A Sequence by John Mee

Bastards

Occasion of Sin

Anne Yate v George Johnson (1563)

Upon a Saturday
in the snowe tyme
and no bodie bye
they did lye in one house
and nothing betwix them
but a broken wall
and a paintid cloth.

The Son of Two Fathers

Maccslechta (c. 750)

If the woman was between men,
the law waits three years for the signs:
sound of the kin, look of the kin, manner of the kin.
But if a man swear upon his penis, that is proof.
Should she gainsay, we seek the truth of God:
her hand in the cauldron, the adze from the oak fire
on her tongue, three dark stones.

The Trial of the Virgin

Mystery Play (1468)

If not the old man, was it the snow? Uncovered,
you closed your eyes. A flake of the cold
found your mouth and grew inside you.
(The Backbiters laugh at the thought.) Beware
the morning. He’ll melt away in the sunlight.

Catechism

(1930s)

Who are the poor of Liverpool?
Irish girls who strayed.
Who are the whores of London?
Irish girls who sinned.
Who are the poor?
Who are the whores?
Irish girls who fell.

Playing the Nought

Cotgreve v Monelay (1562)

She would have gevin me a paire of shoes to hold my counsell
and I refused. Then she would have gevin me a petticote
and I refused hit likewise. She would father the child on William Holt
for he hath a house and Barnes hath none. She is a clarted hoore.
William Holt had carnall dole with her ons, behind the Milne dore.
‘Cockes wounds,’ said Holt, ‘can a man get a child standinge?
for I never had any things to do with her but standinge.’

The Law of Adulterine Bastardy

Judgment in Eileen Flynn v The Sisters of Holy Faith (1984)

‘Times are changing and we must change with them. / However they
have not changed that much / with regard to some things. / In other places
women are condemned / to death for this sort of offence. They are not
Christians / and I do not agree with this of course. / But in some respects
the nuns were far too lenient.’

The Son of the Bushes

Lex Spuriorum (1703)

As if he were nothing
rising out of the ground
like the Wind
or begotten of the Wind
which we know not
from what part of the Earth
it comes.

Tender

(2023)

He looked away
took it badly
for some reason.
She’d only called him
a lucky bastard.

John Mee won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2015 and the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition in 2016. His pamphlet From the Extinct was published by Southword Editions in 2017. His poems have appeared in many publications, including Magma, The Rialto, The London Magazine, The North, Poetry Ireland Review, Prelude. He works in the Law School at University College Cork.