The Dead Men's Song Part 5

BALLAD _of_ DEAD MEN

If Young Allison is vain of anything he has done I have yet to hear such an expression from him. He just writes things and tucks them away in odd corners and it has devolved upon me to collect them and keep them. So it is that, while not a literary executor--because Allison, thank G.o.d, is scandalously healthy and I am making no professions--it falls to my satisfied lot to be a literary collector in a certain sense--if he who gathers and preserves and gloats over the brain products of others may thus be described. That is why, treasured among my earthly possessions--scant enough, the good Lord knows, but full of joy and satisfaction to me--are extensive lead-pencil ma.n.u.script memoranda in Allison's writing showing the painstaking stages by which "Fifteen Dead Men," characterized by James Whitcomb Riley as that "masterly and exquisite ballad of delicious horrificness," reached its perfection. Under whatever name it may be sung, be it "The Ballad of Dead Men," or "On Board the Derelict" or "Derelict,"

it is a poem big enough to fix the Jewel of Fame firmly over the author's brow.

Away back in the Allison strain somewhere must have been a bold buccaneer, for who else but the descendant of a roystering, fighting, blood-letting pirate could have seen the "scuppers glut with a rotting red?" Through all the visible mildness of his deep and complex nature there surely runs a blood-thirsty current, in proof of which I submit this single paragraph from certain confessions[3] of his:

With character seared, abandoned and dissolute in habit, through and by the hearing and seeing and reading of history, there was but one desperate step left. So I entered upon the career of a pirate in my ninth year. The Spanish Main, as no doubt you remember, was at that time upon an open common just across the street from our house, and it was a hundred feet long, half as wide and would average two feet in depth. I have often since thanked Heaven that they filled up that pathless ocean in order to build an iron foundry upon the spot. Suppose they had excavated for a cellar! Why during the time that Capt. Kidd, Lafitte and I infested the coast thereabout, sailing three "low, black-hulled schooners with long rakish masts," I forced hundreds of merchant seamen to walk the plank--even helpless women and children. Unless the sharks devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of that iron foundry. Under the lee of the Northernmost promontory, near a rock marked with peculiar crosses made by the point of the stiletto which I constantly carried in my red silk sash, I buried tons of plate, and doubloons, pieces of eight, pistoles, Louis d'ors, and galleons by the chest. At that time galleons somehow meant to me money pieces in use, though since then the name has been given to a species of boat. The rich brocades, Damascus and Indian stuffs, laces, mantles, shawls and finery were piled in riotous profusion in our cave where--let the whole truth be told if it must--I lived with a bold, black-eyed and coquettish Spanish girl, who loved me with ungovernable jealousy that occasionally led to bitter and terrible scenes of rage and despair. At last when I brought home a white and red English girl, whose life I spared because she had begged me on her knees by the memory of my sainted mother to spare her for her old father, who was waiting her coming, Joquita pa.s.sed all bounds. I killed her--with a single knife thrust, I remember.

She was buried right on the spot where the Tilden and Hendricks flag pole afterwards stood in the campaign of 1876. It was with bitter melancholy that I fancied the red stripes on the flag had their color from the blood of the poor, foolish, jealous girl below.

[3] The Delicious Vice. Pages 23-24. First Series, 1907.

So it is, naturally enough, that to Allison, "Treasure Island" is the _ne plus ultra_ and composite of all pirate stories, and this marvel of delight he called to Waller's attention while they were incubating "The Ogallallas." No sooner had Waller read it than the quatrain of Old Billy Bones took possession of him and converted itself into music. The two of them, as so many other thousands had done, bewailed the parsimony of Stevenson in the use and development of the grisly suggestion and Waller declared that if Allison would complete the verse he would set it to music.

That same night Allison composed three ragged but promising verses, at white heat, while walking the floor in a cloud of tobacco smoke of his own making. Next morning he gave them to Waller, who by night had the score and words married and a day later the finished product went forward to Wm. A.

Pond & Co., and was published under the t.i.tle of "A Piratical Ballad"[4].

