Meeting her on the heath at the day’s end,
After one look and one sigh, he said,
Did a spine prick you from the goosefeather bed?
Were the rings too heavy on your hand?
Were you unhappy, that you had to go?
No.
Was it the music that called you down the stair,
Or the hot ginger that they gave you then?
Was it for pleasure that you followed them
Putting off your slippers at the door
To dance barefoot and blood-foot in the snow?
No.
What then? What glamoured you? No glamour at all;
Only that I remembered I was young
And had put myself into a song.
How could time bear witness that I was tall,
Silken, and made for love, if I did not so?
I do not know.
(From, Sylvia Townsend Warner: Selected Poems, edited by Claire Harman, Manchester: Carcanet)
According to Wikipedia, the ballad of ‘The Gypsy Laddy’ became associated with Jean Hamilton, the first wife of John Kennedy, Sixth Earl of Cassilis (pronounced Cassels). There was no particular reason for this, though it must be said that the Earls of Cassilis did tend to lead exciting lives. (You can read ‘The Gypsy Laddy’ here.)
When I first read the poem I didn’t know this background; the use of ‘glamoured’ suggested to me that the lady had run away with the fairies. It’s a variation on STW’s perennial theme of escaping women, whether wives or spinsters. I love it, down to the very tone of the conversation the two of them are having.
(Arthur Rackham, illustration for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; found here)