The Wayfarer’s Song, Installment 8
November 12, 2014
An Experiment in point of view.
Change changing is education is forever changing change… For to marry here some pretty miss, and take her from her mother, and – presto change – through the love of change, she runs off with another.
Moraley pen[ned] the embellishments to a poem by George Webb that appeared in an almanac for 1730 praising William “Pen” Penn (1644-1718) who was proprietor of the multicultural Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where the secret fraternal order of the Free and Accepted Masons established their first North American lodge in 1730 promoting an egalitarian sensibility of liberalism. To enlightened music in this new order, Fortuna and Lady Liberty became almost interchangeable, to not love her would surely be sinning; and God could be seen tuning the cosmic bass strings to ensure harmony worldwide. Already the colonies fields clad with the verdure of green were a cynosure in the world for upward social mobility if one could produce la bagatelle.
Goddess of Numbers, who art wont to rove
O’er the gay Landskip, and the smiling grove:
Assist the soaring Muse, with Judgment to repeat.
The various Beauties of Thy Fav’rite Seat;
Thy Streets and Lanes, how regular and fair,
With thee no earthly City may compare.
While Europe groans, distress’d by hostile War,
No fears disturb the industrious Planters Care:
No unjust Sentence we have cause to fear;
No arbitrary Monarch rules us here.
Our Laws, our Liberties, and all are ours,
Our happy Constitution here secures,
The Seers, how cautious! And how gravely wise!
The hopeful Youth in Emulation rise;
Who, if the aspiring Muse does rightly sing,
Shall liberal Arts to such Perfection bring,
That Europe shall mourn, her ancient Fame declin’d,
And Philadelphia shall be the Athens of Mankind.
What Praise, O Pen! what Thanks are due to thee!
For this first perfect Scheme of Liberty!
What Praise! What Thanks! to thee, O Pen! are given,
Beloved of Men! and Candidate for Heaven.
Writing songs is tough, nobody knows his neighbor, requires to have them understood, a vast amount of labor. Once in the colonies, Moraley was bound to a master clockmaker who also worked as a silversmith, goldsmith, button-maker, and blacksmith. Amazed by the natural bounty naturally found in his new home, he tramped through the countryside to drum up business for his tyrannical master. The economic reality was that even established colonists had no means to build continuous wealth – they were just starting to build networks to distribute manufactured goods to gain a small sense of autonomy. As a journeyman after service, Moraley could only earn about a third of what another journeyman with comparable experience could make in London. (‘Tis hard to keep afloat, and so I hope that all of you will freely, take a note.) Unable to become independent in the contemporary sense of the word, Moraley lived a single life in a male-dominated world. Once-indentured servants scratched hard to own property, garner a patron to establish credit, and hunt for a wife in a region were men vastly outnumbered hoopsters. Moraley had no voice in the world around him – democracy as we understand it today did not exist; free men owning no property were obliged to work, drink, and live in the company of men. Moraley was a small-minded man, he did not marry, and upon returning to England, sued his mother for her ignorance of money matters and perceived injustices towards him.
[Source: William Moraley. The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, and Indentured Servant. University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State Press, 1992. ]
The Wayfarer’s Song, Installment 7
November 10, 2014
An Experiment in point of view.
This, I believe is still true, be not deceived. There are humbugs here of every profession, the creed of mankind go on in dealing with one another, if that half the world was made well to swindle the other. Like a babe, the wayfarer must be a likable sort of humbug to survive: there is no titbit at Fortuna’s teat for an infantile curmudgeon. Unmanly modern Adams like to attribute their own personal downfalls along with those of their children to weakness in their wives or mothers.
William Moraley (1699-1762) lived as at a time of ambivalent populist religious conversations; he was a man who felt cruelly scratched by Fortuna. Moraley traveled to the North American colonies as an indentured servant to be purchased in the Mid-Atlantic region during the 1720s. Poor Moraley tried his hand at verse without much success (his meter is not much worse than mine). Throughout his life, Dame Fortune appeared to oppress. A financial failure in his homeland, he was mired in poverty. Despite attaining an education in the law, Latin, history, theology, math, and science, he could not find employment as a watchmaker – at least in a pinch I can cobble my own boots. Sadly, mass production transformed skilled industries making many artisans redundant to machinery. Moraley was imprisoned for debts and thrown into a metaphorical pit, signing a contract of indenture to gain passage to colonial North America became his means to climb up out of the pit.
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