words on the wyrd side

We recently took a strange kind of walk, in one of our favourite wild places. The two bags we carried held the last known copy of Songs & Poems in a Nidderdale Dialect by Greenhow poet Thomas Blackah, 30 pebbles painted with our favourite old Nidderdale words, 30 sprigs of St John’s wort to offer our guests and fellow walkers protection in an enchanted woodland and a frippery of other wild offerings to the fae.

We gathered by the glistening River Nidd to meet our friends at the Wildish Club. We paused to gift each of our new companions a freshly minted old word pebble, before meandering along its bank sharing words and poems along the way. 

The whole afternoon of glorious golden autumn light felt like an incantation to something very old that's hard to name. 

We paused first at Joseph Hayton's Pillars Past sculpture to hear the words of Blackah's 'Dedication' against its fitting backdrop. We gave a nod to the infamous skull that haunts the Harefield Hall as we wound below, along the riverbank to indulge my fantasy of Castlestead Bridge as Lewis Carol backdrop with a rendition of The Jabberwock. 

We passed the blutherment that used to be Glasshouses Mill Pond before pausing precariously on the bridge to hear Thomas Blackah's Lines on The River Nidd against the gentle sound of its rushing below. 

As we approached the fairy-tale entrance to Guisecliffe Woods, we realised our bag of herbal charms had been sacrificed to the river nymphs way back where our journey had begun, and we must take our friends unprotected into an ancient forest well-known to enchant its visitors off the beaten track.

So at the whim of the fae we heard The Bosky Dyke and beheld the trifold Nidderdale Barguest legends of Brimham Rocks, Trollers Gill and Busky Dyke Lane before chancing our luck deep into the woodland to obviously get ever so slightly lost before climbing the hill to the tarn, nestled in the woods below the cliff.

To hear the words of Thomas’s Blackah’s “Guiscliffle Edge” read in Liam’s Yorkshire baritone at the tarn was a real site=specific moment of Nidderdale magic for me.

But so too was the blessed opportunity to premier my own epic poem, the Ballad of Jenny Twigg, against the misty sylvan backdrop that inspired it.

Our final offering of the day was Blackah’s Autumn recited at the cup & ring marked rock where ancients gathered.