Thread: Charles Causley
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Unread 12-03-2003, 09:18 AM
oliver murray oliver murray is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: belfast, northern ireland.
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Great article, Sam. Thanks for posting this. I know Charles Causley's work quite well, but have not read a great deal ABOUT it - all I can remember is an interview about twenty years ago. He was certainly a good hand with a ballad and much of his work seems to deal with people lost of damaged by the two world wars. This is a favourite of mine.

A Ballad for Katharine of Aragon


As I walked down by the river
Down by the frozen fen
I saw the grey cathedral
With the eyes of a child of ten.
O the railway arch is smoky
As the Flying Scot goes by
And but for the Education Act
Go Jumper Cross and I.

But war is a bitter bugle
That all must learn to blow
And it didn't take long to stop the song
In the dirty Italian snow..
O war is a casual mistress
And the world is her double bed
She has a few charms in her mechanised arms
But you wake up and find yourself dead.

The olive tree in winter
Casts her banner down
And the priest in white and scarlet
Comes up from the muddy town.
O never more will Jumper
Watch the Flying Scot go by
His funeral knell was a six-inch shell
Singing across the sky.

The Queen of Castile has a daughter
Who won't come home again
She lies in the grey cathedral
under the arms of Spain.
O the Queen of Castile has a daughter
Torn out by the roots.
Her lovely breast in a stone cold chest
Under the farmers' boots.

Now I like a Spanish party
And many O many the day
I have watched them swim as the night came dim
On Algeciras Bay.
O the high sierra was thunder
And the seven-branched river of Spain
Came down to the sea to plunder
The heart of the sailor again.

O shall I leap in the river
And knock upon paradise door
For a gunner of twenty-seven and a half
And a queen of twenty-four?
From the almond-tree by the river
I watch the sky with a groan
For Jumper and Kate are always out late
And I lie here alone.
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