John Riley, English
“Aha! So It’s True, Grandmama! You ARE Trying Out for the Quidditch Senior League!,” 1686
Oil on canvas
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/// Bridget Holmes was a servant to Kings;
“necessary” for intimate things.
Daily emptied and scrubbed
chamber pots. Was she snubbed?
No, this portrait’s one perk the job brings.
/// Pictured here when she was ninety–six:
Wields her broom and is ready to mix
with a mischievous page
who is one tenth her age,
but she will not put up with his tricks.
/// Worked for English Kings, Charles first and second,
and then afterwards James second beckoned.
William three, Mary two,
were two more royals who
Bridget served. It was duty, she reckoned.
/// So, despite the immense social gap,
England’s King could be like any chap.
Bridget spoke not a word
of the gossip she heard;
she had taken a lot of their crap.
/// She lived one hundred years, we are told,
and kept working despite being old.
Now in Westminster Abbey,
(for a maid, not too shabby),
she’s interred and her name is extolled.
/// Mildred swept where the curling stone goes
down the ice, but there’s more that she knows.
A fun game she would play
when young, back in the day,
and it ended with curling of toes.