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The Troubadour Remembers

A troubadour wayfaring town to town,
Hamlet to homestead, dale to grassy down,
While he his vagabond mandora strummed,
Now with the bass, now with the treble hummed,
Until the dancing echoes of the air,
Cast on the seas of carefreeness and care,
Lured from the depths where memories belong
A once half-heard, now half-remembered song,
Breathing, “Love is a mended sensual swing.
The eyot’s rill flows which only froze in Spring.
In mist, high on a highland windowsill
Two lovers kissed and—” and the world stood still
While spiralling the windmills of his mind
Tried from the wheeling grains more lines to grind.
“Did birds sing songs in all the greenwood ways
’Neath the clear moon in merry rondelays?
No, that was somewhere else. I’ll try again.
Thou wast three times a lady. Although when
Those three occasions were I can’t recall,
She was a lady thrice or not at all.”
But his heart finds the more his passions stoke
Erato’s lovely flame, the more the smoke
Gets in his eyes and brain but, to complete
His aria, a postlude long and sweet
And delicate meanders from the strings
To tidy up his muses’ ramblings,
While zephyrs bear away this verbal salad,
The limp, green leaves of what was once a ballad.

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Morrison Handley-Schachler is a retired Chartered Public Finance Accountant and Lecturer in Accounting. He has a doctorate in Ancient History and has published articles on ancient Persian history, accounting history, financial crime, auditing and financial risk management. He lives in South Queensferry, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Scotland.

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18 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    This is worthy of a Medieval balladeer with hearty refrains strummed and sung in perfect rhyme and rhythm with the possible bawdy allusion. The phrase, “Two lovers kissed and—” and the world stood still,” is so close to the phrase from the song from a few decades ago, “Love’s a Many Splendored Thing,” that goes “two lovers kissed, and world stood still.” I really liked your well-crafted poem.

    Reply
    • Morrison Handley-Schachler

      Many thanks, Roy. I also enjoyed writing it. Glad you enjoyed reading it as well.

      Reply
  2. Brian Yapko

    This poem is a real charmer, Morrison, which, for me, evokes those “ballads, songs and snatches” mentioned in G&S’s “A Wandering Minstrel, I.” You very cleverly incorporate misremembered lyrics (“Love is a mended sensual swing” I believe is a misremembered “Love is a many splendored thing…”) But your troubadour tries again and we get sly allusions to “Three Times a Lady”, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and more. And I love the final rhyme of “salad” and “ballad.” This poem is a delightful piece so very well done!

    Reply
    • Morrison Handley-Schachler

      Thanks, Brian. Your comments are much appreciated. I loved coming up with misheard and misremembered lyrics and for “Love is a many-splendoured thing,” I hope I managed to produce something that would be not-quite-not-gibberish. I’m afraid my troubadour is not quite as skilled as Gilbert and Sullivan’s Nanki-Poo but he does his best. Glad to see that you also spotted some of the other allusions.

      Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    This is a brilliant confection of references to past songs, put together with consummate skill. And the tone — a mix of the romantic, the comic, the sensual, and the languorous, and with the final dismissive note of a joke!

    I love the rich language, the perfect rhymes, and the expertly handled serial enjambment. This is the kind of verbal craftsmanship we are trying to resuscitate here at the SCP.

    Reply
    • Morrison Handley-Schachler

      Thank you, Joseph. I am glad you enjoyed it. The combination of tones was very much what I was aiming for, especially the sensual lapsing into the comic as the troubadour confusion overwhelms his artistry.

      Reply
  4. Jeremiah Johnson

    Love the salad metaphor at the end!

    And, on another note, your poem somehow reminded me of Fragonard’s “The Swing”

    Reply
    • Morrison Handley-Schachler

      Thanks, Jeremiah. I couldn’t resist the salad metaphor. Neither Fragonard’s brilliant painting nor the more restrained Swing by Goya was actually in my mind at the time but it certainly seems an apt image. A swing seemed a suitable metaphor which I could almost imagine someone thinking he heard instead of the original words.

      Reply
  5. Shamik Banerjee

    Love this poem, Morrsion! This is so archaic and redolent of old ballads.

