Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 1 The story of Skipper Ireson was told to Whittier by a schoolmate from Marblehead, when he was a student in Haverhill Academy (see Pickard's Life, vol. ii, p. 409, and the poem 'A Sea Dream '), and he began to write the ballad at that time, in 1828. It was finished, and published in the second number of the Atlantic Monthly, in 1857. Lowell, then editor of the Atlantic, suggested the use of dialect in the refrain (see Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. i, pp. 417-418, and Lowell's Letters, the letter to Whittier of Nov. 4, 1857). Mr. Samuel Roads, Jr., in his History of Marblehead, published in 1879, tried to show that Captain Ireson was not responsible for the abandonment of the disabled ship. Whittier characteristically wrote to Mr. Roads: I have now no doubt that thy version of Skipper Ireson's ride is the correct one. My verse was founded solely on a fragment of rhyme which I heard from one of my early schoolmates, a native of Marblehead. I supposed the story to which it referred dated back at least a century. I knew nothing of the participators, and the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. I am glad for the sake of truth and justice that the real facts are given in thy book. I certainly would not knowingly do injustice to any one, dead or living. 'I am very truly thy friend, JOHN G. WHITTIER.' Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Over and over the Mænads sang: 30 'Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt Small pity for him! - He sailed away rain ! 40 What did the winds and the sea-birds 'Hear me, neighbors!' at last he cried, 'What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin 80 To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me, I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!' Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead ! Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea Said, 'God has touched him! why should we !' Said an old wife mourning her only son, 90 Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!' So with soft relentings and rude excuse, Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame and sin. Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead ! Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead. With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled; Once again, without a shadow on the sands the moonlight lay, And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay! 'God preserve us !' said the captain; 'never mortal foes were there; They have vanished with their leader, They who do the Devil's service wear their master's coat of mail!' So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town, From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down. Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth. Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind, Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined; Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain. In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high 1 THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 1 PIPES of the misty moorlands, Dear to the Lowland reaper, The Scottish pipes are dear; O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played. ΤΟ 1 An incident of the Siege of Lucknow, during the mutiny of the native troops in India, 1857. See Tennyson's superb ballad, The Relief of Lucknow.' Day by day the Indian tiger Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, hear it?-dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!' Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Like the march of soundless music Of the heart than of the ear, 20 30 40 1 It is in strict accordance with the facts of the rescue. In the distance the beleaguered garrison heard the stern and vengeful slogan of the MacGregors, but when the troops of Havelock came in view of the English flag still floating from the Residency, the pipers struck up the immortal air of Burns, Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot.' (WHITTIER, in a letter to Lowell, April 10, 1858.) 2 A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home. (WHITTIER.) The place Whittier had in mind in writingTelling the Bees' was his birthplace. There were bee-hives on the garden terrace near the well-sweep, occupied perhaps by the descendants of Thomas Whittier's bees. The approach to the house from over the northern shoulder of Job's Hill by a path that was in constant use in his boyhood and is still in existence, is accurately described in the poem. The gap in the old wall' is still to be seen, and the stepping-stones in the shallow brook' are still in use. His sister's garden was down by the brook-side in front of the house, and her daffodils are perpetuated and may now be found in their season each year in that place. The red-barred gate, the poplars, the cattle yard with 'the white horns tossing above the wall,' these were all part of Whittier's boy life on the old farm. (Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. ii, pp. 414-415.) See also Pickard's Whittier-Land, pp. 17-18. |