People
keep mentioning ‘Tarantella’ – it seems to be having a Moment. My mental map for childhood memories can
locate where I was when I first heard it, aged 7: in a classroom with walls the
colour of the less lurid kind of mushy peas.
On one wall was a grid with our names down the side and x2, x3, x4 etc along
the top. Whenever one of us mastered a
new times table, the relevant square in the grid was filled with a coloured
star. Or were the stars all gold? The room faced south and I’m seeing the sun
lighting up our stars, which made an interesting pattern, though one very
unlike real stars.
It
didn’t matter who this man with a strange name was. I don’t think I associated him with the Cautionary Tales. The poem’s rhythms, rhyme, speed and descriptive
power took root. The pattern of the
sounds went in and out like the dance. I
could see most of the poem though had trouble with “the wine that tasted of the
tar”; how could this adult drink taste of the sticky stuff that melted on roads
in the summer? I can still see what I
saw – the courtyard of an old, white-painted inn with several floors of wooden-railinged
galleries, red flowers/leaves and everyone looking Spanish. There wasn’t a picture, I’d never been abroad
and we didn’t have a television at home.
Attachment
to the romantic sublime in landscapes must start early… re-reading the poem
brings back my visualisation of the second verse too. I relished the abrupt change of mood to doom
and gloom – all those long vowels, “more.. hoar.. falls”, etc, and the feet
tramping in the dead sound of the words ending in d, “sound.. tread.. ground..
sound”. Not knowing what had happened
only drew me deeper in. Probably not
understanding all the words (muleteer, tedding, hoar) did too. So, I think, did the idea of remembering
something that couldn’t be retrieved from the past but could be recreated on the page.
Of
course some of the above may be false memories, as dubious as the goldness of
the stick-on stars. But at least some of
it’s valid; and above all I can remember the feeling of the experience – my first
ever grown-up poem, and the first time I got what poetry could do. Anyway, here’s ‘Tarantella’. You can listen to Hilaire Belloc himself half-reading,
half-singing it on the Poetry Archive. There’s an interesting piece about him on the
same page.
Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc
Do
you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do
you remember an Inn?
And
the tedding and the spreading
Of
the straw for a bedding,
And
the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And
the wine that tasted of the tar?
And
the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under
the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do
you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do
you remember an Inn?
And
the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who
hadn't got a penny,
And
who weren't paying any,
And
the hammer at the doors and the din?
And
the hip! hop! hap!
Of
the clap
Of
the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of
the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing
and advancing,
Snapping
of a clapper to the spin
Out
and in –
And
the ting, tong, tang, of the guitar.
Do
you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do
you remember an Inn?
Never
more;
Miranda,
Never
more.
Only
the high peaks hoar:
And
Aragon a torrent at the door.
No
sound
In
the walls of the halls where falls
The
tread
Of
the feet of the dead to the ground
No
sound:
But
the boom
Of
the far waterfall like doom.
