Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BLOODYBUSH EDGE, by WILFRID WILSON GIBSON



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BLOODYBUSH EDGE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: A track, at last, thank god
Last Line: And such a clatter-jaw!


Bloodybush Edge is a remote spot on the borderline between
England and Scotland, marked by a dumpy obelisk, on
which is inscribed an old scale of tolls. A rough
sandy road runs down across the dark moors, into
England on the one hand, and into Scotland on the
other. It is a fine, starry night in e

"Now Liddisdale has ridden a raid;
But I wat they better hae stayed at hame;
For Michael o' Winfield, he lies dead;
And Jock o' the Side is prisoner ta'en."

[He stands for a moment, looking across the fells, which
are very dark, in spite of the starry sky; then flings
himself down in the heather, with his back to the
obelisk, and lights his pipe. Presently, he sees a
dark figure, stumbling with uncertain steps across the
boggy moor; and watches it ke

TRAMP. A track, at last, thank God!
DICK. Ay, there be whiles
When beaten tracks are welcome.
TRAMP. Who the ... Oh!
I didn't count on having company
Again in this world; and when I heard a voice
I thought it must be another ghost. It's queer
Hearing a voice bleat when you haven't heard
A mortal voice for ages. I've not changed
A word with a soul since noon; and when you spoke
It gave me quite a turn. A feather, Lord!
But it wouldn't take the shadow of a feather
To knock me over. I'm in such a stickle,
Dead-beat, and fit to drop. To drop! I've dropped
A hundred times already, humpty-dumpty!
Why, I've been tumbling in and out black holes,
Since sunset, on that god-forsaken moor,
Half-crazed with fear of ... Ah, you've got a light:
And I've been tramping all the livelong day
With a pipeful of comfort in my waistcoat-pocket;
And would have swopt the frizzling sun itself;
For a match to kindle it. Thanks, mate, that's better.
And now, what was it you were saying, Old Cock,
When I mistook you then for Hamlet's father?
Lord! if you'd seen him at the "Elephant,"
In queer, blue sheeny armour, you'd have shivered.
"I am thy father's spirit," he says, like that,
Down in his boots. But you were saying --
DICK. There are times
When beaten tracks are welcome.
TRAMP. True for you:
And truer by a score of bumps, for me.
My neck's been broken half-a-dozen times:
My body's just an aching bag of bones.
I'm one big bruise from top to toe, as though
I'd played in the Cup Final, as the ball.
And mud, I'm mud to the eyes, and over, carrying
Half of the country that I've passed through on me.
My best suit, too! And I was always faddy
About my clothes. My mother used to call me
Finicky Fred. If she could see me now!
I couldn't count the times that I've pitched headlong
Into black bog.
DICK. Ay, there are clarty bits
In Foulmire Moss. But what set you stravaging
Among the peat-hags at this time of night?
Unless you know the tracks by heart....
TRAMP. I know
The Old Kent Road by heart.
DICK. The Old Kent Road?
TRAMP. London, S. E. You've heard of London, likely?
DICK. Ay! Ay! I've heard....
TRAMP. Well, mate, I've walked from London.
DICK. You've walked from London, here?
TRAMP. Well, not to-day.
It must be nigh three hundred mile, I reckon.
Just five weeks, yesterday, since I set out:
But, as you say, I've walked from London, here:
Though where "here" is the devil only knows!
What is "here" called, if it has any name
But Back o' Beyond, or World's End, eh?
DICK. You're sitting
On Bloodybush Edge this moment.
TRAMP. To think of that!
Bloodybush Edge! And that's what I have come to;
While all my friends, the men and women I know,
Are strolling up and down the Old Kent Road,
Chattering and laughing by the lighted stalls
And the barrows of bananas and oranges;
Or sitting snugly in bars; and here am I,
On Bloodybush Edge, talking to Hamlet's father.
DICK. My name's Dick Dodd.
TRAMP. Well, no offence, Old Cock!
And Hamlet's father was a gentleman,
A king of ghosts; and Lord! but he could groan.
My name's ... Jack Smith: and Jack would give a sovereign,
A sovereign down, if he could borrow it,
And drinks all around, and here's to you, and you!
