Tarantella
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of the tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteeers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in ---
And the Ting, Tong, Tang, of the Guitar.
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.
Commentary
Nice interplay of form and content here - insistent rhythms, strong assonances, multiple rhymes (internal as well as line-ending), rising and falling cadences - all these combine to evoke the dance form of the title. At the same time, the words themselves paint a vivid (if slightly touristy, imho) picture of the Mediterranean countryside. As Martin mentioned in a previous post about the poet, Belloc does indeed have the ability to take a perfectly ordinary event or emotion and craft an original and memorable work of art from it - and if that’s not genius, what is?
— Thomas
PS. ‘Tarantella’ : a lively folk dance of southern Italy in 6/8 time. (Italian, from Taranto, Italy.)
PPS. The opening line - ‘Do you remember an Inn, Miranda?’ - has been the starting point for any number of parodies and pastiches. It does have a certain something about it, don’t you think?
Biography
Though Belloc lived most of his life in Britain, where he wrote works of prose and verse in tribute to his adoptive Sussex, he was born in the French town of La Celle St. Cloud, near Paris. His father, a French lawyer, died when he was just two years old. Shortly afterwards his English mother, Bessie Parkes, moved the family to London.
Hilaire was enrolled at the Oratory School where he studied under the legendary Cardinal Newman. He also met Cardinal Manning, the combative English convert, who had a lasting influence on his brand of Catholic apologetics. Manning’s social teachings became especially evident in Belloc’s later economic writings.
At school, the young Belloc delighted in such classical authors as Homer, Virgil and Horace and took away most of the student prizes. Unsure of his future vocation, he spent a brief stint at the French Naval “Stanislas College,” but despite his love of sailing, he quit after just a few weeks.
In 1890 Hilaire met his future wife, Elodie Hogan, an American who was visiting Europe with her mother. The following year he booked passage to New York from whence he tramped his way across the continent to Napa Valley, California, in order to make his proposal to Miss Hogan. Belloc returned to France in 1891 to spend a year as a soldier in the horse artillery, after which he went to Balliol College at Oxford. He graduated with top honors in History but due to his outspoken Catholic views was denied a fellowship.
1896 marked Belloc’s marriage to Elodie and the successful publication of The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts a collection of whimsical cautionary tales. This was soon followed by biographies of the French revolutionaries, Danton and Robespierre. In 1902 Belloc wrote The Path to Rome describing his one man pilgrimage to the Holy City; a remarkable travelogue which remains his most popular work.
Belloc served as a member of parliament from 1906-1910. During a campaign speech he made his famous defense of the Faith before a largely Protestant audience:
“I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. This [taking a
rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative!”
After a shocked silence there was a roar of applause, and Belloc won the election.
Over the next thirty years, Belloc was to churn out dozens of titles on varied subjects including poetry, fiction, social commentary, and military science. Belloc is particularly noted for his spirited attack on the then predominant Whig or classical liberal view of European history. Europe and the Faith (1920), Characters of the Reformation (1936), and The Crisis of Our Civilization (1937) are typical of his insightful approach. Belloc also wrote a number of biographies, including Marie Antoinette (1909), James the Second (1928), Richlieu (1930), Oliver Cromwell (1934), and Milton (1935) which are still admired for their lucid and engaging style.
Along with his friend and literary companion G. K. Chesterton, Belloc helped to found the economic theory of Distributism. Rooted in Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum, Distributism was, and is, a meaningful alternative to the materialism of both laissez-faire capitalism and socialism. According to Belloc, Europe had seen the decline of slavery and the rise of an independent property holding yeomanry in the Middle Ages only to have this balanced economic arrangement upset by the Lutheran revolt of the 16th century. Acquisitive aristocrats—ostensibly promoting religious reformation, but mostly bent on filling their own pockets—brought about a polarization of classes and the emergence of a rootless proletariat which has continued to this day. Ironically, while Belloc is denounced by liberals for his Catholic “triumphalism” his social analysis of the Reformation has been largely vindicated by recent scholarship. The ideas of Distributism were enunciated in The Servile State (1912), The Restoration of Property (1936) and in the pages of G.K.’s Weekly.
