Interactive British History Milestones Poem - wip
Created | Updated May 4, 2006
Mostly Ghostly Forbears
Hear this my story of proud survivors,
A clan with a flair for flouting the odds,
Their line a charm-bound arrow fleeting down
The years to where we meet them first, climbing
With sturdy legs and hearts up the Eurasian
Ladder to pastures ever green and fair.
Skilled at hunting wealth and gathering lands
With a will of iron they forged ahead,
See them now clad in draughty togas whilst
Elephants of Rome ford the River Colne,
When Boudicca cried the Iceni to her
Side our heroes ran the other way via
A course so wondrously straight that Roman
Makers of roads downed their rods and wept, and
So by the Tyne they set up camp and there
A fortune made from lucrative trade
In pilfered rocks from Hadrian’s Wall, their
Lives and daughters they bought from Saxons and
Jutes but had the last laugh with Saxon swords
Hired and sent to recoup every loss and
More, so prospered they ten score years until
One kinsman came ambling by a sword in
A stone and discreetly left well alone,
In similar vein descendants of his
In Ten Sixty-Six chose the better part
Of valour and ditched the woad in favour
Of a quick sidestep to le style franglais,
Thus by the mid Eleven Hundreds they had
The perfect phrase to hand when they cried
“Mon Dieu!” and cantered very far away
From priests of the turbulent kind, on and
On they rode till at last they came to the
Holy Land where they stayed and played a night
Or two before coming crusading home.
Strutting and swaggering and pulling rank
By the banks of the Runnymede we
See them next and then here they are again
Chipping in with the friars, a son here
Or there easily spared and worth a prayer.
They went with the flow up Bannockburn way,
Paid the piper’s dues when Black Death scythed and
Supped on wine and frogs legs at Agincourt.
They blossomed heedless of hell on earth at
Towton village and bloody Bosworth Field,
And then for a secret service rendered they
Swung invites to play sevens with Henry
And thence to capers with the Virgin Queen.
Keeping civil tongues they kept their heads and
Flourished whilst Cromwell levelled and skirmished,
From there it was a sweet downhill coast to
Sucking oranges with William and Mary,
One way or another they even contrived to
Surface safely with flotsam and jetsam
In the wake of the South Sea Bubble,
And so we come to recent times and not
Much to mention, a little sport with nought
But an upstart called Bonaparte to while
Away tranquil days of easy nobility.
