Grant's Blog

Verse as Prose

NewsPosted by Grant Baynham Mon, January 18, 2010 10:51:54

Verse in Prose

They, whoever ‘they’ are, say that comic verse should sound like conventional prose which just happens to rhyme and to scan. So – and I’ve never tried this before – here’s the lyric to a new song, Spencer’s Cock, exactly as performed, but laid out in prose. It sort of works, despite the humour of the piece deriving partly from its incongruous jumps from the solemn High Archaism of cod folk-song to over-chummy, modern idioms: easier in performance than in print. Nevertheless, if you read this aloud you should suddenly find yourself speaking metrical verse. That’s the idea, anyway.

The rhymes, as they ought to be in comic verse, are all ‘perfect’: matched trailing phonemes always sound identical. So, specifically, wrath/bath and marriage/garage are pronounced to rhyme as they do in good demotic Brummie.

Spencer’s Cock

“Cross my palm with silver,” said the gypsy at the fair. “Cross my palm with silver coin and listen - if you dare. Your dead love, she shall walk tonight for she would have you know what test will bring her soul to rest ere Spencer’s cock do crow. Look for her at midnight by the sound of Great Tom’s bell and steel your heart for horrors that no tongue of mine can tell; pale she was in life, and gaunt - never fair as such - and twelve months underground, I vaunt, won’t have improved things much.”

Now, he doubted not the gypsy’s gift nor that she had spoke true for, oh, in life his wife had aye been swift to tell him what to do. Her sullen grace, her cool embrace - he’d none of these forgotten: he’d loved her well, but, truth to tell, she’d nagged him something rotten.

Around the midnight graveyard rang the sound of Great Tom’s clock and there, upon her headstone, he espied a bright-eyed cock. “Oh, speak! If thou be Spencer’s cock, it’s glad I am to find you. I seek my own, dead true-love,” and the cock said, “She’s behind you.” He turned and, oh! The horror! For some fiend she seemed from Hell! Foul flesh fell, flayed and formless, from that face he’d loved so well; and vilest bile dripped from her eyeless brow and loathsome lip. Said the cock, “You’re on your own, son, now” and flew home to get some kip.

From her misshapen mouth a grating, grinding, wheedling whine now came, as from some moaning beast. Says he, “At least her voice sounds much the same.” “And now!” she cries, “Ah! Now, my love, your time has come to know what test will bring my soul to rest ere Spencer’s cock do crow. This year-dead night is granted us to prove you loved me true for, oh, an evil place below awaits the spitfire, scold and shrew. One task is all The Dark Ones ask to show you never thought me so: one task, or I am belled to Hell when Spencer’s cock do crow. I was a short year wed, a long year dead, and each day of our marriage, each day you said yourself, ‘Today, I’ll get that shelf up in the garage.’ You never did and now, our kid, that test you’ll undergo: put me up that garage shelf, ere Spencer’s cock do crow.”

To save her soul, you’d think that he’d be glad to do this simple task. To save her soul… but he – and she – knew this the worst thing she could ask. To save her soul, he’d walk hot coals, he’d fight, he’d bleed, he’d gladly die: a gallant chap, but absolutely crap at D.I.Y. That garage shelf would go up back-to-front, skew-whiff, and upside-down (that’s if his drill-bit didn’t hit the main and black out half the town). Ah, what to do? He drew a breath or two, he took calm stock and then he biked it round to Spencer’s farm and strangled Spencer’s cock…

He thought back to her untimely death that fateful day last spring. “A sudden heart-attack while bathing; she can’t have known a thing,” the kindly doctor said, while gazing on that floating cloud of hair: an Ophelia in death she was, so peaceful now and fair. Quiet now that cackle as she’d lashed him on to paint and wire and plumb; quiet now her laughing-tackle every time he’d Stanley-slashed his thumb. And quite right, too: the one job he’d thought through was that night, in his wrath, when he’d bulldog-clipped the fuse and dropped his heat-gun in her bath.

So he had a word with Spencer not to get another cock until he’d got that garage shelf up straight and steady as a rock, at which The Dark Ones hummed-and-hawed a bit, but then they let it go - and her soul flew up to Heaven e’en as Spencer’s cock did crow.

“Cross my palm with silver,” said the gypsy at the fair. “Cross my palm with silver and let fall my raven hair. I like a man who keeps his head when dreadful Fate her winds do blow - and a man who keeps his end up until Spencer’s cock do crow.”

Grant Baynham © 2010

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Shiny new computers

NewsPosted by Grant Baynham Sun, August 03, 2008 15:08:30
I haven't posted here for months because of generalised computer probs. Briefly, computers never work first time for me, and I can't be bothered perservering. I always have something better to do. Now, finally, we seem to have a computer that does the things I want it to with no fuss, so expect more self-indulgent blogging.

The cut (off) finger is now as good as it will ever be, which is not quite 100%, but what can you expect at our age. I dislocated my knee as well a coupla months back. My eighty-year-old dad did the roadying for a while, which was a thing worth watching. What with that and the ricked tendons in the wrists last August ('08) - which was another month off playing, and they'll never be right again, either - the year has, physically, been something of a trial.


Oh, moan, moan, moan. I'm having fun, writing hard, and looking forward to three days at Sidmouth this week. See you all there.

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Cut finger

NewsPosted by Grant Baynham Fri, February 08, 2008 15:04:58

The big problem at the moment is my left index finger: I've cut the end off it.

This is about a month ago now. I was shredding spring cabbage with the splendid new knife that my bro-in-law - Alistair, fellow foodie, major scientist and all-round good egg - gave me for Xmas. There was a moment of unusual resistance, and then the top right-hand corner, viewed from above, of the finger shot across the chopping board and I was suddenly shredding red cabbage. H'mm.

I've lost about three-eighths of an inch off the pad, but it's grown, or growing, back, although at the moment it's pink, puffy, painful and unplayable.

So I've spent the last few weeks adapting Freddie Green's three-finger triad rhythm technique for the BACK three fingers (2,3 & 4), literally to keep my hand in, or three quarters of it anyway. I even have some performable repertoire: Look for the Silver Lining and two Eric Idle pieces: The Galaxy Song and, inevitably, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

All being well, I'll be back gigging at the end of Feb, but it's going to be a long haul to get up to previous speed, and I'll be playing the sympathy card (and the above-mentioned songs) a lot.

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