The Angry Exile: Own goal

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

Sunday, 20 June 2010

Own goal - UPDATED

Either you are free to speak as you think and feel, or you are not. Any restriction on what can be said by definition means you do not have freedom of speech. It's one of life's absolutes. Mrs Exile should be free to call me a pom with an unhealthy obsession with the weather and the correct form of queueing. I'm should be free to call her a typical fucking colonial with a cultural inferiority complex. We should be free to refer to the Scots as a nation of orange haired, drunken porridge wogs* who deep fry anything edible, perhaps anything at all in the hope of making it edible. And the Scots most certainly should be free to say they'd rather support anyone but England in the World Cup.

Arguably the performance of Rooney & Co is enough to make English fans consider supporting anybody but the Italian led bunch of overpaid, talent-free, embarrassing, salad dodgers on whom England's hopes rest(ed) anyway, but given that the Scots, as usual, don't have a dog in the fight, why shouldn't they support who they want for whatever reason they want?

Because it's racist, apparently.

High street retailer HMV has withdrawn "Anyone But England" World Cup posters and T-shirts from its Scottish stores following complaints they were racist.

/facepalm

Racist? Oh, behave. I wouldn't call that racist if I heard it from an Aussie, much less a Scot. I might accept that "Anyone But England' has possible racist overtones, though not that it's explicitly racist, if it came from someone black or asian etc, but really it's more nationalist than racist. And even if you do accept as racist, it's about a bloody soccer tournament for Christ's sake. How bloody thin-skinned do you need to be to get upset by this? Harden the fuck up!

And who's behind the complaint?

The Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) contacted police about the "insensitive and provocative" items which, their website claimed were "criminally irresponsible".

/double facepalm and oh shit. I'd been meaning to link to the CEP since I thought these guys stood for a return to common sense, fairness and liberty for all. I may still but this move seems awfully like a touch of "if you can't beat 'em, join in". The CEP seems to want freedom of speech for England, and of course that's great. I'm all for freedom of speech so I'm absolutely with the CEP on that, but why stop at England? Personally I'd like to see the day when any North Korean can say that Kim Jong Il is a cunt, so England (or Australia, depending on who/where I'm ranting against) is no more than a first step. But if so then restricting the same freedom elsewhere seems like a step backwards, especially if it's within your own country. Would we get more freedom here in Victoria by persuading Canberra to put limits on Queenslanders, or would it be more likely for them to apply the same restriction in all states?

You're not gaining more freedom for yourselves by demanding limits on the freedom of your neighbours, and I think the CEP have scored a massive own goal here. I'd hope that the idea was to try to ridicule the tendency to cry 'racist' whenever anyone says something that someone else (not necessarily themselves) finds something vaguely objectionable, but I think they've succeeded only in legitimising it even for something as trivial as fucking football. In turn this opens the door for the Scots to cry 'racist' if an Englishman says he'd rather eat anything but a clootie dumpling.

As far as I know I haven't so much as a molecule of Scottish glomahaeblin in my blood but I'm on their side. Screw the English who killed Mel Gibson and won't let them support whatever football team they like - HMV should have told them to fuck off. Anyone but England indeed, though in the interests of free speech I'll say I think Scotland's twelfth most talented footballer is Wee Jimmy Krankie.

UPDATE - I left a brief comment to this effect on a post about the Scottish HMV at The CEP blog at 9:58am on 20/6/10. It's still awaiting moderation, though ten comments made afterwards seems to be up. [Shrugs] Wonder why.

* In the Aussie sense a wog is a Mediterranean European providing they're not French and therefore already covered by the term 'Frog'. The people covered by 'wog' have been extended by the use of modifiers. Some, like 'porridge wog' for the Scots, I've heard fairly often. Others. like 'potato wog' for the Irish and 'clog wog' for the Dutch, seem more rare. The fact that Australians have given us English the unique and unmodified term 'Pom' all to ourselves I take to be an indication of the special place we occupy in the cultural hearts of this linguistically gifted people. Either that or the sand-grubbing bastards loathe us so much that we deserved our own insult.

I don't lose any sleep over it either way.