Poems: Tales o' Our Town

by Joseph Lee

Excerpt from Poems: Tales o' Our Town:

But the Bailie beat his bony breast,
An' cried, Waes me, for I canna rest
Until my sins I hae ainee confessed
To the man should first say a 'guid save,
'Aboon my grass-grown, lanely grave.
(the pedlar had seen the thristles wave.)
An' nane hae come, an' nane hae pray'n,
Thro' a' the years that my banes hae Iain
Whan my frien's had gotten my gowd an' a',
They thocht nae mair o' auld Bailie Braw,
Nor spar'd our Holy Kirk mite or dole
To sayin' o' masses for my soul.
An' I've had a dreary weird to dree,
Sae look, an' listen - an' learn 0' me.

159 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Joseph Johnston Lee (1876 – 1949) was a Scottish journalist, artist and poet, who chronicled life in the trenches and as a prisoner of war during World War I.

Lee was the grandson of Sergeant David Lee, who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars, and was one of nine siblings. He began his working life at the age of 14. After a spell of employment in the office of a local solicitor, he went to sea as a steamship's stoker.