Ban and Arriere Ban: A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes

Ban and Arrière Ban gathers the scattered verses of Andrew Lang, that indefatigable Scottish man of letters, into something that feels less like a collection than a rallying cry from a vanished world. The title itself, borrowed from feudal terminology for summoning vassals to battle, hints at what Lang is doing here: calling forth poems that might otherwise have fled into obscurity, assembling them under one banner against the forgetting of time. The verses range across the emotional landscape with the restlessness of a poet who could not quite settle: there are tender lyrics to lost loves, jaunty ballads of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite cause, contemplative verses that pause to examine the passing of seasons and the fragility of human happiness. Joan of Arc appears in these pages like a vision of martyred glory. The "Ballade of Yule" captures the ancient celebrations of midwinter with the keenness of someone who understood that old customs carry old magic. Lang writes with the nostalgia of a man who loved the past not as history but as home, and the poems gain their power from that genuine ache. These are fugitive rhymes, yes, but ones worth chasing down.