Just the other day I found a tiny little book no larger than a mobile phone which was printed in 1835. Yet it contained 175 pages of very entertaining poetry, with a strong rural bent. It’s called “Bloomfield’s farmer’s boy, rural tales.” What a gem if you like country themes such as Thomas Hardy and Gordon Beningfield. And imagine my surprise when I discovered a poem about “the Fakenham Ghost”, a spirit I had not previously heard about.
The story, interspersed with brilliant evocative lines, goes as follows.
An “ancient dame” in “fearful haste” was going home along a “lonely footpath, still and dark”. She was in a hurry as “her footsteps knew no idle stops” but “echo’d to the darksome copse”. All very well so far ... she clearly was tired and desperate to get home before darkness fell.
But then, “darker it grew, and darker fears came o’er her troubled mind” as a “Short quick step she hears come patting close behind. She turn’d; it stopp’d! ... naught could she see” ... imagine her terror in those lawless times; “terror seiz’d her quaking frame”. Then, suddenly, “through the cheating glooms of night, a Monster stood in view”.
Her fear was such that “down she knelt, and said her prayers” then rushed onwards towards home. But it didn’t stop there, as when she finally opened the gate “so long it swung that Ghost and all pass’d through”. Just imagine, “Much she feared the grisly ghost would leap upon her back”.
She was so overcome by fear that she “fainted at the door”. Quickly, out of the house came her husband and daughter “much surprised”. They lit a candle whose “gleam pierc’d the night” and “there the little trotting sprite distinctly might be seen”.
“An ass’s foal had lost its dam
Within the spacious park;
And simple as the playful lamb
Had followed in the dark.
No goblin he: no imp of sin:
No crimes had ever known”.
You can imagine how foolish the “ancient dame” must have felt, but it all ended well as
“They took the shaggy stranger in,
And rear’d him as their own.
His little hoofs would rattle round
Upon the cottage floor.
The matron learn’d to love the sound
That frighten’d her before”.
“An ass’s foal had lost its dam
Within the spacious park;
And simple as the playful lamb
Had followed in the dark.
No goblin he: no imp of sin:
No crimes had ever known”.
You can imagine how foolish the “ancient dame” must have felt, but it all ended well as
“They took the shaggy stranger in,
And rear’d him as their own.
His little hoofs would rattle round
Upon the cottage floor.
The matron learn’d to love the sound
That frighten’d her before”.
An enchanting story which perhaps sheds some light on the phrase about making an ass of oneself?
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