Last updated 05:43, Friday, 22 August 2008

Susanna blamire was the most considerable poet ever to come from Carlisle. She was born in 1747 at Cardew Hall near Dalston. Her mother died when she was seven and she was brought up by her aunt at Thackwood Nook, Stockdalewath, near Raughton Head in the country south of Carlisle.

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Highhead Castle: Not far from Thackwood, this was the home of Susanna’s cousin Henry Richard Brougham (1728-76), a High Sheriff of Cumberland

Selected Poems of Susanna Blamire: Cumberland’s Lyrical Poet edited and introduced by Hugh Maycock. Bookcase. £10

Her life was that of a genteel lady. She was a cousin to the Curwens of Workington Hall and to the Broughams of High Head Castle. However, when she and Lord Ossulston of Chillingham Castle fell in love – Susanna was 19 at the time, the wealthy lord a few years older – her lover was packed off to Naples and she was left with a broken heart.

All who knew Susanna talked of her vivacious, engaging personality. She was a lively letter writer and wrote poetry which she playfully pinned to the oak trees at Thackwood for passers-by to read. She was an enthusiastic horsewoman and a member of the Carlisle Hunt.

However, her thwarted romance seems to have given her life a darker cast and even in her most cheerful poetry there is always a hint of melancholy.

Even though Susanna appears to have had other attachments, she never married, and died a spinster at the age of 47.

Her younger sister, Sarah, fared slightly better, marrying Colonel Graeme. Susanna went to live with them in Duchray Castle in Scotland for the few years before the Colonel died in 1773. It was when she returned to Thackwood in 1773 that she suffered her first bout of rheumatic fever, a debilitating illness that was to afflict her, off and on, for the rest of her life.

Her brother William had become a naval surgeon and, for a time, on her return, Susanna seems to have acted as a doctor to the poor country folk of Stockdalewath.

These years certainly seem to have deepened her experience. She wrote a long poem called “Stocklewath” which is an accurate portrayal of country life in north Cumberland 50 years before Wordsworth looked to similar themes for his poetry. She pictures the enthusiasm of tired workers for their mid-day meal when they throw down their spades and picks and hurry home where:

“Now the fried rasher meets them on the way

And savoury pancakes welcome steams convey”.

The schoolchildren wait for their meal and then rush to their play. The womenfolk are seen about their daily business and we are offered a full account of village life as it must have been known by most people 200 years ago.

Besides more serious poetry, Susanna also wrote some fine songs in both Scottish and Cumberland dialects. Her most famous verse is The Siller Croun where a young girl refuses the silver crown offered to tempt her away from her true love. The girl’s resolute response to financial temptation is eloquent in its simplicity:

“O wha wad buy a silken goun

Wi’a poor broken heart!

Or what’s to me a siller croun,

Gin frae my love I part!”

Another song, We’ve hed sec a Durdum, is a rumbustious account of a fair in old Cumberland, and Barley Broth has a married Cumberland couple arguing hammer and tongs.

Susanna Blamire’s poetry is wonderfully fresh and alive. She describes the life around her and gives us a moving picture of her own, often painful life. Much of the sadness is redeemed by vivacity, wit and good humour.

She is one of the most interesting of 18th-century female poets and someone who should be more widely known, especially in her native Cumbria.

This generous selection of her work, together with a detailed introduction by Christopher Maycock, makes her work widely available.

The Selected Poems of Susanna Blamire is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com.