As Performed by the Maids, with a Fiddle, an Act and a Penny Whistle

First Maid:

If I was a princess, with silver and gold,

And loved by a hero, I’d never grow old:

Oh, if a young hero came a-marrying me.

I’d always be beautiful, happy, and free!

Chorus:

Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave

The water below is as dark as the grave,

And maybe you’ll sink in your little blue boat

It’s hope, and hope only, that keeps us all

Second Maid:

I fetch and I carry, I hear and obey,

It’s Yes sir and No ma’am the whole ing day;

I smile and I nod with a tear in my eye,

I make the soft beds in which others do

Third Maid:

Oh gods and oh prophets, please alter my life,

And let a young hero take me for his wife!

But no hero comes to me, early or late

Hard work is my destiny, death is my fate

Chorus:

Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave

The water below is as dark as the grave,

And maybe you’ll sink in your little blue boat

It’s hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat.

The Maids all curtsy.

Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks, passing the hat:

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

IX.  The Trusted Cackle-Hen

The sea voyage to Ithaca was long and frightening, and also nauseating, or at least I found it so. I spent most of the time lying down or throwing up, sometimes both at once. Possibly I had an aversion to the ocean due to my childhood experience, or possibly the sea-god Poseidon was still annoyed by his failure to devour me.

Thus I saw little of the beauties of sky and cloud that Odysseus reported on his rare visits to see how I was feeling. He spent most of the time either at the bow, peering ahead (I imagined) with a hawklike gaze in order to spot rocks and sea serpents and other dangers, or at the tiller, or directing the ship in some other way I didn’t know how, because I’d never been on a ship before in my life.