Repeated recitation

Retired biochemist Dr Alasdair Thomson has responded to the items on the Poet and the Pudden poem. “I remember the poem well,” he says, “and its repeated recitation in 1951 by John Anderson who was a fellow student at St Andrews with me in Hamilton Hall. Had it not been for reference to 1950 in the cutting, I would have insisted on my memory of student Anderson in Hamilton as at least a co-author.

“A group of us had acquired the words from him, seemingly as his, before he first performed it. The version I remember as a treasured memory over the years differs in the use of certain Scoticisms emphasised by John A.

A poet tae his lodgings bound espied a wee bit shoppie, wi’ black puddin’, potted heid, an’ yerds o’ syrup toffee.

He hung aboot the windae, sleekit, aboot the door he wannerd, until at last he courage took and in he slowly donnerd.

“An’ whit aboot ye,” the auld wife cried, “tae tempt sich stormy weather?”

“Ah am a poet,” he replied. “A great man wis ma faither.

“Ah hae tried the papers w’oot success, and hae nae situation. And noo A’m oan the very verge o’ utter sair starvation!”

Compassion shook that pair wife’s hairt, altho’ she didny show it! She took the biggest puddin’ in the shop, an’ haunt it tae the poet.

Then up the street through slush an’ mud, the poet’s feet gaed scuddin’, came tae the door, thrust in the key, but lo, the lock was a’ enrustet.

So he laid the puddin’ gently doon, tae try the double pressure, but then a cat came idlin’ doon and abscondet wi his treasure. To which the poet cried and cried: “Ma puddin, oh ma puddin.”

“John Anderson hailed from Montrose where his father was the medical superintendent of the local mental hospital. John once dropped him an emergency request for funds which read: ‘No mun, your son’ and the reply from Montrose read: ‘So sad, your dad’.

“The last I heard of John was many years ago when he was a practising medic on patrol in Indonesia, covering a huge area of 10,000 sq miles.”