Bad Poetry: An English Slave

I am a slave, despite the pearls

That dangle from my ears.

They say it's worst for pretty girls.

I bite back sobs and fears.

Papa died first; Ma close behind.

Then my rich uncle sent

Men to collect what they could find

To sell to pay the rent.

Here I stand at the village fair.

A rag's all that is left

To tie up my long dirty hair.

I'm wary, gaunt, bereft.

A lady looks me over well,

Then smiles, and moves right on.

She'll be back. I wish I could tell

Whether she has a son.

Though African slaves were the ones some people wanted to make a permanent slave caste in the United States, a majority of the first generation of slaves owned by English colonists were English--brought over from England, as slaves. Some were sold as punishment for crimes, and some out of desperate financial need, at times when begging or even vagrancy were criminalized.

Over at https://dversepoets.com/2025/06/19/greetings-from-boston-and-an-invitation-to-join-us-live/, Lillian the Home Poet invited poems suggested by one of three portraits of people. One of the portraits depicts a young girl dressed in real old-style rags and tatters with a twig caught in a wisp of hair that dangles out from under a faded bonnet patched with different faded rags, and a pearl earring. All the painting said to me was "imperfect realism" until someone observed that the girl looked a bit like Scarlett Johansen. Then my mind flashed back to her role as Anne Boleyn, and a story in which (the young) SJ might have played an English slave popped into mind. 

English slaves in England, unlike African slaves, could afford to be ambitious; they could earn their freedom and rejoin the working class. The character SJ played as Anne Boleyn might even have aspired, if she'd been poor...probably not to marry a rich man, but to be "ruined" by one who would give her enough money to support her and the child. (If she'd been a boy, she might have been able to hope to learn a trade and go into business for herself by the time she was full-grown. Discrimination is bad for people's characters.)

Rich people in Renaissance England weren't in town every day. Free laborers might get year-long job contracts at a fair. Slaves and just about everything else might be sold at one.

But how would this girl have dared to present herself for domestic service in this condition? People expected cheap domestic help to be half-grown, likely half-witted, certainly not educated or even trained for their jobs. Standards of cleanliness were lower for everyone than they are now. Still, a competent domestic was not supposed to show visible hair or a smudged face. The only way even SJ's version of Anne Boleyn could have carried that off would have been if people saw someone else deliberately...This is a poem, not a novel, though a novel about this character might be interesting.