The Piper's Progress.
(Bentley's Miscellany, July, 1837.)
When I was a boy
In my father's mud edifice,
Tender and bare
As a pig in a sty:
Out of the door as I
Look'd with a steady phiz,
Who but Thade Murphy
The piper went by.
Says Thady, "But few play
This music-can you play?"
Says I, "I can't tell,
For I never did try."
So he told me that he had a charm
To make the pipes purtily speak;
Then squeezed a bag under his arm,
When sweetly they set up a squeak!
Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo!
Och hone!
How he handled the drone!
And then the sweet music he blew
Would have melted the heart of a
stone!
"Your pipe," says I, "Thady, So neatly comes o'er me, Naked I'll wander
Wherever it blows: And if my poor parents Should try to recover me, Sure, it won't be
By describing my clothes.
Pater me clauserat
Domi homunculum :
Grunniens sus erat
Comes, ut mos :
Transibat tibicen
Juxta domunculam
Quando per januam
Protuli os;
Ille ait impromptu
"Hâc tibia num tu,
Ut te sine sumptu
Edoceam vis?"
Tum pressit amiculam
Sub ulnâ vesiculam
Quæ sonum reddidit
Vocibus his ;
Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo!
Φεν, φευ !
Modo flens, modo flans,
Magico ελελευ
Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans!
The music I hear now
Takes hold of my ear now,
And leads me all over
The world by the nose."
So I follow'd his bagpipe so sweet,
And I sung as I leap'd like a frog,
"Adieu to my family seat,
So pleasantly placed in a bog."
Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo!
Och hone!
How we handled the drone!
And then the sweet music we blew
Would have melted the heart of
a stone!
Sic melos quod audio
Me replet gaudio
Ut trahor campos et
Flumina trans:
Jam linquo rudibus
Hic in paludibus
Patris tigurium
Splendidè stans.
Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo!
Dum tibicen, tu,
Modo flens, modo flans,
Iteras ελελευ
Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans!
Full five years I follow'd him,
Nothing could sunder us;
Till he one morning
Had taken a sup,
And slipt from a bridge
In a river just under us
Souse to the bottom
Just like a blind pup.
He roar'd and he bawl'd out;
And I also call'd out,
"Now Thady, my friend,
Don't you mean to come up?"
He was dead as a nail in a door-
Poor Thady was laid on the shelf.
So I took up his pipes on the shore,
And now I've set up for myself.
Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo!
Och hone!
Don't I handle the drone!
And play such sweet music? I, too,
Can't I soften the heart of a
Ut arle sic magicâ
Egi quinquennium:
Magistro tragica
Accidit res;
Bacchi nam numine
Pontis cacumine
Dum staret flumine
Labitur pes!
"E sinu fluctuum
O puer, duc tuum
(Clamat) didascalum
Fer opem nans!"...
Ast ego renuo :
Et sumens denuò
Littore tibias
Sustuli fans.
Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo!
Φευ, φευ !
Modo flens, modo flans,
Magico ελελευ
Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans!
The Double Barrel.
(Bentley's Miscellany, September, 1837.)
[This ninth "Song of the Month" in Bentley, like the first and the seventh, was from the hand of Father Prout.]
"Duo quisque Alpina coruscat
Gaesa manu."-Eneid, lib. 8.
Παν πρᾶγμα δυας ἔχει λαβας.-EPICTETUS.
September the first on the moorland hath burst,
And already with jocund carol
Each NIMROD of NOUSE hurries off to the grouse,
And has shoulder'd his DOUBLE BARREL:
For well doth he ken, as he hies through the glen,
That scanty will be his laurel
(Should he miss a first shot)
Some resource in a DOUBLE BARREL.
'Twas the Goddess of Sport, in her woodland court,
DIANA, first taught this moral,
Which the Goddess of Love soon adopted, and strove
T' improve on the "double barrel.'
Hence her Cupid, we know, put two strings to his bow,
And she laughs when two lovers quarrel,
Who, to soothe him, han't got
The resource of a DOUBLE BARREL.
Nay, the hint was too good to lie hid in the wood,
Ör to lurk in two lips of coral;
Hence the God of the Grape (who his betters would ape)
Knows the use of a DOUBLE BARREL.
His escutcheon he decks with a double XX,
And his blithe October carol
Follows up
With the sup
Of a flowing ale cup
September's Double BARREL.
WATERGRASSHILL, Kal. viibres
Poetical Epistle from Father Prout to Boz.
(Bentley's Miscellany, January, 1838.)
[It was from Genoa the Superb, under date the 14th of December, 1837, that Mahony despatched to Charles Dickens, then in his twenty-sixth year, this genial apostrophe.]
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