Note that these initial verses are described as "ragged" and in this I am also quoting Allison himself who in our various chats on his reminiscence of "Treasure Island" has often given them this characterization. Be that as it may these three verses were the foundation for the perfect six that were to emerge after several years more of intermittent but patient development and labor.

[4] A Piratical Ballad. Song for Ba.s.s or Deep Baritone. Words by Young E. Allison; Music by Henry Waller; New York. Published by William A. Pond & Co. Copyright 1891. [See pages 65-68.]

A PIRATICAL BALLAD.

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

The mate was fixed by the bo's'n's pike, The bo's'n brained with a marlinspike, And cookey's throat was marked belike It had been gripped By fingers ten.

And there they lay, All good dead men-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men all stark and cold-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Their eyes popp'd wide and glazed and bold-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

The skipper lay with his n.o.b in gore Where the scullion's axe his cheek had sh.o.r.e, And the scullion he was stabbed times four.

And there they lay, And the soggy skies Rained all day long On the staring eyes-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of the Vixen's list-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

All gone down from the devil's own fist-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

We wrapped 'em all in a mainsail's fold, We sewed at the foot a bit of gold, And we heaved 'em into the billows cold.

The bit was put As snug's could be, Where't ne'er will bother You nor me-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

This is the requiem of the Fifteen Dead Men that Eugene Cowles would sing so effectively in his booming ba.s.s after rehearsals of "The Ogallallas." It must have been great!

Allison felt that he had done little justice to an idea full of great possibilities and made a number of revisions during the polis.h.i.+ng process until it was raised to five verses. I have the original ma.n.u.script[5] of the first revision of "A Piratical Ballad" unearthed from a cubby-hole in an old desk of his to which I fell heir, the only change being in the t.i.tle to "A Ballad of Dead Men," the elimination of one of the concluding lines "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" from the refrain of each verse, (it had been added originally to fit the musical cadence), and the strengthening of the final verse by the subst.i.tution of--

With willing hearts And a Yo-heave-ho Over the side To the sharks below.

[5] Reproduced in facsimile.

Many will no doubt recall "The Philosophy of Composition"[6] by Edgar Allen Poe, and those who by some mischance have missed it, can spend a delightful hour in the perusal of what, beyond the least doubt, is the most skillful a.n.a.lysis of poetic composition ever written, even though it fails to carry conviction that "The Raven" was ever produced by the formula described. Poe declared that--

... most writers--poets in especial--prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy--an ecstatic intuition; and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought, at the true purposes seized only at the last moment, at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view, at the fully matured fancies discarded as unmanageable, at the cautious selections and rejections, at the painful erasions and interpolations--in a word at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene s.h.i.+fting, the step ladders and demon traps, the c.o.c.k's feather, the red paint and the black patches, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred const.i.tute the properties of the literary _histrio_.

[6] Stone & Kimball Edition. Vol. 6; page 31.

And so he proceeds to detail how he composed "The Raven." First he decided on a length of about one hundred lines that could be read at one sitting; on beauty as its province; on sadness as its tone; on a variation of the application of the refrain--it remaining for the most part unvaried--to obtain what he termed "artistic piquancy;" proceeding only at that stage to the composition of the last verse as the first step. All this of course has little to do with "Derelict" and yet I cannot but see a sort of a.n.a.logy of effect by processes wholly divergent, particularly as Allison once told me that the central idea of the last verse for consigning the bodies to the deep was ever in his mind and that this verse was first projected, although its development was the most difficult and its perfection did not come until later. So much for that! In the five verses he had arrived approximately at a consummation of the sea burial, the introduction very properly repeating the quatrain of Billy Bones before concluding:

We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight, With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight, And we heaved 'em over and out of sight-- With a yo-heave-ho!

And a fare-you-well!

