CHILDISH NOTIONS ABOUT INQUESTS AND HANGMEN
Verses by Eamon Henry. 5 August 2008

PREFACE: As a young child in the 1930s, I formed several wrong ideas about the awful things that happen. These wrong ideas I organized to form lurid pictures of significant occurrences. The first piece of verse below, composed about 1975, is entitled “The Inquest”. If a person were found dead, this might result in an inquest involving a coroner, a jury of seven men, and a verdict, all happening in the local pub. A man might have a great heart, and yet also have a bad heart, resulting in a coronary, relating to the coroner, who did major surgery on the corpse, with the jury looking on. An outcome could be a “corned heart” which might possibly be like corned beef.
The second piece of verse below, also composed bout 1975 and entitled “Smoked Shoulder”, is about bad men getting severe punishment later. The hangman could do butchery on the corpse, leading to “smoked shoulders”. The cannibalistic outcome of the latter I found myself unable to stomach!
THE INQUEST:Strong men hard-hatted seven stood in Farley’s bar in broad daylight.Enough red whisky they imbibed, to sober them and make them right.Impeccable in frock-coat calm they wait the Coroner with bag.The corpse laid out on table-top says not a word of blame or brag.
Officially he sets to work with pincers, hatchet, saw and lance.He corns the heart, coronary! He then cuts out the eyes that glance,the bloody brains, the puddings all, the liver, lights and kidney-clot.The seven men are watching close to quite ensure he corns the lot!
He puts the pieces back inside and stitches up the flesh and skin.His work complete, he turns now to hear the Verdict from the men.The Foreman of the Jury speaks the right reply: “A work of art!”In childhood, thus my notion was, of Inquests, Juries, corned heart !


SMOKED SHOULDER:
He cut two ladies into lumps, and sent them off in travelling-trunks.The hangman had him at the end. He stretched a neck and lost a friend!
The hooded hangman, capped in black, cut up his corpse and sold the back.The shoulders, hung on hooks in town, were dried and smoked till yellow-brown.My mother brought a shoulder home. ‘Twas smoked and brown and long-time dead.I thought it came from hangman’s hook. “It is a pig” is what she said.