The Rymor and I



The Rymor and I
1. Thomas Rymor
2. I

A contemporary insight
based on a true story

I am the drunk’n Rabbie
Who drinks aw thru the day
I am the rantin’ Rabbie
Who wrote this poetry

1
When Rymor who from Erseldown
Espied a pultring maid (Pultring – rutting lascivious)
Her love sweet love led him along
A traipsing in a glade

To know some new thing perhaps
Keen Thomas strove below
But love oh love led him along
Once more to earthly show

By there o’er lands of mimicry
True Thomas swane not elderly (Swane – young)
Where there did he at Erseldown
Enquire of Eldon tree

Had Thomas known what bode beneath
This towering spire above
A roving he might not have gone
So spritely for a love

What saw he there few souls can tell
A poem suffice to say
Farewell one love so for another
The pride of seelie sidh (Seelie sidh – good fairies)

His homeland here thought sore missed he
Of heather and the heath
Some airy sprite watched o’er the town
Where Rymor sank beneath

Though there be more no doubt hid
By dint of those queer folk in
Fay land should gift betoken
Truer the word was ever spoken

Unseelie sidh save ee’ to see (Unseelie sidh – bad fairies)
What roves there too by Eldon’s tree
Where Robert Kirk and Rymor be
And soon perhaps a witeless me

Yon Rymor stone and Huntly burn
With crooked stream and perilous urn
Stand by the Tweed ae surly
By jagged crags o’er perilous pourie

Once stood by Eldon tree uprooted
A portal now mere lore
Of sovereign sent by which he went
Toils not evermore
 
Where Tweed’s burns tumble far and wide
From Lanark o’er to Lauder
And lark crow flies the Eldons pry
Along its bridled border

There through each night
When sleeping spires toll not thereon
The ferlies buzz their toil till day
And keep their watch to dawn

Thus here the tale of which is told
Of heaven above and hell unfold
I leave it now and up to thee
To marvel of it naturally

First here a cliché to clear this up
I sip now of communion cup
And pray the Lord my soul to keep
Should I pass o’er in my sleep

Where ferlie kids come out to play
By the embattled and spritely way
I spied them thrice with my own eye
In that dark wood I tell no lie

Just as Rymor I went through
That queer lit land fu’ painted blue
And like Rymor aye I too
State all I ink with rhyme is true

When I fair drank the bubbly shade
Not once to meet a tripping maid
Instead I saw cold and unafraid
A troll sat ominously in the glade

My faithful friend submissive she
Sped back a tad affrightedly
And on that day we wisely knew
To go not through where hell hounds do

To suffer Kirk’s fate when he did mill
Upon a charmed ferlie hill
Was not my wish that dingle day (Dingle – silly)
When ferlie kids came out to play

Of things true which I ha’e seen
Was ne’er quite the ferlie queen
The face which did at first appear
Kirk’s troublesome haunting bode oh so clear

Beneath an upturned bowl-shaped hat a head
What thing is this that nature thou
Such malady can procreate
And hallowed wings allow

A seething pot Jeremiah said
As Zechariah saw and I here too said
Beneath its bowl or frame was red
The gross truth of Burns howcket dead

The beating heart therein no more
That bears out to the wilderness
To build itself a house thereof
Of abject wickedness

A sentinel or something best unspoken
What so it be was not for me
Unlike Kirk who drees his weird (Endures his fate)
Still yet beneath the ferlie scree

What once a man mid earth’s domain
Now cursed be a sad refrain
A tarnished soul no doubt to say
Was once profane humanity

Grim in its grimmest form
The geniie wings the storm
Slight as some cloud said Shelly
That catches but the palest tinge of day

A bower for itself to take
In Shinar to the East
Drift and blow o’er all the earth
To sate unholy beast

To feed its own atrophied clan
It milks the wickedness of man
Accursed the magic car it be
Was Shelley’s ode that means to me

A demon to appease C.S Lewis said
A bowl shaped thirsty doting head
As all agree what you now may see
The curse it was so blind it be

And now a curse it be again
Sprung from earthen denizen
Where Rymor no doubt saw there too
What sprung from it is Clootie’s crew

The hag sped o'er the windy muir
A mile I'd say no more or fewer
To meet with mother sure I think
It moved a mile there in a blink

One mile I knew for it did turn
At Lee Pen's tip o'er icy burn
And then with speed uncanny flew
Once not to disbelieve it true

There in a box where was my name
Did not occur to me as sane
But in it there inked my home lay
And someone took it fleece away

To thieve the box I thought low
Which soon thereafter I did know
That something other had occurred
Before the move to Ladyurd

A craft o'er me flew by the eve                                                                        When first I saw both hags on leave
Lee Pen was where I stood below
The moon lit low with rosy glow

A man flew on that craft I found
The next day he was on the ground
What time, he asked, was that say clear
Same time I saw his craft appear

