Page 31 - Poetry-Country

Ma siftin’ meal, ‘n’ then you sing,
“Rafferty tafferty tickory toe,
Elabow crackabow, ther’ you go!”
An’ all the time you keep the thing
A-shakin’ till at last you see
The chaff’s shuck through, and then run three
Times round the heap, and kind o’ sing
“Alaby balaby blubberin’ Ben,
Don’t let trouble come here again.”
‘N’ if ye’re careful with the charm,
Ain’t no signs ken do you harm.

WHEN I WAS A BOY.

When I ‘uz a boy
The girl that worked fer mother
Kept me ‘most scart to death
With some bad sign or other.
The tremblin’ leaves on the big pople-tree
In our back yard, said she,
Meant weevil would destroy
The wheat. And when late summer’s breath
Moaned in a sooty way
About the kitchen pipe,
She’d say, “Afore the corn is ripe
A fever’ll take this house.”
At last, when mother found me and brother
A-cryin’ for the squeakin’ of a mouse
That meant that some of us must die,
She turned the girl away,
And spanked us both, and I,
Still thankin’ her, will always say,
“God bless my mother!”

— Doane Robinson (Century Magazine, 1893)

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