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New Zealand Tablet, Volume LI, Issue 48, 3 December 1924, Page 34

NOTES

By Eileen Duggan

Winifred Letts. If you come from Wexford you will know that name. If you don’t know it. you should, for she has exalted your county. It was always a fighting county. It is now a singing county. And such songs! Tender, human, rippling little lyrics written of the people for the people. No dedications in that book to earls and squires, who reading such would say, “Dear me! How quaint, how very quaint!” and straightaway forget. No! Winifred Letts writes for the poor. She goes down to the alleys and the slums of the city, and shows us though the tongue be rougher in the byeways, the heart is harder on the highways. It is not merely pity she feels for them. Pity is not enough! She loves them and she understands them, and when that is said all is said, for the poor, the children of Want—proud, ancient, patient, inevitable Wantlock their hearts and their minds against the unworthy. Take her poems on those who “traipes” through the street in rags, and broken boots, and tattered shawls. There is a gallery of slum portraits. There is the family visiting the Crib—i Forcninst the Crib there kneels a little child. Behind him in her ragged shawl his mother. For all the ages that have passed, one child Still finds God in another. The father kneels away there by the door, The hands he clasps in prayer are rough with labor; The likes of him that hunger and that toil Once called St. Joseph neighbor. Then there is the wonderful, inimitable, maternal rebuke to the bold, unbiddable child. Every mother will know how much is behind the fierceness of how much pride Now what is he after below in the street? (God save us, he’s terrible wild!) Is it stirring the gutter around with his feet ? He’d best be aware when the two of us meet. Come in out o’ that, Come in, You bold, unbiddable child! Can’t you hear her at it?and she with such pride in the little unbiddable sinner! Then there is the portrait of Katie, the little streetmother, Not hard to see her from this Barefooted, with her share of dirt, But steadfast for her years is Kate;' The likes of her don’t come to hurt. Though sure she’s only rising eight. Then the picture of the slum quarrel, window to street. ’Twas some old one she faulted down below. ”1 heard,” she says, “they borrowed 1 your two feet The’ time they wanted flagstones for the street. v I thought I’d ask yourself now was it so?”

The retort courteous! One of the most loveable of the portraits is that of the little newsboy, Peter Morrissey. He’s ne’er a shirt upon his back, nor ganzy to his name. There never was a pair of boots the likes of him could claim, An’ he’s after treading on some glass, the way he’s walking lame. Parents that drink, rags, and hunger for Peter Morrissey, yet his little heart laughs after blows, and his little mouth sings in the rain. Then there is that querulous old voice from tho workhouse ward — The ould one that’s beside me she coughs with every breath, The one beyant, the villyain, her temper’s frightful short. But it’s in this place we’re gathered, an’ like to be till death, Arrn’t I praying every minyit to love them as I ought. Peace and goodwill the angels sing, And let you love your brother; But angels in a workhouse ward Would maybe hate each other. There are numerous ones on the poor children, including that simple, stern indictment — Where money’s thick you’ll scarce find any. Some wanted here, too many there — It’s qua re! Other Poems. Well-known among her other poems are 1 'Spring,” “The Travelling Man,” "The Kerry Cow,” "My Blessing be on Waterford,” "My Granny, She Ofttimes Says to Me, and "A Soft Day. Then there is the beautiful lyric, “I think if I lay dying in some land where Ireland is no more than but a name,” and that song of the old widow mourning her silent man — ’Tis closing in on fifty year since him and me got wed. A quiet man, he" always was, an few the words he said. But sure he had a right itself to take me with him too, My quiet kind companion, that God may welcome you! And then there is Tim the Terrier. Would Tim go to Heaven? Of course. Common sense! "Would God be wasting a dog like Tim?” And then there is the priest who tells his flock why the fish have left the coast, ' ’Tis what his Reverence says to us this day: “Need you wonder that the fish are gone away? ’Twas the sights they saw on shore That had scared them more and more, And so hadn’t"they a right to swim away?” And the verdict of the old Wexford woman— What rdo I think of the race that we’re rair.m’? Thev’re not worth rav shawl.

or it’s sooner they’re threadbare and no- - body carin’. i Mine was the daysbut it’s no good com-T parin’, ( God help us all! Last, the mother’s prayer—a prayer for all mothers that God may guard their children — From stones that would bruise her, from , thorns of the briar, t From red evil berries that wake her desire. J From hunting the gander and vexing the goat, From the depth of the sea-water by Danny’s old boat. From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping, May God have my jewel this day in His keeping. One cry like that is worth the lute-strings of Apollo. Winifred Letts has done well for Ireland. ——