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Gloucestershire Friends: Poems From a German Prison Camp cover

Gloucestershire Friends: Poems From a German Prison Camp

Chapter 39: 5. A RIVER, A PIG, AND BRAINS
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About This Book

A collection of short poems written by a soldier in captivity reflecting on home, memory, and the experience of imprisonment. The verse moves between intimate domestic images—mother, English gardens, county landscapes—and the hardships of internment, loneliness, and comradeship, often blending pastoral detail with wartime grief and wry humor. Forms vary from ballades and sonnets to rondel and villanelle, and recurring motifs include nature, loss, longing, and reflections on duty and sacrifice. Many pieces juxtapose the small joys of remembered rural life with the starkness of prison, producing restrained lyricism that balances tenderness, anger, and quiet faith.

5. A RIVER, A PIG, AND BRAINS

Last fall, to sell his oldest perry,
Old Willum Fry did cross the ferry,
And thur inside of an old sty
’A seed a leanish pig did lie:
A rakish, active beast ’a was
As ever rooted up the grass:
Eager as bees on making honey
To stuff his self. Bill did decide
To buy un with the cider money
And fat un up for Easter-tide.
He bought un, but no net ’ad got
To kip thic pig inside the boat.
“The’ll drown wi’ pig and all at ferry!”
Cried one. Said Fry, “Go, bring some perry,
And this old drinking-horn you got,
Lying inside the piggery cot!”
He poured a goodish swig and soon
—As lazy as a day o’ June—
Piggy lay boozed, and so did bide
Snoring, while him and Fry were taken
’Cross Severn: and ’a didn’t waken
Until the boat lay safely tied
Up to a tree on t’other side.