He caught my eye as he stared to sea,
I noticed his shoulders heave,
And tears were flowing so fast and free
More than you would believe,
He wasn’t young, but was not too old
To be caught in the pangs of love,
I thought I’d see what his fortune told
So I called to him from above.

I leant right over the balcony
Looked down at the old sea wall,
And called out ‘Friend, would your heartache mend,
Is there much I can do at all?’
He turned and twisted his face to me
And I saw the pain in his eyes,
And round his mouth was the misery
He’d caught from all of her lies.

‘I wish I’d never believed her spin,
She swore that she loved me true,
She opened her heart and she asked me in,
What was a man to do?
She taught me things that I didn’t know
She let me into her world,
A world of stockings and petticoats
And the sweet perfume of a girl.’

I thought that I was a lucky man
To have a wife such as mine,
Who’d wait at home and would hold my hand
And smile with a look divine.
We’d sworn our vows in the little church
That sat way back on the hill,
‘Do you take Annie-gelina now?’
She said that she would take Will.

‘So what is it turned your world about,’
I asked the man down below,
I thought to get all the story straight
As he was turning to go.
‘She said she was married, I’d have to go
Though she’d never said it before,
I couldn’t believe that my Annie-gelina
Was simply a painted *****.’

David Lewis Paget

She kept him out in the garden shed
Where her sisters wouldn’t see,
He’d not been once in her upstairs bed
If they saw, she’d say, ‘Who me?’
He hadn’t come from her neighbourhood
So he wasn’t quite her class,
Whenever they met, he’d be upset
Like walking on broken glass.

He wasn’t known to her wealthy friends
Her folks or her peers at all,
If they came by she would go all shy
And gaze at a cold brick wall,
While he made out that he wasn’t there
Would hum and look at the sky,
She made him stare like he didn’t care
Or was merely passing by.

But deep down things were beginning to hurt
As he felt each little slight,
Like when she came to the garden shed
For her love feast every night,
She’d bring her cushions and lay her down
As she offered up her breast,
Then pick the cushions up off the ground
To take, once she had dressed.

She didn’t want to be seen with him
She’d say, ‘It can’t be done,
My friends would freak and would think me weak
If they knew what’s going on,’
She said he’d have to be patient, that
It all would be all right,
‘The time will come when I’ll have to tell
But it just won’t be tonight.’

Her sister came to her room one day
With a new bow in her hair,
Her hands had shook with excitement
And that made her sister stare,
‘You’ll not believe what I found today
And I took into my bed,
The greatest love of my life, and he
Was sat in the garden shed.’

David Lewis Paget

The brook at the end of the garden
Would gurgle and gush through the weeds,
Would ripple and plash in the morning sun
Like a spirit with spiritual needs,
I’d play as a child with my paper boats
As they twisted and twirled on the stream,
Not knowing the danger my sister faced
As she paddled barefoot in a dream.

For under the water and in the weeds
Was the face of a Grindylow,
He’d stare long up at my sister’s legs
From his weedbed, down below,
I should have known and I should have warned
If I’d known he lay down there,
Ruling the brook from his silver throne
But I didn’t, I declare.

I didn’t then, till I saw one day
His face in the willow shade,
Reflected up on the water course
Like a shadow God had made,
He wore a sinister smile that turned
The edge of his mouth to scorn,
And eyes that pierced as Deirdre passed
Her legs quite bare at the dawn.

I said, ‘You walked by the river god
And he stared right up your skirt,’
But Deirdre frowned, stared at the ground
I thought that she must feel hurt.
She kept on paddling in the brook
Walked out by the willow tree,
And two long arms then pulled her down
Rose out of the brook, by me.

I hadn’t the time to scream or cry
Her hair went into the brook,
Quick as a wink, she made no sound
I dashed to the tree to look,
And though the water was inches deep
Its depth had taken the girl,
Down through the weeds where the Dryads weep
With the water starting to whirl.

The brook still bubbles and gurgles there
Will ripple and plash in the weeds,
But I won’t go where I know below
My sister lies in the reeds,
She must have married the Grindylow
For she never came back to see,
If I was there in the morning air,
If anything happened to me?

David Lewis Paget

They said that he lived in the tunnel
That burrowed right into the hill,
That once saw a belching funnel
Of sulphur and black clouds spill,
The train on the iron railway
That chuffed its way into the past,
To just leave the eerie tunnel,
Smoke blackened and silent at last.

In closing the barbed wire entrance
To keep all the children at bay,
They’d come to the end, in repentance,
The end of the steam railway,
It lived in the lost generations
In memories lost to the young,
In dreams and in steam in the stations
The old locomotives lived on.

But something lived deep in the tunnel
That hadn’t been there long before,
A product of sulphur and brimstone,
A thing with a terrible roar,
It wandered at night in the meadows,
It tore the throats out of the sheep,
And left pools of blood by the hedgerows,
Returned to the tunnel, to sleep.

The town held a council of elders
The ones who remembered the train,
‘We have to get rid of the monster,
It comes out again and again,’
‘I think that the monster is lonely,’
Said one of them, in a remark,
‘He needs to be soothed to be healthy,
We’ll lure him out into the Park.’

They thought of the spinster called Mary,
A woman not gifted with looks,
In truth she was ugly and hairy,
She buried her head in her books,
‘She’d do very well for a monster,’
They all of them seemed to agree,
And rolled her in lashings of sulphur
And brimstone for her pedigree.

They tied her just outside the entrance
Attached to barbed wire in the fence,
The tunnel grew dark as an ulcer,
Both she and the townsfolk were tense,
The monster came out and he saw her
And made sniffing sounds in the dark,
And Mary had gone in the morning,
Back into the tunnel, not Park.

