To Bed, Too Bad

My parents used to quote a rhyme at bedtime, which I recently mentioned to a friend. Naturally, curiosity demanded yet another internet deep dive. Here are two main variations:

“Come, let’s to bed!” Said Sleepy-head. “Let’s stay awhile,” said Sloe. “Put on the pot,” Said Greedy Sot†, “We'll sup before we go.”

“To bed! To bed!” Said Sleepyhead. “Tarry awhile,” said Slow. “Put on the pan,” Said Greedy Nan; “We'll sup before we go.”

The nursery rhyme ‘To Bed, To Bed’ was first printed by Sir Henry Cole in 1843 in Traditional Nursery Songs of England with Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists. Seven decades later, a variation was republished in The Little Mother Goose in 1912.

“Okay,” you say, stifling a yawn worthy of Sleepyhead. “So what?”

In internet perambulations, I stumbled upon a homicidal version. It didn’t take much digging to trace this dastardly deadly document to an Australian poet, David Lewis Paget.

“Murder? What sick mind would do such a thing?” you wonder aloud.

Uh, me! Me! But my attempt will have to appear another time. Here now is David Paget’s take where “To bed, to bed,” means deathbed, never to arise again.

To Bed, To Bed (deadly version)

“To bed! To bed!” Said Sleepy-head. “Tarry awhile,” said Slow. “Put on the pan,” Said Greedy Nan. “We'll sup before we go.”

They sat at the kitchen table as The candle flickered low, And Greedy Nan put on the pan To indulge her sister, Slow, While Sleepy Weepy Annabelle Blotted her book with tears, And thought of her Beau from long ago Who she hadn’t seen for years.

“Why doesn’t Roger notice me, Why doesn’t Alan O’Dell? I’m wearing the dress cut low for me And I’ve hitched my skirt as well. I’ve a pretty turn to my ankle, so You’d think it would drive them wild.’ “But men are a mystery,” said Slow, “And Alan O’Dell’s a child.”

While over the pan stood Greedy Nan, Was cracking a turkey’s egg, A lump of yeast and a slice of beast And a single spider’s leg. With a wing of bat and an ounce of fat And a toe of frog for the spell, She needed to turn her sister off From her crush on Alan O’Dell.

For Greedy Nan was the eldest girl And would have to marry first, The other two would wait in the queue Or their fortunes be reversed, The omelette sizzled, and in the pan She added before they saw, A piece of some Devil’s Trumpet plant For the mating game meant war.

She sliced the omelette into half And she served them up a piece, “Didn’t you want?” said Annabelle But Slow enjoyed the feast. “I’m not that terribly hungry now I’ve cooked it up in the pan, I think I’ll just have a slice of bread,” Said the scheming Greedy Nan.

They finished up and they sat awhile, And they mused about their fate, “If Greedy Nan isn’t married soon, For us it will be too late.’ “I’ve set my sights on a country squire,” Said Nan, without a blink, Lured them away from her secret fire To confuse what they might think.

“The room is woozy, spinning around, I’d better get me to bed,” Said Annabelle, while Slow with a frown Saw Dwarves dancing in her head. But Greedy Nan was cleaning the pan To clear all signs of the spell, Her back was turned to her sisters, spurned For the sake of Alan O’Dell.

And when he came in the morning Greedy Nan was sat by the door, While Annabelle and her sister Slow Were lying dead on the floor, “I didn’t mean it to kill them all, It was only a simple spell,” But as they cuffed and led her away He frowned, did Alan O’Dell.

^† Sot in this case means fool. Some readers may have been confused by the term, because another, more modern variation uses the phrase Greedy Gut.

English Chaos

Sketch of Gerard Nolst Trenité aka Charivarius

In the spirit of the ‘English, English’ article two weeks ago and recent essays about the madness of the language, I dug out a copy of ‘The Chaos’. Its author, Gerard Nolst Trenité, who went by the nom de plume of Charivarius, was a Dutch writer, traveller, law and political science student, teacher, playwright, and noted contributor to the English language. More than a century ago, he gathered some 800 trickiest English irregularities into a 274 line poem called ‘The Chaos’ as a practice suite for his students.

