I was ‘quest to write a ballad, “Like ye stories of old
About adventure on the high seas; piratical and bold!
Line structure should be formal, De-dum, de-dum de-dum
Rhyming every second line, Yet keeping the story fun!”
The end result is... quirky, like ‘most everything I do,
Did I meet the challenge set? I’ll leave that up to you!
So settle back, assail your ears, for an epic tale of woe
Without any more delay - The ballad of Scurvy Joe!
The Ballad of Scurvy Joe
The hero of
this narrative
If hero he
be deemed,
Is an old
salt named Josiah,
Whom nobody
esteemed.
A
black-patch masked his wooden eye,
The first of
many flaws:
He only had
two crooked teeth
His gums
were bleeding sores,
His legs
were bowed, his nose was bent
No Johnny
Depp was he,
His skin was
pocked-marked, yellowish
Tough and
leathery.
His hair was
coarser than his speech,
A squirming
tangle of mice,
A minor
inconvenience,
But at least
they ate the lice!
He reeked of
rum and rotting fish,
Never bathed
nor changed his clothes,
One whiff of
Scurvy Joe downwind
Was enough
to curl the toes.
His age was
indeterminate,
Some said
he’d sailed the flood!
A truly
ancient mariner,
With ocean
in the blood.
Yet he’d
never risen to captain
Or even
position of mate,
Forever
swabbing the decks
Was poor
Josiah’s fate.
Decades of
faithful service
Gained him
nothing but neglect,
Even the
whey-faced cabin boy
Garnered
more respect!
Joe suffered
his lot in silence
Or if he did
complain,
No-one could
understand him,
So it was
all the same.
All he ever
said was “Fishing”
The only
word he knew,
And his
favourite occupation
When work
allowed him to.
One day
while alone on deck
Joe spied a
mermaid on a rock,
He rubbed
his good eye in disbelief
And dropped
his mop in shock!
But there
she sat as bold as brass
Comb and
glass in hand,
Catching poor Josiah’s eye
She sang out
her demand –
“I call to thee, O sailor fair
Come and be my mate
Jump into the wine-dark sea
Eternity awaits...
I call to thee, O sailor true
Come into my arms
I will keep thee warm at night,
Safe from every harm.”
Heeding her
persuasive call
He dived
into the waves
But oblivion
in murky depths -
Was not to
be his grave!
Unlike other
sirens of the deep
This mermaid
kept her vow,
Filled his
lungs with healing breath
She dragged
him to her bower...
Candles
flickered within her cave
Where
waiting stood a priest,
An earnest
man of preaching bent
Thrown
overboard for his beliefs
He had no
love for buccaneers
Or any
godless folk
But this
mermaid saved his life
And so a
debt was owed
Besides she
wanted honest vows
Before sight
of the Lord
A noble
undertaking
He did
nothing but applaud.
And so
Scurvy Joe was married
To a maiden
of the sea
For better
or for worse
In wedded
harmony...
At first
they seemed quite happy
In that cave
beneath the sea
Having such
a fish-wife
Was quite
the novelty
But
novelties wear off like spells
And love
will soon grow stale,
When you
wake up one morning
Find your
wife looks like a whale!
Josiah was
no Adonis,
But his wife
was truly vile,
Many a ship
was wrecked
By sight of
her rictus smile
Clammy skin
bulged with blubber
Her strength
could rival an ox
Her hair was
twined with tentacles
Her teeth
were jagged rocks
Her voice
could rupture ear-drums
Venom laced
her kiss
The glass in
her hand wasn’t a mirror,
And she
drank like the proverbial fish.
Her temper
was worse than a sea squall
Grudges she
clung to with bile,
In the face
of Josiah’s rejection
She became
yet more volatile!
Frenzied she
chased him relentless
Cleaver and
glass in her grip,
Right out of
the cavern they shared,
And into the
ocean’s abyss...
Yet again
fate intervened
For Josiah
did not drown
Along came a
lumbering leviathan who
With one
gulp swallowed him down...
But unlike
Jonah in the whale
Josiah did
not escape,
In the belly
of a kraken
Our hero met
his fate.
His
mer-widow cried her eyes out,
Sober now
and contrite,
For she had
truly loved her husband
And mourned
his ignoble plight.
The Kraken
was harpooned by some whalers
Caught by
mistake in their nets
It’s
death-throes of epic proportions
None who
survived would ever forget
They gutted
the beast with sharp daggers,
Shocked to
the core when they found,
The Skeleton
of poor Josiah
Fleshless
yet moving around!
“Is that a
ghost or a zombie?”
One man was
heard to shout,
Lopping the
thing’s head with a sword-stroke
The others
cared not to find out.
Joe picked
up his skull with a curse
And screwed
it back onto his spine
The sailors
knock-kneed in terror,
Jumped head-first
into the brine.
Alone on the
deck of the whaler
Josiah
laughed with glee,
He might be
dead, but he had a ship
Unchallenged
captaincy!
Placing his
hands on the wheel
He steered
into open sea,
Keeping a
wary eye out for mermaids
In case one of them was she....
Harpoon always
oiled and ready
He fished to
his heart’s delight,
There were
plenty more fish in the sea!
The future
refreshingly bright.
So ends the
ballad of Scurvy Joe
Who took a
mermaid to wife –
I’m sure
that there’s a moral there
But I can’t
find it for my life!
