Missing, Presumed Dead

BABES IN THE WOODS
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS, SAD ~

Additional llustrations
by Randolph Caldecott (1846 – 1886)

Babes in the Woods
[Variations]

My dears, do you know
how a long time ago
Two poor little babes
whose names I don' know
Were stolen away
on a bright summer day
And left in the woods,
so I've heard people say.

And when it was night,
how sad was their plight,
The sun it went down
and the moon gave no light.
They sobbed and they sighed
and they bitterly cried,
And the poor little things,
they lay down and died.

And when they were dead,
the robins so red
Brought strawberry leaves
and over them spread,
And all the day long,
they sang them this song:

Poor babes in the woods,
poor babes in the woods!
And don't you remember the babes in the woods?

I used to wonder (as does author Marilynne Robinson in her novel Home): Why did my dear grandmother so often sing me this sad sad lullaby?

Could it be that the old folk song resonated because Babes in the Woods -- abandoned, recovered (or not), lost, left for dead -- was not such an uncommon tale in real life? Some hard truths may be lurking there just beneath the surface of the sentimental lyrics. Google the phrase, and you will soon learn that "Babes in the Woods" has become the name of numerous heartbreaking cold cases, such as the 1934 murders of the Noakes sisters, Norma, Cordelia, and Dewilla, in Pennsylvania. Or the 1947 murders of the D'Alton brothers, Derek & David.

My grandmother must have heard the stories of children disappearing, not only into the deep dark woods but also from the wide open plain, as recounted by contemporary poet Jim Barnes in this distressing tale of a curious, adventurous child, playing out - of - doors, all day long, innocently yet to his peril:

For Roland, Presumed Taken

By the time we missed you dusk was settling in.
The first reaction was to think
of drowning, the deep hole just north of the house
that the spring flows into
out from under the sycamore.
You had played there earlier in the day
and had wanted to wade the still water
after minnows schooling the shadows.

We tracked you back to the spring, and I died
with fear that you would be floating
among the lilies, white as the ghost of fish.
But your tracks veered left
toward the valley where the cattle grazed,
then vanished in the flowing grass.
I blew the horn that called the cattle in.
You knew the sound and loved the way
the cattle came loping up at feeding time.

Roland, still, today, you cannot hear the sound of the horn,
cannot holler back up the mountainside
to let us know in your wee voice you are safe and found.
Why you walked off into the green of that day
we can never know, except the valley
and the mountain beyond must have yielded a sudden
sound or flash of light that took your eyes away.
And you were gone.  It is as if

eagles swooped you up, leaving
not one trace to tell us the way you went away.
Nights I imagine the beat of drums,
the clanging of toy swords,
rocking horses neighing
on their tracks.
In another age
I would offer
up my glove
to God
to have you back.

Now, we have packed away your life
in boxes we store
in case the memory
we hold is swept away
by chance 
or the slow years.

~by Jim Barnes (b 1933)
~from The Sawdust War (see also)

Every time I read this poem, the bleakness of young Roland's unknown fate rends my heart. Barnes' poem came immediately to mind not long ago, when I was watching the crime drama Dublin Murders. The series, set in 2006, begins with a flashback to 1985: "As dusk approaches a townland near Dublin in the summer of 1985, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror."

As the series progresses, several crimes are revealed and solved, but never the whereabouts of the other two children. Sadly, their disappearance has become something that their parents -- and the audience -- have to accept, no matter how cruel. Their outcome remains unchanged, unknowable. The only conclusion: "presumed taken."

When I mentioned this connection to Jim, he explained further:

The allusions to "The Song of Roland" took a goodly day to place in the poem at just the right junctures. I rather think the poem would fall flat with sentimentality without them.

Kitti: Jim, I get it: the horn, and the jousting, the glove, the bargain. Not sentimental -- just the stark reality of loss with no explanation.

Jim: "Stark reality of loss" exactly abstracts it.

More poetry from Jim Barnes on this blog,
on my Quotidian blog, and on my Book blog.

Next Fortnightly Post ~ Missing Ancestors
Wednesday, August 14th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com