Belloc’s contributions to poetry, collected in Sonnets and Verse (1938), are still acclaimed by literary critics. According to Michael Markel, he “was a first rate craftsman in the classical tradition of A. E. Housman.” Belloc also tried his hand at novel writing, producing satirical works like The Postmaster General (1932), as well as light fiction including The Green Overcoat (1912) and Belinda (1928). What is perhaps his best and most unusual novel, The Four Men (1911), was later made into a BBC play and has since been reprinted by Oxford Press with an introduction by A.N. Wilson. The Four Men describes a ramble through the Sussex countryside by Sailor, Grizzlebeard, Poet and Myself— aspects of Belloc’s own personality. The book’s timeless appeal lies in its expression of the fact that though a man’s “loves are human, and therefore changeable, yet in proportion as he attaches them to things unchangeable, so they mature and broaden.”
Despite his outward exuberance as a writer and individual, Belloc faced a number of personal losses —the death of his wife Elodie in 1914, his sons Louis, in World War I, and Peter, in World War II. Belloc weathered these storms with that sort of hard-headed faith he once ascribed to St. Thomas More, who had “nothing to uphold him except resolve.” In 1942, however, he suffered a stroke which put an end to his literary work though he continued to live in quiet retirement for another eleven years. This redoubtable Catholic genius died in his beloved Sussex on July 16, 1953. The BBC interrupted all its programmes to announce the passing away of one of England’s greatest literary figures.
– from the Web, http://www.angelfire.com/va/belloc/
Minstrels Links
Belloc is most famous for his children’s verse, especially the many poems about beasts like the hippopotamus: poem #124
Of a more serious bent are the poems tinged by religious thought, such as ‘Is there any reward?’, at poem #176
For sheer imagery, ‘October’ is hard to beat: poem #226
while ‘The Pelagian Drinking Song’ is as funny as they get: poem #78
Show 26 commentsHide comments
From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Teirney R · 9 April 2000
Has this poem got into anyone else’s brain? It was one of many I learned as a 12 year old in a Catholic school and though I enjoyed reciting it because of its rhythm, I just didn’t get it.
Years later, at a party, I was amazed that a friend from another state and I could still recite almost the whole thing. Why did it stick in my brain? I didn’t try to learn it.
Help! What does it mean? Forty years later, I still want to know.
RT
Doug Armitage · 15 April 2002
Hello:
my wife and I were discussing excellent school teachers of English . She has always been able to remember the opening line andnow e have the full piece. Her teacher was a Miss Betts at Monkwearmouth Grammar School in about 1936. Any other readers of this remember her? How wonderful that such teachers live on in our memories!
Roderick Louise A (Castrol) · 11 September 2002
Some 33 years ago I was privileged to have an english teacher who was so passionate about her subject that she managed to every student of hers with a love for poetry and literature. Whenever I hear the first line of this poem it evokes the most wonderful memories of Thelma Sacks. She passed away on the operating table table about two years after I completed school in 1970 and I still mourn the loss of a beautiful soul. Louise Roderick
South Africa
Louise Roderick
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The Cowells · 2 November 2002
Like it a lot. I’m 15 and doing it for a 9th grade English assignment. Most amazing poem I have ever read really. Makes me think about Spain, and the Mediterranean. Also makes me think of sundries tomatoes.
clempage · 1 June 2003
Some composer whose name I don’t recall set “Tarantella” for four-part male chorus with piano accompaniment, and I sang it on tour with my college glee club in 1967. It’s a tribute to both the poet and the musician that I can still sing much of it today (in the shower, I mean), and the closing lines still give me goosebumps.
Sybil Gange · 26 July 2004
I learned this lovely poem at school and have never forgotten it. Cynara
CaligalinFL · 11 August 2004
BTW, couldn’t help but notice that this is a Rice website. I did my MM at Rice at the same time this site went up. The internet world gets smaller.
Suzanne
CaligalinFL · 11 August 2004
In response to the person who sang the four-part men’s arrangement… that was by Ron Nelson. I’m preparing that piece as part of my doctoral study in conducting, and came to this website researching the poem. What a small internet world.
Suzanne
Sybil Gange · 15 August 2004
I learned Tarantella at school fifty years ago and still love the poem to this day. Cynara.
Jarrad Mills 04 · 19 September 2004
To Suzanne, and the person who sang the four-part men’s arrangement: the setting may also have been that of Randall Thompson. I visited this website while doing preparatory research to conduct the Thompson setting. I don’t know Ron Nelson’s setting, but I would be most interested to hear it.
