the landlord’s daughter.” I cried buckets over it sixty years ago. And when I read it today, I found myself wiping a tear away again, and hoping that the two of them actually did, in their ghostly incarnations, manage a happy ending.
And so may we all :
Published in GeneralPART ONE
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.PART TWO
He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.. . .
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
Yes and yes. “Lady of Shallot,” too. Good stuff.
I remember that one. We had that volume or one just like it.
I inherited “101 Famous Poems”, which has this poem in it, from my grandmother.
I don’t like or understand poetry (I’m too literal and uncreative) but holy moly do I love that painting!
I have that book! When my daughter was little, I’d always point up at the sky if it was cloudy at night and say “The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.” I got the book when I was 12 because our teacher gave extra credit for memorizing poems. The poor man had to listen to me reciting most of the ones in that book after class.
“101 Famous Poems” might have been the book I’m thinking of. I just looked at the living room bookcases. It’s not there, but it might be in a bookcase in a bedroom upstairs.
Another one I remember:
Which leads to this, of course:
Nice. Doesn’t really need the tune though. Grandma would read that one to me before I could read it by myself.
The nice thing is that they can be set to music, unlike much contemporary poetry. I also like Arthur Conan Doyle’s poetry for that, much like Kipling’s.
………..
Oh that one was in a book of my parents’, Best Loved Poems of the American People. I read it from cover to cover as a kid. Which I probably wouldn’t have done if we’d had Nick Jr. It was a thick tome that had everything from Eugene Field to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to my personal favorite (well I was 8 years old), which I still know from memory:
Dried Apple Pies by Anonymous
I loathe, abhor, detest, despise,
Abominate dried-apple pies.
I like good bread; I like good meat,
Or anything that’s fit to eat;
But of all poor grub beneath the skies
The poorest is dried-apple pies.
Give me a toothache or sore eyes
But don’t give me dried apple pies.
The farmer takes his gnarliest fruit,
Tis wormy, bitter, and hard to boot;
They leave the hulls to make us cough,
And don’t take half the peelings off;
Then on a dirty cord they ‘re strung.
And from some chamber window hung;
And there they serve as roost for flies
Until they’re made up into pies.
Tread on my corns and tell me lies,
But don’t pass me dried-apple pies.
Paul Revere’s Ride is another I remember from that book. Probably wasn’t in @she’s, what with the redcoats taking a licking.
Aha! I bought that one at a used book store about thirty years ago, for $1. I just love those old compendia of poetry, as well as those which have “improving selections” for the mind of all sorts of written materials–fiction, history, poetry, etc, and I am sure I have more than my fair share of such things, up to, and including, The Book of Virtues. It’s astonishing, really, how what might pass for my own “moral compass” was formed as much by reading and taking to heart–as a child–the lessons of such materials as by anything else. (An advertisement for Aesop’s Fables, if ever there was one, I suppose.)
My nuclear family wasn’t particularly formal in its religious observances. (Those rituals and lessons were the provenance of my grandparents, who filled in the gaps pretty effectively.). I do find myself wondering, sometimes, if today’s young people aren’t suffering from a double whammy in that so many of them are disconnected from, or their families are antithetical to, any form of organized religion, and–to put it bluntly–they’re quite illiterate, not only when it comes to the context of historical understanding, but even in terms of just picking up something written with words of more than one syllable (or even that) and being able to read it. And because children do–underneath it all–highly value security and conformity, and ‘fitting in,’ they’re extremely vulnerable to those with the loudest voices and the “best” story, no matter how freakish or destructive its lessons may be.
This was another excellent find at a second-hand bookstore, can’t remember where:
I remember wondering what the author–committing herself to words of one syllable–would do with the names of the two main characters, (leave them intact for young tongues to stumble over somehow),and discovering that there was a mid-Victorian rage in the United States for such books, which I thought was rather sad. (Many of the bits of history I found suggested that the books were greatly simplified so they could be used in the education of former slaves.)*
Perhaps it’s time for a revival of the concept.
*Mary Godolphin was the pen name of Lucy Aiken, an Englishwoman who also wrote The Pilgrims Progress in Words of One Syllable.
