Willows Revisited

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16-. CM*JORDAN MIDDLEDUCKJordan Knox Wallace Middleduck, according to the SaskatchewanWHO'S WHO, was born in 1925 on the farm on which he still lives, and which, incidentally, he seldom leaves. Both parents are dead and he lives alone and unmarried at his present age of forty -one on his bit of land which is picturesquely located on the right bank of the Saskatchewan river near the little village of Pelvis. He is regarded as very much of a recluse by those who know him except in the matter of the three churches to which he belongs and which he somewhat disapprovingly, but nevertheless faithfully, attends.His great-grancf parents are said to have been weavers in the Low Country of Europe by the name of Mitteltuch(meaning utility cloth, as befits weavers) and they were noted for their piety. On moving to Canada in the mid eighty* and settling in Bruce County, Ontario, the name Mitteltuch gradually was changed to Middle-duck by the Scotch settlers there with whome the large Mitteltuch progeny Intermarried. None of the traditional family piety was lost in this change; in fact it tended to increase, and Jordan's father was a stern Presbyterian who brought up his large family, of which only Jordan today survives, in the narrow path of rectitude and with a stock of moral principles which, surprisingly enough, has enriched Jordan's literary talents.It is not unusual to find in Saskatchewan and even more so in Alberta a poet who expresses in his work some of that old-fashioned literalism and fundamentalist morality which has not only guided so much of the private life of that province but has even colored its politics and economic theory.
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But Jordan Middleduck is more than a stern moralist, He regards his poetic talent as a trust to be devoted to the uplift of mankind. In this respect he is something of an anachronism. One might almost say that he is a classicist, a throwback, as it were, to another poetic age. He is somewhat Miltonian in character; his style is leisurely with a flavor of the archaic and this tends to be augmented by the fact that he is largely self-educated and like so many of that class who have read a great deal but have not heard the words spoken in ordinary conversation, he sometimes gives them a quaint pronunciation. One encounters such modulations as" humidity" rhyming with pretty >" Thus;\le&&< v^^In wind and hall we're sitting pretty /\f\$\jL^ Come rain and relative humidity,*^"v and one also comes across such oddities as mmm "ocean" being pronounced "orcean" and the plural of "neck" on the giraffes being given as neckses: These are not, as in the case of John Swivel's use of "insuliar" a revival of some archaic form whereby our language is being enriched by the poet; they are the vernacular of the districtin which Jordan himself was raised. The diction of Noah, for example, could have come from any farm in the neighborhood of Pelvis. Mlddleduck's roots are deep in the Saskatchewan soil, but, despite his moralizing, he is concerned with human-ness as much as with humus, and this, together with his high sense of mission gives him a special place as the spokesman of the people.Mlddleduck's fame rests almost entirely upon his great epic NOAH. He has written two other works, JONAH, and THE RED SEA, but these have not as yet been published, and in fact, THE RED SEA has not been finished. The fact that his farm on the banks of the Saskatchewan is subject to annual flooding may have influenced him in his choice of themes. Certainly it has had a lot to do with the writing of NOAH.
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108Where Mlddleduck excels is In the delineation of character. This is particularly true in the case of his greatest work in which he takes the Biblical story of the flood and tells of the voyage of the Ark in which Noah, at the age of six hundred, rescues the many generations of his children, grand children, great grand children, and great, great grand children to mention only the more recent ones from the perils of the great "inundation". It is an epic poem and as epics go it seems singularly lacking in incident. The Ark simply drifts without any particular efforts at navigation on the partof the crew, and the daily log is monotonously repetitious inis; account of the weather for the day as being regularly "Cloudy withshowers." But out of this emerges the towering figure of Noah whogrows in greatness from his first appearance where his wife admonisheshim lay off alcohol, to his final landing on Ararat where he meets,eroneously, "the Romans". The other figures in the poem, Ham, Shem,and Japheth, are vaguely drawn and they serve rather as foils andprompters for the moral lessons which Middleduck, through Noah, wishesto convey. Only Noah's wife, Mrs Noah according to Middleduck, standsout in any detail, and even she is a somewhat blurred image of Noahhimself in that she too has caught some of his hortatory manner, orat least she acquires it before the poem is finished.Mlddleduck's flood scenes are always somewhat reminiscent ofthe spring break-up of the Saskatchewan river beside which he livesand the fact that he visualizes the great flood of Biblical times interms of his own experience and expresses it in his own idiom giveshis interpretation a unique charm. The poem opens in the classicalmanner with an epigraph and a short introductory verse in which heindicates the aim and content of the poem to follow and also givesa hint of the moral lesson to be learned from adversity.
