| |
| IMPRIMIS he was “broke.” Thereafter left | |
| His Regiment and, later, took to drink; | |
| Then, having lost the balance of his friends, | |
| “Went Fantee”—joined the people of the land, | |
| Turned three parts Mussulman and one Hindu, | 5 |
| And lived among the Gauri villagers, | |
| Who gave him shelter and a wife or twain. | |
| And boasted that a thorough, full-blood sahib | |
| Had come among them. Thus he spent his time, | |
| Deeply indebted to the village shroff 1 | 10 |
| (Who never asked for payment), always drunk, | |
| Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels; | |
| Forgetting that he was an Englishman. | |
| |
| You know they dammed the Gauri with a dam, | |
| And all the good contractors scamped their work | 15 |
| And all the bad material at hand | |
| Was used to dam the Gauri—which was cheap, | |
| And, therefore, proper. Then the Gauri burst, | |
| And several hundred thousand cubic tons | |
| Of water dropped into the valley, flop, | 20 |
| And drowned some five-and-twenty villagers, | |
| And did a lakh or two of detriment | |
| To crops and cattle. When the flood went down | |
| We found him dead, beneath an old dead horse, | |
| Full six miles down the valley. So we said | 25 |
| He was a victim to the Demon Drink, | |
| And moralised upon him for a week, | |
| And then forgot him. Which was natural. | |
| |
| But, in the valley of the Gauri, men | |
| Beneath the shadow of the big new dam, | 30 |
| Relate a foolish legend of the flood, | |
| Accounting for the little loss of life | |
| (Only those five-and-twenty villagers) | |
| In this wise:—On the evening of the flood, | |
| They heard the groaning of the rotten dam, | 35 |
| And voices of the Mountain Devils. Then | |
| An incarnation of the local God, | |
| Mounted upon a monster-neighing horse, | |
| And flourishing a flail-like whip, came down, | |
| Breathing ambrosia, to the villages, | 40 |
| And fell upon the simple villagers | |
| With yells beyond the power of mortal throat, | |
| And blows beyond the power of mortal hand, | |
| And smote them with his flail-like whip, and drove | |
| Them clamorous with terror up the hill, | 45 |
| And scattered, with the monster-neighing steed, | |
| Their crazy cottages about their ears, | |
| And generally cleared those villages. | |
| Then came the water, and the local God, | |
| Breathing ambrosia, flourishing his whip, | 50 |
| And mounted on his monster-neighing steed, | |
| Went down the valley with the flying trees | |
| And residue of homesteads, while they watched | |
| Safe on the mountain-side these wondrous things, | |
| And knew that they were much beloved of Heaven. | 55 |
| |
| Wherefore, and when the dam was newly built, | |
| They raised a temple to the local God, | |
| And burnt all manner of unsavoury things | |
| Upon his altar, and created priests, | |
| And blew into a conch and banged a bell, | 60 |
| And told the story of the Gauri flood | |
| With circumstance and much embroidery…. | |
| So he, the whiskified Objectionable, | |
| Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels, | |
| Became the tutelary Deity | 65 |
| Of all the Gauri valley villages, | |
| And may in time become a Solar Myth. | |
