Cousin Nancy Lyrics
Strode across the hills and broke them
Rode across the hills and broke them—
The barren New England hills—
Riding to hounds
Over the cow-pasture
Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it
But they knew that it was modern
Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith
The army of unalterable law
About
According to Terri Mester, Eliot wrote this poem in 1915 while at Oxford, England, and it was “one of a series of satirical vignettes on contemporary mores and New England manners, presumably between relatives and people the poet knew in Boston and Cambridge”. This poem appears with Eliot’s other satirical verse, including “The Boston Evening Transcript” and “Aunt Helen”, which ridicules high-bourgeois society values and personages.
Eliot’s Nancy Ellicott with her knowing “all the modern dances”, cigarette smoking, and reckless horseback riding “superficially suggest a Yankee independence and individual” that “prove to be barren acts of rebellion”.
Source: Terri Mester, Movement and Modernism: Years, Eliot, Lawrence, Williams and Early 20th Century Dance (University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 70.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning