The Angry Exile: Getting an education redux.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday, 11 February 2010

Getting an education redux.

On Tuesday I linked to Dick Puddlecote's blog post in which he quotes a letter from his son's school encouraging - which is a wholly inappropriate word for it - parents to come along to a school event and reminding them to bring their CRB checks with them.

... seeing as the process, in my experience, can take up to three months, anyone without clearance who wished to attend was effectively barred on the remote premise that they might be a paedophile.

Sorry if that appears simplistic, but how else can one view it? Guilty until proven innocent by the state machine.

Agreed. It's much the same way I see the airport body scanners.

So it was interesting to read DP's latest post on the mini-Puddlecotes' educations (quoted en bloc):

You'll be pleased to hear that the 8 year old boy Puddlecote's class have finished reading Journey to Jo'burg.

They are now cracking on with The Peacock Garden.
Set in 1947 when India was partitioned, this is the story of Zuni, a young Muslim girl, whose family is caught up in the upheaval. Rather than fleeing Pakistan (since they're not in Pakistan someone, possibly at Amazon, missed out the word 'to' and buggered up the meaning there - Angry Exile), as many other Muslim families did, Zuni's family seek refuge in the gardens of a local mosque.
In other news, he is almost fully conversant with his times tables thanks to the after-school tutor I pay.

No such nonsense from the girl Puddlecote's school. They had a Big Green Tidy Up today ... or litter-picking, to you and me.

I think the caretaker had a day off.

And no, I am NOT making this shit up.

No such news to report from the Exile household. The best I can do is that the dog has learnt that eating jellyfish will make him throw up and the cats still couldn't catch the birds that perch in the tree in the yard without one of us first hitting the feathery fucksticks with an ounce or so of 7½ shot at over 1,000 kph, but at least we don't have rabbits looking after them all day and indoctrinating them about what life would be like as a Chinese weasel or something. Sadly this is apparently what passes for education these days, and so The Peacock Garden is a 'recommended' book according to its only Amazon UK reviewer Linda the teacher (she gave it five stars, natch).

Fantastic book, difficult to get hold of now but as a teacher it is classed as a recommended text so I was really pleased to be able to get hold of one.

Sorry to be pedantic, Linda, but the book is not a teacher - you are, and if you're teaching English I'd hope you don't normally write as a teacher' and then refer to an inanimate object. If my kids (which as I've indicated have four legs each and some revolting and evil personal habits) were in your class I'd be fucking concerned. It's not just your English, love - it was only a bloody Amazion review after all - it's that I wonder if it's ever crossed your mind to consider why this book, despite being highly recommended by the people's commissars, is so hard to get. Judging by the used prices (AU$55 to $165 according to one quick search I did) and it's rarity it's very likely to be out of print. Economics and the laws of supply and demand may not be part of English Literature lessons but being out of print hardly suggests the book was a huge commercial success for the publisher, right, Linda? Fuck, it's not even mentioned on the author's Wikipedia page. It might be a trendy read among the Righteous, and it might even be a very good book, but if so word doesn't seem to have spread and I'm guessing that it might not be the most accessible book for children ever written. I'm not saying the subject matter shouldn't be taught, but there are history classes for that. I'm not saying the book is unsuitable - there's no reason why it couldn't be part of a reading project or something. I'm just saying it's a bloody odd choice to include on the recommended reading list a probably out of print book featuring a protagonist who will be hard for children to identify with, and this seems likely to affect their enjoyment of the story.* Thing is, I doubt that enjoyment has anything to do with it.

"Give me a child till the age of seven and he will be mine for life." Of all the awful things the Church of Rome has inflicted on the world - crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of Galileo among others, the Counter-Reformation, bad advice about birth control and so on - this Jesuit motto is among the worst. I'd go so far as to say that fucking with their heads is almost up there with the boy buggery practised by some and overlooked by others in the Catholic Church. Perhaps the worst thing about it is that it's been poached by the modern Church of Righteousness, whose god is the loving and all-knowing state and whose priests and lay preachers have had access to a couple of generations of children for six or seven hours a day (apart from weekends and school holidays of course).

Note that it's not the fucking school that's credited with the young Puddlecote's near mastery of times tables but a tutor and his parents (who seem too modest to have claimed their share of the credit). Note also that Master Puddlecote is eight.

'Kinellfire!

* They might like it later but be put off by having it imposed on them now - Lord of the Flies was as boring as fuck when I was first forced to read it at too young an age, and so it was years before I re-read it and realised what a great book it is.