The Death of Lady MondegreenSylvia Wright

Drawings by Bernarda Bryson

WHEN 1 was a child, my mother used to. read aloud to me from Percy's

Reliques, and one of my favoritepoems began, as 1 remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,Oh, where hae ye been?They hae slain the Earl Amurray,And Lady Mondegreen.

1 saw it all clearly. The Earl had yellowcurly hair and a yellow beard and of coursewore a kilt. He was lying in a forest clearingwith an arrow in his heart. Lady Mondegreenlay at his side, her lung, dark brown curlsspread out over the moss. She wore a darkgreen dress embroidered with light greenleaves outlined in gold. It had a low necktrimmed with white lace (Irish lace, 1 think).An arrow had pierced her throat: from itblood trickled down over the lace. Sunlightcoming through the leaves .rnade dappledshadows on her cheeks and her closed eyelids.She was holding the Earl's hand.

It made me cry.The poem went on to tell about the Earl

Amurray. He was a braw gallant who didvarious things, including playing- at the bar,which, 1 surmised, was something lawyers didin their unserious moments (I grew up dur-ing prohibition, though 1 was against prohi-bition and for Governor Smith). The poemalso said that he was thequeen's love, andthat long would his lady look o'er the castledoun before she saw the Earl Amurray come

sounding through the toun. Nothing morewas said about Lady Mondegreen.

But 1 didn't feel it was necessary. Every-thing had been said about Lady Mondegreen.The other ladies may have pretended theyloved the Earl, but where were they? Thequeen was probably sitting in Dunfermlinetoun drinking the blood red wine along withthe king (he was in "Sir Patrick Spens"), Asfor the Earl's wife, hiding in the castle inperfect safety and pretending to worry abouthim, it was clear she only married him so shecould be Lady Amurray. She was such a sissyshe probably didn't even look doun very hard-she was scared she'd fall through the crenela-tions of the battlements. As a matter of fact,she looked like a thin wispy girl 1 once sockedin the stomach while 1 was guarding her inbasketball because she kept pushing me overthe line when the gym teacher couldn't seeher and who was such a sissy that she fainteddead away so that everybody said 1 shouldlearn to be a lady when really she was cheat-ing-but 1 won't go into that. Lady Monde-green loved the Earl truly, and she was vervbrave. When she heard that Huntly (the vil-lain) was coming after him, she ran right outof her castle and into the forest to be withhim without even stopping to change fromher best dress.

By now, several of you more alert readersare jumping up and down in your im-patience to interrupt and point out that,according to the' poem, after they killed

THE DEA TH OF LADY MONDEGREEN 49

the Earl of Murray, they laid him on thegre·en. I know about this, but I won't give into it. Leaving him to die all alone withouteven anyone to hold his hand-I won't have it.

The point about what I shall hereafter callmondegreens, since no one else has thought1Ip a word for them, is that they are betterthan the original.

Take Hizeray. Hizeray is that huge hairymuscular Etruscan in the Lays at AncientRome who was such a demon with the broad-sword and who committed one of the greatbetrayals of history. If Hizeray had beenthere, Horatius couldri't have held the bridgea .rninute, Horatius was very brave, butHizeray was bigger. If not, why was he thefirst person Lars Porsena of Clusium thoughtof, when he swore by the Nine Gods that thegreat house of Tarquin should suffer wrongno more?

And named a trysting-day,And bade his messengers ride forth,East and west and south and north,

To summon Hizeray,

Hizeray was hard to find or the messengerswouldn't have been told to go in so manydirections, but he had no excuse. The mes-sengers blew so many trumpets that tower andtown and cottage heard the blast. I· hopedHizeray would rush in at the last moment andknock Horatius into the Tiber. (I was onLars Porsena of Clusiurn's side, though you'renot supposed to be, because his name was somuch better than anyone else's.) But he neverdid. When they say

Shame on the false EtruscanvVho lingers in his home,

When Porsena of ClusiumIs on the march for Rome-

they mean Hizeray.Then there is Harold. You know Harold:

"Our Father who art in heaven, Harold bethy Name." It's not one I would have pickedmyself, but if He has to have a name, Haroldwill do.

