Chapter V: Epilogue

Ghosts of my fathers, where you keep On ghostly hills your ghostly sheep, Should you a moment chance to turn The pages of this book to learn What trade your offspring's taken to, Because my exiled heart is true To your Northumbrian fells and you, Forgive me that my flocks and herds Are only barren bleating words.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER

_KRINDLESYKE_

_By WILFRID GIBSON_

_Author of 'Livelihood,' 'Whin,'
'Neighbours,' &c._

_Crown 8vo._
6/-
_Net._

_MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED_
_St. Martin's Street, London_
1922

Mr. Gibson's new work is a tragic drama in blank verse, concerned with three generations of a family of Northumbrian shepherds. The title, 'Krindlesyke,' is taken from the name of the lonely cottage on the fells where they live and the incidents of the story pass.

While 'Krindlesyke' is not in dialect, it has been flavoured with a sprinkling of local words; but as these are, for the most part, words expressive of emotion, rather than words conveying information, the sense of them should be easily gathered even by the south-country reader.

_Some Press Opinions_

_The Poetry Review._--'A new book by Mr. Wilfrid Gibson must always
arouse interest, for his genius has been displayed in such varied
forms that one can only wonder what new development, what new
blending of his great qualities may appear.... In "Krindlesyke" he
may be said to have astounded us all by achieving the seemingly
impossible combination of the diverse qualities he has hitherto
displayed separately.... Ezra Barrasford and his sons appear, amidst
the wreck they have made, wonderfully convincing characters.... The
women are no less convincing--good-hearted, toil-worn Eliza, driven
to "nagging" by her husband and sons; Bell Haggard, a truly
wonderful study; Judith, who has learned much wisdom from bitter
experience. As to the language, it is wonderfully true to country
life and character.'

_The Daily News._--'There is much breadth of vision and much of that
bitter wisdom that is yet half beauty in this poem.'

_Mr. Laurence Binyon in The Observer._--'"Krindlesyke" is at once
the most ambitious and the strongest work that Mr. Wilfrid Gibson
has given us. It is a dramatic poem, firmly designed, and carried
out with abundant energy and power.'

_The Times Literary Supplement._--'The poet of deep and
self-forgetful feeling must, we venture to think, survive when
mannered muses are forgotten. Mr. Gibson is such a poet.... It is
his distinction to belong to the school of Wordsworth in an age
which is generally too clever, hasty, and conscious to wait upon
"the still sad music of humanity." ... "Krindlesyke" is a notable
achievement of the sympathetic imagination.'

_Prof. C. H. Herford in The Manchester Guardian._--'Bell's talk
is full of salt and vivacity, a brilliant stream in which city
slang reinforces rustic idiom, and both are re-manipulated by
inexhaustible native wit. She is the most remarkable creation in a
gallery where not a single figure is indistinct or conventional....
Mr. Gibson's essay--for there is confessedly something experimental
about it--must be reckoned, with those of Mr. Abercrombie, to whom
"Krindlesyke" is dedicated, among the most remarkable dramatic poems
of our time.'

_The Aberdeen Journal._--'"Krindlesyke" is incontestably the best
work Mr. Gibson has so far given us. It is amazingly good--vivid,
sincere, living, felt in the marrow of his bones and the beat of his
heart.... Here are peasants that belong to a world as true and as
deeply felt as those of Hardy and Synge. They are provincial only in
the sense that Wordsworth's dalesmen and women are provincial; that
is, they are, in the true sense, universal.... No recent work is
more worth reading.... Mr. Gibson has fashioned for his peasants the
rich, racy, coloured, vigorous speech that is essential to them. No
thing of book this.... As peasant talk it rings true; its rich tang
is a rare delight.'

_Other Works by Wilfrid Gibson_

_Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net_ _LIVELIHOOD_ _Dramatic Reveries_

_The Times._ 'All have the same freedom, vigour, life, tenderness,
minute and thoughtful observation, ever-present sense of the
interestingness of human beings and their doings and feelings, work
and love and play. There is not a dull page in them.'

_Katharine Tynan in The Bookman._ 'These "Dramatic Reveries" are
compact of imagination.... The poems are so much extraordinarily
vivid and compelling short stories that they might be read with zest
by a man with no poetry in his soul, although that man would miss
the beauty of poetry which lies over the tale.'

_Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net_ _WHIN_ _Poems_

_The Observer._ 'There are charming things in this little book....
Throughout there is a very cunning use of northern place names that
stir the imagination like the sound of the Borderers' riding.
"R. L. S." would have liked these names and used them as cunningly.'

_Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net_ _NEIGHBOURS_ _Poems_

_The Westminster Gazette._ 'The workmanship of these heart-breaking
little studies is, as we should expect from Mr. Gibson, honest and
exact. Their grim view of human destiny, its all-pervading greyness,
is presented with appropriate austerity; and this restraint and
detachment increase their vividness and force.... The beautiful
sonnets in the section called "Home" show that he, too, is capable
of delight.'

_The Spectator._ 'Mr. Gibson's skill is most admirable when we
consider that it is allied to poetic feeling of the utmost
simplicity and depth.'

_LONDON: MACMILLAN & Co., Ltd._

_BY THE SAME WRITER_

NEIGHBOURS 1920
WHIN 1918
LIVELIHOOD 1917
FRIENDS 1916
BATTLE 1915
BORDERLANDS 1914
THOROUGHFARES 1914
FIRES 1912
DAILY BREAD 1910
STONEFOLDS 1907

KRINDLESYKE

Macmillan and Co., Limited
London . Bombay . Calcutta . Madras
Melbourne

The Macmillan Company
New York . Boston . Chicago
Dallas . San Francisco

The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd.
Toronto

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Errata:

Unusual spellings are assumed to be intentional unless there is strong reason to believe otherwise. The use of parentheses in stage directions is as in the original.

You mustn't heed him, Phoebe, lass
_text reads "musn't," but all other occurrences of the word are
spelled "mustn't"_

thon
_regional variant of "yon" used several times in the text. The pronoun
"thou" does not occur._