Post by Admin on Mar 28, 2009 16:57:49 GMT
I spoke to Jarlath by e-mail and he has given me permission to use some of his excellent material for you all to see.
This is his poem about Rebecca.
Poor Rebecca Town
I came across this story about a grave in our town graveyard of a poor lady called Rebecca Town. The inscription on the flat tabletop stone said that she died in her 43rd year, after having thirty children. Only two of the children are mentioned by name on the gravestone, and they both died as infants. One can only assume that the other twenty-eight children must have either been stillborn or died soon after birth.
What a sad life of unbelievable miserable this poor woman must have had.
There’s a corner in Keighley Graveyard
Where a pitiful soul lays….not alone
Buried with her thirty poor children
Her memorial…just this lowly stone
What a tale of suffering endured by her
Bearing thirty children…none whom survived
Her life full of toil and childbirth
Why did not a single one thrive
Never able to see a child grow up
This continuing story of misery
Just one false hope on another
Then one by one she had to bury
To never hear the sound of her child
Having fun as they run and play
Just a continual test of trying again
For the hope of children someday
Her life ending in pathetic notoriety
Stalked by death and disease throughout
Thirty children born in twenty-three years
Then at forty-three, her body worn out
And what now remains of her memory
Just this stone in a cold, cold corner
Not a flower or a word of kindness
And no one here to mourn her
This is his poem about Rebecca.
Poor Rebecca Town
I came across this story about a grave in our town graveyard of a poor lady called Rebecca Town. The inscription on the flat tabletop stone said that she died in her 43rd year, after having thirty children. Only two of the children are mentioned by name on the gravestone, and they both died as infants. One can only assume that the other twenty-eight children must have either been stillborn or died soon after birth.
What a sad life of unbelievable miserable this poor woman must have had.
There’s a corner in Keighley Graveyard
Where a pitiful soul lays….not alone
Buried with her thirty poor children
Her memorial…just this lowly stone
What a tale of suffering endured by her
Bearing thirty children…none whom survived
Her life full of toil and childbirth
Why did not a single one thrive
Never able to see a child grow up
This continuing story of misery
Just one false hope on another
Then one by one she had to bury
To never hear the sound of her child
Having fun as they run and play
Just a continual test of trying again
For the hope of children someday
Her life ending in pathetic notoriety
Stalked by death and disease throughout
Thirty children born in twenty-three years
Then at forty-three, her body worn out
And what now remains of her memory
Just this stone in a cold, cold corner
Not a flower or a word of kindness
And no one here to mourn her