Acerbic Saint-Jean-Baptiste Verse

On this Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste, thirty-eight forgotten lines of nineteenth-century verse by S. Frances Harrison. Am I wrong in finding it curious? I admit I don't know much of the poet's work, but I was under the impression that S. Frances Harrison was a great champion of French-Canadian culture. This poem, from Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart, 1891) suggests her enthusiasm had its limits. Bur really, who can't help but feel sympathy for little Antoine?

ST. JEAN B'PTISTE 

I 

     'Tis the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste,
          And the streets are full of the folk awaiting
     The favourite French-Canadian feast. 

     One knows by the bells which have never ceas'd,
          Since early morn reverberating,
     Tis the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste. 

     Welcome it! Joyeux, the portly priest!
          Welcome it! Nun, at your iron grating!
     The favourite French-Canadian feast. 

     Welcome it! Antoine, one of the least
          Of the earth's meek little ones, meditating
     On the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste, 

     On the jostling crowd that has swift increas'd
          Behind him, before him, celebrating
     The favourite French-Canadian feast. 

     He is cloth'd in the skin of some savage beast.
          Who cares if he be near suffocating?
     Tis the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste,
     The favourite French-Canadian Feast. 

II 

     Poor little Antoine! He does not mind.
          It is all for the church, for a grand good cause,
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind. 

     The martyr's spirit is fast enshrin'd
          In the tiny form that the ox-cart draws,
     Poor little Antoine, he does not mind. 

     Poor little soul, for the cords that bind
          Are stronger than ardor for fame or applause—
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind. 

     And after the fete a feast is design'd—
          Locusts and honey are both in the clause—
     Brave little Antoine! He does not mind 

     The heat, nor the hungry demon twin'd
          Around his vitals that tears and gnaws,
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind. 

     The dust is flying. The streets are lin'd
          With the panting crowd that prays for a pause.
     Poor little Antoine! He does not mind!
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind.

Bonne fête!

Related posts:

'Hommage' pour la Fête

Root Beer for a Sober Fête de la St-Jean Baptiste

A Highly Inappropriate St-Jean-Baptiste Advert

Burpee's Bad 'St. John the Baptist': Truly Criminal
Pour la fête de St-Jean-Baptiste
Celebrating la Fête in 19th-Century Massachusetts
La Fête: Il y'a 100 ans

Canadian Womanhood on Parade!

'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!'

A Song for la Fête de la St-Jean 

Encore!

Arthur Mayse: The Gift of His Extraordinary Life

 

At ten, The Beachcombers consumed a steady portion of my week – one half-hour each Sunday evening – and yet Arthur Mayse's name meant nothing to me. Truth be told, I never paid much attention to the show's credits. Mayse wrote four of the early episodes; they followed more than sixty short stories, novellas, and novels published in Liberty, Argosy, Collier's, Maclean's, and the Saturday Evening Post. They also followed three novels, including 1952's Desperate Search, a Post serial and Sears Book Club selection, which was adapted to the screen in a film starring Howard Keel and Jane Greer. IMDb has the trailer.

Arthur "Bill" Mayse was a Manitoban, born amongst the Swampy Cree to Baptist missionaries, though he lived most of his life in British Columbia, the province in which most of his fiction is set. A newspaperman, Mayse wrote for the Vancouver Sun, the Province, and was for thirty years a columnist for the Victoria Times-Colonist. His obituary appeared in the same edition as his final column.

I moved from Montreal to Vancouver not long after Arthur Mayse died. In my fifteen years in British Columbia – eight of which I served on the Executive of the Federation of BC Writers (two as Vice-President, two as President) – I never once heard anyone mention his name.

How can this be?

Arthur Mayse lived a most remarkable life. This early part of his Vancouver Sun obituary (25 March 1992), penned by son-in-law Stephen Hume, gives a sense of what we lost in his passing:

He knew Cowichan shamans, Sointula pukka fighters, tame apes from the A-frame camps, Chinese laborers, unrepentant Wobblies. More than anything, he knew and loved the country. He lived it, breathed it, fished it and sometimes despaired at what was being done to it in the ignorant clamor called progress.
      He was an ace reporter for The Province from the day he was hired out of UBC, a prize-winning poet one course short of graduation. He'd been freelancing pieces at space rates until the managing editor noticed he earned more from his column-inch scale than reporters did on full salary and hired him to save money.
     In 1933, covering the first ascent of Mount Waddington, highest peak in the Coast Range and a notorious killer of climbers, he packed carrier pigeons to the high base camp. Hawks picked them off at the treeline, so he did a solo descent through brutal terrain, bushwhacked his way to tidewater, cat danced the log booms and sweet-talked a tugboat skipper into taking him downcoast to file his exclusive story.

It ends:

When word of his death came, we went outside and looked into a night sky blazing with stars. The Big Dipper wheeled down toward the horizon, the same constellation Bill watched from Cowichan Bay in his dugout canoe (heisted for him by shaman Cultus Tommy) as a boy so long ago. It seemed right that he should escape weary age and sorrow at the hinge of the year. He died just before dawn. It was equinox, the first day of spring. We took his two-year-old granddaughter to a sea-run cutthroat beach –  a child he loved, a place he loved – and gave thanks for the gift of his extraordinary life.

Extraordinary indeed.

It wasn't until this month that I'd read anything by Arthur Mayse. The strength of that work, his debut novel Perilous Passage, sent me off on a tear through the short stories he published in Maclean's. It's sad to think that they came and went with each new issue – none were ever collected – and yet I can't help but appreciate a time in which fiction featured in our best magazines. And I can't help but admire the artists who provided illustrations for his stories.

15 February 1940

1 April 1945

15 May 1945

15 September 1945

15 October 1946

15 March 1951

Does "The Hex-Man of Croacker's Creek" have anything to do with "The Hexman," one of Mayse's Beachcombers scripts?

The question might be addressed in the introduction to a collection of his short stories.

Is the publication of such a thing not overdue?

Related posts:

Just Kids

Arthur Mayse, His Wife, and The Beachcombers

A Father's Love on Father's Day

A favourite purchase of last year, and a cherished volume for all time, my copy of Anne Hebert's 1942 debut, Les songes en équilibre, bears this inscription from her father:

Mine is anything but unique. That Maurice Hébert presented other copies with similar sentiments makes me love it all the more.

A Happy Father's Day!

This one marks my twenty-third.

I am blessed.

Related post:

The Twenty Best Book Buys of 2019