Pringle, Thomas
1 2024-09-14T15:59:53+00:00 Christopher Ohge 67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c37616 1 3 Person record for Thomas Pringle plain 2024-09-14T16:01:10+00:00 Christopher Ohge 67a4fbaba4797c94aa865988788fca89b5c37616Pringle, Thomas
Name ID: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q380383
Born: 1789
Died: 1834
Faith: Presbyterian
Note: Thomas Pringle was a Scottish writer, poet, and abolitionist. A friend of Sir Walter Scott, and for a short time editor of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, he published his first volume of poems in 1809, which included ‘The Emigrant's Farewell’. He emigrated to South Africa, and he is remembered chiefly as a poet of that country. His Ephemerides (1828) and African Sketches (1834) reveal his sympathetic interest in Africa. He became the secretary of the London Anti-slavery Society in 1827. In 1834, the year the Slavery Abolition Act was passed, he died of consumption.
This page is referenced by:
-
1
2023-11-13T08:11:58+00:00
The Forester of the Neutral Ground, by Thomas Pringle
19
Poem by Thomas Pringle
plain
2025-01-08T12:32:28+00:00
A South-African Border Ballad
We met in the midst of the Neutral Ground,
'Mong the hills where the buffalo's haunts are found;
And we joined in the chase of the noble game,
Nor asked each other of nation or name.
The buffalo bull wheeled suddenly round,
When first from my rifle he felt a wound;
And, before I could gain the Umtoka's bank,
His horns were tearing my courser's flank.
That instant a ball whizzed past my ear,
Which smote the beast in his fierce career;
And the turf was drenched with his purple gore,
As he fell at my feet with a bellowing roar.The stranger came galloping up to my side,
And greeted me with a bold huntsman's pride;
Full blithely we feasted beneath a tree; --
Then out spoke the forester, Arend Plessie.
"Stranger! we now are true comrades sworn;
Come pledge me thy hand while we quaff the horn;
Thou 'rt an Englishman good, and thy heart is free,
And 'tis therefore I'll tell my story to thee.
"A Heemraad of Camdebóo was my sire;
He had flocks and herds to his heart's desire,
And bondmen and maidens to run at his call,
And seven stout sons to be heirs of all.
"When we had grown up to man's estate,
Our father bade each of us choose a mate,
Of Fatherland blood, from the black taint free,
As became a Dutch burgher's proud degree.
"My brothers they rode to the Bovenland,
And each came with a fair bride back in his hand;
But I brought the handsomest bride of them all --
Brown Dinah, the bondmaid who sat in our hall.
"My father's displeasure was stern and still;
My brothers' flamed forth like a fire on the hill;
And they said that my spirit was mean and base,
To lower myself to the African race.
"I bade them rejoice in their herds and flocks,
And their pale-faced spouses with flaxen locks;
While I claimed for my share, as the youngest son,
Brown Dinah alone with my horse and gun.
"My father looked black as a thunder-cloud,
My brothers reviled me and railed aloud,
And their young wives laughed with disdainful pride,
While Dinah in terror clung close to my side.
"Her ebon eyelashes were moistened with tears,
As she shrunk abashed from their venomous jeers;
But I bade her look up like a burgher's wife --
Next day to be mine, if God granted life.
"At dawn brother Roelof came galloping home
From the pastures -- his courser all covered with foam;
' 'Tis the Bushmen!' he shouted; 'haste, friends, to the spoor!
Bold Arend! come help with your long-barrelled roer.'
"Far o'er Bruintjes-hoogtè we followed -- in vain:
At length surly Roelof cried, 'Slacken your rein;
We have quite lost the track.' -- Hans replied with a smile. --
Then my dark-boding spirit suspected their guile.
"I flew to our father's. Brown Dinah was sold!
And they laughed at my rage as they counted the gold.
But I leaped on my horse, with my gun in my hand,
And sought my lost love in the far Bovenland.
"I found her; I bore her from Gauritz' fair glen,
Through lone Zitzikamma, by forest and fen.
To these mountains at last like wild-pigeons we flew,
Far, far from the cold hearts of proud Camdebóo.
"I've reared our rude shieling by Gola's green wood,
Where the chase of the deer yields me pastime and food:
With my Dinah and children I dwell here alone,
Without other comrades -- and wishing for none.
"I fear not the Bushman from Winterberg's fell,
Nor dread I the Caffer from Kat-River's dell:
By justice and kindness I've conquered them both,
And the sons of the desert have pledged me their troth.
"I fear not the leopard that lurks in the wood,
The lion I dread not, though raging for blood:
My hand it is steady -- my aim it is sure --
And the boldest must bend to my long-barrelled roer.
"The elephant's buff-coat my bullet can pierce;
And the giant rhinoceros, headlong and fierce,
Gnu, eland, and buffalo furnish my board,
When I feast my allies like an African lord.
"And thus from my kindred and colour exiled,
I live like old Ismael, Lord of the Wild --
And follow the chase with my hounds and my gun;
Nor ever regret the bold course I have run.
"But sometimes there sinks on my spirit a dread
Of what may befall when the turf's on my head;
I fear for poor Dinah -- for brown Rodomond
And dimpled-faced Karel, the sons of the bond.
"Then tell me, dear stranger, from England the free,
What good tidings bring'st thou for Arend Plessie?
Shall the Edict of Mercy be sent forth at last,
To break the harsh fetters of Colour and Caste?"
