Age is a moving target. I am older today than when I started this blog. Being ancyent is a state of mind unrelated to physical age. The Ancyent Marath'ner is a pseudonym I have used from time to time since I was in my mid 30s.
The Rime of Ancyent Marath'ner first saw the light of day in 1988. At the time I was newsletter editor for Magnolia Road Runners (MRR), a running club in Pretoria, South Africa. As the editor I had an opportunity to publish my own ramblings. After all, someone has to fill the pages of a newsletter. I wasn't very persuasive at soliciting contributions, so most issues had a few pieces written more-or-less pseudonymously. Apart from Ancyent, a regular "contributor" was Red Ed (or Ed Red, sometimes expanded to Ed Reddy or similar). That is a play on words. Back then, South Africa had two official languages, English and Afrikaans. (It now has 11.) "Redakteur" is the Afrikaans for "editor". So Red Ed is short for Redakteur / Editor. The play on words part is because "Red" was synonymous with Communism. South Africa was involved in a shooting war against the forces of Communism along the border between Angola and what was then South West Africa (at that time governed by South Africa). The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) forces were supported by advisors and troops from the USSR and its allies (primarily Cuba). South Africa supported Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). South African government propaganda was that anyone who opposed Apartheid must be a Communist. When I moved from liberal Cape Town to conservative Pretoria, some members of the running club I joined initially (the Pretoria Marathon Club) called me a Communist, probably only partly in jest. That may have been not just because I had attended the den of iniquity that is the University of Cape Town but also because I tried to suggest that the all-white PMC should open its membership to other races. The running club I had belonged to in Cape Town was one of the first in the country to be open to all races, from the time it was founded in 1977. (I should add that I have never been a Communist, nor even a Communist sympathizer.)
The first "online" appearance of the Ancyent Marath'ner was in November 1995, in a post to the Dead Runners Society listserv.
My friend Jim Puckett is good at what he calls filking, that is, modifying the words of a song, similar to what Weird Al Yankovic has made a career out of (though I have never heard Jim singing any of his filks). I hadn't heard the term (or even of Weird Al) at the time I wrote The Rime of the Ancyent Marath'ner, but it is obviously from the same genre. The spelling of "rime' and "ancient" and the notes next to the body of the text are as in an old version I found of Coleridge's masterpiece.
Herewith,
THE RIME OF THE ANCYENT MARATH'NER
With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and poetry lovers everywhere
Part I
An ancient Marathoner It is an ancient Marath'ner,
meeteth three gallopers And he stoppeth one of three.
bidden to a running 'By thy sweaty vest and glittering eye,
race and detaineth one. Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The competition's open wide,
And I would like to win;
The field has met, the gun is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'
He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a race,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me sweaty loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
The race entrant is He holds him with his glittering eye -
spell-bound by the The Race-Entrant stood still,
eye of the Grand And listens like a novice yet:
Master and constrained The Marath'ner has his will.
to hear his tale.
The Race-Entrant sat on a stone :
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Marath'ner.
'The field was cheered, the start-line cleared,
Merrily did we run
Beyond the kirk and o'er the hill,
The Marathoner tells Beneath the rising sun.
how the race began
with a good course The sun came out upon the left,
and warm weather, Out o'er the hill came he
till they hit And he shone bright, an awesome sight
the wall. No water could have we (*).
Higher and higher every kay,
It climbed into the sky-'
The Race-Entrant here beat his breast,
For he saw the field go by.
The Race-Entrant The hare hath sprinted up ahead
heareth the Chariots Fleet of foot is he;
of Fire; but the Bobbing their heads behind him goes
Marathoner continueth The mass of humanity.
his tale.
The Race-Entrant here beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Marath'ner.
(At that point my Muse upped and left, never to return to this spot again.)
(*) In ancient times seconding was not allowed so early in a race. Even if water was available, one was not allowed to drink, hence later in the poem the famous lines:
"Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink"
Not just in ancient times. The first few marathons I ran were conducted according to the Olympic rules of the time. The only seconding allowed was from refreshment stations at mile 8 and every 5 miles thereafter. Oh, the good old days :-).
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