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Come on England’

Stuart Butler

Wednesday, November 6th, 2002

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 It’s possible to shout that in umpteen different languages
And still mean it.
‘Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’
And what does that smell like?
It smells of Prehistoric Beaker Folk from Europe,
Of Celts and Romans and their Auxiliaries from Africa and Asia,
Of Picts, and Scots and Angles and Saxons
And Jutes and Vikings and Normans;
Of Flemish weavers
And Protestants fleeing the Counter-Reformation,
And Jews and Africans and Poles and Hungarians
And Germans and Travellers and Czechs and Italians
Ugandans and Irish and Indians
And Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis and Pakistanis
And West Indians and Cypriots and refugees from Chile
And all the others I have missed out because I am writing at speed
Before I miss the ‘bus’
The Omnibus – Latin Word, meaning ‘all’.

© Stuart Butler

Notes

I think I read recently that over 250 different languages are spoken in this country at the moment.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/come-on-england-3/