The Women of Mumbles Head! : a true story of a lifeboat - poem for recitation - 1883

In my last post I introduced a poem for recitation about a shipwreck. In this post I do the same. However, this is the first poem specifically identified as a 'poem for recitation' in Trove. It consists of 32 rhyming couplets. The poet is identified as Clement Scott. Scott was a theatre critic and other poems written by him can be found in the Trove archive.

Trove's articles mostly mispell the title as 'The poem of mumlbes head' an I have chosen to correct that to mumbles (which is a place near Swansea, UK), this is consistent with spelling in other parts of the poem.

Interestingly Wikipedia notes that "the word 'Mumbles' may be a corruption of the French les mamelles, meaning "the breasts"(Wikipedia | mumbles), a description of the twin peaks that form the headland. If this is true it plays nicely into the theme that Clement Scott is portraying here. The heroic mother love of women. 

There is a memorialised life boat disaster at Mumbles in 1947, but clearly the scene here is from an earlier time. This article by Carol Powell does a good job of telling the story of the wreck on the 27 January 1883, and of indicating how in such times the gallantry of men is rewarded and that of women is merely expected. See also this article by Geoff Brooks.

The poem was published in at least nine Australian papers in the July of 1883. The version needing the least work to tidy up was the one found in the Burra Record. It is worth scanning the multiple records of the same article in Trove if you wish to reduce clean up time :-)

Division into quatrains is my choice (suggested by the 64 lines being divisible by four).

The Women of Mumbles Head! : a true story of a lifeboat.

Poem for Recitation.

Bring, novelists, your note-books! bring, dramatists, your pen !
And I'll tell you a simple story of what women do for men.
It's only a tale of a life-boat, of the dying and the dead,
Of a terrible storm and shipwreck that happened off Mumbles Head !

Maybe you have travelled in Wales, sir, and know it north and south :
Maybe you are friends with the 'natives' that dwell at Oystermouth ;
It happens, no doubt, that from Bristol you've crossed in a casual way,
And have sailed your yacht in the summer in the blue of Swansea Bay.

Well! it isn't like that in the winter, when the lighthouse stands alone,
In the teeth of Atlantic breakers that foam on its face of stone ;
It wasn't like that when the hurricane blew, and the storm-bell tolled, or when
There was news of a wreck, and the lifeboat launch'd, and a desperate cry for men.

When in the world did the coxswain shirk ? a brave old salt was he!
Proud to the bone of as four strong lads as ever had tasted sea,
Welshmen all to the lungs and loins, who, about that coast, 'twas said,
Had saved some hundred lives a piece — at a shilling or so a head!

So the father launched the lifeboat, in the teeth of the tempest's roar,
And he stood like a man at the rudder, with an eye on his boys at the oar,
Out to the wreck went the father! out to the wreck went the sons!
Leaving the weeping of women, and booming of signal guns,

Leaving the mother who loved them, and the girls that the sailors love,
Going to death for duty, and trusting to God above !
Do you murmur a prayer, my brothers, when cosy and safe in bed,
For men like these, who are ready to die for a wreck off Mumbles Head ?

It didn't go well with the lifeboat! 'twas a terrible storm that blew!
And it snapped the rope in a second that was flung to the drowning crew!
And then the anchor parted — 'twas a tussle to keep afloat!
But the father struck to the rudder, and the boys to the brave old boat.

Then at last on the poor doom'd lifeboat a wave broke, mountains high!
"God help us now !" said the father. "It's over, my lads! Good-bye.'
Half of the crew swam shoreward, half to the sheltered caves,
But father and sons were fighting death in the foam of the angry waves.

Up at a lighthouse window two women beheld the storm,
And saw in the boiling breakers a figure — a fighting form,
It might be a grey-haired father, then the women held their breath,
It might be a fair-haired brother, who was having a round with death ;

It might be a lover, a husband, whose kisses were on the lips
Of the women whose love is the life of men going down to the sea in ships.
They had seen the launch of the lifeboat, they had seen the worst and more,
Then, kissing each other, these women went down from the lighthouse, straight to shore.

There by the rocks on the breakers these sisters, hand in hand,
Beheld once more that desperate man who struggled to reach the land.
'Twas only aid he wanted to help him across the wave,
But what are a couple of women with only a man to save ?

What are a couple of women ? well more than three craven men
Who stood by the shore with chattering teeth refusing to stir — and then
Off went the women's shawls, sir, in a second they're torn and rent,
Then knotting them into a rope of love, straight into the sea they went!

"Come back!" cried the lighthouse-keeper, "for God's sake, girls, come back!"
As they caught the waves on their foreheads, resisting the fierce attack.
"Come back!" moaned the grey-haired mother, as she stood by the angry sea,
"If the waves take you, my darlings, there's nobody left to me."

"Come back !" said the three strong soldiers, who still stood faint and pale,
"You will drown if you face the breakers ! you will fall if you brave the gale!"
"Come back !" said the girls, "we will not ! go tell it to all the town,
We'll lose our lives, God willing, before that man shall drown !'

"Give one more knot to the shawls, Bess! give one strong clutch of your hand
Just follow me, brave, to the shingle, and we'll bring him safe to land!
Wait for the next wave darling! only a minute more,
And I'll have him safe in my arms, dear, and we'll drag him safe to shore.'

Up to the arms in the water, fighting it breast to breast,
They caught and saved a brother alive! God bless us, you know the rest —
Well, many a heart beat stronger, and many a tear was shed,
And many a glass was toss'd right off to 'The Women of Mumbles Head!'

Clement Scott, — in the Theatre.

Source:

The Women of Mumlbes Head! (1883, July 6). Burra Record (SA : 1878 - 1954), p. 2 (Supplement to the Burra Record). Retrieved March 5, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article36008287