The Pogues' Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

Jeffrey T. Roesgen

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781441105707
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

To absorb Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash is to be taken on a wild voyage with a cast of downtrodden revolutionaries. Despite this notion, the epic themes of the Pogues' second full length record have been overlooked by both critics and biographers in favor of two things: the band's penchant for combining Celtic folk with punk rhythms ("the sound") and the excesses of Shane MacGowan ("the creator"). Instead of reiterating these aspects, this book discusses, in the form of a sea-faring narrative, the record's articulation of what it is found to be magnificently trodden. Through epic imagery gracing the cover of the album and reverberating throughout the lyrics, Roesgen's book shows that what the Pogues created is far more than pub-room music created by drunken men wallowing in Irish nostalgia and pining for something subversive.

The Bank of the Thames, 1985

A life at sea had transformed the man who stood on the dark riverbank. It had withered his face, thickened his hands; it had offered him both freedom and tragedy. It had delivered him to places so far and beautiful that he wept at the sound of the waves. In the scent of the ocean he recalled old friends, just whispers now, with whom he’d drunk, fought, and held under every imaginable circumstance. Now, this man was old; his legs unsteady, his fingers nubs, no longer suited for ropes.

At night, he wandered the riverbanks, looking to the great moored vessels that floated, impotent now, on crests of water illuminated by the city lights. He recited their histories as he watched them; he whispered the names of their crews, long committed to memory. Communing with the ships this way soothed him, like a family, an experience embraced.

One particular night, he watched commotion about one of the ships. There was music—familiar to the old man yet in some other way, damaged. There were drunken hollers from the deck that resounded over the water. At the railing of the ship he saw a man writhing with laughter, waving a bottle, spewing silver facets of rum into the air. Another group of men hoisted him onto their shoulders and cast him into the river.

When the music ended, the old man watched as the ship’s passengers descended onto feeder boats that ferried them to the banks where he stood. In tight clusters they stumbled out over the docks and dissolved beyond into the dark streets. The last boat to depart the ship approached slowly. Its inhabitants, engaged in full-throated song, came out of the darkness like specters of Admiral Nelson’s Navy, clad in blue and gold. There was a notion of wear in their faces, that they were merry though in some other way betrayed. As they rose from the boat, they lugged laundry bags and cases filled with accordions, guitars, drums, and rum. Passing the old man, one of them turned. He offered a grin that was both menacing and solemn. He reached into the pocket of his coat and tossed a volume of papers out onto the bank. Then he continued on with the rest of the group toward the ramshackle buildings that stood across the road.

The band heaped their cases and bags into the corner of a small tavern and came to rest around a table. Some of them continued to sing, while others put their brows to the table and slept. After some time Cait, the sole woman in the band, rose and nodded to her group. She collected a bag and a bass and left with a man in glasses and a black hat who’d been standing along the wall. Voice by voice, the band’s songs diluted into the commotion of the tavern room. Soon, there’d be more songs to sing, but for now there’d be rest; the kind that all trodden men must indulge.

Outside, the old man wandered over to the volume of papers. He lifted and shifted them under the moonlight. He fingered at pages that were damp and eaten and held the slightest trace of rum. To himself, he read out the title of the volume that was still legible in curling, black ink: Rum, Sodomy & the Lash.

Rochefort, France, June 15, 1816

The sea lapped at the edge of the ferry and Philip’s hand fell from under his chin, slapping against the harbor. It woke him with a shiver that sent his metal cup out of his coat pocket and into the water. Both of us watched it hover, its cavity filling and then fading beneath the surface. I looked around to the rest of our group, Cait, Shane, James, Andrew, and Spider arrayed about, unconscious. Philip twisted his head at the sky, squinted, and then returned to sleep. I licked a sour film of brandy from my lips. I’d been awake for two days playing to a festival crowd, then to a squad of soldiers, and was now joining a convoy in Rochefort where we were to board a ship for Senegal.

