The Highwayman's Coat

I was recently looking at a list of obscure colors, and I came across this gem of an obscure word: claret. This word holds a somewhat special place in my heart because I heard it - or read it, more appropriately - for the first time about 15 years ago in a poem.

I was 12 years old and in a literature class (one of a gazillion English classes I've taken...I am an English Major, after all). It was the very first day of class, and I only remember this because it was the very first time I flipped through the text book we were given. As I flipped, I came across a picture that caught my attention. It was a painting of a dashing rogue on horseback. He was elaborately dressed, and he was leaning over the neck of his horse, holding his hand down to the beautiful young woman standing on the road below him.

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes is easily one of my favorite poems of all time. It is a narrative poem that tells of a highwayman who stops by an inn in the middle of the night on his way to rob someone. He stopped to visit Bess, the woman he loves, to tell her that he'll return for her soon with a great deal of gold in his pockets. But things go wrong. Soldiers seize the inn and take Bess hostage. They tie her to the foot of her bed, and tie a musket up next to her with the muzzle against her chest. As the soldiers are looking out the windows waiting for the highwayman, she wiggles around enough to put one finger on the trigger. When the highwayman comes into view and the soldiers are all taking aim, Bess pulls the trigger "And warns him with her death." Thinking he'd been shot at, the highwayman turns and rides away. But, the next morning, when he hears what Bess did, he's seized by rage, and he races back to the inn where the soldiers are still waiting. They shoot him down. Still, to this day, the highwayman visits the landlord's daughter on winter nights.

So, this is not the happy-go-lucky love story that most little girls love, but I was just in love with the highwayman in the picture, and so I inhaled the poem. Now for the obscure word: Claret. Sorry it was a little late in coming. The Highwayman is described thus: "He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, /A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;" Of course, whenever I hear the word "claret," I think of wine. However, Claret (Klar-it) actually refers to the color of the wine: a deep red-purple.

This post is somewhat different from previous posts because I'm not really discussing the word itself, but instead the memories the word evokes. I discovered about 8 years ago, 7 years after reading the poem for the first time, that The Highwayman is actually my father's favorite poem. I very rarely see my father, and the fact that we have something in common was actually quite a shock to me. For some reason, despite being certain that we are related, I was under the impression that because my father and I never had any interraction, we would have absolutely nothing in common. It sort of makes the poem extra special.

Anyway, that's all for this time around. Thank you for reading. Until next time!