Subsequent versions were adopted and maintained by the Simplified Spelling Society. Abrupt lapses in style and occasional losses of mètre suggest others may have tinkered with the piece, much like a recipient ‘improves’ an email tidbit before passing it along. Trenité himself dropped and added words in subsequent versions, and popular stanzas have been restored by historians. Any way it’s viewed, the collection impresses readers a hundred years later.

Note: This rendition carries over the formatting and indentation passed down by Trenité. Originally staggered couplets hinted at senses of masculine and feminine as used in other Romance languages, and they can still be comfortably read with alternating male and female voices.

Here now is…

The Chaos

by Gerard Nolst Trenité writing as Charivarius

Dearest creature in Creation,

Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Susy,† busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy;

Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;

So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain

(Mind the latter, how it's written!)

Made has not the sound of bade,

Say-said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as vague and ague,

But be careful how you speak,

Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via;

Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,

Cloven, oven; how and low;

Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery:

Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,

Typhoid; measles, topsails, aisles;

Exiles, similes, reviles;

Wholly, holly; signal, signing;

Thames; examining, combining;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war, and far.

From 'desire': desirable– admirable from 'admire';

Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier;

Chatham, brougham; renown but known,

Knowledge; done, but gone and tone,

One, anemone; Balmoral;

Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German; wind and mind;

Scene, Melpomene, mankind;

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,

Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.

This phonetic labyrinth

Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Have you ever yet endeavoured

To pronounce revered and severed,

Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,

Peter, petrol and patrol?

Billet does not end like ballet;

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,

Which is said to rhyme with 'darkly'.

Viscous, viscount; load and broad;

Toward, to forward, to reward,

Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?

And your pronunciation's okay.

Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve;

Friend and fiend; alive and live.

Is your R correct in higher?

Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.

Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,

Buoyant, minute, but minute.

Say abscission with precision,

Now: position and transition.

Would it tally with my rhyme

If I mentioned paradigm?

Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,

But cease, crease, grease and greasy?

Cornice, nice, valise, revise,

Rabies, but lullabies.

Of such puzzling words as nauseous,

Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,

You'll envelop lists, I hope,

In a linen envelope.

Would you like some more? You'll have it!

Affidavit, David, davit.

To abjure, to perjure. Sheik

Does not sound like Czech but ache.

Liberty, library; heave and heaven;

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven,

We say hallowed, but allowed;

People, leopard; towed, but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,

Between mover, plover, Dover,

Leeches, breeches; wise, precise;

Chalice but police and lice.

Camel, constable, unstable;

Principle, disciple; label;

Petal, penal, and canal;

Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal.

Suit, suite, ruin; circuit, conduit

Rhyme with 'shirk it' and 'beyond it.'

But it is not hard to tell

Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular; gaol, iron;

Timber, climber; bullion, lion,

Worm and storm; chaise, chaos, chair;

Senator, spectator, mayor.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rime with 'hammer.'

Pussy, hussy, and possess,

Desert, but desert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants

Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.

Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,

Cow, but Cowper, some, and home.

Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker,

Quoth he, 'than liqueur or liquor',

Making, it is sad but true,

In bravado, much ado.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,

Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.

Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,

Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.

Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,

Make the latter rhyme with eagle.

Mind! Meandering but mean,

Valentine and magazine.

And I bet you, dear, a penny,

You say mani-(fold) like many,

Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,

Tier (one who ties), but tier.

Arch, archangel; pray, does erring

Rhyme with herring or with staring?

Prison, bison, treasure trove,

Treason, hover, cover, cove,

Perseverance, severance. Ribald

Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.

Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,

Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

Don't be down, my own, but rough it,

And distinguish buffet, buffet;

Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,

Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.

Say in sounds correct and sterling

Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.

Evil, devil, mezzotint,

Mind the Z! (A gentle hint.)

Now you need not pay attention

To such sounds as I don't mention,

Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,

Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

Nor are proper names included,

Though I often heard, as you did,

Funny rhymes to unicorn,

Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

No, my maiden, coy and comely,

I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.