And a sullen plunge In the sullen swell-- Ten fathom-lengths of the road to h.e.l.l-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

While this composition is fine and tight as a drum in poetic meter and conception, the real perfection was not arrived at until he made it "Ten fathoms _deep on_ the road to h.e.l.l." In the five-verse revision a part of the last verse as it appeared in "A Piratical Ballad" went into the second, a part of the second verse was s.h.i.+fted to the third and a fourth was added to give an implied reason for the riot of death in an inferred quarrel over the "chest on chest full of Spanish gold, with a ton of plate in the middle hold." Strangely enough all these s.h.i.+fts and additions do not appear to have altered the sentiment in the least and at times I am amazed, in reading over old versions, that I do not appreciably miss certain lines and ideas that seem vital to the finished product.

Shortly after the five verses had been privately printed for his friends on a single slip, Allison conceived the rather daring idea of injecting the trace of a woman on board the Derelict which up to this time he had very closely developed in the Stevensonian spirit. While there was no woman in "Treasure Island," he proved to himself by a.n.a.lysis that his new thought would do no violence to Stevenson's idea, because Billy Bones' song was a reminiscence of _his own past_ and not of Treasure Island. Hence the trace of a woman, skillfully injected, might be permissible. Here, too, his a.n.a.lysis gave him the melancholy tone--of which Poe speaks as so highly desirable--greatly accentuated by doubt of whether she was "wench" or "maid," and a further possible incentive for the extermination of the whole s.h.i.+p's list. This verse[7] has undergone little change since the woman trace was first injected:

More we saw, through the stern-light screen-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Chartings ondoubt where a woman had been-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

A flimsy s.h.i.+ft on a bunker cot, With a dagger-slot in the bosom spot And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.

Now whether wench Or a shuddering maid, She dared the knife And she took the blade.

By G.o.d! She was stuff for a plucky jade-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

[7] Reproduced in facsimile.

There were certain niceties of word adjustment to follow as for instance the subst.i.tution of "a thin dirk-slot" for "a dagger-slot," the word "thin"

carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the s.h.i.+ft, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy.

The very acme of touches came in the punctuation[8] of the concluding lines--pauses that emphasize with so much ingenuity the very question that lends the speculatively mournful cadence to the whole:

Or was she wench ...

Or some shuddering maid...?

That dared the knife And that took the blade!

And as a cap-sheaf came the thought of differentiating the whole verse[8] by an Italicized setting! That is almost the last word of the conception of poet-printer.

[8] Reproduced in facsimile.

The dogged persistency that Allison applied to the completion of this masterpiece has always won my deepest admiration. And the admiration of many others too, for this poem, first publicly printed in the Louisville _Courier-Journal_, has been reprinted in one form or another, in almost every newspaper in the country and has an honored place in many sc.r.a.p books. What great and painstaking effort was encompa.s.sed in its composition only one can know even partly who has been privileged to "peep behind the scenes" at the "properties of the literary _histrio_"--the ma.n.u.script notes and memoranda, a few of which accompany this volume in facsimile.

IF THERE _is_ CONTROVERSY!

If any one in this wide, old world, after reading the wealth of evidence in this little volume, still thinks Young E. Allison did not write "Derelict,"

let him come to me like a man and say so and I'll give him a good swift stab in the eye, with my eye, and say: "You don't want to be convinced."

This includes the editor of _The New York Times Book Review_. When he made an egregious blunder by stating that "Derelict" was an unskilled sailor's jingle, a wave of protest reached him. He then printed Walt Mason's letter describing the poem as a work of art and altered his editorial characterization of it to "famous old chanty." In the same breath he wrote that it was not likely that Mr. Allison was the author--but why not likely?

It is plain that somebody must have written it. n.o.body else's name had ever been a.s.sociated with it. The _Times_ man had n.o.body to suggest as the author. Why, then, maintain that Mr. Allison was not the author? His sole reason is that the "Bowdlerized" and b.a.s.t.a.r.d version which he printed had been _copied from a ma.n.u.script written into an old book printed in 1843_!

What does the ink say about dates? What do the pen marks say? Great G.o.ds and little fishes! If ever I shall desire to antiquitize a modernity I'll copy it into an old book and send a transcript to that delightful Babe of the Woods of _The New York Times Book Review_.