Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/341

 picturesque Spanish bandits or tragic Italian clowns.

But meanwhile their friendship had had another result. It was one evening in 1891, that Mr. Allison happened to mention Treasure Island, and the famous and haunting quatrain of old Billy Bones. They bewailed the parsimony of Stevenson in revealing so little of a song which had such tremendous possibilities; and finally Waller remarked that if Allison would write two or three stanzas around the theme, he would set them to music, and maybe they could make some money out of it. The suggestion appealed to Allison, and he composed three ragged but promising stanzas, which Waller set to music next day. They called it “A Piratical Ballad,” and sent it to William A. Pond & Co. It was accepted and published—but while it was a good song, it never made anybody’s fortune.

But Mr. Allison had found what was to become his avocation for many years—to devise fitting and adequate expression for an entrancing theme:

He himself has applied the adjective “ragged” to the three stanzas which he wrote for Waller’s song; they were far from satisfying