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Lancashire Times
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Jonathan Humble
Features Writer
8:00 AM 18th April 2021
arts

Doggerel for the Discerning: 'The Tripe Hound of Little Ormstonmere'

 
Here is the first in a series of light-hearted rhyming poems which, after appearing in a Blogspot, attracted the unlikely attention of the Tripe Marketing Board. Subsequently published by the TMB as a collection bearing the similarly unlikely title of My Camel’s Name is Brian, I commend them to your discerning gaze:


The Tripe Hound of Little Ormstonmere

Amongst the dark foreboding hills of ancient Lancashire,
the eerie howls rolled down the moors o'er misty peatland bogs,
to echo round the cobbled streets of Little Ormstonmere
and cause the good folk there to stare and shudder in their clogs.

For knew they well this howl from Hell and what it did portend,
and how great loss was wreaked upon the town in times long past,
when from the realms of Lucifer, the beast's leash did extend,
and Tripe Hound ran amok, to leave all mournful and aghast.

With sadness and reluctance moved the townsfolk to the square,
each citizen a-burdened with a tribute to the feast,
which grudgingly they lay upon a table by the Mayor,
who checked its weight would satisfy and sate the evil beast.

Then from the hills emerged the brute with eyes aflame and cruel,
as townsfolk scuttled off to hide behind their bolted doors
and left a trough of tripe o'er which the Tripe Hound could now drool,
and scoff the lot, before it disappeared amongst the moors.

No morsel left for Little Ormstonmerians to eat,
the town would have to live on offal served up in a skin.
With tripe now gone, and plans postponed for all to be replete,
black pudding topped the carte de jour and stopped them getting thin.

Amongst the dark foreboding hills of ancient Lancashire,
satanic howls can still be heard o'er misty peatland bogs,
and there behind locked doors the folk of Little Ormstonmere
have cause enough to hide their tripe and shiver in their clogs.


My Camel’s Name is Brian was published by the Tripe Marketing Board.

More information here: (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Camels-Name-Brian-Jonathan-Humble/dp/0957314167)