The Lamplighter (41 page)
Authors: Anthony O'Neill
HE
L
AMPLIGHTER
My tea is nearly ready
and the sun has left the sky;
It's time to take the window
to see Leerie going by;
For every night at tea-time
and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder
he comes posting up the street.
Now Tom would be a driver
and Maria go to sea,
And my papa's a banker
and as rich as he can be;
But I, when I am stronger
and can choose what I'm to do,
O Leerie, I'll go round at night,
and light the lamps with you!
For we are very lucky,
with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it
as he lights so many more;
And O! before you hurry by
with ladder and with light,
O Leerie, see a little child
and nod to him tonight!
Â
R
OBERT
L
OUIS
S
TEVENSON
,
A Child's Garden of Verses
, 1885
Of the innumerable writers whose works on Edinburgh I consulted I am particularly indebted to Robert Louis Stevenson, James McLevy, James McGowan, J. W. McLaren, Alisdair MacGregor, Charles McKean, E. F. Catford, George Baird, J. M. Barrie, Thomas Speedy, Sandy Mullay, and David Masson. For matters of the mind I tip my hat to Ernest Geller, Seth Pringle-Patterson, Robert C. Solomon, James Hillman, Jacques Maritain, Mario Praz, Philip J. Davis, Walter E. Houghton, George Frederick Drinka, Alan Gould, Henri F. Ellenberger, Robert Van de Castle, and Peter O'Connor. For diabolical substance I bow deferentially before Rossell Hope Robbins, Alice K. Turner, R. Love Thompson, Piero Camporesi, Alan E. Bernstein, and Sir Walter Scott. And for miscellaneous subjects I thank Molly Weir, Mary Peckham Magray, Catriona Clear, R. W. Munro, J. A. R. Stevenson, and Bella Bathurst.
In Edinburgh I was graciously assisted by Patricia and Donald Watt, Eddie McMillan of the Lothian and Borders Police, Ann Nix and the good people at the Edinburgh Room of the Central Library and the National Library of Scotland, and Pam McNicol of the Edinburgh City Archives. I further wish to acknowledge the gracious help of Carl Harrison-Ford, Jean Curthoys, Linda Funnell, Mark Gibson, Doctors A. Chin and J. G. Kendler, Guy Carvalho, and T. C. Macleod. And for obvious reasons Rose Creswell, Kim Witherspoon, David Forrer, Mark Lucas, Annette Hughes, Sadie Chrestman, Shona Martyn, Joan Deitch, Emma Kelso, John McGhee, Tegan Murray, and my astute editors Colin Harrison, Flora Rees, and Rod Morrison.
Anthony O'Neill is the son of an Irish policeman and an Australian stenographer. He lives in Melbourne.