Three Poems

By -
Tighe haunts Hairy-Faced Dick
Three, yes three narrative poems!  I finished my poetry challenge!

I have been fretting about my narrative poetry challenge.  Plus it's almost Halloween.  I put the two together and found the perfect solution--The Ingoldsby Legends!

The Ingoldsby Legends is a sort of miscellaneous collection of poetry, myth, ghost story, and legend, most of it told in a humorous style.  They were written by "Thomas Ingoldsby" (really a Victorian clergyman named Barham) and published in magazines, and were so popular that they were collected and published.  It's the sort of book that was hugely popular and well-known a century ago, but no one reads it now unless they are a little weird like me.  When I was a kid, I used to see it mentioned in books by E. Nesbit and wonder what it was, so I bought an old copy when I got the chance.

The stories and poetry are funny, but of course very, very Victorian.  I got tired of the poems pretty quickly when I first read it.  But there are lots of good legends and stuff about Hands of Glory and whatnot.

So, to combine my challenge with some spooky Halloween reading, I chose three poems.

The Legend of Hamilton Tighe was a good one.  In a shipboard battle, Hairy-Faced Dick kills young Hamilton Tighe, who then proceeds to haunt him and anyone else who profited from the death. 

I expected The Witches' Frolic to be fun, but instead it was rather tedious.  It is really very long--a good 13 pages--and describes a witches' party, but not very amusingly.

The Jackdaw of Rheims involved a jackdaw who stole the ring of a great Lord Cardinal of the Church.  The Cardinal curses the unknown thief, and soon the poor beleaguered jackdaw shows up, repenting of his crime.  Ever after he is the most reverent of birds.

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more