Sam'l's Ghost

Sam'l's Ghost

 

I don’t know exactly what I mean by ghosts.

What are they? Dead folk as walks? Bogles?

Fetches? Corpses? There’s a red woman

Who walks in the spinney where I live.

My mother saw a lad without a head – once,

When she was a maid. And there’s that light,

Carried about the town, casting it on windows,

With no hand holding the lantern. There’s lots

Of tales about those kinds of bogles, and none

Of them are scary. I’d rather meet a bogle

Than be one. And I wouldn’t be Sam’l for the world.

 

Samuel was burnt to death:

He was ashes, maybe cinders.

Some of him went up the chimney;

Some blew out the windows.

 

"Thou mun goo in th' yarth-pla'ace,

An' tell th' Big Wo'm thou's de'ad,

Wi’out him, ye’ll never rest,

Nor make th’ mools thy bed.”

 

So Samuel went to the earthy place –

He wasn’t feeling lucky:

There were creeping, crawling, fluttering things;

The air was rank and mucky,

 

And curled up on a great flat stone

Was a worm, with waving head:

“Wal’ wheer’s tha body?” said the worm,

“Fer a’hm ‘ere ter eat th’ dead.”

 

But Samuel had no earthly body.

The worm’s tail writhes and lashes,

“Dost think as we can eat thou,

Unless tha brings th’ ashes?”

 

So Samuel flew about the dark,

Collecting smuts and cinders,

And brought them to the writhing worm,

Black, and dry as tinder,

 

And when the worm had eaten them,

His blubbery lips a-kissing,

He said, “Sam’l, wheer’s th’ rest on tha?

I’ll sweer thar’s suthin’ missin’.”

 

For Samuel’s arm got caught one day,

Mangled in the thresher.

“Go, fetch it,” said the wriggling worm,

“Doan’ hurry. Thar’s no pressure.”

 

So Samuel went and found his arm,

Pickled by the surgeon.

The worm began a-chewing it –

It didn’t seem that urgent.

 

And when the worm had eaten that,

His blubbery lips a-kissing,

He said, “Sam’l, wheer’s th’ rest on tha?

I’ll sweer thar’s suthin’ missin’.”

 

For Sam had lost his fingernail

When he was only five.

You don’t think where you chuck such things

While you are still alive.

 

And that’s why Sam’s a bogle now –

An ashen one, and pale.

He’ll always be a bogle, till

He finds his fingernail.

 

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

 

 

Done