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109Take heed, ye mortal children hereOh Pilgrim, mend jour ways, The deep dark vale is ever near, And hell a matter of days.This is followed by the INTRODUCTION. Middleduck is always very specific and the reader is left in no doubt as to what he is tryingto do.INTRODUCTION. Of flood I sing, I sing of flood, First ditches filled, then roads turned mud, And stacks that float and barns that totter, And as far as you can see its under water,And there's no getting out, and the food all et up, And its raining buckets, and no sign of let up � And you say it's woe, and it's turning woer -Take heart, Brother pilgrim, remember Noah.Admittedly this opening is somewhat depressing but again Middle-duck would not leave us in any doubt as to his high moral purpose. Having made his point, however, he changes pace with great artistry and we are gradually edged into the change in weather. He accomplishes this with his famous and delightful little lyric, CLOUDS, with which Mrs) Noah greets the day and this is followed immediately by the three poems to the birds whereby she undertakes to read the weather.Bird poems are something of a surprise coming from Middleduck in that they depart somber and somewhat monotonous couplets which he adopts as his epic form. Moreover it has been suggested that Middleduck wrote the bird poems to Infuriate Doctor Bedfellow who has repeatedly expressed his contempt for Middleduck's poetry, and who, in turn, is regarded by Middleduck as being lost and beyond redemption a literary sense, at least.But actually Middleduck wrote the bird poems to indicate the character of Noah's wife who is portrayed here as being "flighty," She was Noah's third (at least) wife and was considerably younger than her husband. She is described as being "porgy" by which Middleduck means that she is fond of food and is putting on weight, and she
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110also comes under Middleduck's condemnation for being "partial toorgy" whatever that may mean in Middleduck's limited experience insuch matter;She was pretty, but porgy, And given to orgy,And subject to difficult mood, When she'd run out on Noah And dance the Aloha, On the beach � or swim in the nude.But Noah's wife was more than flighty. Being obviously ofHawaiian descent she was a great student of nature and she had inheritedfrom her ancestors a weather lore which enabled her to foretellchanges in the weather pattern from studying the behaviour of birds.But first she sits and contemplates the clouds. It is in this poemthat Middleduck makes the famous comparison of the cloud with a cow.CLOUDS.Clouds! Whiter than shrouds,Swifter than cows, Beautiful clouds � I greet you.Bringing the rain, Pattering netherwards, I leave off work, And gaze heavenwards.Snow comes from thee, Too hail and mist, Fog and sleet also, Are thy gift.White as anything, Light as a feather, Let me thy praises sing, Forever, forever.
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111Having thus set the scene Middleduck then calls our attention to the different birds which are being studied by Noah's wife and through which she is made a aware of a change of weather in the offing and of which she later informs Noah. Apparently not every bird has an instinctive knowledge of a change in the weather pattern. Just as in Saskatchewan it is only from a study of the snearth that weather changes can be predicted soalso in Biblical times the number of birds which could be relied upon as foretelling the weather was limited. They were, according to Middleducjf1 s poem, the canary especially the young canary the bobolink, and the hen ostrich. Each of these birds rates a special poem in the epic, and they are poems of a lyrical quality which we would hardly expect from the austere Middleduck. The truth is .however that on his Isolated farm, Middleduck the lonesome bachelor, has acquired a real fondness for birds, and he is, in fact, the only person known who has ever succeeded in making a pet of Saskatchewan's own provincial bird, the shy and silent snearth. It is no wonder that Middleduck is cordially hated by Professor Baalam Bedfellow.Of the three bird poems given, THE BOBOLINK* is undoubtedly the one of the highest quality, The, CANARY," of course, has its admirers,and THE HEN OSTRICH is rich in moral and meaning, but THE BOBOLINKstands supreme.THE CANARY.I will tarry but a little by the sycamore, the sycamore, Tarry but a little by the tree, For the clouds are drifting westward, And the birds are flying eastward, And up above the geese-birds, Are gathering in groups of three, And the hairy young canary, like a fairy light and airy, Twitters madly, twitters badly, the refrain � Tarry not, tarry not, by the sycamore, the sycamore, I wouldn't be surprised if it rains.
