The Barge And The Bride Poem by David Lewis Paget

I was having a meal, steak egg and chips
At the Humpty Dumpty Inn,
Next to the Curly-Wyrley Cut
Where the Curly bits begin,
When I heard a shout from a passing barge
‘You'd better duck! ' it said,
Then the bone from a monster ham flew up
And it hit me in the head!

I fell to the crazy paving, gathered
My wits, and looked around,
And there was Joe on the ‘Autumn Queen'
With his daughter, Maggie Browne,
He'd said something to stir her blood
And she'd thrown the bone at him,
But missed - and always the lucky one,
I'd caught it on the chin!

‘I'll get you back for this, ' I yelled,
And I shook my fist at her,
But she just laughed, and stuck her foot
On the prow, to bait my glare,
She slowly pulled her dress right up
To the thigh, and showed a leg,
‘If you can beat us to Walsall Lock
You can have me, we'll be wed! '

I gathered Flynn and we hitched the horse
And we set off in pursuit,
But our old Barge was slow, and Jessie
The horse was old, to boot,
We carried a hundred tons of coal
And the going would be slow,
But Maggie had always turned me down
In the past… I'd let her go!

She knew I only had eyes for her,
She'd played me like a fool,
She'd flirt, then gather her skirts and run,
It seemed to be the rule,
I knew she wanted away from Joe
So this could be my chance,
She'd never gone back on her word before,
Was she ripe for a new romance?

They'd left us a half a mile behind
As we got her under way,
This dirty Barge with the fancy name
That I'd christened ‘Mandalay',
But Flynn got Jessie to heave and strain
And we made four miles an hour,
If we could beat her to Walsall Lock
Then I'd have her in my power!

The towpath changed to the other side
At a tiny hump-backed bridge,
Flynn had to lead the horse across
Then down, and under the ledge,
We called it ‘threading the needle' then,
By keeping the rope attached,
We'd made a couple of hundred yards
On the Barge we wanted to catch.

The sun went down and the stars came out
I could see their lights ahead,
Their cabin gave out a cosy glow
As the thought rushed through my head,
That all was fair in love and war
I ran along the bank,
Then hidden in darkness up ahead
I unhitched their horse, called ‘Hank! '

Their Barge was dead in the water
When we passed them at nine o'clock,
By ten, I saw it ahead, the lights
And the gates of Walsall Lock,
Then out of the gloom I heard a sigh
As Maggie appeared in the dark,
And raised her face as the moon came up
So I kissed her, there by the Lock!

30 June 2012

(For our American readers, the ‘Curly-Wyrley
was the Wyrley and Essington Canal - ‘the Cut'
as we used to call canals, where I came from in
Birmingham, England. It had more twists and
turns than any canal in England, thus the
‘Curly-Wyrley'. During the Industrial Revolution
Canals were major transport hubs, valuable for the
Transport of coal from the midlands, and whole
families lived and eked out a living on these barges) .