The Ballad of John Clare (29 page)

And I shall leave his bed-side now and wait for him in churchyard clay. I shall fall silent and bide my time.

Day will follow day and John Clare shall take his fair portion of all that the world gives and withholds. His share digs deep into its furrow, and could I tug at the stilts I would not change its course. He is sundered and there’s only one way that he can find what’s been took from him.

Ay, though every lark in England should rise up above his head and sing for him, it can only be in his art that he shall make himself whole.

There's a tradition among the First Nation peoples of America that any action we take today will have its full implication in seven generations time. This is a story that takes place seven generations ago. The wholesale enclosure of the English parishes rang the final death knell for ancient patterns of subsistence economy. It also displaced the small farmers and the landless poor, who became the workforce for the mills, factories and mines of the industrial north. A different relationship with the land began that we are reaping the full harvest of today. John Clare (in his life and his poetry) has become emblematic of these losses.

Very little is known about Clare's early life beyond a few bare bones in the ‘Autobiographical Fragments' that he wrote for his children in the mid 1820s.

This story is in no way ‘biographical'. It is an improvisation around a few of the sketchy facts that we have of his doings between 1811 & 1812 (when he was 17 and 18 years old). I have incorporated several incidents and a dream that he describes, and throughout there are traces of his poetry, but the narrative is pure fiction.

I have used many of the names of village people that Clare mentions in his poems, memoirs and letters … but in my story their personalities are entirely invented, they bear no relation to their real historical name-sakes.

Place names, on the other hand, are for the most part pretty accurate.

I have shrunk the protracted process of enclosure, which took several years, into twelve months.

Anyone wanting to find the true story of Clare's life should go to Jonathan Bate's excellent biography (Picador), or to
John Clare By Himself
(Carcanet).

And I hope that there are enough clues here as to the real emotional journey of Clare's youth, and the language that surrounded him, for any reader to go to his poems afterwards and find that they make sense in a way that they might not have done otherwise. That is the true purpose of this story.

My thanks to Ana Adnam, Ronald Hutton, Emma Thomas, Anna Magyar and Liz McGowan for careful reading, and to Eric Lane for rigorous editing.

Alicumpane – Doctor’s remedy in Morris (Mummer’s) Play

Annis – Witch-like cannibal hag of East Midlands

Avata acoi – (Romany) Come here

Baggin – Pack lunch

Barnack – Sandstone, local to Helpston

Bau – (Romany) Comrade

Baulk – A ridge left by the plough

Bengte – (Romany) The Devil

Bero – (Romany) Ship

Bi luvva – (Romany) Without money

Boggarts – Malign fairies of the Fens

Boney – Napoleon Bonaparte

Boro pawnee – (Romany) Sea (big water)

Cambri – (Romany) Pregnant

Chal – (Romany) Lad, boy

Changeling – A stolen mortal child that has been replaced by a fairy child

Charles’ Wain – (Clare) The constellation of the Plough

Charlie Wag – Fen nick-name for Charles 1st

Chin – (Romany) Cut

Cocalor – (Romany) Bones

Coney – Rabbit

Crop – The stomach of a bird

Curlo – (Romany) Throat

Dimute – (Clare) Diminutive

Dotterel – (Clare) A pollarded tree

Dukkering – (Romany) Fortune-telling

Dunnock – Hedge Sparrow

Fancy – The art of boxing

Florin – Two shillings

Frumity – Wheat boiled in milk and seasoned with sugar and cinnamon

Fustian – Cloth made of linen and wool

Gelding – Castrated stallion

Gentils – Maggots

Ghostly Enemy – The Devil

Gorgio – (Romany) Someone who lives in a house

Gry – (Romany) Horse

Guddle – To fish with bare hands

Handywoman – Midwife

Hickathrift – Tom Hickathrift, legendary giant of the Fens

Hok-hornie-mush – (Romany) Policeman

Holkham – The seat of Coke of Holkham, pioneer of agricultural improvement

Horkey – Harvest home celebration

Kickshawed – Criticised, put down

Lurcher – Greyhound cross

Maiden assize – An assize with no death penalty

Mardling – Gossiping

Mawkin – Scarecrow

Men – (Romany) Neck

Mere-stone – Parish boundary marker

Michaelmas shack – Allowing cattle to graze on stubble

Mutzi – (Romany) Skin

Nip-cheese – Mean, stingy

Noddle – Head

Old Sow – Last sheaf of wheat to be cut (end of harvest)

Pismires – (Clare) Ants

Poggar – (Romany) Break

Poknies – (Romany) Judge

Poppy-head tea – Tea made with opium poppy heads, taken in the Fens as a cure for marsh fever (Malaria)

Por-engro – (Romany) Someone able to write

Pricked – (Clare) Marked or written

Proggle – (Clare) Stir up

Pudge – (Clare) Puddle

Queen Mab – Queen of the Fairies

Reynolds – Fox

Ride – A track (for riding) through a wood

Rockie – Spindle

Shepherd’s Lamp – (Clare) The Pole Star

Simmeno – (Romany) Broth

Sisal – Hemp

Skep – Beehive

Slomekin – Dishevelled

Snottum – (Cant) Iron pole for hanging pots and kettles over a fire

Squit – Nonsense

Stannyi – (Romany) Deer

Starnel – (Clare) Starling

Stook – A bundle of sheaves of wheat, oats or barley

Stulps – (Clare) Stumps

Sturt – (Clare) Start in a startled way

Tailor’s yardband – (Clare) Orion’s belt

Tel te jib – (Romany) Hold your tongue

Tippoty dre mande – (Romany) Bearing malice against me

Todloweries – Fairies of the Fens

Tumbrel – Cart

Turn-key – Gaoler

Tyburn frisk – Dance of a hanging man on the gallows

Varmint – Pest (from vermin)

Vennor – (Romany) Entrails

Verdigrease – Crystals of copper acetate

Wain – Wagon

Wat – Hare

Whelp – Young dog

Whin – Gorse

Wishengro – (Romany) Game-keeper

Withies – Thin branches of pollarded willow

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Publishing History
First published by Dedalus in 2010
Reprinted in 2011
First ebook edition in 2012

The Ballad of John Clare copyright © Hugh Lupton 2010

The right of Hugh Lupton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Printed in Finland by Bookwell
Typeset by Marie Lane

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