Just to be sitting in The Seven Stars,
And listening to the jabber, just to snuff
A whiff of the smoke and spirit. Seven Stars!
I'm lodging under stars enough to-night:
Seven times seven hundred....
DICK. Often I have tried
To count them, lying here upon my back:
But they're too many for me. Just when you think
You've reckoned all between two sprigs of heather,
One tumbles from its place, or else a hundred
Spring out of nowhere. If you only stare
Hard at the darkest patch, for long enough
You'll see that it's all alive with little stars;
And there isn't any dark at all.
TRAMP. No dark!
If you'd been tumbling into those black holes,
You'd not think overmuch of these same stars.
I couldn't see my hand before me. Stars!
Give me the lamps along the Old Kent Road:
And I'm content to leave the stars to you.
They're well enough: but hung a trifle high
For walking with clean boots. Now a lamp or so...
DICK. If it's so fine and brave, the Old Kent Road,
How is it you came to leave it?
TRAMP. I'd my reasons.
DICK. Reasons! Queer reasons surely to set you trapesing
Over Foulmire in the dark: though I could travel
The fells from here to Cheviot, blindfold. Ay!
And never come a cropper.
TRAMP. 'Twas my luck,
My lovely luck, and naught to do with reasons --
My gaudy luck, and the devilish dust and heat,
And hell's own thirst that drove me; and too snug
A bed among the heather. Oversleeping,
That's always played the mischief with me. Once
I slept till three in the morning, and...
DICK. Till three?
You're an early bird, if you call that oversleeping.
Folk hereabouts are mostly astir by three:
But, city-folk, I thought....
TRAMP. I'm on the night-shift.
I sleep by day, for the most part, like a cat.
That's why, though dog-tired now, I couldn't sleep
A wink though you paid me gold down.
DICK. Night-shift, you!
And what may your job be? Cat's night-shift, likely,
As well as day's sleep!
TRAMP. Now, look here, Old Cock,
There's just one little thing that we could teach you
Down London way. Why, even babes in London
Know better than to ask too many questions.
You ask no questions, and you'll hear no lies,
Is the first lesson that's hammered into them.
No London gentleman asks questions. Lord!
If you went "What's-your-job?"-ing down our way
You'd soon be smelling some one's fist, I reckon;
Or tripping over somebody in the dark
Upon the stairs: and with a broken neck,
Be left, still asking questions in your coffin,
Till the worms had satisfied you. Not that I
Have anything to hide, myself. I'm only
Advising you for your own good. But, Old Chap,
We were talking of something else ... that hell-hot road,
I'd pegged along it through the blazing dust
From Bellingham, till I could peg no more;
My mouth was just a limekiln; and each foot
One bleeding blister. A kipper on the grid,
That's what I was on the road. And the heather looked
So cool and cosy, I left the road for a bit;
And coming on a patch of wet green moss,
I took my boots off; and it was so champion
To feel cold water squelching between my toes,
I paddled on like a child, till I came to a clump
Of heather in full bloom, just reeking honey;
And curled up in it, and dropt sound asleep;
And, when I wakened, it was dark, pitch-dark,
For all your stars. The sky was light enough,
Had I been travelling that way. But, for the road,
I hadn't a notion of its whereabouts.
A blessed babe-in-the-woods I was, clean lost,
And fit to cry for my mammy. Babes-in-the-wood!
But there were two of them, for company,
And only one of me, by my lone self.
However, I said to myself: You've got to spend
A night in the heather. Well, you've known worse beds,
And worse bed-fellows than a sheep or so --
Trying to make believe I wasn't frightened.
And then, somehow, I couldn't, God knows why!
But I was scared: the loneliness, and all;
The quietness, and the queer creepy noises;
And something that I couldn't put a name to,
A kind of feeling in my marrow bones,
As though the great black hills against the sky
Had come alive about me in the night;
And they were watching me; as though I stood
Naked, in a big room, with blind men sitting,
Unseen, all round me, in the quiet darkness,
That was not dark to them. And all the stars
