Re-reading "The Highwayman," Riding, Riding . . .



When I was young, days spent with my grandparents were filled with delights.  We usually started with a late breakfast at Rick’s Diner, where I always had to battle the impulse to dip my spoon into the scoop of soft salted cream butter that sat in the middle of the table, sweating a little, like a tantalizing scoop of French Vanilla ice cream.  The day that followed would unravel around some adventure — watching Grandpa build an engine in the garage, dusting Mrs. Macaroon and the dollhouse that sat in the bay-window, or helping my Grandma make apple crisp.  In the afternoon, we’d make the occasional trip to Woolworths for a sundae, or to the Seven Mile Fair, where we once found a whole package of crew socks for a dollar and celebrated our find . . . only to discover when we got home that the socks had no toes or heels.  We’d been had in a terrible way, but could only laugh with pleasure at what a good story it was! 



Page from the Childcraft version of the poem. 



After a busy day, Grandma baked one of her savory casseroles, and we ate it by the spoonful, scraping the sides of our plates with buttered Roman Meal bread while Grandma gently led the conversation.  When all the dishes were cleared and the dishwasher had began to hum comfortingly, I would go to the bookshelf in their den, pick out a volume of the faded Childcraft Encyclopedias that they’d bought for their children in the sixties, and we’d settle in on the couch to read. 

I would almost unfailingly pick out the poetry volume, which was so loved, it practically opened itself to the poem it knew I wanted to read.   When I found it, my grandmother began:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
 The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
 The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
 And the highwayman came riding—
                      Riding—riding—
 The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

“The Highwayman” was written by young poet Alfred Noyes in 1906 as he was holed up in a small cottage in Surrey for a weekend.  He would recount later that the first lines came to him in the sound of the wind, wallowing like a wounded animal as it blew across the moor.  It could have been just another disastrous weekend holiday.   Instead, Noyes allowed himself to be moved by the poetry of the weather. 

As Gram read the poem, I would follow along, looking at the drawings depicting the dandy bandit and his love, the dark haired Bess.  Carried along by both image and text, we journeyed into the lives of these violently passionate people: the Highwayman, Bess, and the jealous stableman who sets the tragedy in motion by notifying the British Red Coats of the lovers' intrigues.

Years later, I read the poem and am somewhat  bemused.  Like Noyes himself, I now read the poem with probably too much critical distance.  As a mother of two children, I wonder how on God’s green earth a tale of a tragic love affair ending in a suicide, murder and a haunting could make it into an encyclopedia of children’s literature.  As a Ph.D. in literature with a particular passion for the Modernists, I cringe at the neo-Romantic aesthetic at work in the poem, “the crust of dead English,” so to speak, that Ezra Pound revolted against in his early modernist treatises.  . . . And yet, as a poet, I am mesmerized by the near-perfect meter. 

I still feel the strong cadence of this poem's rhythm within my body as I recall the lines, even though I haven’t had it read to me for years.  As with any good narrative poem, the meter is not merely accidental — it evokes the drama within the poem — the winsome sound of the blustery wind, the loud clop of approaching hooves.   But rather than imprinting on my mind like a Lady Gaga song, the rhythm is visceral, creating body memory.  I feel Bess’s anticipation of her love, I feel the Highwayman’s anticipation of his, I feel the banishing force of wind as it gives chase to the night within the gloam.    

In reading me that poem again, and again, and again, my grandmother fostered within me a love for the lyric quality of language.  I have, in a sense, been  listening for “The Highwayman” all my life. . . even if, as I just discovered, I have never read the poem I once loved to my children.   I think I will tonight. 

Like Noyes's tragic poem, there are poems and stories of such high oral quality that they deserve to be read out loud.  Or chanted, breathed, sang, danced to, or beat out in rhythms.  Before children can learn how to deconstruct lyric devices such as rhythm, they should feel it and appreciate its capacity to tell narrative.   Fostering lyric appreciation in kids doesn't require more than bringing a little poetry into your daily reading routine, and thinking outside the box when you read it with your kids out-loud.

                                                                                     

In the next few blog entries, I’ll discuss the ways in which I have tried to foster lyric appreciation in my children.  Hopefully they are activities you find both fun and useful!