The Tattie-Bogle
Patrick Reginald Chalmers
1872 to 1942
A farmer once, to scare the birds away,
O'er his poor seeds set up, to leer and ogle,
A raffish moon-face, stuffed with straw and hay,
A tattie-bogle;
And rook and daw and stare their pinions spread
Incontinent; for, so they judged the matter,
Some scowling foe stood there, and off they fled
With startled chatter.
A week the portent stood in sun and rain
And fluttered rags of dread. A sparrow, nathless,
Whose nestlings cried, dashed down and snatched a grain,
And got off scathless.
Emboldened, back she flew; to such good end
The others followed, craning and alarmful,
To find the monster, if perhaps no friend,
At least unharmful.
To-day the bogle wags, a thing of jest
And open scorn: the very pipits mock it;
A jenny-wren, I 'm told, has built her nest
In one torn pocket!
Heart of my heart, and so be aught of awe
That darkens on your path: the buckram rogue 'll
Prove, when you face him, but a ghost of straw —
A tattie-bogle!
Patrick Reginald Chalmers's The Tattie-Bogle
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