A sinister Christmas poem.

[tree_and_leaf]

By Charles Causley, an interesting and under-rated poet - possibly because he wrote so deceptively simply. In Britain, he's probably known best for his poem about a neglected child ("Timothy Winters comes to school/ With eyes as wide as a football pool.") A lot of his poems have a religious theme - ("I am the great sun, but you do not see me") - though like RS Thomas, they seem to oscillate between hope, anger and despair. He also has a tremendously strong sense of place, particularly with regard to his native Cornwall. Auden reported that Causley was given to saying that "while there are some good poems which are only for adults, because they pre-suppose adult experience in their readers, there are no good poems which are only for children." This seems to me to be dead right (it's true of books and music, too).

Anyway, the poem, which has been recorded in a spine-chilling version by the Yorkshire folk collective Coope, Boyes and Simpson is under the cut:



Innocents Song


Who's that knocking on the window,
Who's that standing at the door,
What are all those presents
Lying on the kitchen floor?

Who is the smiling stranger
With hair as white as gin,
What is he doing with the children
And who could have let him in?

Why has he rubies on his fingers,
A cold, cold crown on his head,
Why, when he caws his carol,
Does the salty snow run red?

Why does he ferry my fireside
As a spider on a thread,
His fingers made of fuses
And his tongue of gingerbread?

Why does the world before him
Melt in a million suns,
Why do his yellow, yearning eyes
Burn like saffron buns?

Watch where he comes walking
Out of the Christmas flame,
Dancing, double-talking:

Herod is his name.

Comments

[white_hart]

I love that poem!

[tree_and_leaf]

Wonderful, isn't it? In its sinister way...

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I have a wonderful version of that by Show of Hands.

I put it on my Christmas mix cd, actually, which probably illustrates all too well what sort of morbid person I am.

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't think I know that.

If you're morbid, so am I, but I don't think morbid's necessarily the right description. You can't eat gingerbread all the time, even at Christmas...

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I have the Show of Hands version as well, and as I'd downloaded it I had no idea it was by Causley.

[tree_and_leaf]

I have never heard of Show of Hands - I seem to be missing something!

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

This is true. Although most of my favorite Christmas songs have a hint of the melancholy, being about things like massacred toddlers and impending crucifixions and reminders that you could totally die tomorrow... ;)

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5h4PFBuzvw)'s 'Roots', their single from earlier this year of controversial sentiment, on YouTube.

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

Causely seems to go well with folkies; and a number of them have put him to music (the late Alex Atterson did quite a few; but when he met the poet - who was something of a recluse - discovered that he wasn't all that thrilled).

This one is truly creepy; and has that wonderful unwelcome revelation at the ending. I hadn't come across it before; and must now check out the musical versions.

[tree_and_leaf]

Thanks - I think that the very fact that that's controversial indicates that there's a big problem with the English self-image. But I think he's wrong to locate the difficulty in WASP guilt - though the specific issue with the St George Cross has more to do with football hooligans! - it's the fact that England was industrialised so early, and it's the same reason why there's so little English regional cookery. The Scots aren't great at singing either, although the folk revival was I think a bit more successful at penetrating the wider population with us.

I'm always astonished, when meeting German Scouts, at how much more they sing - and all kinds of things, from modern pop to folk songs (both German and Scottish/ Celtic/English/ American protest songs) and even the odd hymn. I've got used to everyon knowing 'Ye Jacobites by Name' (though it's a song I loathe, even though I'm hardly a wearer of the white rose) and 'The Foggy Dew' , but recently I heard some German Scouts singing 'MacPherson's Rant', and nearly fainted.

There's also something odd - but nice - about 'I'm a rambler from Manchester Way' sung in a Teutonic accent....

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, he writes good ballads and is leftish with strong local roots - I can see the appeal. I didn't realise there were so many musical versions floating about.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I've never read this before - it's a fantastic and wonderfully effectively sinister poem (I do know Timonthy Winters, but then it was rather frequently anthologised). Thanks for posting it.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

There were a few commentators - on my LJ flist, anyway - who interpreted the song as borderline racist and backward-looking, or took issue with the idea that rap wasn't 'English', on the grounds that culture is a process of assimilation.

I don't know as many folk songs as I ought, really; my taste is on the rocky incline of the folk revival, really, which can narrow things a bit. Nonetheless in general any traditional or popular song which doesn't only deal in the immediate, but is aware of generations of lives lived before now and their experiece, is normally worth listening to.

[tree_and_leaf]

Glad you enjoyed it!

I think it must have been mandatory for school poem anthologies to contain 'Timothy Winters' at one point. I haven't read as much Causely as I'd like to, but he's a good poet.

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I always loved Causley; I think the ballad is a much-underused verse form and he was a master of it.