Laxative and Poetic Licence

Following on from yesterdays musings on Pontefract Cakes here is a wonderful and evocative poem written around 1954 by the great John Betjeman on the very same subject of licorice and the town of Pontefract, West Yorkshire.

His emphasis is more on the lusty and sensual aspects of the plant than the laxative one.

Not Betjeman or even in Pontefract

The Licorice Fields at Pontefract 

by John Betjeman

In the licorice fields at Pontefract

My love and I did meet

And many a burdened licorice bush

Was blooming round our feet;

Red hair she had and golden skin,

Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,

Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd

The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers

Gave off the sweetest smells;

From various black Victorian towers

The Sunday evening bells

Came pealing over dales and hills

And tanneries and silent mills

And lowly streets where country stops

And little shuttered corner shops.

      She cast her blazing eyes on me   
                           

And plucked a licorice leaf;

I was her captive slave and she

My red-haired robber chief.

Oh love! for love I could not speak,

It left me winded, wilting, weak,

And held in brown arms strong and bare

And wound with flaming ropes of hair.

I have taken the liberty and apologise for adding what would be a suitable final stanza of my own.

Eh up, young Man, she said to me

As I languished in her ardour

You've trod all over all me lovely plants

And just made my honest labour harder

Get out this field as quick as tha' can

For goodness and pity's sake

What's next, tha' knows, you'll have your hands

All over me Pontefract Cakes.