The Angry Exile: Dumming down at The Tellygraff

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 21 November 2010

Dumming down at The Tellygraff - UPDATED

Okay, everybody makes a typo here and there. I'm no different and now and then I do catch one while re-reading an old post I'm about to reference or quote. However, in my defence I have to point out that the entire staff here at Chez Exile consists of me, myself and I, with cups of tea, additional opinions and interesting links to engage and enrage me occasionally provided by the lovely Mrs Exile. Thorough proof reading is often a casualty if it's late or a nice weekend afternoon or if I'm rushing to get a post off before doing something else because I don't have anyone else to do it. Newspapers do, so I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about taking the piss out of them for poor English. What I am starting to feel a bit guilty about is focusing on The Grauniad and its long standing rep because these days The Telegraph seems to be worse. I screen-capped an article there the other day in which "Philippines" had been given no less than four Ps in one use (still uncorrected at time of blogging), though the correct spelling had been used in the rest of the piece, but I'm not going to put it up to giggle over because I've since seen a better one. How unfortunate for The Teletubbiegraph that the article is about education, falling standards and the plan for pupils to lose marks for using poor English in their exams.

To their credit someone at the paper seems to have spotted and corrected it before the commenters started, but the point is that The Tele do seem to be a bit slack at checking things before hitting the publish button. Not just spelling. Whoever is responsible for pictures and captions has let a few howlers slip through. Aside from several mislabeled animals and other gaffs spotted by the Ambush Predator there's this shotgun masquerading as an air rifle and more recently this "small-calibre weapon" (small compared to what? An artillery piece?). I mean, if you don't understand the terms and can't be bothered to look them up why bother with the picture at all?

And then there's the question of what on earth they're thinking when they select certain pictures for certain stories. Back in January for a warble gloaming doom story about how the decade was the hottest ever the picture caption read:

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies report found temperatures had been getting steadily warmer over the past three decades.

You might expect whoever does the pictures to have used a graph illustrating this claim - and surely there was one in the GISS report - but what they actually chose to show this worrying trend in all its apocalyptic glory was a stock agency photo of a blonde girl in a bikini posing on a beach.

What's that supposed to say about the story? We're all going to die, but some girls have got lovely tits, eh? I can't help feeling it says more about declining standards at The Tele than anything else.

UPDATE - sadbutmadlad in the comments points out that there's another mistake in The Tele's picture caption. Instead of "written English" they've put "written english". Good spot, SBML. The Telegraph slips a little further.