Saturday Suck: On the Benefits of Prosthetics

Sorry for the delay on yesterday's blog entry - we were traveling most of the day. But I'll make up for it with this incredible ode to legs. Or carpenters. Or the handicapable. Or wood. Or begging. Or perhaps all simultaneously.

Wooden Leg

James McIntyre

Misfortune sometimes is a prize,
And is a blessing in disguise,
A man with a stout wooden leg,
Through town and country he can beg.

And the people in the city,
On poor man they do take pity,
He points them to his timber leg
And tells them of his poor wife, Meg.

And if a dog tries him to bite,
With his stiff leg he doth him smite,
Or sometimes he will let him dig
His teeth into wooden leg.

Then never more will dog delight
This poor cripple man for to bite;
Rheumatic pains they never twig
Nor corns annoy foot of leg.

So cripple if he's man of sense,
Finds for ill some recompense;
And though he cannot dance a jig
He merry moves on wooden leg.

And when he only has one foot,
He needs to brush only one boot;
Through world he does jolly peg,
So cheerful with his wooden leg.

In mud or water he can stand
With his foot on the firm dry land,
For wet he doth not care a fig,
It never hurts his wooden leg.

No aches he has but on the toes
Of one foot, and but one gets froze;
He has many a jolly rig,
And oft enjoys his wooden leg.




Where can I get me one of those things?! They sound pretty dang awesome - just moving around merrily, begging, hurting living creatures, standing in mud, luxuriating in not having corns... Heck, come to think of it, what's the point of actual legs anyway?!


Stupid flesh legs... Why can't you be wooden?


A couple of things to notice - what is with Meg, the dude's poor wife? She comes out of nowhere, gets mentioned for no good reason and then vanishes again. Then there's the recommendation to "smite" small animals - according to the new AP stylebook, the only people who may smite are God and The Incredible Hulk. 


Then there's the mix of the flights of fancy with the banal, usually in the same line. It really is a masterpiece of incompetence. But what really ties it all together is the iambic tetrameter (each line has 4 syllables in a da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM pattern), and he rides that horse from here to glory. Even if it means emphasizing important words like "A" or "His" or pronouncing the word "many" like "ma-NY" and "city" like "ci-TY" and people like "peo-PLE."


If I may give some advice to any aspiring poets:


If you use couplets that are rhymed
Iambically for many lines
It may prove hard for you to be
Then taken at all seriously.