New Collected Rhymes

In Short

This volume is a diverse gathering of formal verse that moves from historical melancholy to affectionate satire. It brings together Jacobite lyrics lamenting the fallen Stuart cause, humorous tributes to cricket and golf, parodies of contemporary Victorian poets, and tragic ballads of Scottish folklore. Throughout the text, a deep sense of nostalgia pulls between lost history and lighthearted modern distractions. It endures because it balances a genuine, heartbroken reverence for old, defeated loyalties with a sharp, self-aware wit that pokes fun at literary trends, modern annoyances, and the author's own incurable habit of collecting ancient things.

The Story

The intellectual arc of the collection opens with a backward glance toward lost causes and historical tragedy, moves through the absurdities of contemporary Victorian life, and ends in the dark, deterministic world of ancient balladry.

It begins in the shadow of fallen dynasties and lost heroes. The opening section sings of Joan of Arc leading her spotless ranks from Blois to Orleans, but quickly shifts to the ruined hopes of the Jacobite risings. The poems mourn the hunted Prince Charles hiding in Highland heather, the slaughter at Culloden where the clans died on the guns, and the lonely exiles in Rome or France clinging to the White Rose long after the cause was dead. Loyalty here is not a political desire for revolution, but a romantic memory of a lost world that can never return.

From this tragic past, the text shifts abruptly into the light, satirical atmosphere of late-nineteenth-century leisure and literary life. The mood turns playful as the verse celebrates the simple, obsessive joys of sport and art. The narrator writes affectionate odes to female bowlers on monastic cricket pitches, laments dead cricketing legends lying beneath the daisies, and groans over ruined golf drives lost in the sand.

The satire deepens as the book turns its lens on the Victorian literary scene. The verse mocks the gloomy, "grimy" realism favoured by contemporary women writers, pokes fun at Oxford dons for making lazy, ungrammatical rhymes like "Chicago" and "embargo," and directly parodies the distinct stylistic mannerisms of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Algernon Charles Swinburne reacting to Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Amid these literary jokes, the collection pauses to praise the sensory comfort of fictional feasts, mourn the loss of Andrew Lang's real-life friend Robert Louis Stevenson (Tusitala) sleeping in Samoa, and ponder the forgotten ancient civilizations that mined gold at Zimbabwe.

In its final movement, the volume discards modern levity and descends into the stark, grim logic of Scottish folk tradition. The closing ballads tell stories of romance ruined by political violence and deceit: a young man murdered in his youth over a diamond-embroidered silver band given by a queen, a Spanish queen whose wrecked ship is blown up in Tobermory Bay by a jealous Campbell wife, and a local lord cursed for breaking sacred holly. The book ends not with modern wit, but with blood, drownings, and unavailing regrets.

How It Unfolds

The march of the Maid Joan of Arc mounts her steed by the Holy Rood, carrying her mystical five-crossed sword and lily banner to lead a clean-confessed army toward the relief of Orleans.

The shadow of Culloden Defeated Highland clans break their claymores against English bayonets in the rain, leaving their dead buried in desolate moorland graves while their prince flees into exile across the sea.

Tributes to the pitch The narrative pauses for playful verses dedicated to skilled female cricketers, forgotten sports heroes of the past, and the agony of a golfer who cannot fix his drive.

Parodies of the poets The text turns to sharp literary satire, mimicking the gloomy poses of the Decadents and poking fun at famous Victorian poets as they try to write official odes for the Queen's Jubilee.

The tragedy of young Ruthven A queen impulsively gives her silver band to a beautiful sleeping youth, triggering the king's fatal jealousy and leading to the young man's cowardly murder.

The wreck of the Florencia A Spanish queen sails to Scotland in search of a golden-haired chief, only to be blown up in Tobermory Bay by her lover's vengeful, scheming wife.

The People

• Jeanne d’Arc: A spotless, fearless maiden who hears heavenly voices and leads the armies of France. She represents pure spiritual devotion and uncorrupted chivalry, untouched by fear, doubt, or sin, whose tragic end leaves even the saints in Paradise weeping.
• Prince Charles (Prince Charlie / Tearlach): The romantic, hunted figurehead of the Jacobite cause. He spends his youth hiding in the heather of the Scottish Highlands and his old age as a broken, forgotten man in exiles like Rome, carrying the quiet heartbreaks of an entire movement with him.
• Austin Dobson: An urbanely clever, blameless poet-friend to whom the collection's dedicatory poem is addressed. He is envisioned as a natural fit for the wittier, chicken-and-champagne-filled eighteenth century of Alexander Pope, writing verse that is pure, bright, and cheerful.
• The Queen o’ Spain: A royal woman who sees a vision of a fair-haired Scottish chief in her Halloween glass. Driven by absolute love, she fills a ship with gold to find him, only to meet a swift, fiery death in a cold Scottish bay through the trap of a rival.
• The Bauld McLean: A golden-haired Highland chief living along the Sound of Mull. He falls in love with the Spanish queen who seeks him out, but his existing marriage to a cunning Campbell woman leads directly to the destruction of his new love and a brutal act of revenge.

In Its Own Voice

"Her banner was borne by a page of grace, / With hair of gold, and a lady’s face;"

The banner-painter recalls the spotless purity of Joan of Arc’s army as she rides out from Blois.

"There’s nothing like the food of fiction."

The speaker confesses that no actual meal at a modern dinner table can match the delicious, comforting feasts described in old novels.

"And we shall hail their happy reign, / When Life comes to his own again,"—

A Jacobite song frames loyalty to the banished Stuart kings not as a political plot, but as a enduring symbol of lost dreams.

What It's Really About

Beneath its variety of forms, the book is an extended meditation on the nature of loyalty to lost things. It contrasts the noble, tragic ideal—represented by the Jacobite rebels dying on wet moors or Joan of Arc marching to her doom—with the shallow, comfortable compromises of modern life. The text repeatedly asks whether it is better to cling to a beautiful, doomed ideal or to embrace the mundane realities of the present. Even when writing about cricket, golf, or collecting rare books, the narrator reveals a deep obsession with the past and a distrust of modern "progress." Ultimately, the collection argues that human beings find their true meaning not in wealth or easy victories, but in the memory of the things they loved and lost.

Why Read It Today

This collection will appeal to readers who enjoy formal verse, Scottish history, traditional balladry, and late-Victorian literary wit. It offers a fascinating blend of high romance and low comedy, moving smoothly from heartbreaking laments for fallen clans to clever parodies of Victorian literary snobbery. The book feels like a conversation with a highly cultured, slightly nostalgic companion who takes history seriously but refuses to take himself too seriously.

Readers should be prepared for a few structural challenges. The text relies heavily on broad Scots dialect in its central ballads and Jacobite songs (using words like laigh, wuddy, spae, and propine), which requires a slow, attentive reading pace. Additionally, the middle section contains specific late-nineteenth-century literary references and period-specific academic jokes that may feel obscure to modern readers. However, the musicality of the verse, the vivid narrative drive of the ballads, and the quiet, persistent melancholy underlying the satire make it a deeply rewarding experience for anyone who appreciates fine craftsmanship and old legends.