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Willow's forge, and other poems

Chapter 19: CANT SONGS
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About This Book

A varied set of poems mixes ballads, lyrical meditations, cant songs, and devotional sequences to evoke both rural and urban landscapes while probing longing, loss, faith, and the uncanny. Some pieces adopt narrative ballad forms to tell haunted or elegiac stories; others offer intimate prayers, mystical reflections, or ironic streetwise verses that capture modern motion and twilight. The collection balances storytelling energy with devotional and folkloric imagery, moving between direct emotion and contemplative spiritual seeking across concise and narrative-driven lyric modes.

CANT SONGS

The Scampsman’s Night

Mists on the marsh are gathering thick,
The shuddering woods are dim,
My barker’s muzzle looks grim,
Of boozing and delling and such I’m sick.
Saddle my mare—my Marjorie—
For Oliver’s glim is bright,
And this is a snaffling night—
Ho, my girl, for the nuttiest spree!
We’ll make his Lordship tip us the bit,
We’ll knuckle his mort’s fawnie,
And a kiss, for we’re gay dogs, we,
And love to fool with a comely chit.
At morning’s dawn we will ride to our ken,
And tipple, and count our swag,
And of our flash spices brag,
And rest the bodies of mares and men.