No. Yet Froude compared with proud

Is no better than McLeod.

But mind trivial and vial,

Tripod, menial, denial,

Troll and trolley, realm and ream,

Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.

Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely

May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,

But you're not supposed to say

Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

Had this invalid invalid

Worthless documents? How pallid,

How uncouth he, couchant, looked,

When for Portsmouth I had booked!

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,

Paramour, enamoured, flighty,

Episodes, antipodes,

Acquiesce, and obsequies.

Please don't monkey with the geyser,

Don't peel 'taters with my razor,

Rather say in accents pure:

Nature, stature and mature.

Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,

Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,

Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,

Wan, sedan and artisan.

The TH will surely trouble you

More than R, CH or W.

Say then these phonetic gems:

Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,

There are more but I forget 'em—

Wait! I've got it: Anthony,

Lighten your anxiety.

The archaic word albeit

Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;

With and forthwith, one has voice,

One has not, you make your choice.

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;

Then say: singer, ginger, linger.

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

Hero, heron, query, very,

Parry, tarry fury, bury,

Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,

Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,

Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners

Holm you know, but noes, canoes,

Puisne, truism, use, to use?

Though the difference seems little,

We say actual, but victual,

Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,

Put, nut, granite, and unite.

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,

Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,

Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific;

Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,

Next omit, which differs from it

Bona fide, alibi,

Gyrate, dowry and awry.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion with battalion,

Rally with ally; yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.

Never guess– it is not safe,

We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

Starry, granary, canary,

Crevice, but device, and eyrie,

Face, but preface, then grimace,

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;

Ear, but earn; and ere and tear

Do not rhyme with here but heir.

Mind the O of off and often

Which may be pronounced as orphan,

With the sound of saw and sauce;

Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?

Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.

Respite, spite, consent, resent.

Liable, but Parliament.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,

Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

A of valour, vapid vapour,

S of news (compare newspaper),

G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,

I of antichrist and grist,

Differ like diverse and divers,

Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.

Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,

Polish, Polish, poll and poll.

Pronunciation– think of Psyche!–

Is a paling, stout and spiky.

Won't it make you lose your wits

Writing groats and saying 'grits'?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel

Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,

Islington, and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,

Saying lather, bather, father?

Finally, which rhymes with enough,

Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough?

Hiccough has the sound of 'cup'.

My advice is: give it up!

^† ‘Dearest Creature Susy’ is believed to reference French student Susanne Delacruix.

The Mirage

by Eve Fisher

He was walking out on the desert, sand-whipped and alone
Shuffling on feet that felt in the heat like they had turned into stone.

Behind him in the distance, a dust cloud and a big foreign car,
shimmering brighter and brighter in the heat rising up from the tar.

The roar chewed up the silence.  The man stopped and turned around.
He raised his hand, hesitating, his head aching from the sound.

The roar slid towards silence; the car purred like a cat in the road.
The woman waiting at the wheel stared at the lines in the road.

She asked, "Where are you going?"  He said, "Nowhere I haven't been."
The heat was hissing around them; she said, "You might as well get in."

The woman drove like a demon, she never once turned her head
Toward the man sitting beside her; he might as well have been dead.

The desert stretched out around them, it lay everywhere that he turned.
It had calmed and cleaned his body, but his soul felt terribly burned.

He finally asked, "Where ya going?" She looked at him through her hair.
"Sort of the same as you I guess, just sort of going nowhere."

"Lady you picked the right place; if this ain't nowhere, nothing is.
I've been out here a week or more, so I know how empty it is."

They gave each other a quick glance.  Then he stared at the clouds in the west.
After a while she asked him if he'd come out on some spiritual quest.

He laughed so hard she was wincing, then he answered her mockingly,
"Yeah, I thought if I got sunburned enough, I'd get high naturally."

His eyes were as harsh as his laughter; their look was like a blow from a fist,
Curving around her hips and breasts, then settling down at her wrists…

His eyes fixed on the carved crosses; he drummed his hands on the seat.
"Maybe this is what I came here for, to see what I would meet."

