Although Fitz-Herbert Dacosta Bailey left Bay Street Boys’ School at least 77 years ago, the Bajan can remember almost every word of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classic poem about the village blacksmith.
Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands.
The smith, a mighty man is he, with large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
Longfellow, inspired by the sight of a tradesman, forge and children playing near the blacksmith shop on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as he walked to Harvard University where he taught foreign languages, wrote the immortal 19th century verse.
Bajans of Bailey’s generation and much later learnt it by heart from the Royal Reader, a standard text in Barbados’ elementary schools in the first half of the 20th century.
“Oh yes, I can remember that poem very well,” said Bailey before reciting it with ease.
But there is another sound reason why the 90-year-old man, of Pinelands, St Michael, enjoys the poem.
The grandfather who is spending several weeks with his daughters Enid Crookendale and Shirley Bailey-Franklyn in New York, is among a handful of blacksmiths, if so many, alive today.
The tradesmen whose shops dotted the Barbados landscape, especially on or near sugar cane plantations and factories, were also present in Bridgetown and its environs and kept the wheels moving in Barbados.
Back then, long before the automobile became the standard mode of transportation, there were the donkey-, horse- and mule-drawn carts as well as the horse and buggy owned by plantation managers and the black well-to-do.
After the wheelwrights had done their job, blacksmiths took over making and fitting the rings or the iron bands cited by Longfellow. They also made horseshoes.
“That brings back many memories,” said Bailey, who became the Government’s blacksmith at the then Department of Highways and Transport. He served for more than 30 years before retiring decades later with a pension and gratuity.
“Blacksmiths were everywhere. We had quite a lot. Not only did they make the rings for the wheels but they also made or sharpened the pickaxes and metal hand tools used by labourers and others toiling across the country.”
Indeed, his Government job involved making the iron hand tools for workers digging ditches and doing other jobs.
“When I retired I was the last blacksmith at the Pine,” he recalled.
“The blacksmith trade began to fade long before I retired as more and more vehicles came into the country and the carts began to disappear. In addition, you could import the tools and there wasn’t much of a need for people like me.”
But there is more to Bailey’s story than being a blacksmith.
He was also a tinsmith and made pots and pans for cooking, washing, bathing and other daily chores in the home.
“I used to put handles on empty cans that became cups for drinking tea, water and beverages,” he explained.
“Poor people had to use those things back then because they couldn’t afford otherwise. I drank drink out of a tin can on which I had put a handle. I made cups, anything for drinking. That was before people could afford enamel cups and imported baking and cooking pans and pots. That was the way of life in Barbados.”
In much the same way that the disappearance of the horse and buggy and donkey and mule cart ended the need for blacksmiths, the routine importation of cheap cups, saucers and cooking utensils sent the tinsmith trade to its ultimate doom.
“After trucks and cars began to flow into Barbados, the blacksmith trade started to disappear,” Bailey added. “Tinsmiths suffered a somewhat similar fate.”
He learnt the smithy trade from his father, who had a small shop in the Pine in the 1930s. Originally, he wanted to be a tailor after he left elementary school but couldn’t afford to be an apprentice.
“I left school at 13 years because I had to help support the family and I went to work with my father,” he recalled. “In the blacksmith shop you had to be able to use the forge and to stand in front of tremendous heat.
“When things began to get slow, that was when I prayed for a steady job with the Government and I got it. I also learned how to use the large sledgehammer and the anvil to shape the iron. It was hard work but it brought a steady income.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
These days, Bailey is enjoying the sights and sounds of New York in the company of his daughters and grandchildren before heading back to Barbados.