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/ THE BOBOLINK.All gaily and all cheerfully, The bobolink it sings, And high above, its mate to it A song in answer brings � And under the eaves From off the perch, Over the hill, Beside the church, Beneath the elm, Atop the birch, The answering echo rings � And then they join in song together, And say, "What lovely sunny weather!"More cheerful then and gailier, The bobolink and mate, Their voices blend to praise the day, And trill and ululate � And over the eaves,Above the perch, aAtop the hill,High up on the church,Still higher on the elm,And half-way up on the birch -The blue-jay cries, "That's what you think,You dizzy, daffy bobolink �Tomorrow night you'll both be coughingThere's change of weather in the offing"THE HEN OSTRICH.Of all the birds that ever sings I think the tall hen-ostrich brings, To her affairs the greatest sense, At least a sense of competence; Throughout those days when all her young Are coming out, she holds her tongue, And when they're hatched, and not 'til then She finds her shrieking voice again To lure the male who's Just a rover Across the sands, to start all over � Unless of course, they both decide, It's going to rain �and let it ride.
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The point has sometimes been raised by critics that Mrs, Noahhere learns more about the coming storm by observing the cross currentsof wind and by listening to the blue Jay than from watching the canaryand the bobolink, but then Middleduck may have had some point of Mrs Noah's character in mind �one never knows about these Hawaians."Beet ,the important thing to remember is that she actually did learnabout the unprecedented bad weather which was due, and that she didwarn Noah in good time to take whatever steps he deemed necessaryto rescue his relatives and some of the animals from the Impendingflood. Not only did she warn Noah about the weather, she also �andhere we definitively have the high minded voice of Middleduck �warnshim to remain sober if his plans are to be" attended with success;"Oh never touch of demon rum,Leave whiskey on the shelf,And as for rye, when once begun, No man can be himself; For he who quaffs the devil's brew, Of sherry or champagne, Or Collins, slinger, twist, or screw, Can never sail the main � And none can navigate a barque, Or know Just where he's at, If stewed to ears he heads the Ark, Away from Ararat.Noah, perhaps more frightened than penitent, takes her advice and proceedes to build the Ark. Middleduck, who like all Saskatchewan farmers, is very capable with his hands and is something of a builder, gives us detail as to the construction of the Ark, but these are not particularly interesting except to those who are concerned with the technical details. In the end it is finished .and we are told that it is "built of cubits and stands on stilts so that it can flat when the water rises. When the gang-plank is finally down to admit the passengers, animal and human, we are given a vivid picture of frightened animals dashing to safety through any available opening in the Ark , regardless of the signs and arrows that have been put up for their
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114orderly embarkation;And then at last the Ark was built, Of cubits made, and stood on stilts, And the arrows were up and the gangplank down � And here come the animals afraid to drown! Through every doorway, entrance and egress, Come dashing teams, a zebra and zebress, A tiger and tigress, a gnu and a she-gnu, A jack and a jenny, a mu and an emu, A pair of elephants, a brace of rhinocerous, Two dinosaurus �mostly esophagus,A gaggle apes � they appear Hamitic, A single earthworm, (hermaphroditic,) A D-wolf and B-wolf, a sheep and a goat, A tapir and tapir, a pig and a shoat,And those things from Africa with the long, long neckses, And others and others of opposite sexes � Too numerous to mention or describe them here But cleverly paired from afar and near: Thus came the animals, two by two, And then the Noah family, and the crew.Noah, at six hundred years of age, is definitely of the old school and tends to be out of touch with the younger generations which hefeels it his duty to rescue from destruction. He is stern, rigid in his habits, and, having finally headed the admonitions of his wife, he neither smokes nor drinks, he regards the privatemorals of his passengers, particularly the feminine passengers whom hedistrusts, with a jaundiced eye. He has little confidence that the new generation which he is rescuing and which is to repopulate theworld after the flood will be any better than those who are beingleft behind to perish. He is never genial towards his great, great,progeny;the responsibility which has been placed upon him. His concern is never for their physical safety, for which he seems to have no anxiety, but for their morals and for their general behaviour. Here, for example, is an extract from Noah's address to the passengers whom he has finally and after much trouble, succeeded In collecting on the main deck forin fact he tends to be definitely peevish as if resentinga briefing on the evening before their departure;
