The plague of Elliant

’Twixt Faoüet and Llangolan There lives a hard, a holy man – His name is Father Rasian.

On Faoüet his best he laid : “Let every month a mass be said, And bells be rung, and prayers be read.”

In Elliant the plague is o’er, But not till it had raged full sore : It slew seven thousand and five score.

Death unto Elliant hath gone down, No living soul is in the town – No living soul but two alone.

A crone of sixty years is one, The other is her only son.

“The Plague,” quoth she, “is on our door-sill ; ’Twill enter if it be God’s will ; But till it enter bide we still.”

Through Elliant’s streets who wills to go, Everywhere will find grass to mow —

Everywhere, save in two wheel-ruts bare, Where the wheels of the dead-cart wont to fare.

His heart were flint that had not wept, Through Elliant’s grass-grown streets who stept,

To see eighteen carts, each with its load — Eighteen at the graveyard, eighteen on the road.

Nine children of one house there were Whom one dead-cart to the grave did bear : Their mother ’twixt the shafts did fare.

The father, whistling, walk’d behind, With a careless step and a mazy mind.

The mother shriek’d and call’d on God, Crush’d, soul and body, beneath her load.

“God, help me bury my children nine, And I vow thee a cord of the wax so fine :

A cord of the wax so long and fine, To go thrice round the church and thrice round the shrine.

Nine sons I had ; I bare them all ; Now Death has ta’en them, great and small.

Hath ta’en them all from my own door-stone : None left, e’en to give me to drink—not one !”

The churchyard to the walls brims o’er, The church is full to the steps of the door : They must bless fields, if they ’d bury more.

There grows an oak by the chmchynrd wall, From the top-bough hangs a white grave pall The Plague hath taken one and all !

Tom Taylor