There was only one drawback to the Belloc descriptions: they bore not the slightest resemblance to what had actually occurred.

From Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich.  Page 38.

Most fun of all was Hilaire Belloc—“Hilary” to his friends. Broad and burly, with a huge close-cropped head, he always wore a black suit with stiff wing collar and black tie in memory of the wife he had lost many years before. His manner, on the other hand, was anything but funereal. He would arrive, having driven himself from his home near Horsham, in a beat-up old Standard car. Once—I must have been about ten—I tried to help him off with his cloak, and almost collapsed under its weight. It seemed to have pockets everywhere—and every pocket contained its flask. There was one of brandy, one of whisky, one of port—the man was a walking wine cellar. And how he held the table: most lunches and dinners ended up with his singing ancient and raucous French songs in his cracked old voice, sometimes little more than a stage whisper. Si la Garonne avait voulu was one of them, elle serait allée jusqu’ en Espagne; or Chevaliers de la table ronde, goûtons voir si le vin est bon. Sometimes, too, he would recite his own poems—Do you remember an inn, Miranda was a particular favorite. (The BBC has a wonderful recording of this; I wish they would broadcast it more often.) Yet another speciality of his was to describe any of the decisive battles of the world. Every object on the table would be commandeered and made to represent a wooded hill, a line of archers, a regiment of cavalry or a gun emplacement. His account of the chosen battle, once he got into his stride, was electrifying: you could hear the thudding arrows, smell the cordite, and see the smoke rising from the burning villages. My father—no mean historian himself—used to maintain that there was only one drawback to the Belloc descriptions: they bore not the slightest resemblance to what had actually occurred. But it hardly seemed to matter.

The poem/song:

Tarantella (1929)

by Hilaire Belloc 

 

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteeers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in --
And the Ting, Tong, Tang, of the Guitar.
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn? 

 

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.

Notes:  The Miranda of Hilaire Belloc's "Tarantella" is Miranda Mackintosh whom Belloc met at an inn in the Pyrenean hamlet of Canranc on the River Aragon in 1909. The poem, written twenty years later, was a New Year's present to the Scottish Miranda. The holograph copy is inscribed: "For Miranda: New Year's 1929."

The tarantella is a dance (for two) that is supposed to be brought on by the intoxication induced by the sting of the tarantula, which is similar to that induced by falling in love.