"Don't think that it matters," she said.  "There's nobody's keeping score.
We start running early and keep running late until we run right out the door."

"Still," as she glanced towards him, "there's times when life's pretty sweet."
She stopped the car and said with a nod, "There's a bottle in the back seat."

They sipped the sweet tequila.  They chased it with warm foamy beer.
They drank until the silence was the only thing they could hear.

The liquor was gone so he kissed her.  Her face seemed to swell in his hands.
Her hair smelled like cactus and liquor and hay and he seemed to taste every strand.

The heat was melting their bodies.  They were burning up from the sun.
They were burning inside and burning outside and burning after they'd done.

They reached Cochise by sunset and her car was about out of gas.
"This is where I get off," he said.  "It's been real."  She agreed, "Yes it has."

He saw her again through the window in the cafe by the garage.
She was almost at the horizon when she walked into the mirage.

— Eve Fisher © 2017

Wikipedia - Farallons Islands Mirage

Liars' Club

The gap between fiction and nonfiction has always been interesting to me. I know some folks who strongly prefer one of the two, and others who enjoy reading both. I'm one of those who happily suffer from fiction addiction--I read a lot more short stories and novels than nonfiction books and articles. Probably because of that, I also think it's more fun to write fiction than non.

A few months ago a guy asked me at a booksigning whether my books were nonfiction. When I said no, he immediately informed me that that was too bad, because he never, ever, reads fiction. "Why," he asked me, looking as if his underwear might suddenly be too tight, "should I waste my time reading a bunch of lies?" Rather than answer that for him--believe me, I could have, and I could've even pointed out that many nonfiction books contain lies as well--I remembered that my mother taught me to be polite and made some "to each his own" comment and wished him a nice day. But I couldn't help feeling that he and others like him might be missing out on much of the joy of reading.

The fun department

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely loved Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit, Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, Karl Marlantes's Matterhorn, Stephen King's On Writing, Doug Preston's The Monster of Florence, Stephen Harrington's The Gates of the Alamo, Steve Martin's Born Standing Up, Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, just about everything by John McPhee and Stephen Ambrose, and many other works of nonfiction. God help me, I still have most of the Watergate confession books by Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Dean, etc., and at the time I even liked those. But for every article or book of nonfiction I read these days, I probably read fifty or more short stories and novels. Are they made up of lies, as my potential customer with the pained expression said? Sure they are. But I like the tension and thrill and surprise and anticipation that these novels and stories offer. I not only don't know the ending, I don't even know what's going to happen next. I guess--although I feel a little guilty when I say it--what it boils down to is this: I read nonfiction when I want to learn something and I read fiction when I want to be entertained. And I really, really like to be entertained.

Not that fiction can't be informative and entertaining at the same time. It can. Just read a little James Michener or Michael Crichton or Colleen McCullough or Edward Rutherfurd sometime. And I think one of the best things ever is the concept of "creative nonfiction"--it's sort of like giving The History Channel a good slap and injecting it with a dose of adrenaline. But if the choice is strictly nonfiction vs. strictly fiction, and if it's a choice between getting educated and having fun, I know which I'll pick, every time. As Gus said to Call in Lonesome Dove, "You never had no fun in your life. That's my department."

An old friend and non(?)author

I recently received an interesting take on fiction vs. nonfiction, when I located (via Facebook) one of my old Air Force buddies, now living in Texas. He was as surprised to find out that I write short mystery stories as I was to find that he writes technical reference books about routers, servers, etc. (He was probably more surprised than I was, actually, because we both entered the military with electrical engineering degrees and actually did that kind of thing for four years.) But we were of course pleased to discover that we were both authors now, and I offered him my sincere congratulations for his literary success.

"It's nothing," he replied. "The thing is, I'm not really an author." I asked what he meant; I had already, by that time, found a lot of his books on Amazon, and I would later also see them on the shelves in the computer section at our local Barnes & Noble. "Well, I've never written any fiction," he answered, "and you're not a real author, you know, until you publish some fiction." I'd never heard that before--I certainly don't believe it's correct--and it was intriguing to hear him say such a thing. He added that nonfiction gets no respect--he said its name doesn't even tell you what it is. Instead it tells you what it's not: it's NONfiction.

