Corpse Way

Churchyard in Swaledale, UK

Maps make earth new.
They cleanse Roman roads,
purge Saxon blood-ways
and dull the bridled bells of drover’s tracks.

he wraps her in linen, not wool

Roads elude maps:
they turn shy of hill and bog,
drown in brackish light
rising green-girdled by hedge.

he wraps her in linen, not wool

Maps trace roads
now forgotten.
Ling and bilberry fuddle
hollowed tracks between dale and pit.

he burns embers at her door

Jiggers and Jaggers;
road names muddled
by southern tongues
are fixed by maps.

he cradles her once again

Maps muffle
the ring and thud
of Neddy Dick’s
stone xylophone.

he lays his daughter on stone

Roads root,
salt and black.
Now, only the living walk
clattering in boots

he whispers words of warning

lumbering
making ammonite patterns;
a maze of prattle and footfall.
Maps silence the souls on Corpse Way.

He will never rest.

I found a wonderful book, ‘Swaledale’ by Ella Pontefract and Maria Hartley. It has a chapter on the Corpse Way. I was intrigued by a story about a man who buried his daughter in linen as opposed to the compulsory wool. He was fined £5 in 1637, the equivalent of over a £1000 in today’s money. The wood engraving is of the church where he would have taken his daughter for burial.

Superstitions surrounding the track are forgotten now, but it was believed that ‘if the dead were taken any other way they would not rest in their graves.’ Resting stones for the wicker coffins are still visible along the footpath today.

Second Prize winner in Readers’ Award. Published in Orbis #189 Autumn 2019. C

‘Corpse Way has an ancestral force of images of roads before

and beyond man, the ‘carved’ roads of life.’

‘Corpse Way needs thought: the individual verses can stand

alone, but the whole works backwards, the overwhelming sense of grief building

up with the father in the single lines interspersed between quatrains of modern

hikers clattering in boots, unaware of the millennia-old tragedy.’

‘Corpse Way had me absolutely fascinated. Hugely evocative, and informative. I was impressed by the way she uses the structure to interweave the different elements and stories and vary the mood and tone. Brilliant.’

Originally published at https://www.traceyhope.com.