posted 11 hours ago
Hello,
I am Dionysius Delamare, professional squirrel breeder, landscape painter, melodeon player and songwriter, nonsense poet, and permaculture farmer. I breed racing-squirrels in a landrace manner, and have developed a breed particularly suitable to my climate in New Hampshire. In this place I have a large garden replete with diverse fruiting plants and shrubs, with animals of various kinds, ponds swarming with fish healthy and hale, and many squirrels. I take utmost care of the squirrels and have devoted over 50% of my land to nut trees and other plants which are most beloved by them. They also provide a substantial harvest of meat for my homestead; squirrel pie is my favorite meal, besides fish.
My origins are long and tedious. I was born in a Kentucky coal-mining town, but orphaned at the age of seven and sent to various homes over the years which were varying degrees of comfortable and uncomfortable and which left me with a lasting distrust of stability or sureness. I am never sure of anything entirely and that has shaped how I consider and contemplate things.
I ended up on the Virginia coast, where I worked in a shipyard for my late teenage years. Eventually I threw the towel in and decided to sail the broad and endless seas for to seek my fortune on the waves. I traveled to India and Ceylon, to Zanzibar and South Africa; I traveled up the Amazon, and down through the Southern Ocean to glimpses of the southern ice. One time, in beauteous fair Ireland, our ship was sailing along and the rich captain spotted a fair maid on the shore. “I’ll die, I will die”, our captain did cry, “if I don’t have that maid on the shore!”
Now the captain had silver, and the captain had gold, and costly wares, these he had; all these he would give to his jolly ship’s crew if we’d bring him that maid on the shore. Slowly, with persuading, she came on board; the captain he gave her a cheer, “O! Come with me to the cabin below. Bid adieu to all sorrow and care!
“I’ll treat you to the red cherry wine which sparkles so bright and clearly; and then shall you sing us a merrily song to compare with my merrily crew?”
She sat herself down in the stern of the ship, where the waves. She sang so sweet, so genteel and complete, sang the captain and crew all to sleep, my friends, sang the captain and crew all to sleep! She partook of his silver, partook of his gold, partook of his costly wares; she took of his broadsword for to make her an oar and then paddled herself back to the shore! O, we were crazy, and we were mad; yea, we were near to despairing. She’d deluded us all as well as himself, and was again a fair maid on the shore.
There are more stories. One time, again, in Maine, another interesting thing occurred. Our ship was crashed upon the rocks by a gale, and I swam to shore along with the rest of the crew. Though we had gathered up many costly wares, they were dashed against the rock by our collective careless negligence and over-eagerness to arrive in Camden-port ‘ere the falling of night. We were stranded on the barren rock with nothing but seaweed to eat until a passing ship the next day spotted us and carried us along. I decided right then and there that I would persist in sailing until I was dashed to bits on the stormy seas or I had made my fortune and could rest.
Soon enough I fell asleep in an open pasture, with ripe blackberries all around, and therein I dreamt that I saw a fair beauteous maid, and her face was very kind and I knew I could trust her (though not why). She was walking out of the greenwood growing, flowers were at her feet; she took my hand and lead me inward, and showed me out to sea, where we saw a storm that was bigger than any I had ever seen. There were waves as high as mountains, and they swallowed the ships, the port towns, and everything that I had wanted was gone, washed by the water and destroyed. “You will die within a year if you continue on your present course”, she said.
“I am your own true love; I love you and you love me”, she said, “and I am of the greenwood. You shall find me here among the trees, especially the oaks and the hickories. You will find me where greener grows the wood by the years that are passing.”
I learned that all of my shipmates had died within the year, though I had forsaken the sailing life and become a landlubber again. I travelled around a while, sang and played for various establishments and honed my songwriting and musical skills. Then, while in Boston, I received another dream, where my own true love came to me and warned me that I should not grow false to her (for my eyes had wandered in time) and would soon come across the place that we would meet. It was in a place full of beautiful oaks and mountains and valleys, and the sun was shining brightly in the day. The next day I boarded a train to New Hampshire and wandered there a while longer, through high mountain and lonesome vale, o’er creeks and howling ridges, until I came to a little golden valley covered all over in white and red oak trees. It was more beautiful than anything else I had seen in this wide world—how beauteous a vale I could never hope to describe! The vastness of the wilderness, and the little town nestled in the center of it—how wondrous it was! I eventually settled around the edges of town, scratching up enough to buy a couple of acres further out and building a home there, where I moved, renting out the house. I drove the horse to market that bore the old farmer’s produce to market, and I was so faithful that after some years he willed his whole farm to me.
“You know the land as well as my children and then some”, he said. “They have all proved unfaithful and have gone to the cities to seek fame and fortune, but you have left any chance of fortune and fame to work the soil with me. There are not many who would do so, and humble themselves as you have done!” And so we have worked together in that way until I come to today.
Perhaps I shall say more another time, but for now I ask that my own true love should seek me out, and if I have failed to see her more closely, then shame on me; for many a fair young lass have I seen in my time, but never so excellent as she.
