Cock O' The North Poem by David Lewis Paget

The castle was smaller than I'd thought
In the Scottish countryside,
It sat in a hollow called Claymore Court
Where all the defenders died,
The signs of cannon, pounding the towers
Were there in the crumbled walls,
And shrubs grew out of the rubbled bowers
While trees took root in the halls.

I sensed a touch of hostility
The moment I reached the gate,
For Angus's friendability
Came on just a little late,
We'd both attended the Priory School
But that had been way back then,
And I, in parting, called him a fool,
He wouldn't remember when.

But he did us proud with a suckling pig
And a quart of ‘Cock o' the North',
Marie, who knew him, was ever so big
And sat with me, holding forth.
I had no mind that he felt so strong,
I'd have left the woman at home,
He had this feeling I'd done him wrong
When I coaxed Marie to roam.

And there she sat with a month to go
Way out in front with our bairn,
I didn't know it would crease him so
But there, you live and you learn.
He coaxed her drink, with a dreadful leer
Pressed on her Cock o' the North,
It wasn't as if she was drinking beer
Or water, for all that it's worth.

We went to bed in a tower room
When the moon rose over the glen,
It felt to me like a Highland tomb
As it was to my clan back then,
Marie began to moan in the night
That the bairn was coming forth,
It had a skinful, thanks to Marie
Of that liquor, Cock o' the North.

And Angus heard and he came to gloat
When he heard that she couldn't hold,
I dropped him there, head first in the moat
To a grave both wet and cold.
Marie and I, we sit in the barn
And the blame swings back and forth,
What price my friend, and a helpless bairn
To a jar of Cock o' the North?

26 January 2016