Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PADDING IT, by PATRICK MACGILL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PADDING IT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hasing it out like niggers on a two and a / tanner sub
Last Line: The journey to ballachulish, for this is the song of it.
Subject(s): Farm Life; Labor & Laborers; Slavery; Travel; Agriculture; Farmers; Work; Workers; Serfs; Journeys; Trips


An empty stomach, an empty sack and a long road.
— From Moleskin's Diary.

HASHING it out like niggers on a two and a tanner sub,
Everything sunk with our uncle, little to burn at the pub,
Fifty and six were our hours, and never an extra shift,
And whiles we were plunging at banker, and whiles we were studying thrift —

Sewing and patching the trousers, till their parts were more than the whole,
Tailoring, cobbling, and darning, grubbed on a sausage and roll —
Thrift on a fourpenny hour, a matter of nineteen bob,
But we glanced askew at the gaffer, and stuck like glue to the job,
We of the soapless legion, we of the hammer and hod,
Human swine of the muck-pile, forever forgotten of God.

"Hearing of anything better?" one to another would say,
As we toiled in all moods of the weather, and cursed at the dragging day,
Winking the sweat off our lashes, shaking the wet off our hair,
Wishing to God it was raining, praying to Him it would fair.
"Curse a job in the country," one unto one would reply,
Looking across his shoulder, to see if the boss was by —
Arrogant March came roaring down on the year, and then
A rumour spread in the model, and gladdened the navvy men.

Was it the highland slogan? was it the bird of the north,
Out of its frost-rimmed eyrie that carried the message forth?
"Jackson has need of navvies, the navvies who understand
The graft of the offside reaches, to labour where God has bann'd,
Men of the sign of the moleskin who swear by the soundless pit,
Men who are eager for money and hurry in spending it.
Bluchers and velvet waistcoats, and kneestraps below their knees,
The great unwashed of the model — Jackson has need of these."

Then the labourer on the railway laughed at the engine peals,
And threw his outworn shovel beneath the flange of the wheels.
The hammerman at the jumper slung his hammer aside,
Lifted his lying money and silently did a slide,
The hod was thrown on the mortar, the spade was flung in the drain,
The grub was left on the hot-plate, and the navvies were out again.
All the roads of the Kingdom converged, as it were, to one.
Which led away to the northward under the dusk and dawn,
And out on the road we hurried, rugous and worn and thin,
Our cracking joints a-staring out through our parchment skin,
Some of us trained from our childhood, to swab in the slush and muck,
Some who were new to the shovel, some who were down on their luck,
The prodigal son half home-sick, the jail-bird, dodger and thief,
The chucker-out from the gin shop, the lawyer minus a brief,
The green hand over from Oir'lan', the sailor tired of his ships,
Some with hair of silver, some with a woman's lips,
Old, anæmic, and bilious, lusty, lanky and slim,
Padding it, slowly and surely, padding it resolute, grim.

We dossed it under the heavens, watching the moon ashine,
And a tremor akin to palsy quivering down the spine.
We drank of the spring by the roadside using the hands for a cup,
Stole the fowl from the farm before the farmer was up,
We lit our fires in the darkness drumming up in the flame,
Primitive, rude, romantic men who were old at the game,
On through the palpable darkness, and on through the tinted dawn,
The line of moleskin and leather fitfully plodded on;
And no one faltered or weakened, and no one stumbled or fell,
But now and again they grumbled, saying, "It's worse nor hell."
The rain came splattering earthwards, slavering in our face,
But we never hinted of shelter and never slackened our pace,
The mornings were cool and lightsome, we never hurried a bit,
"Slow and easy is better than hashing and rushing it."
Ever the self-same logic, steady, sober and suave —
"The hasty horse will stumble," "hashing to make your grave,"
"Easy and slow on the jumper, will drive a hole for the blast,"
"Rome was long in the building, but the grandeur of Rome is past."

You speak of the road in your verses, you picture the joy of it still,
You of the specs and the collars, you who are geese of the quill,
You pad it along with a wine-flask and your pockets crammed with dough,
Eat and drink at your pleasure, and write how the flowers grow —
If your stomach was empty as pity, your hobnails were down at the heels,
And a nor'-easter biting your nose off, then you would know how it feels,
A nail in the sole of your bluchers jagging your foot like a pin,
And every step on your journey was driving it further in,
Then, out on the great long roadway, you'd find when you went abroad,
The nearer you go to nature the further you go from God.

Through many a sleepy hamlet, and many a noisy town,
While eyes of loathing stared us, we who were out and down,
Looking aslant at the wineshop, talking as lovers talk,
Of the lure of the gentle schooner, the joy of Carroll's Dundalk;
Sometimes bumming a pipeful, sometimes "shooting the crow,"
But ever onward and onward, fitfully, surely, slow,
On to the drill and the jumper, and on to the concrete bed,
On to the hovel and card school, the dirt-face, and slush ahead.

Thus was the long road followed — true is the tale I tell,
Ask my pals of the model — ask, they remember well —
Hear them tell how they tramped it, as they smoke at the bar and spit,
The journey to Ballachulish, for this is the song of it.





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