MASTERPIECE #3332

/// The girl Feeding the Chickens agreed
to work hard, for she’s poor and in need.
She has little to wear
that’s not torn and threadbare,
but she gets, like the hens, chicken feed.

/// Mæve must rise every day before dawn,
and can’t rest until sunset has gone.
After dark she can spend
some time trying to mend
the worst holes in the clothes she has on.

/// One nice item of clothing Mæve owns:
the white bonnet (for which she took loans).
The landowner’s young niece
would have thrown out the piece,
but such waste uncle never condones.

/// She had already milked every cow,
and was planning what chore to do now.
She’d next muck out the stable
so her father’d be able
to hook up a clean horse to the plough.

/// Other kin of Mæve’s worked on the farm.
It was drudgery, lacking in charm.
Fees they owed to the boss
added up to a loss,
and complainers would soon come to harm.

/// So they slaved to get out of the hole,
doing harm to both body and soul.
Ploughman Pa and Maid Mother,
and Mæve’s stable boy brother,
made a meal from some eggs that she stole.

/// The old plough-horse dropped dead in the traces.
He’d been too slow to win any races,
but he’d helped till the field.
Now his dying revealed
that, from sadness, they too had long faces.

/// The reason that horse could be eaten
was its owner had ordered it beaten
to make it work harder.
Now part of the larder,
his tough meat Mæve used honey to sweeten.

/// Out of shame for their sins, they’d examine
how starvation caused worship of Mammon.
Now resigned to their fate
they all vowed to go straight,
and through prayer to survive Ireland’s Famine.