Were eyeing me; and whisperings in the heather
Were like cold water trickling down my spine:
And when I heard a cough....
DICK. A coughing sheep.
TRAMP. Maybe: but 'twas a coughing ghost to me.
I've never yet set eyes on a ghost, unless ... [looking
askance at DICK]
Though I've often felt them near me. Once, when I...
But, Lord, I'm talking, talking...
DICK. I've seen ghosts,
A hundred times. The ghost of reivers ride
The fells at night; and you'd have ghosts in plenty
About you, lad, though you were blind to them.
But, why d'you fear them? There's no harm in ghosts.
Even should they ride over you, it's only
Like a cold wind blowing through you. The other night,
As I came down by Girsonsfield, the ghost
Of Parcy Reed, with neither hands nor feet,
Rode clean through me; the false Halls, and the Croziers
Hard on his heels, though I kept clear of them;
And often I've heard him, cracking his hunting-crop,
On a winter's night, when the winds were in full cry;
And heard the yelp of the pack, and the horn's halloo,
Over the howl of the storm, or caught at dawn
A glimpse of the tails of his green hunting-jacket.
Whenever you shudder, or break in a cold sweat,
Not knowing why, folk say that some one's stepping
Over your grave; but that's all stuff and nonsense.
It's only some poor ghost that's walking through you.
TRAMP. Well, ghosts or sheep, I'd had my fill of them;
Went all to pieces, took to my heels and ran;
And hadn't run three yards, when I pitched headlong.
That was the first. Since then, I've felt the bottom
Of every hole, five hundred to my reckoning,
From there to here.
DICK. You've covered some rough ground.
But you have doubled back upon your tracks
If you were making North.
TRAMP. Ay: I was making
For Scotland. I'd a notion...
DICK. Scotland lies
Under your left heel, though your right's in England.
TRAMP. To think of that! Well, I can't feel much difference
Twixt one and the other. Perhaps, if I'd my boots off...
But, Hamlet's father, isn't it a king's bed
We're lying on, and sprawling over two countries!
And yet, I'd rather be in Millicent Place,
London, S. E., and sleeping three in a bed.
This room's too big for me, too wide and windy;
The bed, too broad, and not what I call snug:
The ceiling, far too high, and full of eyes.
I hate the loneliness. I like to feel
There are houses, packed with people, all about me
For miles on miles: I'm fond of company;
I'm only really happy in a throng,
Crowds jostling thick and hot about me. Here
I feel, somehow, as if I were walking naked
Among the hills, the last man left alive.
I haven't so much as set eyes on a house,
Not since I left that blistering road.
DICK. The nearest
Is three miles off, or more.
TRAMP. Well, country-people
Should be good neighbours, and quiet; but, for me,
I'd rather be packed like herrings in a barrel.
I hate the loneliness: it makes me think...
I'm fond of company; too fond at times.
If I hadn't been so fond of company
A while back, I'd have hardly been lying now
On Bloodybush Edge, talking of ghosts at midnight,
When I might be ... but it won't bear thinking on.
Yet, even with you beside me, Bloodybush Edge
Is a size too big in beds -- leaves too much room
For ghosts, to suit my fancy. Three in a bed,
And you sleep sound.
DICK. And why should you fear ghosts,
When, one fine night, you'll be a ghost yourself?
How soon, who knows! Why, even at this moment,
If you had broken your neck among the moss-hags
You'd be your own ghost sitting there, not you.
If you hadn't been so muddy, and so frightened...
Nay! but I've seen too many ghosts in my time
For you to take me in. Ghosts often lean
Over me, when I'm fishing in the moonlight.
They're keen, are ghosts. I sometimes feel their breath
Upon my neck, when I am guddling trout;
Or the clutch of their clammy fingers on my wrist
When I am spearing salmon, lest I should miss.
And always at the burning of the water
You'll see them lurking in the shadows, beyond
The flare and the smoke of the torches, in the night,
Eager as boys to join in the sport; and at times,
When they have pressed too near, and a torch has flared,
I've seen the live flame running through their bodies.
But oftenest they appear to me when alone