Thomas Pringle. -
1
2023-08-23T00:12:00+00:00
The Desolate Valley, by Thomas Pringle
11
Poem by Thomas Pringle
plain
2025-01-07T20:32:07+00:00
a south-african scene.
[The result of the war of 1819, between the Colonial Government of the Cape and the Caffer tribes, was the annexation to the Colony of a large tract of the Amakosa country. This was effected by a compulsory convention with the native chiefs, who, with their followers, were dislodged and expelled beyond the Keisi and Chumi rivers. The whole of the evacuated territory, under the appellation of the Neutral Ground, remained unoccupied for several years, and a large portion of it remains so still. I made an excursion through part of it, from the Winterberg mountain down the river Koonap, in 1822, and again in 1825, in another direction. The aspect of the country, though wild, was beautiful and impressive. It was finely diversified with lofty mountains and winding glens, with picturesque rocks and forests, open upland pastures, and level savannahs along the rivers, sprinkled with mimosa trees; and herds of wild animals, quaggas, elands, hartebeests, gnoos, koodoos, with several varieties of the smaller antelopes, were scattered over the verdant pastures; while troops of elephants were browsing undisturbed among the wooded kloofs and jungles of evergreens. But the remains of Caffer hamlets, scattered through every grassy nook and dell, and now long deserted and fast crumbling to decay, excited reflections of no gratifying character, and occasionally increased, even to a painful degree, the feeling of melancholy lonesomeness which a country void of human inhabitants never fails to inspire. Before the Caffers and Ghonaquas were expelled from this territory, a few of them had acquired some knowledge of Christianity, partly from the instructions of that singular but most meritorious man, Doctor Vanderkemp, and more especially from the missionary Williams, who resided about two years among them at the Kat River, previous to his death in 1818. The following Stanzas are an attempt to give a Sketch of a remote Vale in this wild country, after the first missionary station had been left desolate, and previous to its occupation by the Emancipated Hottentots and their Christian Pastors, in 1829. T. P.]
I.
Far up among the forest-belted mountains,
Where Winterberg, stern giant old and grey,
Looks down the subject dells, whose gleaming fountains
To wizard Kat their virgin tribute pay,
A Valley opens to the noontide ray,
With green savannahs shelving to the brim
Of the young River, sweeping on his way
To where Umtoka hies to meet with him,
Like a blue serpent gliding through the acacias dim.
II.
Round this secluded region circling rise
A billowy waste of mountains, wild and wide;
Upon whose grassy slopes the pilgrim spies
The gnu and quagga, by the greenwood side,
Tossing their shaggy manes in tameless pride;
Or troop of elands near some sedgy fount;
Or koodoo fawns, that from the thicket glide
To seek their dam beneath the misty mount;
With roebucks, harts, gazelles, more than the eye may count.
III.
And as we journeyed up the pathless glen,
Flanked by romantic hills on either hand,
The bush-buck oft would bound away -- and then,
Beside the willows, backward gazing, stand.
And where old forests darken all the land,
From rocky Katberg to the river's brink,
The buffalo would start upon the strand
Where, 'midst palmetto flags, he stooped to drink,
And, crashing through the brakes, to the deep jungle shrink.
IV.
Then, couched at night in hunter's wattled shieling,
How wildly beautiful it was to hear
The elephant his shrill reveillé pealing,
Like some far signal-trumpet on the ear:
While the broad midnight moon was shining clear,
How fearful to look forth upon the woods,
And see those stately forest-kings appear,
Emerging from their mountain solitudes --
As if that trump had woke Earth's old gigantic broods!
V.
Such was the fair but melancholy scene
Which 'midst that lonely wilderness we found,
With scarce a trace to tell where man had been,
Save the old Caffer cabins crumbling round.
Yet this wild glen (Sicana's ancient ground,)
To Nature's savage tribes abandoned long,
Had heard, erewhile, the Gospel's joyful sound,
And low of herds mixed with the Sabbath song.
But all is silent now. Th' Oppressor's hand was strong!
VI.
Now the gay loxia hangs her pensile nest
From the wild-olive, bending o'er the rock,
Beneath whose shadow, in grave mantle drest,
The meek-eyed Pastor taught his swarthy flock.
A roofless ruin, scathed by flame and smoke,
Tells where the decent Mission-chapel stood:
While the baboon with jabbering cry doth mock
The pilgrim, pausing, in his pensive mood,
To ask -- "Why is it thus? Shall evil baffle good?"
VII.
Yes -- for a season Satan may prevail,
And hold, as if secure, his dark domain:
The prayers of righteous men may seem to fail,
And Heaven's Glad Tidings be proclaimed in vain.
But wait in faith: ere long shall spring again
The seed that seemed to perish in the ground;
And, fertilized by Zion's latter rain,
The long-parched land shall laugh, with harvests crowned,
And through those silent wastes Jehovah's praise resound.
VIII.
Look round that Vale: behold the unburied bones
Of Ghona's children withering in the blast:
Can the sad wind that through the forest moans
To these breathe back the spirit that hath passed?
So, in the Vale of Desolation vast,
In moral death dark Afric's myriads lie:
But the appointed day shall dawn at last,
When, breathed on by the Spirit from on High,
The dry bones shall awake, and shout -- "Our God is nigh!"
Thomas Pringle.
This page references:
- 1 2024-01-10T11:50:58+00:00 Presbyterian 1 plain 2024-01-10T11:50:58+00:00