Just the facts, ma'am

Again, those were his views, not mine. I have a healthy respect for the writers of good nonfiction, in the long or short form. One of my reasons for respecting them is that what they create has to follow rules and restrictions that my writing does not. The very fact that it must be true and real means more effort and more research and more legal risks. Having produced a little nonfiction myself now and then, I know how tough it can be. But I must say again, while I respect and admire those writers and their products, I find fiction far more fun and relaxing to write--and to read. To me, nonfiction wears a suit and tie and Sunday shoes while fiction is happy to run around in a sweatshirt and sneakers.

I'll wrap this discussion up with three questions and (just for you, Leigh) a poem. My questions are:

1. Do you read more fiction or non, and why?
2. If you're already a writer of fiction, what kinds of nonfiction do you find most interesting?
3. What's some of the best nonfiction you've ever read?

My poem, if you can call it that, is one that I dug out of my files yesterday, titled "A Little of Both":

Is writing work, or is it fun?

Or is, sometimes, neither one?

For answers, look to Shakespeare's days--

His plays were works, his works were plays.

One more thing. I love the title of Lawrence Block's book featuring some of the many columns he wrote for Writer's Digest. It's called Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. Block has certainly done a good job of that, for many years now.

My fiction is written more for fun than for profit, that's for sure--but in the immortal words of Billy Joel, it's still rock and roll to me.

William McGonagall– One Really Bad Poet

William McGonagall

Imagine a poet so bad, so awful, so lacking in metaphoric skill and seemly imagery, that he left audiences appalled, unable to absorb the shock of the abuse of the English language. When he recited his works in pubs, patrons pelted him with fish and flour, rotten eggplants and eggs. Unsurprisingly, he died a pauper.

I hasten to add that this poet (and actor, tragedian, and weaver) was not North American or even Australian, but British, Scottish to be precise, known as the poet of Dundee. In 1893, he felt so abused, he wrote a poem threatening to leave his fair town, whereupon a newspaper wrote he'd probably stay for another year once he realised "that Dundee rhymes with '93".

But as bad as this poet was, his works live on and remain in print to this day. Web sites and encyclopedia articles appear in his honour. A few years ago, a collection of his poems sold for £6600, more than $10,000. Nearly a century after his death, fans erected a grave marker in his honour. One of his contemporary admirers wrote without irony "Shakespeare never wrote anything like this." This is William McGonagall.

Marked for Greatness

Hoping to secure a royal patron, he wrote to Queen Victoria with a sample of his work. A clerk for VR returned a polite thank you note, which McGonagall misinterpreted as praise. He trekked on foot to Balmoral Castle in a driving storm, soaked to the skin. Upon arrival, he announced he was the Queen's Poet, which surprised the guards and greeters who well knew Alfred, Lord Tennyson. They sadly turned him away, leaving him to trudge back to Dundee, a 200km round trip.

Author Stephen Pile explains it this way: McGonagall "was so giftedly bad, he backed unwittingly into genius." So like Edward Bulwer-Lytton and William Spooner, William Topaz McGonagall became famous for actions in the breach rather than talent. Or maybe they were all smarter than we.

Before we turn to his most (in)famous poem, I should mention 'Topaz' was not his middle name. Rather, acquaintances constructed an elaborate joke and 'punked' him, so to speak. They sent the poor poet an official looking letter from the Burmese King Thibaw Min, appointing McGonagall Burma's poet laureate and knighting him Topaz McGonagall, Grand Knight of the Holy Order of the White Elephant Burmah. Thereafter, McGonagall referred to himself as "Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant."

Frankly, I'm starting to think McGonagall may have been a mad genius.

Less than Serious Portrayals

I'm grateful to our SleuthSayers fans. Shortly after this went to press, a reader sent a link to a discussion of the poet and a partial reading by the actor Billy Connolly.