Harold can do extraordinary things.There's a hymn which teBs about this. As it'sprinted in the book, it says that He "moves ina mysterious way, His wonders to perform."Actually, of course, what it really says is thatHarold "moves in a mysterious way-He'wanders down a horn."

You must pray to Harold if you want some-thing very specific. For instance, if you havediscovered how terribly hard it is to meetsomebody there, you say to Harold, "Leadus not into Penn Station." At the same time,Harold will protect you from those jittery,unreliable New York, New Haven, and Hot-foot trains. They aren't so dangerous whenthey're coming into nice motherly old GranCentral. '

Even the mizz doesn't scare Harold. Themizz is a sort of elemental protoplasm, whichlooks like a thick, pulpy, shifting fog. It isinhabited by all sorts of strangely shaped,white, squdgy animals, who moan quietly tothemselves from time to time. The mizz is inthe Evening Prayer Service: "Let the seamake a noise, and all that in the mizz."

IFYOU decide that Harold is your shepherd,you can be sure of being looked after. IfHe can't be there Himself, He will get in

Good Mrs. Murphy and "Surely Good Mrs.Murphy shall follow me all. the days of mylife." 1 knew Mrs. Murphy, and T can't thinkof anyone I'd rather have follow me, though,knowing her, I think she would more likelybe several blocks ahead. She could do almostas man-y things as Harold. She told fortunesin tea leaves, baked delicious bread in a fryingpan, and once when her little boy climbedonto the top of the roof and was too scaredto get down, she shouted up to him, "You

50 HARPER'S MAGAZINE

come right down, you little Irish basket," andlike magic he got over being scared and cameright down.

Mrs. Murphy lived in Massachusetts, wherethey have a holiday in April called Pay TreatsDay. It always surprises and infuriates peoplewho come from other states, because; justwhen they want to -go out to buy shoes orbean pots, they find all the shops closed uptight, while the shopkeepers are out payingtreats. This reminds me of Paul Revere,who rode to "spread the alarm through everymiddlesex, village, and farm." Middlesexeslook a little like drumlins, if you know whatthey are, but they are made of hay, and soalso look a little like haystacks. There is onemiddlesex exactly in between each village andfarm, and people who are too poor to live ina village or farm live in a middlesex.

And where the middlesexes, villages, andfarms slope down to the sea, beyond thedunes, beyond the rocky coast, stands theDonzerly Light on a rugged, lonely prom-ontory. At twilight, the lighthouse keeperturns it on, and it begins to sprout rockets

and bombs which light up the flag pole withthe great big American Hag which stands rightnext to it. .This is where you go to pledgethe legions to the flag.

There's a rude bridge around here some-where, but I can't quite find it. It's so dilapi-dated that it touches the flood.

THERE are many mondegreens which givevivid new insights into tired old ideas.With all due respect to Rudy Vallee,

''I'm just a vagabond lover" seems a pretty wetnotion nowadays. A friend of mine sang it"J'rn just a bag of unloving." If you've heardanything at all about psychiatry (who hasn't?)you'll realize that a bag of unloving is asignificant and basic 'concept, and when youget a bag of unloving in search of a sweet-heart, you've got the basis for a well-developedneurosis, because as long as you don't haveadequate feelings of self-esteem and love your-self, you can't. love someone else. See?

There's nothing very interesting about avagabond lover, except that maybe he didn'tlike his mother.

The other day I found, on the back page ofthe New York Post, a headline: "Giants Strug-gle Under Weight of 'Dead' Bats." This isone of the most terrifying scenes I can thinkof, particularly since there is some doubt as towhether the bats are really dead. That wouldbe bad enough, but if they were all stirringand squeaking-it would daunt even Hizeray.

Then there are those people who, in be-tween radio programs, sing a very precise,cheerful, staccato, little ditty that goes: "Injust eight sec-onds, you get H-bomb." AfterI had counted eight seconds and hadn't got it,I came to enough to realize that they werecontinuing with "Gas and heart-burn withAlk -aid." So I began to wonder if some ofthem were singing "aid from" instead of"H-bomb" but at that point the announcercame on and said: "This is New York's furstation," and I knew there was a mondegreeninfluence loose in that studio.

