Part 10

Mrs. C.—“What were the young girls of your day like, Patience?”

Patience.—“A silly lot, as these of thine. Wait!”

There was no movement of the board for about three minutes, and then:

“’Tis a sorry lot, not harming but boresome!”

Mrs. H.—“Oh, Patience, have you been to the theater?”

Patience.—“A peep in good cause could surely ne’er harm the godly.”

Mrs. C.—“How do you think we ought to look after those men?”

Patience.—“Thine ale is drunk at the hearth. Surely he who stops to sip may bless the firelog belonging to thee.”

When the men returned home they agreed with the verdict of Patience before they had heard it, that it was a “tame” show, “not harming, but boresome.”

The exclamation of Mrs. Curran, “Let’s look it up,” in the extract just quoted from the record, has been a frequent one in this circle since Patience came. So many of her words are obsolete that her friends are often compelled to search through the dictionaries and glossaries for their meaning. Her reference to articles of dress—wimple, kirtle, pettieskirt, points and so on, had all to be “looked up.” Once Patience began an evening with this remark:

“The cockshut finds ye still peering to find the other land.”

“What is cock’s hut?” asked Mrs. H.

“Nay,” said Patience, “Cock-shut. Thee needeth light, but cockshut bringeth dark.”

“Cockshut must mean shutting up the cock at night,” suggested a visitor.

“Aye, and geese, too, then could be put to quiet,” Patience exclaimed. “Wouldst thou wish for cockshut?”

Search revealed that cockshut was a term anciently applied to a net used for catching woodcock, and it was spread at nightfall, hence cockshut acquired also the meaning of early evening. Shakespeare uses the term once, in Richard III., in the phrase, “Much about cockshut time,” but it is a very rare word in literature, and probably has not been used, even colloquially, for centuries.

There are many such words used by Patience—relics of an age long past. The writer was present at a sitting when part of a romantic story-play of medieval days was being received on the board. One of the characters in the story spoke of herself as “playing the jane-o’-apes.” No one present had ever heard or seen the word. Patience was asked if it had been correctly received, and she repeated it. Upon investigation it was found that it is a feminine form of the familiar jackanapes, meaning a silly girl. Massinger used it in one of his plays in the seventeenth century, but that appears to be the only instance of its use in literature.

These words may be not unknown to many people, but the point is that they were totally strange to those at the board, including Mrs. Curran—words that could not possibly have come out of the consciousness or subconsciousness of any one of them. The frequent use of such words helps to give verity to the archaic tongue in which she expresses her thoughts, and the consistent and unerring use of this obsolete form of speech is, next to the character of her literary production, the strongest evidence of her genuineness. It will be noticed, too, that the language she uses in conversation is quite different from that in her literary compositions, although there are definite similarities which seem to prove that they come from the same source. In this also she is wholly consistent: for it is unquestionably true that no poet ever talked as he wrote. Every writer uses colloquial words and idioms in conversation that he would never employ in literature. No matter what his skill or genius as a writer may be, he talks “just like other people.” Patience Worth in this, as in other things, is true to her character.

* * * * *

It may be repeated that in all this matter—and it is but a skimming of the mass—one may readily discern a distinct and striking personality; not a wraith-like, formless, evanescent shadow, but a personality that can be clearly visualized. One can easily imagine Patience Worth to be a woman of the Puritan period, with, however, none of the severe and gloomy beliefs of the Puritan—a woman of a past age stepped out of an old picture and leaving behind her the material artificialities of paint and canvas. From her speech and her writings one may conceive her to be a woman of Northern England, possibly: for she uses a number of ancient words that are found to have been peculiar to the Scottish border; a country woman, perhaps, for in all of her communications there are only two or three references to the city, although her knowledge and love of the drama may be a point against this assumption; a woman who had read much in an age when books were scarce, and women who could read rarer still: for although she frequently expresses disdain of book learning, she betrays a large accumulation of such learning, and a copious vocabulary, as well as a degree of skill in its use, that could only have been acquired from much study of books. “I have bought beads from a pack,” she says, “but ne’er yet have I found a peddler of words.”

And then, after we have mentally materialized this woman, and given her a habitation and a time, Patience speaks again, and all has vanished. “Not so,” she said to one who questioned her, “I be abirthed awhither and abide me where.” And again she likened herself to the wind. “I be like the wind,” she said, “who leaveth not track, but ever ’bout, and yet like to the rain who groweth grain for thee to reap.” At other times she has indicated that she has never had a physical existence. I have quoted her saying: “I do plod a twist o’ a path and it hath run from then till now.” At a later time she was asked what she meant by that. She answered:

“Didst e’er to crack a stone, and lo, a worm aharded? (a fossil). ’Tis so, for list ye, I speak like ye since time began.”

It is thus she reveals herself clearly to the mind, but when one attempts to approach too closely, to lay a hand upon her, as it were, she invariably recedes into the unfathomable deeps of mysticism.

THE POETRY

Am I a broken lyre, Who, at the Master’s touch, Respondeth with a tinkle and a whir? Or am I strung in full And at His touch give forth the full chord? —PATIENCE WORTH.

As the reader will have observed, the poetry of Patience Worth is not confined to a single theme, nor to a group of related themes. It covers a range that extends from inanimate things through all the gradations of material life and on into the life of spiritual realms as yet uncharted. It includes poems of sentiment, poems of nature, poems of humanity; but the larger number deal with man in relation to the mysteries of the beyond. All of them evince intellectual power, knowledge of nature and human nature, and skill in construction. With the exception of one or two little jingles, the poems are rhymeless. Patience may not wholly agree with Milton that rhyme “is the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre,” but she seldom uses it, finding in blank verse a medium that suits all her moods, making it at will as light and ethereal as a summer cloud or as solemn and stately as a Wagnerian march. She molds it to every purpose, and puts it to new and strange uses. Who, for example, ever saw a lullaby in blank verse? It is, I believe, quite without precedent in literature, and yet it would not be easy to find a lullaby more daintily beautiful than the one which will be presented later on.

In all of her verse, the iambic measure is dominant, but it is not maintained with monotonous regularity. She appreciates the value of an occasional break in the rhythm, and she understands the uses of the pause. But she declines to be bound by any rules of line measurement. Many of her lines are in accord with the decasyllabic standard of heroic verse, but in no instance is that standard rigidly adhered to: some of the lines contain as many as sixteen syllables, others drop to eight or even six.

It should be explained, however, that the poetry as it comes from the ouija board is not in verse form. There is nothing in the dictation to indicate where a line should begin or where end, nor, of course, is there any punctuation, there being no way by which the marks of punctuation could be denoted. There is usually, however, a perceptible pause at the end of a sentence. The words are taken down as they are spelled on the board, without any attempt, at the time, at versification or punctuation. After the sitting, the matter is punctuated and lined as nearly in accord with the principles of blank verse construction as the abilities of the editor will permit. It is not claimed that the line arrangement of the verses as they are here presented is perfect; but that is a detail of minor importance, and for whatever technical imperfections there may be in this particular, Patience Worth is not responsible. The important thing is that every word is given exactly as it came from the board, without the alteration of a syllable, and without changing the position or even the spelling of a single one.