Hercules Mulligan, Cato and Stroud Scarlet

This seems to be the stuff of legend:

Not Finn MacCool on the Giant’s Causeway,

But Hercules Mulligan from Coleraine,

Revolutionary Son of Liberty,

Measuring and fitting Stroud scarlet

Uniforms for English officers;

A dexterous, republican tailor,

Deftly using needle and thread,

Picking pockets for intelligence,

Surreptitiously eavesdropping,

Ensuring it’s all sewn up with satisfaction,

Weaving a path and pattern of success

For George Washington and America.

Strange to think that some Stroud scarlet cloth,

Stretched out on Stroud valley tenterhooks,

Would tell tales to a tailor from New York,

A tailor who would measure King George’s statue,

Take it down to the ground, and melt it down

Into revolutionary musket balls.

Hercules Mulligan from Coleraine,

Seemingly the stuff of heroic legend,

But still the owner of a slave named Cato,

Who stood as sentinel and spy too,

Watching his master measure the enemy,

Watching his masters write a constitution,

Where a slave would also be measured,

And deemed to be worth three fifths of a white citizen.

Cato.