I'm fishing like a heron; and last night
As I stooped over Deadwater, I felt...
TRAMP. And you're an honest man to be asking questions
Of gentlemen on tour! So, you're a poacher,
A common poacher: though it must be rare sport,
I've often fancied...
DICK. To creep up to a pool
Where a big bull-trout lies beneath a boulder
With nose against the stream, his tail scarce flicking;
To creep up quiet and without a shadow,
And lie upon your belly in the gravel;
And slide your hands as noiseless as an otter
Into the water, icy-cold and aching,
And tickle, tickle, till you have him fuddled;
Then lift him, cold and slithery, from the burn,
A quivering bit of silver in the moonlight...
TRAMP. Ay, that must be rare sport; but, for myself,
I'd rather manage without the help of ghosts.
Once, I remember, I was bending down --
'Twas in an empty house ... I'd cut my thumb,
The window jamming somehow, a nasty cut:
The mark's still there ... (not that! nay, that's the place
I was bitten by a friend) and as I fumbled
With a damned tricky lock, some Yankee patent,
I felt a ghost was standing close behind me,
And dared not stir, nor squint over my shoulder:
But crouched there, moving neither hand nor foot,
Till I was just a solid ache of terror,
And could have squealed aloud with the numb cramp,
And pins and needles in my arms and legs.
And then at last, when I was almost dropping,
I lost my head, took to my heels, and bolted
Headfirst down stairs, and through the broken window,
Leaving my kit and the swag, without a thought:
And never coming to my senses, till
I saw a bullseye glimmering down the lane.
And then I found my brow was bleeding, too --
At first I thought 'twas sweat -- a three-inch cut,
Clean to the bone. I had to have it stitched.
I told the doctor that I'd put my head
Through a window in the dark, but not a word
About my body following it. The doctor,
He was a gentleman, and asked no questions.
A civil chap: he'd stitched my scalp before
Once, when the heel of a lady's slipper...
DICK. So you
Are a common poacher, too; although you take
Only dead silver and gold. Still it must be
A risky business, burgling, when the folk...
TRAMP. Risk! ay, there's risk! That's where the fun comes in;
To steal into a house, with people sleeping
So warm and snug and innocent overhead;
To hear them snoring as you pass their doors
With all they're dreaming of stowed in your pockets;
To tiptoe from the attic to the basement,
With a chance that you may find on any landing
A door flung open, and a man to tackle.
It's only empty houses I'm afraid of.
I've more than once looked up a pistol's snout,
And never turned a hair ... though once I heard
A telephone-bell ring in an empty house --
And I can hear the damned thing tinkling yet...
I'm all in a cold sweat just thinking of it.
It tinkled, tinkled ... Risk! Why man alive,
Life's all a risky business, till you're dead.
There's no risk then ... unless ... I never feared
A living man, sleeping or waking, yet.
But ghosts, well, ghosts are different somehow. There's
A world of difference between men and ghosts.
Let's think no more of ghosts -- but lighted streets,
And crowds, and women; though it's my belief
There's not a woman in all this country-side.
DICK. There's womenfolk, and plenty. And they are kind,
The womenfolk, to me. Daft Dick is ever
A favourite with the womenfolk. His belly
Would oft go empty, were it not for them.
TRAMP. You call those women, gawky, rawboned creatures,
Thin-lipped, hard-jawed, cold-eyed! I like fat women.
If you could walk just now down the Old Kent Road,
And see the plump young girls in furs and feathers,
With saucy black eyes, sparkling in the gaslight;
And looking at you, munching oranges,
Or whispering to each other with shrill giggles
As you go by, and nudging one another;
Or standing with a soldier eating winkles,
Grimacing with the vinegar and pepper,
Then laughing so merrily you almost wish
You were a red-coat, too! And the fat old mothers,
Too old for feathers and follies, with their tight
Nigh-bursting bodices, and their double chins,
They're homely, motherly and comfortable,
And do a man's eyes good. There's not a sight
In all the world that's half as rare to see
