Poem: The ballad of Scurvy Joe

 

 

 

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!