Why we decided to make a voyage to Africa was unclear then and still eludes me even now. It was a faint consensus, one that arrived without any particular deliberation or thought, just a simple shrug of shoulders, a spit on the ground, and a collection of indifferent, though resolute, nods. A French officer had invited us to join the convoy the prior week. He’d mumbled to us over the rim of his cup that France, now united after an inconvenient bout with Napoleon, was ready to extend herself back into Senegal where, for a century, her ships had havens at the Port of St. Louis. This officer fingered at his mouth and then hedged that a group of English and Irish would be welcome to go, especially after the aid that our countrymen gave against Napoleon. In the intervening week we’d forgotten the invitation, played five gigs, lost Shane for two days in the countryside, and each night slept outdoors: time and place became a gentle continuum, where there came no distinction between the morning and darkness or Paris or Rochefort or Africa. A sea voyage became another course in our group’s fraying sense of reality: the kind that comes when you’ve been away from home for too long.

It was late in the morning and already the day was hot, without any breeze to stir the water. Each of our ferry’s oarsmen had removed their tunics and their callused brands shone white in the sun. I stared at the them: raised fluer-de-lis, pointed and curved like claws. An oarsman watched me as he ladled at the water.

“France’s rejects,” he called and the others laughed along.

I watched as our ferry took us to the four ships anchored at the far side of the harbor. There were streams of activity about them. Crews ran the decks while hoists pulled up slabs of cargo from flat barges. The creaking was deafening: crates, planks, ropes.

The Medusa sat clean on the water, its precise hull cutting lines that crested up to the mass of the ship that was sailed and battled. When we came below it, I looked up to her guns, watching out to the open ocean. Our ferry shuddered and the oarsmen began to shout up to the crew of the Medusa. A pair of ropes were cast down and a ladder extended. The ferry shuddered again and I watched Shane’s eyelids break. With his hand he collected a phase of spittle on his cheek and then pounded the arm of Spider who’d rolled onto his thigh. Spider covered his eyes and turned onto Cait’s lap. James woke, rose, and lifted a bag onto his shoulders. Andrew reached into the harbor and rinsed his face. “Bastard,” said Cait a moment before Spider’s head made a dull crack against the floor.

There was such banter as we ascended the nimble ladder to the ship that it twisted and sent Spider crashing back into the ferry. Shane looked down from the deck of the Medusa and jibbed at him as he tucked a whistle back into his pocket and climbed again. When he reached the deck, Spider smoothed his hand along his hair and then tackled his old friend, musing that they were reunited brothers.

An officer rushed over to our group. He stood before Spider, rigid and ornate, and nodded to the bags and cases at our feet.

“Musicians,” said Spider, releasing Shane.

The officer winced and brought up a collection of papers he’d rolled behind his back. He squinted at it. “Your name?”

“Pogue Mahone.”

The officer made his eyes slender. “Pogue Mahone?” He fiddled with the sparse whiskers on his chin.

“A Gaelic expression.”

“Gaelic?”

“‘Kiss my arse.’” Spider shot back.

The officer widened his eyes and poised his head above the group.

We were quiet, looking to our feet. The officer shifted himself rigid. He looked to Spider. “Aboard this ship you will be Pogues.” He peered up to the quarterdeck, swallowing hard. Then he hollered to a sailor who’d been loading barrels into the hold. “These are gundeck passengers.”

The sailor limped to us: short footsteps for his body, giving the effect of flotation. He led us to a staircase that went into the belly of the ship. He turned every few steps as if to say something, but each time turned away. Above the staircase, on the quarterdeck, stood a collection of officers speaking low to one another and nodding to two men, one in a glamorous Captain’s uniform and the other in a suit decorated in gold chains and buttons. The sailor released a heap of air and whispered, “The Captain and the Governor.”

“Governor?”

“Of Senegal.” An officer came up the stairs and the sailor quieted. He motioned downward, “You’ll stay on the first deck.”

