The Spook Ballads. William Theodore Parkes
glad pathetic wondered look, but still in tones of woe,
He answered thus, "Alack! ah me I am exactly so"
And confidential gleam of hope across his features grew,
Which gave me courage thus to start a social interview.
"I pray of thee to speak, alas! why grims it so with thee?
Some evil canker nips thy peace, divulge thy wrongs to me,
That I may give thee hope, for I am one to sympathize
With manhood's lamentation, as with womanhood, her sighs,
But ha! Mayhap it fits your jest, with elongated groan,
To seek to fright me, as I'm here in Hampton Court alone,
To wreck my spirits as of old has been the game of spook,"
The spectre turned upon me with a sad reproachful look.
And cried, "Alack! that living men, so long have held it good,
To flee from Ghosts, and hence the Ghost is not yet understood,
Now as for me, I moan it not, for jest of idle sport,
My task, it is as murdered Ghost, to haunt in Hampton Court!
I play the victim to a spook, who chucked me down a stair,
Thro' being caught too near my lady's bedroom unaware."
"Poor shade of ill mischance!" I sobbed, the while a wayward tear,
Tricked out along my nose, and lodged upon my tunic here,
"I pray that thou would'st tell me all, withholding ne'er a jot,
For I might do thee service, in some most unlikely spot,"
"O blessed chance!" the Ghost exclaimed, "Thou art the only one
Of all men else, who spoke me so, they always turn and run!
Thou art the first, that I have seen drop sympathetic tears,
Responsive to my moanings, aye for full one hundred years!
And so I feel that I can speak in unreserving tone,
And give thee cause for this alack! my chronic nightly groan!
When I was in my thirties, I engaged to mind the spoons,
Of Colonel Sir John Bouncer, of the Sixty-fifth Dragoons,
And tho' of lowly stature, I am proud I was by half,
More manly than the footman, by step, and chest, and calf.
With frontispiece well favored, in a frame of powdered wig,
I wot amongst the female sex, I joyed a game of tig,
I played the captivating spark, till Colonel Bouncer caught
Me jesting with my Mistress, and he spake with furious haught,
Expressed him his disfavor loud, unto my Lady thus,
"An' thou do not discharge the knave, 'twill cause some future fuss,
The cock-a-dandy bantam, pillory graduate, and scoff
On manhood, give him notice!" but no, she begged me off.
It was not long thereafter, an early postman bore
A warrant for the Colonel, to start for Singapore,
He sailed, and in the August, 'twas just ten months away
He stayed, and he was due in town, upon the first of May,
Twas on that ninth of August at twelve o'clock at night,
'Thro Bouncer Hall I wandered, to see that all was right;
And in my course of searching, to check the silver stock,
I chanced upon the key, with which my Lady wound the clock,
A Louis clock she valued, it was on the mantel shelf
In her boudoir, her habit was to wind it up herself,
I brought it to her bedroom, and scratched a single knock,
And asked her through the keyhole, if she had wound the clock.
My words were scarcely uttered, when from another door,
I heard a foot, that should have been that night in Singapore!
I saw an eye, that should have seen that night a foreign shore,
"Ha! Caitiff knave!!" He shouted,
'Twas all I heard, no more,
He collared me by neck, and breech, and swept me off the floor,
And bore me down the corridor,
And hoisting me as light as cork, an act I could not check,
He flung me down the oaken stair, and wanton cracked my neck!
For that he paid the penalty, one day on Tyburn tree,
Alack! it was the sorest deed, the Law could wreak for me
For when it made a Ghost of him, he came, and sought me out,
Where haunting at my Lady's door, I heard the self-same shout,
Of "Caitiff knave!!"
The pity on't! he took me unaware,
Once more by gripping of my breech, and tossed me down the stair!
Night after night he compassed it, nor recked he who was there
But by my crop, and grip of trunks, he bumped me down the stair!
Thus mortified by evil fate, his widow nightly wept,
To hear the periodic row, and scarce a wink she slept;
She daily sought to lay his ghost by penance and by prayer,
And got a brace of saintly monks, to exorcise the scare
With holy water sprinked about, a jot he did not care!
But seized me with a fiercer grip, and jocked me down the stair!
And mocked the frightened monks, who flew, with fringe of standing hair.
At last his widow could not reck his evil conduct there,
She moved to otherwhere.
The only tenants that remained in Bouncer Hall, were rats,
Until 'twas taken down, to build some fashionable flats,
And when the workmen moved the stair, I wot he was cut up,
To see its broken banisters, upon a cart put up.
But vengeance of his hate for me, remained a danger yet,
To find a suitable resort, to work it out he set,
And tapped the telephone, until he heard of that resort;
It is an antient oaken stair, that's here in Hampton Court,
'Twas vacant of a Ghost, I faith, a lobby to be let,
And with some Royal Spook, he had a ghostly compact set,
And then he brought me here to work, his midnight murder yet.
An hour ago, accosting