T.S. Eliot's Blue Verses and their Sources in the Folk Tradition
1999; Indiana University Press; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/jml.1999.0002
ISSN1529-1464
Autores Tópico(s)Short Stories in Global Literature
ResumoT.S. Eliot’s Blue Verses and Their Sources in the Folk Tradition David Chinitz (bio) The controversy of 1996–97 over the sources of T.S. Eliot’s bawdy verses, then newly published, ended on an inconclusive note. The central question, opened first by readers of the Guardian and carried on by various critics and correspondents in the TLS and elsewhere, is whether Eliot was indeed the author of a poem called “Fragments,” or whether Eliot had merely transcribed a venerable ballad, identified by some as “The Ball of Kirriemuir” and by others as “The Jolly Tinker” or “The Highland Tinker.” In his edition of Eliot’s early poems, Inventions of the March Hare, Christopher Ricks had ascribed the poem to Eliot, and the allegation that he had blundered in doing so gave rise to jeers that reverberated from the Observer to the New Republic and the Auckland Sunday Star-Times. In his last word on the subject, Ricks granted that “Fragments” contained “a memory of ‘The Ball of Kirriemuir’” but defended his attribution of the poem to Eliot: The seventeen lines are his as many of Robert Burns’s—or Walter Scott’s—are theirs. Eliot was writing variations, dud ones unfortunately, on a good old theme, and the poem is both his and the tradition’s. Unless, that is, someone can now produce a text of “The Ball of Kirriemuir” that Eliot did no more than copy out. 1 Eliot does indeed appear to have merely “copied out” a pre-existing text in his “Fragments,” but “Fragments,” for other reasons, nevertheless remains a poem recognizably by Eliot. It is actually in his suite of “Columbo” verses, rather than in “Fragments,” that Eliot develops an [End Page 329] antecedent folk ballad in the manner of a Burns or a Scott. References to “The Ball of Kirriemuir,” to begin with, are assuredly misleading. The variants which I have examined, totaling over two hundred verses, reveal no overlap with Eliot’s “Fragments” beyond the echo that Ricks has already conceded: They fucked them on the balcony; They fucked them in the hall. God save us, said the porter, butThey’ve come to fuck us all. 2 In challenging the world to “produce a text of ‘The Ball of Kirriemuir’ that Eliot did no more than copy out,” Ricks was perfectly safe, down to the one hundred dollars that he wagered on Richard Poirier’s being unable to produce one. 3 “The Jolly Tinker” poses a far greater threat to Ricks’s position. Whereas “The Ball of Kirriemuir” describes a sexual orgy in a long series of interchangeable stanzas, “The Jolly Tinker,” like Eliot’s “Fragments,” narrates the exploits of a grotesquely over-endowed itinerant. And there are, in fact, published versions which resemble “Fragments” in detail. One such text has been collected by Ed Cray and published in his The Erotic Muse: Eliot’s “Fragments”4 The Jolly Tinker [A]5 1. There was a jolly tinker came across the sea With his four and twenty inches hanging to his knee. There was a jolly tinker And he came from Dungaree, With a yard and a half of foreskin Hanging down below his knee. Chorus With his long-pronged hongpronged Underhanded babyfetcher Hanging to his knee. Chorus: With his long dong-diddly-whacker, Overgrown kidney-cracker, Mother-fucking baby-fetcher Hanging to his knees. 2. It was a sunny summer day the tinker was in heat With his eight and forty inches hanging to his feet— My lady she was dressing, Dressing for the ball, When she saw the jolly tinker Lashing piss against the wall. 13. O tinker dear tinker I am in love with you O tinker jolly tinker will half a dollar do? “Oh, tinker, oh, tinker, I’m in love with you. Oh, tinker, oh, tinker, Will half a dollar do?” 24. O daughter dear daughter I think you are a fool To run against a man with a john like a mule. ”Oh, daughter, oh, daughter, You were a silly fool, To get busy with a man With a tool like a mule.” 25. O mother dear mother I thought that I was able...
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