At Winpenie Abbey (verse)
Ratcliffe, Dorothy Una
August 4, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 327 brated ditty which my familiars and I sang with a because we in my yard were only...
...He sang it twice, and I am sure I saw their faces pale...
...We were Democrats...
...It is a bit too long to be a successful outlaw Her little darling Son...
...None of us, I wish to record, had any idea of what a "Sheeny" was...
...My brother sang it once, and they were stricken to a foolDutchman, Dutchman, stuffed with straw, Can't say nothing but yaw, yaw, yaw ! ish silence...
...They used regularly to march their cohorts Ever she has the love to lure to the edge of their bounding picket fence, directly The first pair of swallows from over the moor, facing our yard, and sing: Secure from alarms They build a nest in her crumbling arms: Democrats eat pickled rats, When the nestlings peek through brittle shells Republicans eat sugar plums...
...yielded no parallels to Mr...
...She croons them the song of long, long agoThe song of the Abbey's once-famous bells a rousing cry, pregnant with victory...
...and because the last name, in Have made for her narrow shoulders, a cloak, particular, being that of a very young brother indeed, And her only worshippers are the treeslent itself happily to illustrative action on the part of A ring of pines and a dying oak, other brothers a little older...
...He was beginning to sing it a third I remember one or two concluding examples...
...quite horribly...
...disdain for one of the great Nordic races But the history of that innovation was a sad one...
...Joe, Joe, made it go, Frank, Frank, turned the crank, His mother came out and gave him a spank, And sent him over the river bank...
...eat Winpenie Abbey (For W. R. C.) I have never come across this specimen outside of my own native Minnesota...
...I suppose a sufficiently precocious And though no longer she rocks her child, ironist would have seized upon their last line to re- In her ageless beauty, she's reconciled tort: " `Republicans eat sugar plums'-well, rather...
...Fall and Mr...
...It humiliated us That three sister-valleys used to know...
...And so the election was lost...
...Loyal for five slow centuries) The last example of all would be found dispersed A crescent of wind-bowed silver willows, over a much wider territory, but the trouble with it The circling stars and a silent pool: is that it is only intermittently recited...
...Later, we heard the Republican version again fluctuating in the gale, but circumstances prevented our Jean, Jean, made a machine, rallying to a reply...
...I And once she was young and wore a crown suspect that it was so much affected on our premises And the folds of her gown because two of the names it mentions were the names Were slim and straight and beautiful: Now the lichen browns and yellows of two of my brothers...
...My eldest brother imThe Sheeny washed the winda, provised upon their chant as follows The winda broke, the Sheeny croaked, Honey Kazack Kazinda...
...I first heard it in the campaign When she heard the lowing of cows in the byre of 1904...
...terseness is the word with them: Yell and run...
...It is one of And our Lady is lone, but her heart is the same those songs into which a people pours its soul in a As the night when her tiny Jesus came, great national crisis...
...The children across the street were Republi- And held to her heart, her heart's desire...
...cans...
...about which we not only knew nothing but never She knows every change in the mavis's song, even dreamed of pretending to know anything) with Those wild, sweet phrases of joy and fear, a hatred and virulence which are positively awesome She owns the hearts of everything young: to recall...
...We delighted in the song mainly be- a version which seemed to me then, and seems to me cause it painted a picture of someone croaking...
...To rock in her arms of lichened hollows But, whether because the politics of that far time The young of ever-returning swallows...
...August 4, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 327 brated ditty which my familiars and I sang with a because we in my yard were only normally stupid satisfaction none the less real for being obscure children, we let the opportunity slip...
...If Democrats eat pickled rats, Republicans eat mouldy cats...
...Denby, or DOROTHY TINA RATCLIFFE...
...and now, to compensate for a certain forcing of its logic we sang with equal relish a lyrical embodiment of with ringing rhyme values far superior to the original...
...and even within its boundar- Our Lady sits on the ruined gate ies, its popularity was, in my experience, highly local- Between Saint Luke and Saint John, ized, centering mainly in the playroom of my own And once she held in her joyful arms home...
...The time when we were called inside and suitably talked first ran thus to...
...Even so, we did Honey Kazack Kazinda, not come off without credit...
...Inseparable playmates At Winpenie, she is the first to hear in times of peace, we fought out the political issue The laverock-choir...
Vol. 4 • August 1926 • No. 13