Musk and hollers channeled up the stairs. Angling with our bags, we came down into the gundeck. The wooden beams of the deck curved low and each of us craned to enter. There were crowds already inside, crouched against the guns and arrayed along barrels of wine and brandy in the far corner. There were songs and shouts trapped in the long room. Men sat in tight circles with the fragile rattle of dice between them. Soldiers and sailors raced into the deck, taking long slurps from the barrels and then running back to their posts. There’d been no bunks constructed on the gundeck, rather, there were perimeters of luggage that marked sleeping spaces. Andrew and Shane set two drum cases in the corner of the room and sat against them and slept. James heaped off a laundry bag from his back. I shrugged off my bag and case next to him and extracted my cup. With my head bowed I forded the crowds, some dressed in fine clothes, others in filthy tunics. At the wine barrels there was a line. Two officers scurried past, both cursing the Captain of the ship. I watched as they broke line to take a drink.

“The revolution continues,” a voice, thick with rhythm, said from the next line. I looked over at the man, who twisted his eyes at the officers. “It won’t be pleasant.”

“It will be a two week journey, nothing more,” a Frenchman next to him said.

“Listen to who curses,” said the man.

“How could you know the minds of Bonapartists?”

“The Isles know the issues of the French.” The man’s eyes turned to me, “Do we not?”

We filled our cups and crouched in the center of the deck. The man wore a gaming jacket from which he’d purposely flashed a pocket watch. At his hip was an empty holster. When he sipped from his cup, he moved his eyes around the deck. His name was Jock Stewart and he spoke at length about the command of the Medusa. The Captain, he explained, had never before commanded a ship, let alone a convoy. He’d been in the King’s navy serving against the Bonapartists during the revolution. There, he’d not reached higher than a customs officer. And yet after Waterloo and Napoleon’s final exile, he’d been given, in reward for his loyalty, command of this entire convoy. Many would have made more suitable commanders, but they’d been Bonapartists. These men now sat under the Captain’s command and they anticipated, even wished for, his incompetence.

“And the Governor?” I asked.

He twisted his eyes, smirked, and said nothing.

Philip walked over, reaching for my cup. We passed it between us while Stewart continued on about the pockets of animosity against the Captain, all the while his eyes shifting about the deck. In that short time, he revealed a talent for allowing us to glimpse his secrets, knowing well that his demeanor caused us to summon even more. He told us how his pistol had been taken when he’d boarded the ship but that he’d stashed two others in his case. “I patrol the situation,” he said, and then sipped and walked away up the stairs.

While the rest of our group slept and Cait thwarted the pleasantries of various men, Philip and I sat beside one of the guns with our instruments, a guitar and banjo, and worked songs. We sounded out a melody that we found could be merry or melancholy depending on how deliberately we played the notes. We found an intricate melody, then a soaring progression: a prolific session. Philip would close his eyes and conjure some secret notion when we played something to his liking: “the ghosts still haunt the waves,” “the sirens sing no lullaby” were things he uttered.

“What bards are these?” A voice called from the gun on the opposite side of the floor. An immense man chuckled and crawled through the crowds to us. He removed his canvas pack and reclined against our gun. He held a round iron shot in his hand that he released and rolled on the floor between his knees. His name was Bogle, a traveler who’d been through the Mediterranean, working barges. When he leaned close, his voice was soft, “Will you play for the deck?” Philip motioned to the corner where Andrew slept. Next to him was James with his chin at Andrew’s feet. Shane was against the wall, his breaths inflating the loose scarf around his neck. “Ah, later perhaps,” Bogle said while he chuckled and rolled the shot. He asked about our music and even knew some Irish lyrics. He sang something of his own but resembling “The Old Claddaugh Ring.” Later, he took up the guitar while Philip slept. Upon the expanse of his chest, the instrument was a toy. He trapped the shot between his thighs and with the thickness of his fingers fumbled at the strings. I took a final sip and then leaned back into the gun. And despite the laughter, the shouts, the brooding for Napoleon, I fell away from the room.

Rochefort, June 16, 1816

A rush of water pounded at the walls and the ship lifted. Bogle’s iron shot rolled from his legs, slamming into the ankle of a man who stumbled and spilled his cup. When he came to his feet, the man stammered through a crowd, slurring, yelling for the man who’d tripped him. Bogle rose to his feet, bending at the waist to keep from extending through the ceiling. The man chuckled. “An accident.”

