Manx Gaelic teacher, musician and composer Annie Kissack is the fifth to hold the title of Manx Bard.

Each month she shares one of her poems with us, and explains what led her to write it.

With ’Oie Voaldyn’, May Eve, now over and the winter behind us, I’ve been thinking about the old custom of burning the vegetation on the hills at this time of year and how this was believed to cleanse the land of evil spirits in time for summer, ’burning the buitch’.

This led me to the witch, Berree Dhone, the subject of a strange song in Manx.

I’ve spent months on her track and am not much wiser. She was not a cloak and pointy hat sort of witch though!

Often seen striding the northern hills, she also had a disconcerting habit of appearing from behind cottage doors!

Her song hints at cattle-stealing and a triumphant return from the gallows. And a mysterious incarnation as a slaughtered ox! A shape-shifter perhaps?

According to local poet, William Kennish, Berree headed a coven of witches in Maughold. There is no tradition of her being burned out, as far as I know, but she has a pool named after her in Cornaa.

Like many old songs, sometimes you have to give up trying to make literal sense of what you’re reading and just go with the imagination.

I like the idea of Berree Dhone remaining elusive and disappearing into the landscape as the winter gives way to summer. Whoever or whatever she was, the fascinated by-standers who provide the words of the song’s chorus seem to have given her some grudging respect.

I’ve tried to add their voices to this poem and let Berree speak for herself at the end.

A choral arrangement of the Berree Dhone song, and lots of other songs in Manx appear on Caarjyn Cooidjagh’s new album, ’Ballakilpheric’.

by Annie Kissack

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