Actually it is! It’s an American book. Louis Untermeyer, the writer, poet, anthologist and autodidact (who was blacklisted after a fairly successful early career on television panel shows because of his suspected Communist sympathies), wrote several anthologies for young people. He spent most of his life in New York. The Battle of Bunker Hill (Oliver Wendell Holmes) is in there as well. And that’s where I learned the story of Molly Pitcher:
I don’t think, as a nation that there’s one which reveres The Battle Hymn of the Republic more that the Brits, or at least the Britain of my childhood. That’s in there too. As well as The Battle of Blenheim, poems about the Napoleonic Wars, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, Beth Gelert, and many more.
But my sentimental nod goes to The Tale of Custard the Dragon:
Still, when there came “a [n evil] pirate climbing in the winda”
Afterwards, things go back to normal
And yet, we know who the real hero of this story is. And that’s all that matters.
That was in a different poetry book of mine when I was young. Love it.
I was stuck at home after 9/11 and one of the things on the tube was the memorial service in London.
I saw the Queen sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It made me cry.
God bless Bess.
Indeed. Whatever one thinks of the British monarchy (and who doesn’t, especially here on Ricochet), I’ll miss her when she’s gone. She’s a link to the England of my grandmothers’ and my great-grandmothers’ generations, and when she’s gone, the only one still standing will be Auntie Pat (99 next month, may she live forever).
The old order changeth….
Here, though, is the complete 2 1/2-minute skit from Elizabeth’s recent Jubilee party, starring HM and Paddington Bear. Clips have been available before now, but I finally found the whole thing. I long for the day when Joe Biden’s handlers suggest something similar (perhaps for his next inauguration) in which he sits across the table from a beloved-by-all fictional character (someone like JarJar Binks), who’s green-screened into the final cut. The possibilities for unintentional humor (even just in the matter of keeping time with the upcoming musical number) are rife. LOL.
But this is just charming:
Ah, Alfred Noyes. When you said the name, I knew the poem. It’s been one of my favorites since I first read it, back in my teens. I’m not much for bodice rippers, but that poem is one for the ages. So evocative! Wow.
And, yes, indeed, Queen Elizabeth II is a royal treasure. The Paddington Bear clip is darling and she’s (as always) a sport with a twinkle. May she continue in good health to 120.
My wife and I were driving to Indianapolis to meet a young friend. Google maps rerouted us off the main drag and took us past James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School. I was surprised the name hadn’t (yet) been “updated.”
The goblins will get them if they try.
If you respond to a painting that way, I doubt you’re as ‘literal and uncreative’ as all that….
Every generation gets less and weaker poetry than the one before. Not sure how long this has been going on, but poetry is the first thing squeezed out of literature classes and there are a lot of things that are being forced in.
I attribute this to a steadily diminishing appreciation for imagination, simile, and metaphor, and a determined stamping out of genres that demand them. That’s why a lot of people can’t leave children alone to wander through poems, fairy-tales, stories of chivalry, adventure, or good and evil, letting their minds go where they may and figuring things out for themselves. (I think it’s fair to say that my understanding of Snow White (the Disney version, which I first read as a storybook, before seeing the movie), was something along the lines of: “You’ll live a much happier life–and maybe get your heart’s desire–if you’re kind, helpful, and generous with people, than you will if you’re a vain, jealous bitch, in which case, you’ll probably turn into an ugly old hag and die a horrible, lonely death.”)
Boy, did I miss the point. I now see how wrong I was, and that, obviously, Snow White is an oppressive tale glorying the patriarchy, showing the helplessness of young women in the face of unwanted male sexual predation, and deeply offensive in its characterization of little people, to boot.
Ohhhhh….
Poetry suffers as much, if not more, because it’s the most imaginative of literary genres. Children used to have poems read to them, or be able to read, recite, and understand on their own–at a pretty young age–poems that aren’t taught until college anymore. If even then. It’s terribly sad.
Another poetry-killer was ‘hey kids, why don’t you try writing poetry yourselves’ which would then be judged – or rather not judged since you wouldn’t want to discourage creativity or ruin self-esteem.
And how can you discuss a ‘great poem’ if all poems are equal?
“Poetry is like beer. With beer, all beer is good, but some beers are better than others. With poetry, all poems are bad, but some poems are worse than others.” — Dave Steinke