Gadralneure Legacy Collection

The Ballad of Auguste Ciparis (Gadralneure)

The Ballad of Auguste Ciparis

In 1870, the great showman Phineas T. Barnum introduced the traveling circus known as The Greatest Show on Earth. It continued its journeys well after his death in 1891. A hallmark of his circus was the sideshow; a collection of freaks and oddities exhibited for the entertainment of the masses. Among the strongmen, wolf-boys, and bearded ladies was a simple stone cell occupied by an illiterate, scarred black man who barely spoke English. His name was Auguste Ciparis. He was billed as The Sole Survivor of the Martinique Tragedy and described in the papers of the day as "haunted" and "a living ghost".

The Ballad of Auguste Ciparis

He sits beyond the gas-lights

in his cell of plastered stone

as P.T. Barnum's barkers shout

and speak about his home.

That home which is so far away,

no longer his to see,

that day that seems so distant now,

when Hell was there set free.

In a bed within his cell he lies,

watching life pass by,

through eyes now glazed

as his mind goes back

to the day he should have died.

The sun shone bright

and the breeze blew warm

on that emerald in the blue,

that tropic island, Martinique,

in nineteen-zero-two.

A stevedore by trade was he,

just over twenty-five,

when temper caused a fight to start

which only he survived.

Auguste was sentenced, set to hang,

from a rope in St. Pierre,

on Pelée's stunning sea-side slope

within that French town fair.

In that town of thirty thousand,

in a barred room made of stone,

Auguste was jailed and settled in

to the last place he'd call home.

Auguste sat sadly on his bed,

reflecting on his life,

knowing he would soon be dead

without a child or wife.

He stared between his prison bars

across a cobbled square

toward a convent and an opera house

which had been built right there.

Then suddenly from clear blue skies

a warm snow drifted down

that covered first the road and church

and soon the total town.