I always wanted to write an epoch in the same vein as “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” or “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Did oodles of research for this one … fascinating story. Ladies and gentlemen: Thomas Veale! 

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‘Twas a lowborn Lynner, who it is reputed, 
Took twenty stripes for his thieving of pewter, 
From the well-favored lair of Salem’s Gershome Brown, 
A consid’rable man cross the seafaring towne. 
Veale be his surname, Thomas to his mother, 
Who the townsfolk imputed as their robber. 
A sanguineous chapeau he showily did wear, 
Lopsidedly perched like a fox-terrier’s ears, 
To strategically cover an embattled left eye, 
And ringlets of curls as dark as the night. 
Convinced that his whipping was surely in vain, 
Veale did enlarge his scurrilous game; 
Shortly thereafter, ‘bout half sixteen hundred, 
He stormed to the seas to take to his plunderage. 
With teeth clenched like irons, and brows pursed in folds, 
He snarled at the wind that snapped the crossbones. 
From one ketch to the next, his crew wrangled riches — 
To and including those rightfully British; 
Yet Veale suffered ne’er a nervous man’s twitches, 
Argh, these spoils outshone his younger day filches. 
Then one autumn, at their Cap’n’s behest, 
Veale’s sloop a-shoaled down the river Saugus; 
Away from the vessel four seaman did row, 
With sugar and rum and riches in tow. 
The thickets of Lynn they proclaimed their stead, 
As tales of the parrying pirates did spread; 
But soon as their garden showed lifebuds of Spring, 
Down came a mandate from the murderous King: 
“So our waters might be Free of Pyratical Fear, 
Vengeance need be Levied on Veale the Buccaneer!” 
Anon three were caught, napping in a glenn, 
And shown to the gallows of bloody England; 
Yet there still breathed a fourth who did employ the Woods, 
To humbug the hounds, as but the Cap’n could. 
A home walled with stone he was force to concoct, 
Deep in the darkness of ol’ Dungeon Rock — 
A mountain of ore so enormously vast, 
One hundred feet high, as the legend is passed! 
Down in the chasm he gingerly would crawl, 
Salting away until his belly did growl; 
So, in need of an article to barter for food, 
Leather and buckles he bounded ‘to shoes; 
Tap … tap … tap … echoed through the caverns, 
Like rumours of the treasure of the walls of the taverns; 
A mystery cobbler with an appetite for pillage, 
A makeshift barrow he wheeled about the village, 
To trade his wares for a morsel or crumb, 
Ladled between his two battered thumbs. 
Yet far and wide accusations still stormed, 
Of a man who once lived by the tip of his sword; 
And with nary an oar to return to the fiord, 
Sanctimonious he stood, a pirate “reformed.” 
‘Til one day when the earth shook like thunder, 
And layers of stone buried him under; 
Boulders ‘stead of coral spelt his final doom. 
Blocking the entrance, aye, sealing his tomb. 
In Dungeon Rock Veale would rot, but not his sacred gold — 
Guarded by the lack of a map to decode. 
Now three centuries aft, not a coin has been lifted, 
‘Spite the picks and powder of many a grifter, 
Who frustrated o’er the years they enlisted, 
Swear the sea-rover never existed. 
But if ye dare take a walk today by the Rock, 
At night when the hands strike twelve on the clock, 
In water knee-deep you’ll be brought to a kneel, 
By a haunting ghost sound so frightfully real — 
    The tireless tapping of pirate Thomas Veale. 

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