As a fat old wife with jellied eels and porter.
Ay, women should be plump ... though Ellen Ann
Was neither old nor fat, when she and I
Were walking out together, and she'd red hair,
As red as blazes, and a peaked white face.
But 'twas her eyes, her eyes that always laughed,
And the merry way she had with her ... But, Lord,
I'm talking! Only mention petticoats,
And I'm the boy to talk till doomsday. Women!
If it hadn't been for a petticoat, this moment
I might be drinking my own health in the bar
Of The Seven Stars or The World Turned Upside Down,
Instead of ... Well, Old Cock, it's good to have
Someone to talk to, after such a day.
You cannot get much further with a sheep;
And I met none but sheep, and they all scuttled,
Not even stopping to pass the time of day,
And the birds, well, they'd enough to say, and more,
When I was running away from myself in the dark,
With their "Go back! Go back!"
DICK. You'd scared the grouse.
They talk like Christians. Often in the dawn...
TRAMP. Bloodybush Edge! But why the Bloodybush?
I see no bush...
DICK. Some fight in the old days, likely,
In the days when men were men...
TRAMP. I little thought,
When I set out from London on my travels,
That I was making straight for Bloodybush Edge.
I had my reasons, but, reason or none, it's certain
That I'd have turned up here, some day or other:
For I must travel. I've the itching foot.
I talk of London, when I'm well out of it
By a hundred miles or so; but, when I'm in it,
There always comes a time when I couldn't stay
A moment longer, not for love or money:
Though in the end it always has me back.
I cannot rest. There's something in my bones --
They'll need to screw the lid down with brass screws
To keep them in my coffin. When I'm dead,
If I don't walk, I'll be surprised, I ... Lord,
We're on to ghosts again! But I'm the sort
That's always hankering to be elsewhere,
Wherever I am. Some men can stick to a job
As though they liked it. I'm not made that way.
I couldn't heave the same pick two days running.
I've tried it: and I know. I must have change.
It's in my blood. And work, why work's for fools.
DICK. Ay, fools indeed: and yet they seem content.
Content! why my old uncle, Richard Dodd,
He worked till he was naught but skin and bone,
And rheumatism: and when the doctor told him:
"You must give up. It's no use; you're past work."
"Past work," he says, "past work, like an old horse:
"They shoot old nags, when they are past their work.
"Doctor," he says, "I'll give you five pound down
"To take that gun, and shoot me like a nag."
The doctor only laughed, and answered, "Nay.
"An old nag's carcase is worth money, Richard:
"But yours, why, who'd give anything for yours!"
They call me daft -- Daft Dick. It pleases them.
But I have never been daft enough to work.
I never did a hand's turn in my life:
And won't, while there are trout-streams left, and women.
And I am a traveller, too, I cannot rest.
The wind's in my bones, I think, and like the wind,
I'm here, to-night; to-morrow, Lord knows where!
TRAMP. London, perhaps, or well upon the road there,
Since I'm on Bloodybush Edge.
DICK. Nay, never London.
I cannot thole the towns. They stifle me.
I spent a black day in Newcastle, once.
Never again! I cannot abide the crowds.
I must be by myself. I must have air:
I must have room to breathe, and elbow-room,
Wide spaces round me, winds and running water.
I know the singing-note of every burn
'Twixt here and High Cup Nick, by Appleby.
And birds and beasts, I must have them about me --
Rabbits and hares, weasels and stoats and adders,
Plover and grouse, partridge and snipe and curlew,
Red-shank and heron. I think that towns would choke me;
And I'd go blind shut in by the tall houses,
With never a far sight to stretch my eyes.
I must have hills, and hills beyond. And beds --
I never held with beds and stuffiness.
I'm seldom at my ease beneath a roof:
The rafters all seem crushing on my head,
A dead weight. Though I sleep in barns in Winter,
I'm never at home except beneath the stars.
I've seen enough of towns; and as for the women,
Fat blowsy sluts and slatterns...
TRAMP. Easy, Old Cock!
"What's one man's meat ..." as the saying is; and so,
Each man to his own world, and his own women.