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115For them as makes the trip I'd like to say, Especially to the girls here, if they could Shut up a second, just for once, and pay Attention for their own eternal good -Now things appear in strange proportion Due to the largeness of the orceon, And it's Just as well, before you go, (Especially them as cant say no) To realize that on the 'wash, A lot of stuff that's said is tosh, And you want to watch on the briny wet, you dont do things you might regret; Man needs a woman's tender hand,Perhaps most when out of sight of land � But that don't mean at sea she otta Do things she wont on terra cotta, And, just because �t he's feeling queasy Aint no excuse for being easy: We leave tomorrow when the water's riz � I thank you, Ladles, such as is.Although very little ever happens aboard the Ark Noah is vigilant and keeps a sharp eye on all his passengers. When the occasional incidents do occur in Middleduck's epic they are introduced not for the purpose of action but to Illustrate the greatness of Noah's character and his ability to rise above adversity. On one occasion,! for example, the monkeys are liberated from the hold by some of the passengers asa prank. These enlist the aid of a passing octopus in rounding upall eight members of the crew and "battening them down in the hatches"The monkeys then take over the navigation of the Ark and almost succeed in returning it to its point of departure. Noah's indignation on discovering this deception is positively Titanic and the scorn which he pours over the generation of teen-agers, whom he assumes to be the guilty one', finally spreads over to the entire passenger list �a list Incidentally, which he found some difficulty in keeping up to date. There is much resentment on the part of those of the older generations and what Middleduck describes as "mutterings" are heard which threaten to get out of hand if not develop into actual mutiny. As it happens the sudden shout of "Land ho!" from one of the monkeys
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in the riggings, who had been overlooked when they were exchanged forthe liberated crew^ saved the situation. After this nobody paid anyfurther attention to Noah who retired to his quarters in a huff.Greatness triumphs. Noah grows in character as his distractionsIncrease and after several months land is actually reached Repeatedlyhe calls his passengers together to give them advice and cautions themconcerning the dangers which they may meet in the new land the occupants of which Middleduck mistakenly assumes, probably as a result of reading Sarah Binks to be Romans. He counsels industry and sobriety. They must be moderate in all things. Work, he declares, is the greatest of all virtues, but even work, if it is actuated only for money, is every bit as bad as slothfulness;Who drinks at night a quart of wine, "Can never hope to rise at nine, With quick affection for his species Or greet the robin's morning cliches; But he who early goes to bed Alone and sober, less he's wed, Will rise alert to face the day, And grinning drive dull cares away; But he who works beyond his need, Acquiring money just for greed, Until he's got a greed psychosis Well, nature sends him acidosis, Pink-eye, pip, gripitus, shivers, J Yaws, and cirrhosis of the livers.It is interesting to note here that Middleduck has long maintainedthat the long life reached by such men as Adam and Methuselahand Noah himself, was due to the fact that they had two livers.Science has not been able to verify this certainlyplausible theory, but It is nevertheless interesting to find thewhich provinceidea in the literature of Saskatchewan Arise- will undoubtedly get the credit if the two-liver theory is ever confirmedMiddleduck takes full advantage of his poetic privilege to modify the story of the flood so that it will meet local conditions as well as
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11712-f91accord with his own temperament. He is a kindly soul and the thought of so many people being drowned is abhorent to his nature, sternthough it may be. The Ark, accordingly, which for many days has beendrifting westward finally reaches a new land which is calledArarat, a land which is already populated with friendly and hospitablefolk. These bid Noah and his family welcome and are happy to includethem in their collection of ethnic groups even though Noah himself isat first suspicious and regards them as "foe." In the end he comesto the conclusion that his own group is not so much, either, and he settlesdown happily in the new country which, from his point of view, has the big advantage of being a drought area at least not subject to flood,. As is to be expected Middleduck sees this new land in Saskatchewan terms and the words whichhe puts into Noah's mouth for the final briefing indicates the splendidethnic variety of his native land as well as carrying another of the high-mindedmessages for which he is famous; Today we land, you'd better crane the neck,And keep a sharp lookout to meet the foe, Canadian-French, Ukrainian, Pole, or Czech, � This is the West, we cant exactly know: I think they're Romans, 'but could also be, Dakota German with some Swede and Dutch, Or Scotch descendents with a touch of Cree, In any case, you're not yourselves so much; So riever say, to hold yourselves above, "My ancestors came over on the Ark,," It wasn't no Mayflower, and if it waren't for Dove And me, you wouldn't have disembarked.Noak, great and revered,- and much mellowed by his age and the experiences of his six hundred years, spend his declining days inwhatever comfort his arthritis permits. Mrs Noah, now apparentlyyounger and more Hawaian than ever deserts her husband for a life Inthe city where she gives dance and swimming lessons, but Noah takesthis philosophically. He is now much sought after by the youngergenerations for his wisdom and advice, none of which they ever accept.

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