Yallery Brown

Yallery Brown

 

I thought I heard a sobbing child –

A baby left behind

With none to sing his lullabies

But crows and wailing wind.

 

I looked for him beneath the hedge,

I looked amongst the moss;

I sought him in the drainage ditch

And by the wayside cross.

 

“A stone! A stone!” I heard him cry – embedded in the ground:

I raised it sucking from the mools, and there lay Yallery Brown.

 

No bigger than a year-old brat

With cotted hair and beard

All wrapped about him like a shroud,

And yellow as good mead,

 

His face was solid wrinkles

And his eyes were berry-black,

And down his silken, knotted locks

The tears ran hot and slick.

 

“Thou’st a good lad!” His twittering voice: a piping little sound

Like a sparrow’s. Then he said, “Well met. I’m Yallery Brown.”

 

“Wilt hev’ a wife? A’ll give tha one:

The rampinist lass i’ town!

Wilt be rich? A’ll give thee gould:

‘S much as man may own.”

 

But I was brash and foolish then;

I waved such thoughts away:

“Oh Yallery Brown, I’d rather be

Bone idle every day.”

 

“A wa'ant no tha'anks, a 'll hev no tha'anks,” the boggart stamped and frowned,

Ef iver tha’s in need o’ he'p, jist call on 'Yallery Brown.”

 

Then he picked a dandelion –

He puffed it and was gone –

But when I got back to the farm

The threshing was all done.

 

That’s when things went arsy-varsy:

The jobs he did for me

He undid for the other lads:

‘Twas a shambles for to see:

 

Tools a-blunted, crops a-spoiled, ditches clogged to drown

The seedlings sprouting from the drills – because of Yallery Brown.

 

“Yallery Brown, Yallery Brown!

Go and serve some other!

I’ll never need your help again!

I’d thank thee not to bother!”

 

"Ho, ho, Tom! Thoust tha'anked me, lad;

Thar’s no way t’ atone!

A'll niver he'p thee e’er ag'ean,

An’ niver leave thee alo'an!”

 

Now I am worn with poverty, rejected and cast down;

I have no woman, work nor gold, thanks to Yallery Brown.

 

Lyric by Giles Watson, 2013. From ‘Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars’, recorded in Folklore, 1891, by Mrs Balfour.

 

 

Done