[They sit for awhile smoking in silence. Then DAFT
DICK begins singing softly to himself again.]

DICK [singing]. "Their horses were the wrong way shod,
And Hobbie has mounted his grey sae fine,
Wat on his old horse, Jock on his bay;
And on they rode for the waters of Tyne.

"And when they came to Chollerton Ford,
They lighted down by the light o' the moon;
And a tree they cut with nogs on each side,
To climb up the wa' of Newcastle toun."

TRAMP. What's that you're singing, matey?
DICK. "Jock o' the Side."
A ballad of the days when men were men,
And sheep were sheep, and not all mixter-maxter.
Thon were brave days, or brave nights, rather, thon!
Brave nights, when Liddisdale was Liddisdale,
And Tynedale, Tynedale, not all hand-in-glove,
And hanky-panky, and naught but market-haggling
Twixt men whose fathers' swords were the bargainers!
That was a man's work, riding out, hot-trod,
Over the hills to lift a herd of cattle,
And leave behind a blazing byre, or to steal
Your neighbour's sheep, while he lay drunk and snoring --
A man's work, ever bringing a man's wages,
The fight to the death, or life won at the sword's point.
God! those were nights: the heather and sky alow
With the light of burning peel-towers, and the wind
Ringing with slogans, as the dalesmen met,
Over the singing of the swords:
"An Armstrong! An Armstrong!"
"A Milburne! A Milburne!"
"An Elliott! An Elliott!"
"A Robson! A Robson!"
"A Charlton! A Charlton!"
"A Fenwick! A Fenwick!"
"Fy, Tynedale, to it!"
"Jethert's here! Jethert's here!"
"Tarset and Tarretburn!
"Hardy and heatherbred!
"Yet! Yet!"
Man, did you ever hear the story told
Of Barty Milburne, Barty of the Comb,
Down Tarset way? and how he waked one morning
To find that overnight some Scottish reiver
Had lifted the pick of his flock: and how hot-foot
He was up the Blackburn, summoning Corbet Jock:
And how the two set out to track the thieves
By Emblehope, Berrymoor Edge and Blackman's Law,
By Blakehope Nick, and under Oh Me Edge,
And over Girdle Fell to Chattlehope Spout,
And so to Carter Bar; but lost the trail
Somewhere about the Reidswire: and how, being loth
To go home empty-handed, they just lifted
The best sheep grazing on the Scottish side,
As fair exchange: and turned their faces home.
By this, snow had set in: and 'twas sore work
Driving the wethers against it over the fell;
When, finding they were followed in their turn
By the laird of Leatham and his son, they laughed,
And waited for the Scots by Chattlehope Spout
Above Catcleugh: and in the snow they fought,
Till Corbet Jock and one of the Scots were killed,
And Barty himself sore wounded in the thigh;
When the other Scot, thinking him good as dead,
Sprang on him, as he stooped, with a whickering laugh:
And Barty, with one clean, back-handed blow,
Struck off his head, and, as they tell the tale,
"Garred it spang like an onion along the heather."
Then, picking up the body of Corbet Jock,
He slung it over his shoulder; and carried his mate,
With wounded thigh and driving the wethers before him,
Through blinding snow, across the boggy fells
To the Blackburn, though his boot was filled with blood.
Or the other tale, how one of the Robson lads
Stole a Scot's ewes: and when he'd got them home,
And had mixed them with his own, found out, too late,
They'd got the scab: and how he went straight back
With a stout hempen rope to the Scot's house
And hanged him from his own rooftree by the neck
Till he was dead, to teach the rascal a lesson,
Or so he said, that when a gentleman called
For sheep the next time, he'd think twice about it
Before he tried to palm off scabbit ewes.
Poachers and housebreakers and bargainers!
Those men were men: and lived and died like men;
Taking their own road -- asking no man's leave;
Doing and speaking outright, hot and clean,
The thing that burned in them, and paying the price.
And those same gawky, rawboned women mothered
Such sons as these; and still do, nowadays --
For hunting foxes, and for market-haggling!
You fear no living man! A glinting bullseye
Down a dark lane would not have set them scuttling.
They didn't dread the mosshags in the dark.
And seemingly they'd little fear of ghosts,
Being themselves so free in making ghosts.
Ghosts! why the night is all alive with ghosts,
Ghosts of dead raiders, and dead cattle-lifters;
Poor, headless ghosts; and ghosts with broken necks...
See that chap, yonder, with the bleeding thigh,
On a grey gelding, making for Hurklewinter --
A horse-thief, sure ... And the ghostly stallions whinney
As the ghostly reivers drive their flocks and herds...
[Listening.] They are quiet now: but I've often heard the patter
Of sheep, or the trot-trot of the frightened stirks
Down this same road...
TRAMP. Stop man! You'll drive me crazy!
Let's talk no more of ghosts! I want to sleep:
I'm dog-tired ... but I'll never sleep to-night.
What's that ... I thought I heard ... I'm all a-tremble.
My very blood stops, listening, in my veins.
I'm all to fiddlestrings ... Let's talk of London,
And lights, and crowds, and women. Once I met
A chap in the bar of The World Turned Upside Down,
With three blue snakes tattooed around his wrist:
A joker, he was; and what he didn't know
Of women the world over you could shove
Between the nail and the quick, and never feel it --
He told me that in Valparaiso once
A half-breed wench that he ... but, Lord, what's that!

