Favourite Poems: The Man from God Knows Where by Florence Wilson

The Irish nationalist tradition has given rise to a great wealth of poetry and ballad-- untold thousands of ballads and poems. Many (perhaps most) are indifferent, or even doggerel. Of the rest, their literary value is on a continuum-- many have the charming crudity appropriate to ballads, many have flashes of brilliance in this or that line or verse, and some of them are gems.

Here is a gem: "The Man from God Knows Where" by Florence Wilson, first published in 1918.

This poem featured in an anthology entitled Rich and Rare, which I read again and again in my teens. Yes, it's a long poem, and it's in dialect (though easily understood dialect), but I think it's worth reading. It's astonishingly accomplished, subtle, and even polished (despite the homespun register it's written in). One thing that lifts it above most patriotic poetry is the repeated shift in mood and atmosphere which occurs throughout the poem. This also makes the last, rousing verse all the more powerful.

Another thing that lifts this poem above most patriotic poetry is the rhyme pattern-- not the usual ABAB or AABB. Judge for yourself, but I think it gives the last line of every stanza a note of anticipation, which works very well given the subject matter.

It's about Thomas Russell, a leader of the 1798 rebellion.

Calling this one of my "favourite poems" is a bit of a stretch, but it's one that I greatly admire, so I include it in the series. It fuifils one of the criteria for poems I really love: that lines from it often come into my head unbidden. For instance, when some project or plan is foiled, I often find myself thinking of these lines:

But no French ships sailed in Cloughey bay
And we heard the black news on a harvest day

That the Cause was lost again

Although, to be honest, I always remembered the first line of that quotation as "But no ships sailed into Botany bay". Apparently Botany Bay is in Australia. I didn't know that. It might as well have been in Ireland for all I knew. My ignorance of geography is colossal, despite many efforts to Improve it.

I know nothing about Florence Wilsdon except that she wrote at least one magnificent poem. (And it's not at all what one might think of as a "girly" poem, which is neither a bad nor a good thing in itself-- but it's impressive for a poem written so convinciningly from such a masculine perspective to be written by a woman.)

The Man from God Knows Where by Florence Wilsdon

Into our townlan' on a night of snow

Rode a man from God knows where;

None of us bade him stay or go,

nor deemed him friend, nor damned him foe,

But we stabled his big roan mare;

For in our townlan' we're decent folk,

And if he didn't speak, why none of us spoke,

And we sat till the fire burned low.

We're a civil sort in our wee place

So we made the circle wide

Round Andy Lemon's cheerful blaze,

And wished the man his length of days

And a good end to his ride.

He smiled in under his slouchy hat,

Says he: 'There's a bit of a joke in that,

fFor we ride different ways.'

The whiles we smoked we watched him stare

From his seat fornenst the glow.

I nudged Joe Moore: 'You wouldn't dare

To ask him who he's for meeting there,

And how far he has got to go?'

And Joe wouldn't dare, nor Wully Scott,

And he took no drink - neither cold nor hot,

This man from God knows where.

It was closing time, and late forbye,

When us ones braved the air.

I never saw worse (may I live or die)

Than the sleet that night, an' I says, says I:

'You'll find he's for stopping there.'

But at screek o'day, through the gable pane

I watched him spur in the peltin' rain,

An' I juked from his rovin' eye.

Two winters more, then the Trouble year,

When the best that a man could feel

Was the pike that he kept in hidin's near,

Till the blood o' hate an' the blood o' fear

Would be redder nor rust on the steel.

Us ones quet from mindin' the farms

Let them take what we gave wi' the weight o' our arms

From Saintfield to Kilkeel.

In the time o' the Hurry, we had no lead

We all of us fought with the rest

An' if e'er a one shook like a tremblin' reed,

None of us gave neither hint nor heed,

Nor ever even'd we'd guessed.

We men of the North had a word to say,

An'we said it then, in our own dour way,

An' we spoke as we thought was best.

All Ulster over, the weemin cried

For the stan'in' crops on the lan'.

Many's the sweetheart and many's the bride

Would liefer ha' gone to where he died,

aAd ha' mourned her lone by her man.

But us ones weathered the thick of it

And we used to dander along and sit

In Andy's, side by side.

What with discourse goin' to and fro,

the night would be wearin' thin,

yet never so late when we rose to go

but someone would say: 'do ye min' thon' snow,

an 'the man who came wanderin'in?'

and we be to fall to the talk again,

if by any chance he was one o' them

The man who went like the win'.

Well 'twas gettin' on past the heat o' the year

When I rode to Newtown fair;

I sold as I could (the dealers were near

Only three pounds eight for the Innish steer,

An' nothin' at all for the mare!)

I met M'Kee in the throng o' the street,

Says he: 'The grass has grown under our feet

Since they hanged young Warwick here.',

And he told me that Boney had promised help

To a man in Dublin town.

Says he: 'If you've laid the pike on the shelf,

You'd better go home hot-fut by yourself,

An' once more take it down.'

So by Comber road I trotted the grey

And never cut corn until Killyleagh

Stood plain on the risin' groun'.

For a wheen o' days we sat waitin' the word

To rise and go at it like men,

But no French ships sailed into Cloughey Bay

And we heard the black news on a harvest day

That the cause was lost again;

And Joey and me, and Wully Boy Scott,

We agreed to ourselves we'd as lief as not

Ha' been found in the thick o' the slain.

By Downpatrick goal I was bound to fare

On a day I'll remember, feth;

For when I came to the prison square

The people were waitin' in hundreds there

An' you wouldn't hear stir nor breath!

For the sodgers were standing, grim an' tall,

Round a scaffold built there foment the wall,

An' a man stepped out for death!

I was brave an' near to the edge of the throng,

Yet I knowed the face again,

An' I knowed the set, an' I knowed the walk

An' the sound of his strange up-country talk,

For he spoke out right an' plain.

Then he bowed his head to the swinging rope,

Whiles I said 'Please God' to his dying hope

And 'Amen' to his dying prayer

That the wrong would cease and the right prevail,

For the man that they hanged at Downpatrick gaol

Was the Man from God knows where!