Yesterday Upon the Stair I Met a Man Who Wasnã¢â‚¬â„¢t There He Wasnã¢â‚¬â„¢t There Again Today
"Antigonish" is an 1899 verse form by the American educator and poet, William Hughes Mearns. It is as well known every bit "The Piffling Man Who Wasn't There" and was adapted equally a hitting song under the latter title.
Poem [edit]
Inspired by reports of a ghost of a human being roaming the stairs of a haunted house, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada,[ane] the poem was originally part of a play chosen The Psyco-ed, which Mearns had written for an English class at Harvard University, circa 1899.[2] In 1910, Mearns staged the play with the Plays and Players, an amateur theatrical group, and on March 27, 1922, the paper columnist FPA printed the poem in "The Conning Tower", his column in the New York World.[2] [3] Mearns afterwards wrote many parodies of this poem, giving them the full general title of Later Antigonishes.[4]
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a human being who wasn't in that location!
He wasn't at that place over again today,
Oh how I wish he'd become away![5]When I came home last night at iii
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked effectually the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, get abroad, don't you come up dorsum whatever more!
Get away, go away, and delight don't slam the door...Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little homo who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away....
Use in media [edit]
- Male parent Brown, Season ix, Episode 9, "The Enigma of Antigonish", the villain uses the poem as the idea behind a plot mechanism whereby a, doubtable existence already dead, wouldn't be sought for the murders of several witnesses that had given evidence that resulted in the villain'due south by incarceration for some other criminal offence.
- Horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives focuses its 85th episode "Upon the Stair" on a paranormal entity inspired by the poem. The verse form is mentioned and read aloud in the episode.
- In the miniseries Gallipoli, Season 1, Episode ane, Full general, Sir Ian Hamilton recites the poem.
- In the TV prove Death in Paradise, Flavor 4, Episode one "Stab In The Dark", Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman references the verse form while solving the murder of a distiller.
- In the TV show Fearfulness the Walking Dead, Flavour 3, Episode 6 "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (Fright the Walking Expressionless)", Madison Clark and other Bankrupt Jaw Ranch dwellers observe a witting homo with his encephalon exposed, reciting the verse form out loud.
- In the Boob tube evidence Midsomer Murders, Season 5, Episode 5 "Worm in the Bud", Chief Detective Inspector Barnaby quotes the first stanza of the verse form when mentioning the case he was working on made no sense.
- In the Goggle box bear witness Sapphire & Steel, Season 2, Episode 10 The beginning stanza of the poem is heard 3 times in a ghost story well-nigh children trapped in photographs by a human being (spirit) with no face.
- In the Tv show McDonald and Dodds, Flavor 2, Episode 1 The first stanza of the verse form is spoken by two members of the Bath police force force during the investigation of a man who plainly plummeted to his death, falling from a hot-air airship.
- In The Trial of Christine Keeler, based on the chain of events surrounding the Profumo thing in the 1960s, Dr. Stephen Ward - played by James Norton - recites the verse form several times.
- The film Identity opens with convict Malcom Rivers reciting the poem, claiming to have made it up when he was a kid. It's also the closing phrase in the film.
- In the picture show "The Haunting in Connecticut", Matt Campbell recites the verse form to his cousin.
- The poem is used in Stan Dane's volume Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald to insinuate to research that appears to points to suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald equally being the "prayer human being", a effigy standing on the front steps of the Texas School Book Depository during the assassination of U.s.a. President John F. Kennedy.[6]
Song [edit]
- In 1939, "Antigonish" was adapted as a popular song titled "The Piddling Human being Who Wasn't There", by Harold Adamson with music by Bernie Hanighen, both of whom received the songwriting credits.[3]
- A July 12, 1939 recording of the song by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, with vocals past Tex Beneke, became an 11-calendar week hit on Your Hit Parade and reached #vii.
Other versions were recorded by:
- Mildred Bailey & Her Orchestra
- Larry Clinton & His Orchestra with vocals past Ford Leary
- Bob Crosby & His Orchestra with vocals past Teddy Grace
- Jack Teagarden & His Orchestra with vocals by Teagarden
- In 2016 The Odd Chap released an Electro Swing version using soundtrack from the Glenn Miller Band recording.
- In 2018, the experimental industrial grouping The Reptile Skins released an EP entitled Antigonish with the two lead singers having a dissimilar interpretation of the poem.
- The opening verse is featured on the opening track "Ytterligare ett steg närmare total jävla utfrysning" off the anthology Halmstad past Swedish band Shining
Run across also [edit]
- Extensional and intensional definitions
- Plato'southward bristles
- The Man Who Sold the World (vocal), a vocal by David Bowie
References [edit]
- ^ Colombo, John Robert (1984). Canadian Literary Landmarks. Dundurn Press. ISBN978-0-88882-073-0.
- ^ a b McCord, David Thompson Watson (1955). What Cheer: An Anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty Verse. New York: The Modern Library. p. 429.
- ^ a b Kahn, Eastward. J. (September thirty, 1939). "Creative Mearns". The New Yorker. p. xi.
- ^ Colombo (2000), p.47.
- ^ Mearns, quoted by Hayakawa, Samuel Ichiyé & Hayakawa, Alan R. (1990). Language in Idea and Action. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 96. ISBN9780156482400.
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- Mearns, quoted by Colombo, John Robert (2000). Ghost Stories of Canada. Dundurn. p. 46. ISBN9781550029758. . Italics and exclamation points.
- Mearns, quoted by Gardner, Martin (2012). Best Remembered Poems. Courier. p. 107. ISBN9780486116402. - ^ Dane, Stan. Prayer Human being: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald (Martian Publishing, 2015), p. 190. ISBN 1944205012
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigonish_(poem)
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