The pilot said there was delay
Conflicting lights there high that day
And there I was full witness tae
Two sentries of auld Nick's array

Scotia’s bard knew it well
What skim the muirs are spat from hell
And renew their leagues in kirkyards
O’er howcket dead as Burns had said (Howcket – dug up)

Of Michael Scott bard Burns did know
Thus inked in verse what doth below
Become of frail humanity (Verse 9 Address to the devil)
When cursed fleas steal blasphemy

 Now scholar Scott of his demise
 Wise of hell’s dour eldritch spies
 Took to rest the cross of Christ
 To guard it from the hellish tryst
 
 And a book of spells hilarity
 The Bible was what took with he
 To stay the fiends though is no haver
 For Scott knew this as true and graver
 
 Thought Michael Scott by one side
 Divined the Eldon woe betide
 A wizard not was he
 But a scholar of philosophy
 
 Of Scott said able divided three
 The hill by Eldon tree
 More fable mere and simply put
 To clove the Eldon hill a hoot

 Though Scott ne’er cast a single spell
 Yet Dante plunged him deep in hell
 In the eight circle of pain
 For e’er there to remain

 The truth be told of what Burns said
 A plunder was the horror’s head
 White, grizzled, black and grey
 The wisp of hill and speedy brae

 Now this account of no pretense
 Might seem as if to make no sense
 But then a voice I sudden knew
 Just as two steeds spun up in view

 Harked, Get thee hence, and off they sped
 One garment grey, the other red
 To flit o’er earth’s high vault bright
 And build a home in broad daylight
 
 Though 'Woe is me’ our Rymor be
 But woe am I as well
 For I have spied what few have spied
 And know there is a hell

 There in the trees black phantoms bode
 By tracks my own fair strode
 But dear God’s love abides so there
 Wherein doth lie the evil stare

 Another seer suffice to say
 Along Kirk’s line and Rymor’s way
 Both Kirk and I to ferlie curse
 Thou hast proclaimed our power, be thou now our prey
 
 What crime so foul a bode be rent
 By the ruin of an owrie babble (Owrie – superstitious)
 The ferlie curse declared of us
 Was fairer on its rabble

 A family gone, a wife, a son
 A testament to ire
 Which could have been a threnody (Threnody – a dirge)
 When once in dream I saw a raging fire

Then soon happed that calamity
A drink, the flame, the cursed frame
Of something best unseen
No delusive fancy I saw mere in dream
 
And in the midst of roaring flame                                     
Of which I am to blame
I looked on high a time to die                                                  
The flames did not touch me
 
As revelry mess is not my thing
I swept the briar for the spring
Then under waning sun was stung
Misfortune for a good deed done

Suspected I that wily spy
Was prying from the broken glade
And as I cleared the rotten core
Hell came knocking at my door

First ragweed nags of dizzy crags
Then Shelley’s magic car that eve’
Which somewhat like new machinery
Did glide on by quite silently

Then there upon prints deep in snow
Affrighted that we did not slow
But hurried onward home did we
To leave behind a dead ferlie

A hum of bees times thousand ten
There when the bower burned blue
The host of all the earth appeared
To fetch his surly due

And two fine minds there by whom live
Solved the riddle wrong
A fallen satellite it was said they
That floated by along

By that shorn way my hound and I
Did pass there by the ferlie lie
And as we did a ferlie light
On the ground cast shadow bright

Above my bode a rendezvous
I timed it at twelve thirty two
Not once but twice did one pass through
To vanish there from starlit view

Just as before my maid there saw
What was a beast of sorts
A bird or no; what so it be
Was deltoid from A to C

And where I spied the deltoid dog
Another kind I met one eve
No owner there I saw at least
By that dwelling of the beast

The jet black hound on back road dark
By me strode melancholy
To find it flat upon that track
Was what I thought when I got back

Fixed steeds passed by of that I’m sure
Saw I those lights bright and impure
The hound was gone and there a steer
It took the shape of an ogling deer

And black hound oft’ thought Azrael
Meant psychopomp for me        (Keeper of souls)
That fine one day contrite I prayed
The return of my family

A speeding steed a sad affair
Where killed a cat was there
All white it be as it had been
There now delights the ferlie queen

By haugh and wall where once it sat
No more to chase the beady rat
Now it chases ferlie sprites
The summer long and winter night

Where in that forest be decay
Three ferlies cold came by the way
In single file not to beguile
I spied a furtive smile

All garbed alike the ferlies three
Were weird my braw lad said to me
And hastened onward home did we
Thereby no more to be

Whence a petition the boy did pray                                   
That God forgi’e the deil                                           
That we could all be once again                                      
E
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Submitted on January 24, 2018

Modified on March 05, 2023

9:35 min read
84

Quick analysis:

Scheme Text too long
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 9,719
Words 1,909
Stanzas 75
Stanza Lengths 3, 2, 4, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

Joseph Mark Ippolito

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