Antigonish (poem)

"Antigonish" is a poem by the American educator and poet William Hughes Mearns, written in 1899. It is also known as "The Little Man Who Wasn't There" and was adapted as a hit song under the latter title.

An empty stairway

Poem

Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada,^[1] the poem was originally part of a play called The Psyco-ed, which Mearns had written for an English class at Harvard University, circa 1899.^[2] In 1910, Mearns staged the play with the Plays and Players, an amateur theatrical group, and on March 27, 1922, the newspaper columnist F.P.A. printed the poem in "The Conning Tower", his column in the New York World.^[2][3] Mearns subsequently wrote many parodies of this poem, giving them the general title of Later Antigonishes.^[4]

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away!

When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...

Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away....

Songs

In 1939 "Antigonish" was adapted as a popular song titled "The Little Man Who Wasn't There", by Harold Adamson with music by Bernie Hanighen, both of whom received the songwriting credits.^[3] A 1939 recording of the song by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, with vocals by Tex Beneke, became an 11-week hit on Your Hit Parade and reached #7. Other versions were recorded by Mildred Bailey & Her Orchestra, Larry Clinton & His Orchestra with vocals by Ford Leary and Bob Crosby & His Orchestra with vocals by Teddy Grace

Lil Wayne used a variation of the poem in his song "Pick Up Your Heart". In 2016 The Odd Chap released an electro swing version using samples from the Glenn Miller Band recording. In 2018, the experimental industrial group The Reptile Skins released an EP entitled Antigonish with the two lead singers having a different interpretation of the poem. The opening verse is featured on the opening track "Ytterligare ett steg närmare total jävla utfrysning" off the album Halmstad by Swedish band Shining. In 2019, the YouTube channel Estela Naïad released a song adapted from the poem, with the composition of the main theme and the voice of Estela Naïad, the harmonies and choirs of Priscilla Hernández and the musical production of Naliam Cantero.

Industrial metal band Psyclon Nine used the poem in their song The Unfortunate from their 2005 album INRI.

In culture

• The Invisible Man (1975 TV series) Season 1, Episode 9. Dr. Daniel Westin quotes part of the poem.
• The Danish fusion-rock band Rainbow Band (soon renamed to Midnight Sun) recorded a song based on the lyrics on two albums with two different vocalists in 1970 and 1971.
• The Magnus Archives Episode 85 “Upon the stair”, episode uses poem multiple times to describe an entity in the man-who-becomes-not-there’s house. Full poem spoken once, but referenced throughout.
• A 2009 horror film, The Haunting in Connecticut, quotes part of the poem.
• The poem is used in Stan Dane's book Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald to allude to research that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "prayer man", a man standing on the front steps of the Texas School Book Depository filmed by Dave Wiegman of NBC-TV and Jimmy Darnell of WBAP-TV during the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy.^[5]
• Father Brown: Season 9, Episode 9, "The Enigma of Antigonish," features the poem as both the inspiration for the criminal plot and a clue that helps resolve the crime.
• The Times's October 19, 2022, issue used the Poem facetiously in cartoon with "man" switched to "PM" - referring to former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Liz Truss
• Midsomer Murders's season 5 episode 2, "A Worm in the Bud" John Nettles as DCI Tom Barnaby mentions a part of the poem to Daniel Casey as DS Gavin Troy.
• The Coen Brothers film The Man Who Wasn't There was named after the poem^[6][7]
• Identity, the 2003 movie, repeats the last verse of this line at various parts of the movie. However, the last line of this verse is always replaced by the last line of the first verse.
• Fear the Walking Dead's season 3 episode 5, "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame" references the poem as being Phil McCarthy's final (and only) repeated words after being scalped.
• Death in Paradise's Season 4 Episode 1, "Stab in the Dark" has Detective Humphrey Goodman referencing the poem when revealing the killer.
• Strike Back Legacy, Season 5 Episode 7, Oppenheimer references the poem when blowing up a park in Vienna.
• A paraphrased version of the poem's first stanza is quoted in the introduction of the third part of Stephen King's 2001 novel Dreamcatcher. ^[8]
• The poem is recited in the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine.
• DI Jack Frost recites the first and last paragraph of the poem in A Touch of Frost, episode Mind Games (season 14, episode 1).
• Lazarus Long paraphrases the song in Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children after meeting a representative of the aliens known as The Little People.
• Fallout 76's Smiling Man, added in the "Mutation Invasion" update, recites the final stanza of the poem as one of his lines of idle dialogue.
• The poem is paraphrased in serial 4 of Sapphire & Steel

See also

• Extensional and intensional definitions
• Plato's beard
• The Man Who Sold the World (song), a song by David Bowie

References

1. Colombo, John Robert (1984). Canadian Literary Landmarks. Willowdale, Ont.: Hounslow Press. pp. 25–26. ISBN 0-88882-073-9 – via Internet Archive.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
2. McCord, David Thompson Watson] (1955). What Cheer: An Anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty Verse. New York: The Modern Library. p. 429.
3. Kahn, E. J. (September 30, 1939). "Creative Mearns". The New Yorker. p. 11.
4. Colombo (2000), p.47.
5. Dane, Stan. Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald (Martian Publishing, 2015), p. 190. ISBN 1944205012
6. Einav, Dan (February 18, 2017). "Is this the Coen brothers' most underrated movie?". Little White Lies. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
7. Allen, William Rodney (2006). The Coen Brothers: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. p. 152. ISBN 9781578068890. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
8. "Dreamcatcher, A Novel". Google Play Books. March 20, 2001. Retrieved May 8, 2023.