[A low distant sound of trotting drawing quickly nearer.]

I thought I heard ... Do you hear nothing?
DICK. Naught.
TRAMP. I'm all on edge: I could have sworn I heard --
Where was I? Well, as I was saying ... God!
Can you hear nothing now? Trot-trot! Trot-trot!
I must be going crazy, or you're stone deaf.
DICK. Nay, I'm none deaf.
TRAMP. It's coming nearer, nearer...
Trot-trot! trot-trot! Man, tell me that you hear it,
For God's sake, or I'll go mad!
DICK. No two men ever
May hear or see them, together, at one time.
TRAMP. Hear what? See what? Speak, man, if you've a tongue!
DICK. The ghostly stirks.
TRAMP. The ghostly stirks! Trot-trot!
Trot-trot! They're almost on us. Look you! there!
Along the road there, black against the sky.
They're charging down with eyes ablaze ... O Christ...

[He takes to his heels, running lamely down the road on
the Scottish side, as a herd of frightened young
stirks gallops down the road from the English side.
They pass DICK, who watches them, placidly smoking,
until they are by when, taking his pipe from his
mouth, he gives a blood-curdling whoo

DROVER. Have any beasts come by? Lord, what a dance
They've led me, since we quitted Bellingham!
I've chased them over half the countryside!
DICK. Ay: they were making straight for Dinlabyre.
DROVER. Then I can rest. They cannot go far wrong now.
We're for Saughtree; and I'm fair hattered, and they
Can't have the spunk left in them to stray far.
They'll be all right.
DICK. Ay! and your brother's with them.
DROVER. Brother? I have no brother...
DICK. Well, he and you
Are as like as peas -- a pair of gallows-birds.
And he was driving them, and walloping them...
DROVER [starting to run]. Good God! Just wait till I
catch up with him!
DICK [calling after him]. It will take you all your time
and more, to catch him.
[To himself.] Now, I can sleep in peace, without bed-fellows.
Two in a bed is one too many for me --
And such a clatter-jaw!





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