The Valley of Maggie Grey

I was born and bred in a valley,

It was all that I ever knew,

The cows grazed out in the pasture and

The cottages were few.

I grew surrounded by simple folk

Who toiled, and ate their fill,

They had one rule that they never broke,

‘We don’t go over the hill!’

 

They said, ‘Be happy with what you’ve got,

A pleasant country life,

One of the girls you play with here

Will grow to be your wife,

We have no use for the world out there

With its thrills, and shrill alarms,

We’re all content with the life we’ve spent

On our peaceful valley farms.’

 

The school was simply a single room,

We had no need for more,

At best, the students were twenty two,

At least, they numbered four,

They didn’t study so very hard

For the life they lived outside,

To the best of my recollection there,

Nobody ever died.

 

The cemetery hadn’t been in use

Since eighteen eighty-nine,

We had no use for a doctor there

For our health was always fine.

It always seemed like a mystery

But one that was never told,

Just why in our recent history

Did no-one ever grow old?

 

They told me when I was twenty-one

The story of Maggie Grey,

Her headstone stood in the cemetery,

The last one from her day,

She’d gone as a girl to the mountain top

Picked flowers for a bride,

But when she staggered on down again,

Something had changed, inside.

 

She said she’d eaten a purple fruit

From a bush that fateful day,

Whatever it was, we didn’t know

But it changed her DNA,

Of all the children she bore from then

They all were still alive,

Seven were born to her husband Ben,

And then another five.

 

They intermarried to keep their blood

As pure as it was fine,

And everyone in the valley now

Was descended from her line,

The rest of the folk had died and gone

As it was, before her day,

And the very last to be buried there

Was poor old Maggie Grey.

 

They said that we never could leave there

Just in case our blood would spill,

Or mix with the common herd out there

For the mix would make us ill,

They said we lived in a paradise

But could never make it known,

The moment the world had heard of us

They wouldn’t leave us alone.

 

My girlfriend, Catherine Mundy was

Rebellious from the start,

She said she wanted to travel, that

To stay would break her heart.

I followed her on a moonlit night

Where she went, to work her will,

And called out, ‘Catherine, please come back,

We don’t go over the hill!’

 

She stared at me from the mountain top,

Plunged down the other side,

I chased her then and I caught her, said:

‘Come back, and be my bride!’

‘I have to go or I’ll never know

All the things in the world out there,

But when I’m done, I’ll come on back

To find if you really care.’

 

She disappeared in the darkness, and

I wandered sadly home,

They sent a party to search for her

But then came back, alone.

‘She’s down in that village of miners,

We just hope that she holds her tongue,

If she tells them the story of Maggie Grey,

The valley will be undone!’

 

A year went by and the soldiers came

And they locked us in our farms,

They brought a team of physicians who

Set up in one of the barns,

They tested us and injected us,

Took blood on alternate days,

They wouldn’t say what they expected,

But they checked us with x-rays.

 

Catherine came back home as well,

She was cuffed to an army jeep,

I asked her what she had told them, it

Was then she began to weep.

A farmer died in the early Spring

And his wife went to her grave,

The first ones buried in paradise,

In a valley too late to save!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Tom]

With modern society now entrenched almost everywhere, many of the old traditions and customs have sadly disappeared along with the venerated folk that lived wholesomely by them !

An enjoyable read with an important message to be learned within the cleverly worded lines!

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Whoever says the grass is greener on the other side, doesn't have to mow it. I don't know what it is about us that always draws us to the forbidden, and it's more often a curse than not.

Another wonderful story in verse.

[TL Boehm]

Such a sad tale. A cautionary write. We shouldn't interfere with what we don't know....be happy with what you have.

[nobody]

These words transport me to a place around a fire, listening to tales sung with the ring of truth. Thank you for the experience!

[Yellow Butterfly]

You really do have a way of reeling the reader in with your words David... a great story told by a great story teller...

Superb write...

[Keith]

Superb tale, but maybe a metaphor for when a foreign culture and customs are forced on a previously isolated people. ie the plight of the Australian Aborigines?

[A Soap Mess Stories]

The twists and turns in this story were superb...great storytelling David...

[emmajoy]

Oh my, yet another wonderful poem.come.story.come.myth from you, and in superb meter! Guess there's more than one moral to this, but for me the strongest is that knowing too much can destroy innocence, that being content with the simple is the way to be. Obviously i could be wrong, but the way you introduce hints of how it was in that Shangri La.. or what seemeds to be one.. .. and then how life altered when Catherine went and returned, seemed to point in my final thoughts of what and how, David. Superb writing, again.

[wordwarrior]

Wow David, this is amazing and very true for those who want to stay young forever and live in Paradise. They'll do whatever it takes to discover it. A sad blight on our humanity in many ways.
Excellent writing, as always

[Tate Morgan]

This one really tells it as it would be if we were ever to find the fountain of youth. For sure the government would lock us down poke and prod us. For all are just sheep to them