Deserved Words – The Garland of the Working Class
Tis once beholden, now long agone
Mouthings aplenty, without hesitation
Yet verse then reserved, alone for the gentry
Twas quality, speed, thereon adorned
Coxcomb masters, of the highest degree
Manors resplendent, with fields circumjacent
Enow equipage, with the means to forfend
Tis then, how indeed when clerks did find fie
Among the damsels and cully, beef-witted beldam
Fishwives and chapmen, the cordwainers too
The drab and the doxy, and dandiprat swarms
The fuzzle in kirtle, both levy and knave
Verses of virtue, held high, naught revealed
Neither mayhap nor perchance, nary meet, not indeed
For rabble, rapscallions, and the scurvy-had lot
Neither worth in their purses, nor a top on their crown
Deserved words, served with care and sweetmeat
Trig so they ween, in their immedicable ire
Did fail to invest when communicants came
With parchment and quill, appetency, and audition
Soon came bijoux and bill, often fandangle
Still forsooth, and goodly, verse hence from thy streete
Hight heeded hist, and the mass gathered hither
Magdalens and petermen, stood with paynims and peelers
Picaroon, poltroons, piepowders and porters
Every ear did they lend, as the verse found its birth
How the sciolist did wonder, and the scullion adore
The swash of the poet, the words spilling forth
Worthiness forged, such the verse given life
Garland bestowed, stood then high, open shew
But quotha, chagrin, and again disbelief
Did the gentry challenge and show their athwart
But alas, moving bootless, felt awash in degrade
As the verses did travel, in the packs of horse-copers
This monsterful drudgery of the purblind and nithing
Found mummers each morrow, mazed and unfettered
And with steps prone to lively, and stages naïve
Brought life, appetency, disport, hereupon indefinite
Author’s Note on Deserved Words – The Garland of the Working Class
So many wonderful words from our past are lost to the sands of time. I often use archaic or obsolete words when I write, simply because I choose to. This piece is a collection of dozens and dozens of words no longer spoken.
To save you having to look up the unfamiliar words, the story is such.
Long ago, the wealthy and powerful would speak to the working class, but only when necessary. They lived in estates and manors, where fine food and literature was aplenty. Poetry, books, and anything of high culture was not shared with the everyday people, as the scholars saw them as ill-mannered, low intelligence, unwashed masses. Yet, despite their perceived control, the working class gave birth to their own form of poetry, one which told their story. It spread, and soon evolved into stage plays, ensuring that the porters, farmers, smiths, servants, ironworkers, and even the unscrupulous brigands and bandits, would have a voice in the world.
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