That, in turn, led to this comic skit from four decades ago. The web page doesn't elucidate, but Spike Milligan of The Goon Show and Q5-Q9 fame appears to play McGonagall. I'm not 100% certain, but I believe Peter Sellers is playing Queen Victoria.

And now, a reading…

In the following poem, most readers content themselves with the first and last stanzas without further torturing themselves with those in between. Feel free to do the same.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say–
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say–
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

A Day for the Heart

Okay, so it's the day after Valentine's Day, which means that my turn for an article comes up one day late to land directly on the 14th, but I hope you'll allow me a little leeway here. See, Valentine's Day is my wedding anniversary, so just pretend that everything is correctly aligned. Naturally, I'm supposed to be sentimental during this holiday of the year and thus, shall we say, exposing my softer side to my significant other. One further fact to know, if all goes according to plan, she and I should be lounging in Maui for the umpteenth time even as you read this. (I strongly suspect that Kiti slipped that little clause into the fine print of our marriage contract when I wasn't looking.)

Anyway, Valentine's Day speaks of lovers, romance, flowers, chocolates, roughly anything that melts the female heart and makes it go all gooey. At this point, you, the reader, will have to reflect back into your own Valentine's Days of the past and dwell pleasurably for a couple of moments on whatever worked for you.

In my case, my wife has a little red book stashed away in the lingerie drawer of her dresser. This particular hard-bound book is filled with hand-written poems composed by yours truly whilst gripped in the all encompassing embrace of infatuation. I'm sure most of you have been in some form of that condition at one stage or another of your life. To that end, I wrote all these poems in order to win the hand and heart of my lady love, and in the process filled up every page in that little red book. And no, you can't read it.

Most of the poems are very personal and/or have meaning only to the two of us. Realize that these scribblings aren't exactly sonnets by Shakespeare. Furthermore, need I remind you that when I returned to college shortly after my twelve month tour of Southeast Asia, I took my war poems into the WSU English Department seeking further guidance along these lines and was promptly not encouraged to continue any efforts in the field of poetry. But due to persistence (some would politely suggest hard-headedness) it turns out that the heart likes what the heart likes.

As a sample of my beginning strategy in this win-the-heart endeavor, here's part of an early poem during the courtship:

Please forgive my muddled mind,
it's seldom on the path.
It's not so good in English
and even worse in math.

But as I recall the contract
or the game as it is played,
one poem for one kiss
was the bargain that we made.

*  *  (okay, skip to closing)  *  *

I have no fear about the debt
for as I can plainly see,
you are a lady on your honor
and would not a debtor be.

Oh yeah, working on getting that kiss. Okay, so you had to be there. Shelley or Byron, it's not. Probably not even as good as the first recorded Valentine poem written by Chaucer in 1382 for King Richard the Second to give to his intended bride, and that one was composed in the language of Middle English, but mine are at least a step up from the "Roses are red, Violets are blue..." category. My main point being, hey, give the love of your life some personal hand-written poetry and watch their eyes light up. Go ahead, it's not too late even if Valentine's Day was actually yesterday. It doesn't need to be a professional job, it just needs to be from you, from your heart.

Yep, you can bet I got kissed with them poems. A lot. A whole book full, you might say.

A Heavy Dose of Light Verse

As is often the case, I recently found myself inspired by one of my SleuthSayers colleagues.  This time it was Rob Lopresti and his "Hello, My Lovely" poem a few days ago.  I loved it!  While neither of us is well known for poetry, both Rob and I enjoy wordplay in thirty-one different flavors, and sometimes that's all that's required to turn out an occasional piece of light verse.  I have probably turned out more than I should have over my relatively short writing "career," but I truly like the sound and rhythm--and humor--of certain kinds of poetry.  And I often prefer poems that "tell a story."

Even though I confess my lack of serious poetic knowledge or talent, I would like to present a few of my mystery poems from the past several years.  I call them that because (1) they involve a crime, (2) they were published in mystery magazines, and (3) it's a mystery that they got published at all.  For the record, these first appeared in places like Mystery Time, Murderous Intent, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, and Futures Mysterious Mystery Magazine.