And now, when the roar of the monster
Is heard, there’s no gutting of sheep,
But merely a purr like a hamster,
That says he is going to sleep,
As a man needs the love of his woman
So a monster has needs to be quelled,
And it seems ugly Mary is happy
To be with the monster from Hell.

David Lewis Paget

He got to the top of the mountain
And he saw the shadow of God,
Then he heard it mutter, and shouting
‘Will you heed the reck of the rod.’
Then he fell on his face in horror
When he saw the burning bush,
And he said, ‘I’ll begin tomorrow,
Don’t be in such a rush.’

He headed down from the mountain
And his face was strained and grey,
He stood by the edge of a fountain,
Said ‘I’ve come to make your day.’
He saw the villagers gathered
And he said, ‘New rules from God,
They’ll clatter down from the mountain
And will make you reck his rod.’

And then the first of the tablets
Came rolling into the square,
Engraved with a form of writing
That they’d never seen out there,
They asked the man to explain it,
And he thought, ‘this might be fun,’
‘No matter what you might gain by it,
Don’t ever design a gun!’

The wise men nodded so wisely,
And the dumb ones just looked glum,
Whatever they knew, knew slightly,
They’d never heard of a gun,
The second tablet tumbled down
From somewhere up on the mountain,
It bounced and reared and fell right in
To the water, deep in the fountain.

‘All should be baptised here, it said
By jumping into the water,
But know you’ll be married here instead
If you jump with somebody’s daughter.’
More tablets rolled down the mountainside
To quick for any to count them,
And some were crushed in the awful rush,
The ones that had tried to mount them.

‘You mustn’t commit adultery
Unless you’re adults in play,
And then when you swap your wives about
It’s only for just one day,
The seventh tablet deals with death
And what you should do, or oughta,
After you ****, just take a breath
Then go for a general slaughter.’

The man went back to the mountain top
And he sought the shadow of God,
‘Got all the tablets, thanks my friend,
But isn’t it rather odd?
I couldn’t make out a word they said,
They passeth my understanding.’
‘Don’t call me your friend, you slimy sod,
The Devil wants you, for branding!’

David Lewis Paget

They said that the ocean was rising
It would soon overwhelm the land,
While I lived down on the valley floor
Below the sea and the sand,
The only thing that had kept us dry
Was a narrow band of ground,
Between a couple of mountainsides
In a long protective mound.

There were others lived in the valley
It was like an ancient clan,
That had hung on tight to its own birthright
Since before the world began,
While the fathers ruled for the daughters
That they may not look aside,
They could only marry within the clan
If they’d call themselves a bride.

But I was a rank outsider,
I could look, but couldn’t touch,
I tortured myself with Geraldine
Who flaunted herself so much.
Her skin was the texture of silk and cream
And her voice the trill of the thrush,
She’d bare her ******* till she knew I’d seen
Then laugh when she made me blush.

But Geraldine had a father, Roy,
Who was rough, and high in the clan,
He’d single me out and say, ‘You boy,
Your eyes are straying again!
You’d better not look at Geraldine
She’s not intended for you,
I’ll marry her to a real man
That’s what she’d want me to do.’

He’d threaten to beat me with the staff
That kept Geraldine in line,
I thought, she’d never be marked like that
If ever the girl was mine,
But fate lay just round the corner then
With storm clouds tumbling through,
And gale winds whipping the breakers up
In a high tide whirl of a stew.

The mound was breached in the early morn
And carried away like a dam,
Suddenly water was everywhere
I reached for my boots, and ran,
The whole of the ocean seemed to flow
Right down to the valley floor,
With most of the cottages swept away
The clan, it seemed, was no more.

I heard her crying out in the flood
Reached out as she floated by,
And Geraldine had clung onto me,
Her father would drown, and die.
We fought our way to the higher ground
And we saw our homes subside,
Buried forever beneath the flood
But I made the girl my bride.

David Lewis Paget

Elizabeth Warr was the woman next door,
They called her a witch and a hag,
We lived in a lane that was called ‘Little Payne’
Though what there was lived in her bag,
She carried a hammer, a sharp bladed knife
A corkscrew and two leather twists,
The corkscrew she carried for putting out eyes,
The leather for binding of wrists.

She’d been more than sane up until the back lane
Had revealed that her daughter was courting,
Who’d never told anyone who she had met
Till they found her the following morning,
But she had been ravaged, her body was savaged
Her skirt was pulled over her head,
And blood ran in rivulets down to her ankles
Elizabeth’s daughter was dead.

And that’s when she swore that revenge would be hers
As she haunted the back lanes and alleys,
Carting the murderous tools in her bag
And noting who dillies and dallies,
‘He’ll try it again, and I will be there,’
She announced to her friends and her neighbours,
‘They always return to the scene of the crime
And the place of their murderous labours.’

The months had gone by with barely a sign
He’d ever come back to the midden,
With no-one attacked, he hadn't looked back
So guessing the culprit, forbidden.
But then on a line in the communal yard
A scarf fluttered high on the line,
Elizabeth saw it and reached out and caught it
And muttered, ‘I know that, it’s mine!’

Her daughter had borrowed that scarf for one night
The night that she’d thought to go courting,
And then in the horror, the fear and the fright
The scarf wasn’t there in the morning.
Elizabeth watched who collected the scarf
The mother of Alan John Sidden,
Then carried her bag to the rear of the park
While she waited for dark, to be hidden.

They say there were screams and loud howls in the dark
On that night in the early September,
And smoke in the trees that would waft in the breeze
Along with some foul smelling embers,
When Sidden was found, what was left, on the ground
In the morning, his throat cut, it’s true,
They said that his eyes were a gruesome surprise
They’d been taken by some sort of *****.

David Lewis Paget