Unsteady and free from the anchors’ hold, the Medusa floated idle, shifting in the water. “Sea legs, sea legs, now,” men hollered. For two days our convoy sat this way without the wind to push us from the harbor. Heat drove us up to the main deck at intervals. There we met Corréard, an engineer, who spoke of his task to survey and build Senegal’s railroads. He moved his head over to a collection of twenty foreign men who sat among slabs of cargo staring back at us. “My navvys,” he called them, “navigators to build for me.” Even on the gundeck, the navvys remained silent and together. Corréard was a loyal host to them, protecting their meals and keeping them from fights.

In the afternoon I stood on the main deck, looking back at the coal buildings of Rochefort, and at the other three ships of the convoy. Like our Medusa, each of them held sailors arrayed around the decks, poised for the breeze. To my shoulder came Jock Stewart, who motioned to the quarterdeck with his head. Upon it, the Governor paced between the rails thrusting his finger to the sails, to the sky, to the horizon. He shouted at the Captain, who stood with his hands at his back. Stewart cursed both of them. “Haste will mean catastrophe.” Then he walked over to a young sailor and the two whispered, each taking glances at the quarterdeck.

We returned to the gundeck and marveled at the stock of wine barrels. Every half day a new one would roll in and was tapped. There were pans of biscuits brought in throughout the day and in the galley there were pots of soup made from the uneaten meat and vegetables of the elite passengers. Shane, who’d been missing since last evening, came onto the gundeck with his arm around the neck of Frank Ryan. They laughed and stumbled together, Ryan’s long, rigid trunk keeping them both on their feet. He drank cup after cup in our company, saying that the Governor would make a restless voyager, that he’d push us for speed, that the officers would overthrow him, that the African coast was treacherous. Shane nudged a finger at Ryan, “He stirs the officers.” And Ryan nodded to one passing for a cap of brandy. Shane said to us, “Ask him why he goes to Africa?”

Ryan lifted his finger to the side of his nose and Shane released an unfolding cackle that peeled at the roof of his mouth. Then he and Ryan went away to the barrels.

Philip turned to me, questioning if I recognized his unspoken concern: Revolt? Mutiny? I looked back at my friend and handed my cup to him. The anchors had lifted and we waited only for the grace of the wind. Nothing could be done.

An officer and a soldier entered the deck, the first ones not soliciting a drink. The officer was tall with curling hair the color of wheat. I’d seen him with the Captain poring over charts and orders, one of his aides. He held an ornate, curved blade in his belt and moved with deliberation among the crowds. At last he reached the corner where he, James, and Andrew surveyed the room. We migrated toward them with Cait. The officer explained that the absence of wind had made the Governor, his family, and his staff restless.

“Music would do good for the stalled expedition.” The officer looked to each of us. “The Governor requests you to play on the main deck.”

We hunted among the crowds and found Shane and Spider with Ryan making merry with the navvys. We collected our instruments. Bogle hooted and slapped the floor. He and a crowd followed us up the slender staircase.

On the main deck, a ring of passengers had already formed and it politely parted for us to fill the center. All the faces, adorned with cheerful eyes, were those of the wealthy: King Louis’s passengers. There were women before us with children at their thighs and men posed proudly above them. Behind them, droves of soldiers, sailors, and gundeck passengers approached. Above us on the quarterdeck sat a collection of the ship’s elite: the Captain, the Governor, his wife and daughter, each seated in armchairs. We tussled with our instruments: Spider, some flutters of whistle; Philip, tuning; James, pulling air into his accordion. Then we looked to Shane.

“Wild Cats of Kilkenny!” he proclaimed, following with a shriek that resounded over the harbor.

Cait started with a violent rumble from her bass, then Andrew with a turbulent rhythm, then Philip and I picking quickly. Shane shrieked again and the tempo gained. Soon James and Spider joined with merry melodies above it all. The children who’d been attempting to dance and the men and women ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Rum, Sodomy & the Lash
• Author’s Note
• Bibliography
• eCopyright