Ballads and Poems
Cumbria has a rich heritage in its poems and ballads; both in the romantic poets of the Lake District, and the ballads recording the darker aspects of the regions history involving outlaws, the Reivers and warfare. The Lake poets are too well known, and easy to access, to need repeating here, but many of the ballads and dialect pieces are long out of print, so it's these which I will be transcribing here.
Barley Broth, by Susanna Blamire.
Kinmont Willie, the story of the rescue of the notorious Scottish freebooter from Carlisle Castle.
Kinmont Willie, a second, longer version.
Miss Gilpin's Song, by Susanna Blamire.
The Raffles Merry Neet - a story in Carlisle dialect of a drinking party which gets a bit out of hand !
19 February 2006
© Steve Bulman