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The Secret People by G. K. Chesterton
SMILE at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.
The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind.
Till there was not bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no main paid, that were the wall of the weak,
The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.
And still they do not speak (my note).
Mundabor has an interesting post, Christmas Madness . It is well worth reading, and reminds me of something similar, as long ago as 1988.
On Christmas Eve, at the brokerage where I worked we all decided to go out for lunch at a restaurant somewhere in Knightsbridge. There were about ten of us.
We were eating when suddenly a uniformed policewoman came to our table, and demanded to know who owned car number ******, which she said was illegally parked outside. A friend said it was his, but was at home in Winchester.
She then stripped, singing some secular ditty as she did so: not a real policewoman, but a "stripogram", poor woman, and clearly a mother, because she had stretch-marks.
The friend, an Anglican, and, incidentally, a former S.A.S colonel, and I immediately left, our lunch half-eaten.
The experience overshadowed Christmas. In any half-decent, half civilized country, such work as this poor woman did would be unnecessary and illegal.