Chad (Amherst, Massachusetts)
Darren J Schaffer · 19 November 2004
I learnt this poem at primary school and have been trying to find it ever since. I am now 40 years old and am extremely happy that thanks to your website and the internet I have finally been able to find it and read the last versus that I was unable to remember. Thank you for ever Darren J Schaffer Australia
Nelson Sheila · 24 January 2005
I too, learned this poem in high school (2nd Form) in Kingston, Jamaica, WI. It was taught to me by a British teacher of English Literature, who on first day in class wanted to know if we knew what a “walrus” was? Ha! in Jamaica. That line led to our learning Lewis Carroll’s Cabbages and Kings. It, like many others, is stuck in my brain. How about another Hillaire Belloc poem - Lines from Goblin Market? I can only remember one portion of it regarding fruit (apples and quinces, come buy, come buy).
sheila
Glen Hills · 2 March 2005
Re Tarantella
I’ve also had fragments of this poem running around in my head for years, since my primary schooling in Maryborough, Queensland Australia. Just recently, I was hanging around waiting for my partner to fix and older lady’s computer and picked up an old book of poetry on her shelves. I started to look for it but couldn’t rmeember the title. She came over and when I quoted a few lines, she said, “Oh, you want Tatantella!” Next time he went over she had printed me out a version of it. Now my son likes the poem and wants to perform it as an own choice item in the local eisteddfod. Tarantalla lives on! Zela
David Lettvin · 24 March 2005
Tarantella is another poem (Monro’s Overheard on a Saltmarsh is the other) that I first read in Walter de la Mare’s ‘Come Hither’ anthology. I recommend it highly.
barbara · 20 June 2005
Hi. I am research the poetry of Hillaire Belloc and I, too, learned Tarantella fifty years ago, and like you, have never forgotten it. Pity I didn’t understand it all those years ago - but I think it is a beautiful poem with real pace and rhythm.
I am from England.
Barbara Tierney
Sheamrock · 13 April 2006
Never really knew the name of this beautiful poem “Tarentella” by Hilaire Beloc, but I too learned it from a Christian Brother at Mount Sion CBS in Waterford City, Ireland, wow, 40 years ago. I can still see Brother Maher ( Leather Lips) reciting this poem to the class. It certainly had an impact on me then and still does to the present day.
Séamus Connolly
MICHAEL STRACHAN · 14 April 2006
I once heard a recording of Hilaire Belloc reciting “Tarantella” in person. He had a remarkable voice, and performed the poem in a wonderful rythm. Does anyone know if this recording is available anywhere online? I’ve searched and searched, but with no luck so far.
Mike
Edinburgh, Scotland
Anne Reeves · 16 May 2006
I am fifteen and I have to write a pratical criticism on this poem but I can’t get what the whole poem is about. This sight has been really helpful but i still don’t understand it. Is it about a forgoten in? or a lost youth? I really don’t know.
WJimtex · 29 May 2006
Re: Tarantella
I, too, learned this at an English school in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the early 50s and have never forgotten the first few lines of it. I’m thrilled to find it on the internet.
As to its meaning, I would hazard a guess that it’s final stanza refers to the Spanish Civil War’s effect. Don’t know what year this was penned.
Susan White
Jack Robinson · 2 July 2006
I learned this poem 63 years ago when I was 14 years at Seatoun Primary School, Wellington, NZ
I have been trying to recall the words ever since and thanks to this wonderful website I have last found it-wonderful!
Jack Robinson, Nelson, New Zealand
Nancy Zananiri · 26 August 2006
I am an arab woman from Jordan, seventy four years old. A Miss Harrison from UK then was my english teacher at the CHURCH MISSIONARY SCHOOL in Amman. She made me read it to the class, and ever since have not forgotton the first few lines,sound of the words, and sound of the implications.
I would like to have more information about whoever composed musical scores for the poem.
Nancy E. Zananiri
Gi.Rho.Ma. Music
Ewan D O'Donohoe · 7 November 2006
I’m 16 and learned this poem in primary school, i fell in love with it though totally forgot about it until today 5 years later and i found myself saying it and had the urge to look it up!!cheers!!
Doug Hasler · 25 July 2007
Although learned just over 60 years ago in Form II /Std 6 (NZ) I too, have happily remembered “Tarantella”
Doug Hasler
Mark Trigg · 1 September 2007
Hi, I am researching this poem for English.does any one know what it is really about?
Roy Halstead · 16 September 2007
I have the poem as lyrics in a song written by Francis toye. What I’m looking for is any background on the poem.
Roy H
ADBurrows · 8 February 2008
Hi Barbara ! I’ve been reading a Martha Grimes mystery in which our hero thinks (in italics) “Do you remember ——?” and Miranda came back to me - but only thru the’ fleas in the high Pyrenees’ So of course I had to look it up and found you. What an amazing poem - that it should stay with us so long. I learned it at least 60 years ago. Annie