Dirty, Bent and Stolen...

It was during a fourteen hour day of solo driving, the fourth such trip of that fortnight. My wandering mind suddenly spat an image of a bent old man on a bent old hill. This preceded an old and dusty memory, striving to be heard. A childhood rhyme about a crooked man, but try as I might I couldn't recall the words beyond just about everything in the rhyme being crooked. I shelved the crooked man deciding to investigate the rhyme properly once I had reached my destination. In the meantime to keep myself entertained I decided that I would compose my own version, incorporating my original thought of the bent old man. It was mostly a nonsense but it kept me sufficiently occupied to prevent me from nodding off and straying from my course into a tree, oncoming car or any other potentially fatal obstacles. Upon arriving I recorded my version and you can read it as follows-

Bent Old Man

There lived a bent old man,

upon a bent old hill,

and when he'd et his meal,

he liked to bend his fill.

How he loved to bend,

he'd bend for weeks on end.

When he'd finished bending,

he'd just bend over again.

His poor twisted liver,

so swollen up and bent.

One day the liquor was coming,

but his liver went.

So they bent him out a grave,

and bent him in the hole.

The marker for the spot,

an old and bent up pole.

He bent his way to heaven,

Bent the angels round the bend.

They all decided,

that he was no Godsend.

On his way they bent him,

right on down to hell.

The man bent all the demons

and they began to yell.

The Devil himself was deciding

with the man just what could they do

but before The Devil knew it

the man had bent him too.

It was back to his home they bent him,

Back to his bent old hill.

And if you should pass by his old bent pole,

you'll see him bending still.

Afterwards to satisfy my curiosity I looked into the original. It is an old traditional British rhyme usually included in Mother Goose collections. It appears to be written about the reign of King Charles I (1600-1649). The most common version is as follows-

There Was A Crooked Man

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

I didn't do too much reading on it but the crooked man is apparently a Scotsman by the name of Alexander Leslie (1582-1661), the stile is said to be the border between England and Scotland and the house makes reference to an agreement between the two countries, the more you know. This brings about the close of my musings on men with possible physical disfigurement and/or questionable character.