My Life as an Author

by Martin Farquhar Tupper

Isle of Man.

Under such a title as this, "My Life as an Author," that author being chiefly known for his poetry, though he has also written plenty of prose, it is (as I have indeed just said) not to be reasonably objected that the volume is spotted with small poems. Still, I must do it, if I wish to illustrate by verse, or other extracts from my writings (published or unprinted), certain places where the said author has had his temporary habitat: now one of these is the Isle of Man,—where I and mine made a long summer stay at Castle Mona. The chief literary productions of mine in that modern Trinacria, whose heraldic emblem, like that of ancient Sicily, is the Three legs of Three promontories, are some antiquarian pieces, principally one on the sepulchral mound of Orry the Dane:—

"In fifty keels and five
Rushed over the pirate swarm,
Hornets out of the northern hive,
Hawks on the wings of the storm;
Blood upon talons and beak,
Blood from their helms to their heels,
Blood on the hand and blood on the cheek,—
In five and fifty keels!

"O fierce and terrible horde
That shout about Orry the Dane,
Clanging the shield and clashing the sword
To the roar of the storm-tost main!
And hard on the shore they drive
Ploughing through shingle and sand,—
And high and dry those fifty and five
Are haul'd in line upon land.

"And ho! for the torch straightway,
In honour of Odin and Thor,—
And the blazing night is as bright as the day
As a gift to the gods of war;
For down to the melting sand
And over each flaring mast
Those fifty and five they have burnt as they stand
To the tune of the surf and the blast!

"A ruthless, desperate crowd,
They trample the shingle at Lhane,
And hungry for slaughter they clamour aloud
For the Viking, for Orry the Dane!
And swift has he flown at the foe—
For the clustering clans are here,—
But light is the club and weak is the bow
To the Norseman sword and spear:

"And—woe to the patriot Manx,
The right overthrown by the wrong,—
For the sword hews hard at the staggering ranks,
And the spear drives deep and strong:
And Orry the Dane stands proud
King of the bloodstained field,
Lifted on high by the shouldering crowd
On the battered boss of his shield!

"Yet, though such a man of blood,
So terribly fierce and fell,
King Orry the Dane had come hither for good,
And governed the clans right well;
Freedom and laws and right,
He sowed the good seed all round—
And built up high in the people's sight
Their famous Tynwald Mound;

"And elders twenty and four
He set for the House of Keys,
And all was order from shore to shore
In the fairest Isle of the Seas:
Though he came a destroyer, I wist
He remained as a ruler to save,
And yonder he sleeps in the roadside kist
They call King Orry's Grave."

It was at Castle Mona that I first met Walter Montgomery, who read these very lines to great effect at one of his Recitations, and thereafter produced at Manchester my play of "Alfred." He was, amongst other accomplishments, a capital horseman, and when he galloped over the sands on his white horse, he would jump benches with their sitters, calling out "Don't stir, we shall clear you!" It would have required no small coolness and courage to have abided his charge, and though I saw him do this once, I question if he was allowed to repeat the exploit.