Manx Gaelic teacher, musician and composer, Annie Kissack was recently raised to the chair of the Manx Bard, becoming the fifth Manx writer to hold the title. Each month she shares one of her poems with us, and explains what led her to write it.

’When I was a child we used to walk from Onchan to Summerhill Glen to see the lights at this time of year.

You had to run past the fairy queen with her painted-on and weirdly sinister expression. There were also some squirrel-type creatures too, dashing up and down, none wholly convincing.

I preferred to see the magic of familiar trees and bushes lit up from below in blue or green light, each leaf illuminated against a background of darkness.

It was, and still is, beautiful.

When my mum herself was young, she told me that she used to walk with her dad down the Scollag Road out of Onchan towards Abbeylands, in the hope of seeing a different sort of light in the sky, that of the shooting stars.

It was a regular November quest. This image of the night sky at this time of year stayed with me, and gave me the setting for this narrative poem which I started to write when I was 12. (I have revised it several times since, you’ll be glad to know!)

It is a true story apparently, passed down through my mother’s family.’

Tap Tap Tap

I will tell you a story of long ago, of something that we found

When shooting stars raced round the earth and the frost gleamed on the ground,

When we were young and the world was full of whispers in the night

And the eyes of cats shone in the dark like greeny orbs of light.

The candles had been snuffed out some hours, and we in our beds tucked tight

And all asleep, or nearly so, deep in the dead of night.

Then Tap, Tap, Tap! A muffled knock disturbed our sleepy dark,

A startled child sat up in bed and the dog began to bark.

’Mammy I cannot sleep!" I said. ’Hush hush, my girl, lie still!

That sound you hear is in your head, there’s none would wish you ill.’

’But Mammy, I heard it again tonight, a tap, tap on the wall.’

’Come lie by me, my sleepy girl, there is no sound at all.’

’But Mammy, I cannot sleep,’ I said, ’and that thing won’t go away.

It’s got me all so frightened that the words won’t come to pray.

There’s something taken in the wall and it’s wanting to get free!’

’Chut, chut, such fancies, chile veen! You are quite safe with me.’

Then Grandma Gorry, bleak and blanketed, bonneted for the cold,

Rose darkly from her corner seat and declared in a voice most bold,

’I have lived for eighty years or more and though my eyes are dim,

My ears are good and I’ll tell you all, I’ve had enough of HIM!’

’This Tap, Tap, Tap and Tap, Tap, Tap would drive you to distraction...

It’s no use wishing it away; the thing we need is action.

I’m eighty three and gone in the knee, but gone in the head I’m not,

And if you ones can live with him, I tell you, I cannot!

’

Then Grandma Gorry, bold, unbending, stern and bony, old,

Left her darkening corner to go out in the night time cold.

’Mother,’ they called, ’Mother, houl’ on!’ but Grandma’s eyes just shone...

’I will not stop for man or beast, until that thing has gone!’

When she returned, she went to the wall and frowned at a certain place

Where the wallpaper hung wrinkled and loose like the skin upon her face.

One bony hand clasped tight the hammer, the other was outspread

Against a damp and dingy wall, but not a word was said.

And then it was not Tap, Tap, Tap, but Thump and Thud and Scrape

While the cat’s fur stood up all on end and our mouths were wide agape.

Soon, dust and dirt and broken stone lay thick upon the floor

And in the wall there was a hole, five inches deep or more.

A deep, dark hole in the cottage wall and Grandma turned around

’It was just a noisy little thing and wanting to be found.’

In her tremulous fist, she clasped it fast, true as the heaven’s above,

The thing that kept us from our sleep...a child’s green glove.

’One of a pair,’ my Grandma said, ’and now it must find its mate.’

She took it out that very hour and laid it by the gate,

Out in the silvery, shivery night beneath the stars in space,

And by the dewy morning it had gone without a trace.

by Annie Kissack

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