Heritages1 ( Hybrid Sonnet)

121 39 6
                                    

Try, try again, is always spider's say
that Robert* learned, it's said, to beat them back,
the Sassenach - that's my folk, by the way,
or is it? Are They? In genetic hack

seventy per cent is Celtic. A.S.
(Anglo-Saxon) whistles on top pig sty,
and then the Viking nobles and, God curse,
the Norman nobles too, my Harold's eye!

But there's a smidgen Roman maybe;
and they do say the Alans* running flak
gave us our grail and Arthur, deeped in myth.

I like to think the ginger goes right back
to some Neanderthal woman, hairy Eve,
and limp when history whispers I'm too stiff!

......................

*Robert The Bruce, a Scottish King who beat back the English form Scotland. He was supposed to have watched a spider building again after her web was destroyed.

*The Alans were a tribe coming out of the steppes. Their women were warriors too if they wished it and were buried with military honours if they had been.

*Not forgetting the Dutch. Then after all that the Empire and the colonies and the responsibility and immigration and the the prejudice and the accommodation - and the principle of being a part of the world as well as part of Europe that Fascists will always deny.










WinteringWhere stories live. Discover now