    Reply
    • Morrison Handley-Schachler

      Thank you, Shamik. I’m delighted that you enjoyed the poem. I have sought to create an old-time mediaeval atmosphere while having fun with some romantic songs. Romance is something for all eras.

      Reply
  6. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Thank you for this beautifully crafted, clever, and high entertaining poem. I especially like: “Thou wast three times a lady. Although when / Those three occasions were I can’t recall, / She was a lady thrice or not at all.” and the closing couplet is superb.

    Reply
    • Morrison Handley-Schachler

      Thank you, Susan. I’m glad that you enjoyed reading the poem. “Three times a lady” is one of five intentional song references, although the troubadour has sometimes “improved” or misunderstood or completely misheard the lyrics.

      Reply
  7. Mary Jane Myers

    Morrison

    This is so clever and so artfully done. Perfect pentameter, perfect rhymed couplets. Sly humor. Bravo!

    Though the narrator pokes gentle fun at the talentless troubadour who is struggling to compose a song, still, I see a serious through-line here. Isn’t artistic creation exactly like this? The artist takes bits and pieces from all the random stuff with which he/she has stocked his/her mind and weaves those fragments into something new, and with any luck at all, something good. Which is I suppose an argument for a well-stocked mind. Garbage into the artist’s mind, garbage out!

    It’s interesting also when we consider that in some traditions (such as the Celtic “bards”) poets/singers were considered to have spiritual powers similar to prophets or seers. They were clairvoyant spirit mediums. Your rather feckless troubadour is channeling bits and pieces of banal popular ditties rather than the revered wisdom of the tribe!

    I am chuckling as I think of the peripatetic poets (called “Homer:\”) “on the road”—improvising the hexameter of the Iliad with the use of mnemonic devices and formulas. A work of collective “genius.” Or what about that shameless MacPherson, passing off his rather banal Ossian poems as genuine Celtic epics—he presumably had internalized scraps of oral poems learned in his childhood. We in money-obsessed America can’t argue with his international success. And we cheer on hoaxters!

    My favorite lines:
    “Lured from the depths where memories belong a once half-heard, now half-remembered song”;
    “Thou wast three times a lady. Although when those three occasions were I can’t recall, she was a lady thrice or not at all.”
    “And delicate meanders from the strings to tidy up his muses’ ramblings”

    Note: A complex iamb in that last couplet: elision makes the word “ramblings” shape-shifting in its pronunciation— you’ve used it as 3-syllable word, so that the iamb ends on a masculine stress: RAM-be-LINGS.

    Most sincerely
    Mary Jane

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      About “ramblings” — I’ve noticed that this is true for many words with an “mbl'” consonant cluster (stumble, rumble, tumble, fumble, humble). In some regional variants one gets an intrusive schwa vowel (just a vague unstressed “uhh” sound) between the /b/ and the /l/ if the word gets an “-ing” ending. It happens in some other words like “film,” which in some parts of New York City is pronounced “FIL-um.”

      The variant is useful for poets if they need to make position, but if the intrusive schwa is not part of the reader’s dialect it can sound forced.

      Reply
      • Morrison Handley-Schachler

        Hi Joseph. Thanks for the comment, which is interesting.
        Here on the East Coast of Great Britain, it’s definitely three syllables, although poetically it can be shortened down to two if needed to fit the meter. In speaking here in Edinburgh I think this would sound clipped and strange but, again, elsewhere it might be the norm.
        Further west there might also be a schwa vowel as part of the second syllable but here the second syllable is entirely a vocalic l – the same as the second syllable of “people” or “trouble”. I wonder what comes naturally to people in other parts of the world.

    • Morrison Handley-Schachler

      Hi Mary Jane. Thanks for your extensive and insightful comments. I’m afraid that my troubador is no Homer but he does accidentally create something new, however far removed from the originals.

      Reply
  8. Paul A. Freeman

    I guess your avid strumming and your feeling,
    must have your listeners dancing on the ceiling.

    Nicely done, Morrison. And to be continued?

    Reply
  9. Margaret Coats

    Wondrously done memories with imprecise but pertinent quotations. You create the character of a special troubadour, and place him somewhere in time with polished archaic word choices. While the mixture of tones leading to humor may have been your intent, you’ve created both an immensely pleasing poem and a memorable personage!

    Reply

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