Epode III: Grown-Up Girls Below the Railway (Parentis olim)
[In Olden Days]

This Epode is a curse poem and I confess I had not come across this genre before. Here’s what David West has to say in his explanatory notes:

‘When Jason and the Argonots came to Colcis to win the Golden Fleece, Jason had to yoke fire-breathing bulls. Horace pretends that garlic was the deterrent Medea prescribed against them. Jason took her back to Greece with him, but when he was about to marry Cruesa, daughter of the King Corinth, Medea gave her a poisoned dress which burned on contact with the skin.’ (1)

‘Horace may be mischievously playing with the fact that Publious Canidius Crassus was a loyal supporter of Anthony and led his land forces at the battle of Actium. He was put to death by Octavian in 30 BC’(2)

‘Hercules killed the Centaur Nessus when he attempted to rape Hercules’ wife Deianira. As he died Nessus gave her a shirt impregnated with fire, and told her that she should give it to Hercules if ever she doubted his love.’(3)

This idea of the curse poem seemed like a really good opportunity to use the girls’ friendship group as a place to warn each other off about stealing boyfriends. In my poem the girls we met as youngsters in an earlier, non-Epode based poem, ‘Girls Below the Railway’, have grown up. The girls are loyal friends, but when it comes to men it’s every girl for herself!

Just has Horace replaced the original deterrent with garlic, so in my poem I replace Horace’s garlic with pigs trotters, (regarded as somewhat of a delicacy below the railway in Thornaby just after the Second World War – but you’ll have to take my word for that!)

Horace says, ’If any man with impious hand has broken his aged father’s neck /
let him eat garlic. It is worse than hemlock.’ And he ends by addressing his patron, Maecenas, telling him that if ever he decides to play tricks then may he be cursed like this,
’your lover may put up her hand against your kiss and lie far from you on the bed.’
The speaker in my poem warns her friend, Little Anne:

’Now Anne, if you get any ideas about my bloke,
don’t be surprised if the next day,
when you go to get your best dress from the wardrobe,
it smells like the essence of pig.’

thus reintroducing the idea from the original Jason story about a poisoned dress.

(1)West, D. (1997) Horace: The Complete Odes and Epodes. Oxford University Press,:Oxford p.133
(2)ibid
(3)ibid