POETRY SPOT - 'SMILE', SPIKE MILLIGAN

 

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Spike Milligan:

Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan KBE (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British India, where he spent his childhood before relocating in 1931 to England, where he lived and worked for the majority of his life. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.

Milligan was the co-creator, main writer, and a principal cast member of the British radio comedy programme The Goon Show, performing a range of roles including the characters Eccles and Minnie Bannister. He was the earliest-born and last surviving member of the Goons. He took his success with The Goon Show into television with Q5, a surreal sketch show credited as a major influence on the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

He wrote and edited many books, including Puckoon (1963) and a seven-volume autobiographical account of his time serving during the Second World War, beginning with Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1971). He also wrote comical verse, with much of his poetry written for children, including Silly Verse for Kids (1959).

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By the way . . . 

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#1:

Milligan died from kidney failure, at the age of 83, on 27 February 2002, at his home on Dumb Woman's Lane near Rye, Sussex. On the day of his funeral, 8 March 2002, his coffin was carried to St Thomas Church in Winchelsea, East Sussex, and was draped in the flag of Ireland. He had once quipped that he wanted his headstone to bear the words "I told you I was ill." He was buried at St Thomas' churchyard but the Chichester diocese refused to allow this epitaph. A compromise was reached with the Gaelic translation of "I told you I was ill", Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite, and in English, "Love, light, peace". The additional epitaph Grá mhór ort Shelagh can be read as "Great love for you Shelagh".

The headstone of Spike Milligan's grave in the grounds of St Thomas' Winchelsea, East Sussex. The epitaph includes the phrase Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite, Irish for "I told you I was ill". The headstone is positioned roughly midway between the New Inn and the church door.

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Dumb Woman's Lane is a street located in the civil parish of Udimore, near Winchelsea in East Sussex, England. The street has achieved a level of notoriety because of its unusual name and because it was the location of the residence of the comedian Spike Milligan from 1988 until his death in 2002.

While the etymology remains unconfirmed, there are two theories on the origin. The first is that the source of the name is a mute woman who sold traditional medicines and once lived on the lane. The second is that the lane is named after a woman who witnessed the activities of smuggling gangs in the area and had her tongue removed to prevent her from informing authorities, suggested to have been the local publican's wife who had her tongue removed for reporting the activities of the Hawkhurst smuggling gang in the 1740s.

Dumb Woman's Lane

Milligan was acquainted with the singer Paul McCartney who, knowing he lived there, wrote a poem about Dumb Woman's Lane which he recited on a visit.

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#3:

Paul McCartney’s poem (with his punctuation and lack thereof), plus the drawing which accompanies the poem:

The poem:

The Poet of Dumbwoman’s Lane

The voice of the poet

At Dumbwoman’s lane

Can be heard across vallies

Of sugar-burned cane

And nostrils that sleep

Through the wildest of nights

Will be twitching

To gain aromatic insights.

The wife of the farmer

Of Poppinghole Lane

Can be seen from the cab

Of the Robertsbridge train

And passengers comments

Will frequently turn

To the wages the wife

Of a farmer can earn.

The poet of Dumbwomans Lane

Sallies forth

He is hoping for no-one to see.

Poppinghole Lane is a street in Robertsbridge, East Sussex. The village is thought to date back to 1176 when a Cistercian abbey was founded there.

Starvecrow Lane is in Peasmarsh, England and is near the home of Paul McCartney.

Paul McCartney's house in Peasmarsh