JOHN GILPIN

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 118, 14 November 1925, Page 16

JOHN GILPIN

BEST BELOVED OK ENGLISHMEN.

The people of Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, where Cowper wrote letters and poetry and hymns, and sat under the Rev. John Newton, have just been celebrating the sexcentenary of their church, stafes the "Daily Telegraph." The pulpit from which that grim curate used to preach has just been brought back to the church after serving for.some time, not inappropriately, in" Northampton Prison. It was, however, not Mr. Newton, either as cur«t« or as slave-trader, whom the people of Qlney chose as the hero of their centenary, They' preferred John Gilpin. That Londoner of credit and renown was to be seen galloping through the streets of Olney, "neck or nought," without hat or "coat or wig, and Mrs. Gilpin and the children went on before, and the calendar and the turnpike men were not forgotten. Olney chose wisely. John Gilpin is far more famous than the poet who gave him fame, j he is, and will ever be, one of the most widely known and the best-loved of Englishmen; he is certain of honour wherever and as long as English is spoken. Even a patriotic Cockney should concede to Olney the honours of h|s birthplace. Precisely how much of John Gilpin's charm comes from Lady Austert, who told Cowpqr the story to cheer him up, and how much from the poet who wrote the bajl&d in an evening, it wpuld be idle to specu* late.. Lady Austen was a lively soul, to whqra he. owed the happiest years of hi« life,' bit Cowper himself, in spite of his hapless instability qf mind, and the mm? istrationu/pf* the Bey. Mr, Newtop, had humour enough for anything. At Olney, the,n, the. John Gilpin we know was bprn in the brain of William Cowper or Lady Austen; and it is by np means certain that be ever had any independent existence. There i«, indeed, a tradition that tfee paginal of Gilpin waa a Mr. Beyer, a lineji-draper of Paternppter'rpw, in which region ef the city draper* still abound, though, perhaps, they ars np( now so austerely devoted to business a* John Gilpin was- Eight years after the ballad was published the "Gentleman's Magazine" announced that "the genile* man who: was sp severely ridiculed, for bad horsemanship under the title of John Gilpin, died a few days ago at Bath, and hw left an unmarried daugbr ter with a fortune of £§0,QQ0." But this dpes look rather like a He with cireujnr stance. Another tradition reports that Lady Austen "remembered the tale from the days of her childhood," which suggests an origin in folk-lore, and, Sputhey ppnjecfcured that it may have come from some ' verse* of' Sir rhctmai Mbpre. Everyapt. can see thst the ballad is much more like the tales which the humbler of Chaucer's pilgrim* told against one another than anything of the eighteenth century. John Gilpin may have come out of mediaeval fabliaux, but since all is conjecture we prefer to believe that L»dy Austen made him her* self put of the odds and ends of memory, as people do when they esareh their brains for something to cheer up the sick and despondent. But wherever he came from, int« folklore Jphn Gilpin has' gone. He is immortal as Jack of the Beap Stalk and Jack the Giant Killer. •