Week 1 Storytelling: The Boy Who Would Be King

As I was going by Charing Cross,

I saw a black man upon a black horse;

They told me it was King Charles the First;

Oh, dear! my heart was ready to burst!

 (Original Nursery Rhyme)

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This is a story a girl one can only dream to be,

Behold this is the story of me,

I was a child of one,

Because by then my father was done,

He died of a stroke before I was born,

And of course you can bet, my mother was torn,

She wanted to love me, but still yearned for him,

She dreamed of riches and so much more,

But in the end we were nothing but poor,

So when I was young, I made a friend,

His name was Charley,

But only called this by me,

While my mother would clean his house,

I would watch, quiet as a mouse,

Until the day I met my dear Charley,

We played together every day thereafter, Charley and me,

We would play everyday from morning to night,

And slowly we noticed our change of height,

He grew tall, handsome, and strong,

My face was thin and my hair was long,

And he told me he knew I was beautiful all along,

We learned to love,

No one could imagine a better pair of doves,

Young Love 

One day when we were teens,

Of each others presence we would soon be weaned,

He told me “from the day we met till the day we part,

You will always have a piece of my heart”,

He told me things were to change,

And through the months we were estranged,

As a symbol of his love he gave me a pin,

And he told me he could never see me again,

Victorian Lovers Knot

I didn't understand why,

But after he left I did nothing but cry,

I was later informed he was a prince,

It has been 10 years since,

And so that brings me to today,

As I was walking along my usual way,

As I was going by Charing Cross,

I saw a black man upon a black horse;

They told me it was King Charles the First;

Oh, dear! my heart was ready to burst!

Because you see it was Charley,

the man I loved and in return loved me!

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Author's Note: This story is based on a Nursery Rhyme about King Charles; the nursery rhyme can be found in The Nursery Rhyme Book page 37, edited by Andrew Lang (1897). After reading this nursery rhyme, I was inspired to write about a forbidden love between a boy who didn't realize he would be king and a peasant girl that was the daughter of one of Charley's parents' maids.