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115 A puffed up swelling. 1 A tankard or goblet filled to the brim. 2 RICHARD HEAD (c.1637– 1674–1686) Richard Head, one of the most colourful writers of the Irish Restoration period, was born in the North of Ireland. His father was killed in the Rising of 1641 after which the family fled from Carrickfergus to Belfast and on to Devon. Head apparently attended Oxford but left without a degree and became a bookseller in London. He returned to Ireland in about 1660 and wrote an indecent play, Hic et Ubique or The Humours of Dublin which was, apparently, performed in a tavern in Dublin. The text of the play, published in 1663, is of great interest for its representation of spoken Hiberno-English and for its extensive, if satirical, portrayal of Dublin characters. Head went on to write the first substantial pornographic novel in English (set mostly in Ireland), The Miss Display’d (1673) and many peculiar works of fiction as well as jest books and mock travel books. His most famous book was the semiautobiographical , The English Rogue described in the life of Meriton Latroon, a witty extravagant (1665). Head was an inveterate gambler and seems to have lived as racy and reckless life as his fictional characters. The verse that follows comes from his extraordinary fictional account of the discovery of O Brazeel, an enchanted island off the coast of Ireland. He himself is said to have drowned during a crossing to the Isle of Wight. A Great Sea-Storm describ’d which hapned in the discovery of O Brazeel, commonly called the Inchanted Island. Nothing but Air and Water is in sight, And each ’gainst t’other did its force unite. The blustring Winds let loose did raging fly, And made the Water seem to scale the Sky. Much like to Libertines let loose, will know No Law to guide them, but astray will go. The Sea, to swell her teeming Womb, brings forth Wave after Wave, and each of greater Birth: Waves grow to Surges, Surges Billows turn; The Ocean is all Tympany;1 the Urn 10 Of Water is a Brimmer;2 Neptune drinks So full a Cup, it overflows the brinks: Insulting Waves, how durst ye proudly dash At Heav’n, as though its cloudy face you’d wash! 116 What, is the lower Water fully bent To mix with that above the Firmament?3 Or by Invasion does it go about To put the Element of Fire quite out?4 The Sea roll’d up in Mountains: O! ’tis such, That Penmen-maur’s a Wart,5 if’t be so much. 20 Which fall again into such hollow Vales, I thought I’d crost the Sea by Land o’re Wales.6 And then to add confusion to the Seas, The Sailers speak such Babel words as these: Hale in Main-Bowlin, Mizen Tack-aboard;7 A Language like a Storm to be abhor’d. I know not which was loudest, their rude Tongues, Or the big Winds with their whole Cards8 of Lungs. So hideous was the noise, that one might well Fancy himself to be with Souls in Hell, 30 But that the Torments differ; those Souls are Punisht with Fire, but these with Water here. Our Helm, that should our floating Castle9 sway, We lasht it up, lest it should run away. Our Ship now under Water seems to Sail, Like a Toast drown’d within a Tub of Ale.10 A reference to the Ptolemaic world view which asserted that the earth was the centre of 3 the universe; rain occurred when the waters that were above the sky or ‘firmament’ overflowed. This line echoes one in ‘AnAnatomie of the World: the FirstAnniversary’by John Donne 4 (1573–1631): ‘The Element of fire is quite put out.’ In the Ptolemaic world view, the earth was surrounded by fire. i.e. the mountainous waves are so huge that they make the real mountains of North Wales 5 (including Penmenmaur) look like an insignificant excrescence. This seems to mean that the poet thinks he has been tossed right over Wales by the waves. 6 These are orders to the seamen to haul in the ropes attached to the sides of the main sail 7 and to bring aboard the ropes attached to the sails on the mast towards the stern. This seems to mean that the winds possessed ‘lungs’ that could overpower (or ‘trump’ 8 as in...

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