And some years ago, before World War II,there was a quiet Sunday morning when Idiscovered that on the front page of the NewYork Times it said: "World Blows Near." AsI puzzled over this, I felt, in my room, thefaint, fresh breath of the winds which weremoving the turning world. Whose world wasit? _What was going. to happen?

THE DEATH OF LADY MONDEGREEN

You see, if you lay yourself open to monde-greens, you must be valiant. The world,blowing near, will assail you with a thousandbright and strange images. Nothing like themhas ever been seen before, and who knowswhat lost and lovely things may not comestreaming in with them? But there is alwaysthe possibility that they may engulf you andthat you will go wandering down a horn intoa mondegreen underworld from which youcan never escape. If you want to be safe,guarded from the underworld and the crea-Hues in the mizz.you have only to turn yourback. And if you're this type of person, allyou'll feel is a faint twinge of heartburn overwhat you have missed-and you know how toget aid from that.

You have only to decide, as HumptyDumpty put it (more or less), which is to bemaster, you or the word.

I am for the word, and against you.

/ BECAUSE there was a time, before she metthe Earl Amurray, when Lady Monde-green ~as a bag of unloving. Forlorn,

in her embroidered dress, she looked out overher own crenelated battlement, wonder-ing, all alone, about when the world wouldblow near so she could see what it wasall about. Suddenly, beyond the moat, beyondthe meadows, there is a stirring like dust faraway on the horizon. A trumpet blasts, andshe sees that it is the Earl Amurray, ridingdown the winding road, surrounded by menon prancing horses. Actually, these are RobinHood's men, on a day off from SherwoodForest, and the sun is glistening on their tunicsof link and green. As the Earl Amurray spies'Lady Mondegreen, he and his men spur their'horses to a gallop and shout their wild, strangebattle cry, "Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gon-ward." Lady Mondegreen rushes down thelong winding stone stair. She reaches theportcullis and it rises as if by magic. The EarlAmurray seizes her, lifts her onto his horseand they ride over the drawbridge togetherand out into the world.

At noon, they come to a babbling brookand they stop and tie their horse to a tree.Upstream a little way (Here it is!) they see arude bridge. The Earl Amurray pledges hislegions to the flag to April's breeze un-furled and they go off, marching as to war,while the royal master leans against the

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. phone, waiting for news of their victory.Lady Mondegreen and the Earl Amurray

are left alone by the brook. "Tell me," saysLady Mondegreen, as they .sit down on thesoft greensward in a crowd of gold andaffodils, "Tell me [for she is beginning to geta little bit hungry] where is fancy bread?"And at this very moment, Good Mrs. Murphy,who has been riding a suitable distancebehind on a sturdy mule, trots up and pre-sents them with an Irish basket, which shehas been carrying on her saddlebow. In it,wrapped in a damask' napkin, is the fancybread, a delicious small brown loaf, full ofraisins and covered with white frosting.

After they have eaten, they wash theirhands in the stream and they rest awhile.Lady Mondegreen lies back on the grass andlistens to the soft sounds of the mumble-beesas they muzz among the affodils. 'The EarlAmurray entertains her by sounding througha tune in his fine baritone voice. Then theyride on. When night falls, they come at lastto their own particular middlesex where theycamp out under the stars, and Lady Monde-green, because she loves him, does not say aword when he takes all the covers.

Tragedy lies ahead and there is no one whocan save them. Hizeray is cowering in his'home under a weight of dead bats. And alas,Harold, who has been watching them fromabove with a happy smile on His benign face,cannot help. His horn has vanished, andthere 'is no way He can wander down.

But even though the worst will happen,Lady Mondegreen and the Earl Amurrayhave had their journey together. Even if here-after they get H-bomb, they have sniffed thedelicate fragrance of the affodils, tasted· thefancy bread, and slept together in the middle-sex. Lady Mondegreen knows what the worldis all about.

Lady Mondegreen is me.