Charles Causley Quotes

From nonsense poems like ‘Quack’ Said the Billy Goat, in which all the animals make the wrong sounds, to poignant selections such as Riley, in which an elderly homeless man, known for living happily by himself in the wild, disappears one day, the selections here are all interesting

“Down in the water-meadows Riley, spread his wash on the bramble-thorn, sat, one foot in the moving water, bare as the day that he was born.”

Figgie hobbin is a light, Cornish pudding on plum duff, creamy-white in colour and sweetened with raisins, which are called “figs” in Cornwall.

“Stiffly Sir Frederick stumps the green cobble-stones, opens the gate by the stable door, hums as he strolls in the pale of the afternoon a faded old song of the First World War.”

The poems range from the nonsensical near nursery rhyming of ‘Quack!’ said the billy-goat and As I went down Zig Zag to the haunting ballad strain of Mary, Mary Magdalane and the lyrical beauty and intensity of such poems as My mother saw a dancing bear, Tom Bone and Who?

“Bring me some Figgie Hobbin!” - a Cornish plum pudding which is both sweet and savoury - orders the old King of Cornwall.

“Candid was his curling whisker, brown his body as an old tree-limb, blue his eyes as the jay above him watching him watch the minjies swim.”

A fantasy book of British folk type rhymes written by a modern poet. The book’s strength is Trina Schart Hyman illustrations. one poem about a girl obsessed with the ocean is rather good, and “Figgie Bobbin is amusing; the Zig Zag the same.

“My mother saw a dancing bear by the schoolyard, a day in June. The keeper stood with chain and bar, and whistle-pipe, and played a tune.”

Here we meet many celebrated characters: Colonel Fazackerley, who was unlucky enough to buy an old castle complete with a ghost; Mr Pennycomequick, who jumped off the top of Launceston Castle using a carriage-umbrella as a parachute.