NOTE: I'm recycling even further, here, because several of these ditties were featured in one of my Criminal Brief columns more than four years ago--but I'm hoping that those of you who might've read them there have fully recovered by now from any mental anguish or acid reflux they might have caused.

Here goes:


A WIFE IN THE COUNTRY


Turk McGee sipped his tea and contentedly sighed
As he lounged on the porch and observed his young bride;
She was working the fields, as she'd done every day
Since her father arranged for her marriage last May,
But what Dad hadn't known (and McGee hadn't said)
Was that Turk thought all girls became slaves when they wed.
Just today, for example, she'd plowed until three,
Stopping only two times to pour Turk some iced tea;
But at last she was done, and looked quite peaceful now
As she unhitched the mule and put up the old plow.
When she walked to the porch, McGee'd finished his glass
And was watching the mule as it rolled in the grass;
"I been wonderin'," he said, "how a woman abides
A dumb beast that's so mean and so lazy, besides."
"I been wonderin' that too," she remarked to old Turk,
And then sat down to wait for the poison to work.


IMMORTALITY

Philip Marlowe was a P.I.,
Kay Scarpetta an M.E.,
Ms. Warshawski was a V.I.,
Mr. Watson an M.D.

Clarice Starling was a pro,
Bernie Rhodenbarr a con,
Ranger Pigeon was an Anna,
Vito Corleone a Don.

Inspector Pitt was smart and cagey,
Spenser brash and bold,
Dave Robicheaux sleuthed in the heat,
Kate Shugak in the cold.

Some say these folks weren't real--they lived
In books and books alone;
I say they'll be alive long after
You and I are gone.


PURPA TRAITOR

When Purpa's flights were smuggling grapes
Its king escaped in vain;
The Purpals found His Majesty
Aboard a fruited plane.


TINSELTOWN

The new bartender was a guy
Dressed in a well-cut suit and tie.
Sue blinked. "Hey, aren't you Peter Gunn?"
"I used to be, in '61."
"What happened, there? I liked that show."
"The guy who played me had to go."
"So you're Craig Stevens?" she replied.
"No, I'm the character. Craig died."
"The character? For real?" asked Sue.
Gunn shrugged. "Don't I look real to you?"
"But you were once a superstar!"
"A fallen star, now tending bar."
"So all this time, you've been right here?"
"Long story. Want another beer?"
When refilled, Sue inquired again:
"So what all have you done since then?"
"Well, two producers died one night--"
"I heard. They both got poisoned, right?"
"--I was accused; I left L.A.,
And caught a boat and sailed away."
She sipped her brew and asked: "With who?"
"With Gilligan. The Skipper too."
"You hid out on another show?"
"I lived there forty years or so."
"You stayed on, after they were done?"
"An island beach, a naked Gunn."
"So now you're back. Still wanted, right?"
"And undetected, till tonight."
Sue said, with a malicious grin:
"Aren't you afraid I'll turn you in?"
Then, gagging, she fell to the floor.
Gunn smiled and said: "Not anymore."


CAN YOU SPELL "ESCAPE"?
(Come on, you knew I had to include a limerick . . .)

On the eve of Boone's hanging, Ann Price
Hid a nail-file in his bowl of rice.
No great genius, Boone
Hanged the next day at noon,
But his fingernails looked rather nice.


NEVER TOO LATE

"You're Al Capone?"
He said: "That's right."
"You're dead, I thought."
He said: "Not quite."
"Then you must be--"
"I'm 103."
"So you're retired?"
"That's not for me."
"But how do you--"
"Get by?" he said.
He pulled a gun.
"Hands on your head."


Enough silliness.  I will now close with a more serious poem, about the commonly held belief that we as fiction writers are sometimes a little weird.  I hope this will help dispel those rumors:


GHOSTWRITERS

They say creative people tend
To lose their marbles now and then.
Musicans? Artists? That may be--
But novelists? I disagree.
My fellow authors, young and old,
Are all quite sane; this I was told
By Faulkner, Poe, and Hemingway--
I spoke with them just yesterday.