Reminding us that the horrors of war extend far beyond the battlefield, Wilfrid Gibson’s poem ‘Katherine Veitch’ tells of a mother driven to madness by the loss of her son at the battle of Loos in 1915. Gibson, one of the first poets to write about World War 1, had previously described soldiers with shell-shock; in this post-war poem he dramatises the psychological consequences for families of the war dead. He continued to write about war and its aftermath for many years after the Armistice.
The Battle of Loos, autumn 1915, was a major disaster for the British Army. There were massive casualties, and of the 21000 British troops killed, one in 3 were Scots; scarcely a town or village in Scotland was unaffected by loss. This is perhaps why Gibson chooses here to include a number of Scots/Border dialect words which would have been familiar to him from his formative years living in the borderlands of Northumberland.
Katherine Veitch
He fell at Loos: and when she heard
The tidings, though she did not stir,
Some light within her at the word
Was darkened; and it seemed to her
Death sought to snatch her bairn from her —
To snatch her suckling babe from her:
And she forgot that he had grown
A hefty lad, to be her pride,
A shepherd for skilled piping known
Throughout the hilly Borderside,
Until they took him from her side,
No more to seek his minney’s side.
By day or night, she cannot rest —
Stravaging over Auchopecairn
She clutches to her naked breast
An old clout-dolly, like a bairn,
And moans — My bairn, my hinney bairn!
Death shall not have my wee bit bairn!
Germinal No 1, [July 1923]; reprinted in Wilfrid Gibson, 1925,
I Heard a Sailor and other poems.
Notes
Auchopecairn [ or Auchope Cairn] is in the Cheviots, near the Scottish/English border. This bleak, rocky, and windswept spot is likely to be a place Gibson knew first-hand, as a keen walker of his native moors and hills.
Clout-dolly: rag doll.
Minney: term of endearment for mother
Hinney bairn: darling child
Stravaging: wandering aimlessly
More Gibson poems relating to war.
For Armistice Day 2023: poem by Wilfrid Gibson
Wilfrid Gibson poems for Armistice Day, November 2018
Copyright: All Wilfrid Gibson poems © trustees of the Wilfrid Gibson estate.
COMING SOON
In 1923 Katherine Veitch was included in the launch issue of Germinal, a short-lived literary magazine edited by socialist feminist Sylvia Pankhurst. More on the connection between Wilfrid Gibson and Sylvia Pankhurst coming soon to this site.