PANDEAN.
'Twas harvest time and close and warm,
A day when tankards foam,
But when there came the thunder-storm
We'd got the last load home;
We'd knocked off work—as custom is—
Though 'twern't but four o'clock,
And turned in to Jim Stevens's,
That keeps "The Fighting-Cock."
The rain roared down in thunder-thresh,
And roared itself away,
And left the earth as sweet and fresh
As though 'twas only May;
And from outside came stock and clove
And half-a-dozen more;
And then up steps a piping cove,
A-piping at the door.
We tumbles out to hear him blow,
Tu-wit, he blew, tu-wee,
On rummy pipes o' reeds a-row
Their likes I never see;
And as he blew he shook a limb
And capered like a goat,
And us bold lads we looks at him
Like rabbits at a stoat.
An oddly chap and russet red,
He capered and he hopped,
A bit o' sacking on his head
Although the rain had stopped:
Tu-wee he blew, he blew tu-wit,
All in the clean sunshine,
And oh, the creepy charm of it
Went crawling up my spine.
I don't know if the others dreamed—
'Cos why, they never tell—
But in a little bit it seemed
I knew the tune quite well;
It seemed to me I'd heard it once
In woods away and dim,
Where someone with a hornéd sconce
Came capering like him.
It held me tight, that tune o' his,
It crawled on scalp and skin,
Till sudden—'long o' choir-practice—
The belfry bells swung in;
The piping cove he turned and passed,
Till through the golden broom
A mile along we saw him last
Go lone-like up the coombe.
The belfry bells they rang—one—two;
The spell was lift from me,
The spell the oddly piper blew—
Tu-wit, he went, tu-wee;
The spell was lift that he had laid,
But still—tu-wee, tu-wit—
I can't forget the tune he played,
And that's the truth of it.