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.

The Mirror
Submitted by Angela Hickey


Each year my mirror seems much older,
Somewhat duller and a fraction colder,
The glass which always gleamed and twinkled
Now appears all scratched and wrinkled.

Appears more blotchy, tired and droopy
Confused and haggard, dazed and loopy
Sadder, slower, grimmer, glummer
I think that I’ve been sold a bummer.!!!!!


I found this little gem among my late Mums belongings and I feel it tells it’s own tale.
It all depends on how we look after that mirror.

A DEAD STORK AND A HOT NIGHT
Two pieces of verse by Eamon Henry. Date 15 July 2008

Introduction:
The first piece of the two verse compositions following is my own English translation, made in 1974, of the Gaelic poem “An Bonnan Buidhe” (meaning “the yellow bittern or stork”) by Cathal Buidhe Mac Giolla Gunna (Charles the yellow-haired Kilgun) born about 1690. He comes upon a dead yellow-coloured stork during a mid-winter session of ice and snow. In a light humorous vein, he compares himself closely with the bird, now dead, and sees them both together as comprising a brace of long-suffering yellow-haired topers!
The second piece, of title “A Frank Admission”, is my personal thoughts on a hot September night in Barbados during my 1999-2000 work-stint down there, and needs no further comment on what it has to say. Rather solemn stuff!

THE YELLOW STORK:
A sad day’s work, oh yellow stork! Your poor shanks stretched after all the crack!
Not for food, I think, but through want of drink, are you lying flattened upon your back!
Great Troy destroyed makes me less annoyed, than your corpse laid out on the stone’s bare top.Not a harm you brought, no deception wrought, you deserve good wine, not bog-hole slop!
My handsome scout, the heart goes out to your quiet head laid at my feet!How often I have heard your cry, while you drank your fill in the marshy peat!I Charles your friend will meet my end, from the drink, they say, let them think the worst!It will not be so, but like gallant crow, that lately died of excessive thirst!
Oh stork so young, my heart is stung, to see you there among the whins!The rats will stay at your wake all day, and it won’t be nice, when the sport begins!I am quite put out that you didn’t shout, that the times were bad, that your strength did fail.The ice I’d break on Vasey’s lake, you could have your fill of Adam’s ale!
My sad lament does not extend to blackbird, crane, or song-thrush fair.Of my stork I sing, great-hearted thing! Like me in his thirst and his yellow hair!His life he spent on drink intent. For myself betimes there’s the day or nightWhen each dram supplied goes down inside lest I die of thirst, a fearful plight!
The wife has said I’ll soon be dead unless I change my tipsy ways.My blunt reply: she speaks a lie, for the drink will rather prolong my days.Our stork, you note, had a well-oiled throat, yet he died last night of drought profound!So, good friends, don’t fret! Keep the wind-pipe wet! For no drop ye’ll get in the graveyard ground!


A FRANK ADMISSION:

Barbados gave a sweaty night, between the showers of rain.The throbbing drums of vans from slums did cause his ears to pain.The chirping frogs with barking dogs had joined in loud affray.They’d keep it up without a stop until the break of day.
He rubbed below with cream from tube, to try and stop the itch,And spray-gunned a mosquito, to kill blood-sucking bitch.While beetles all, both great and small, climbed up and down and flew. He laced a shot of rum with juice to boost his strength anew.
There are cool days and quiet nights without the sweat and noise,And these indeed could come again as deeply valued joys.The bracing air of Dublin hills refresh his thinning blood,Like throbbing cry of kestrel’s young tree-hopping through the wood.
Like hare and deer and whirring grouse and all the things that moveAmong the heather and the woods upon the hills above.He misses them but hopes indeed to find them all once more Where they will be when he is gone – a happy thought to store!