Susanna Blamire (1747-1794)

By Becky Lewis

In 1994, a memorial tablet was placed in Carlisle Cathedral in Cumberland commemorating Susanna Blamire (1747-1794) as "Poet of humour and observation who caught the authentic voice of Cumberland." In the same year, the Lakeland Dialect Society published a bicentenary tribute, Susanna Blamire, "The Muse of Cumberland." Jonathan Wordsworth contributed a Foreword in which he recalls that she originally wrote her poetry for family and friends and dubs her "the poet of friendship."

Susanna Blamire never published during her lifetime. The poetry and songs she wrote as entertainment were distributed in manuscript among friends and relatives (Gilpin 8). While some of her songs may be published in songbooks of the period, they were never signed. We owe our knowledge of the work to the collaboration of Patrick Maxwell and Henry Lonsdale, who grew up in Cumberland where Blamire lived most of her life and where her poetry and songs have been remembered for generations. In 1842, Lonsdale and Maxwell first collected her work, finding it in several places, including a collection of Robert Anderson, a later Cumberland poet who admired Blamire's work, the commonplace books of Blamire's friends, and Blamire's fair copies saved by members of her family. In the same way, Maxwell and Lonsdale gathered information about her life. In 1842, they published her poems in The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire, "the Muse of Cumberland," including a Preface, Memoir, and Notes written by Maxwell. A review of this book in Chamber's Edinburgh Journal annoints her the "Cumbrian Sappho." Later, in 1866, Sidney Gilpin edited Songs and Poems by Miss Blamire Together with Songs by her Friend Miss Gilpin. Gilpin claims her talent lay in song writing and calls her "the most original and most reflective mind that Cumberland has produced -- always excepting the revered name of William Wordsworth" (3-4).

Blamire lived six years in Scotland with her sister who in 1761 had married a Scotsman who settled in Gartmore in the Highlands. At this time Scottish songs were enjoying a huge popularity all over Europe, and Blamire was inspired to try her hand at the Scottish dialect (McCue 58). These songs form the majority of her dialect songs; however, a "small but choice group"are written in the Cumberland dialect (Wordsworth 3). The bulk of her work (almost 100 poems and songs altogether) is written in standard English; but it has been the Scots and Cumbrians who have made the strongest claim on her work. In 1871, Sarah Tytler and J. L. Watson included her in The Songstresses of Scotland, asserting that she "adopted Scotland and the Scotch with enthusiasm, and thenceforth wrote Scotch songs like a Scotchwoman" (245). Indeed, even her Cumberland songs show "a vigorous independence on the part of the men and an arch coyness on the part of the women -- above all, a pawkiness and a gauciness, to borrow two untranslatable Scotch words, which are generally held to abide on the Scotch side of the Border, and to be out of keeping with frank dutiful English human nature" (235).

Likewise, Jessie Findlay in The Spindle-Side of Scottish Song claims she absorbed the spirit and vernacular of Scotland, noting the similarity between dialects as well as the characters of the "Cumbrian dalesman" and the "Scottish peasant" (57). More recently, an essay by Kirsteen McCue includes Blamire in a study of over thirty Scottish women writing songs between 1750-1850, citing two of her songs, "And Ye Shall Walk in Silk Attire" and "What Ails This Heart o' Mine" as examples of the popular love and partnership theme in Scottish women writer's songs. McCue also reminds us that many Scottish women writers were accomplished musicians. Maxwell describes Blamire as musically proficient. Her favorite instrument was the guitar and she often played while she composed her songs to familiar melodies (xxxii). Most anthologies include the names of music that the songs were composed for.

Blamire's best known Scottish song is "And Ye Shall Walk in Silk Attire," also known as "The Siller Croun." Its twelve lines are divided into three stanzas with an aabb rhyme scheme. In the first four lines the voice of a suitor proposes marriage to a young woman and describes the fortune she will receive if she will accept this proposal and forget Donald, the young man she loves. This new suitor promises that if she will marry him, she will "walk in silk attire, and siller hae to spare." However, the young woman remains desperately in love with Donald. She asks,

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!

The rest of the song describes the love and loyalty she feels for Donald. She has pledged her "virgin troth, brave Donald's fate to share," and, if she were to take back her promise, "it would be waur' than theft!" Blamire shows the piquant intensity of her love for Donald in her firm refusal in the plaintive refrain that occurs in the last two stanzas, "And ere I'm forced to break my troth, I'll lay me doun an' dee."

According to Maxwell, "The Waeful Heart" follows "The Siller Croun" in both sentiment and expression (xl). The second song continues the story begun in the first; however, "Donald" has become "Jamie" and is "in his grave." The twenty-four lines are divided into three stanzas of eight lines, each rhyming abcbdefe. The poet achieves the same emotional intensity as in "the Siller Croun." The "waeful heart" is hers and now "craves" death, to be laid "in the darksome grave" with Jamie. The last stanza sounds almost like a hymn and reveals her ultimate trust in him as she follows his lead,

I come, I come, my Jamie dear;
And O! wi' what good will
I follow wheresoe'er ye lead!
Ye canna lead o ill,

The last four lines portray her death as the poem ends, "Her waefu' heart forgot to beat,-- / Her sorrows sunk to rest." She has joined Jamie.

Findlay calls Blamire 'The Songstress of Sentiment," claiming "What Ails This Heart o'Mine" to be the "most pathetic love song ever penned" (57). This song has four eight-lined stanzas in abcbdefe rhyme scheme. The pain over the absence of a lover "far awa" described is deep and lasting. In fact, his absence makes him "dearer grow." Every thing she does reminds her of him-in the morning air, she sees "ilka rustling bush" where they use to meet; the leaf that "fa's i' my lap" is a word from him. Those thoughts keep him alive in her mind and her "heart in twenty years / [will be] The same as 'tis to-day." Blamire's song resonates with the strong human feeling of loss called up by the absence of the beloved.

Another favorite theme in Blamire's work concerns change over time. One well-known Scottish ballad, "The Nabob," also called "The Traveller's Return," tells an Odysseus-like story about an old soldier returning home after being away for thirty years. She introduces the theme of the old way giving way to the new way as the old traveller returns "wi' many hopes and fears." His "heart beat a' the way." However, as he goes through his "native land," he is sorely disappointed. "Nae friend stepp'd forth wi' open hand." He finds "nae weel-kenn'd face." Even the music of "Scotland's ancient lays" that once "thrill'd" his heart has given way to music with "mony an artfu' turn," but he misses "the simple melody I listen'd to langsyne." The "pensy chiels" or stylish young men who shudder at his "Gothic wa's" that are reminiscent of his old Toryism. They show him where their fathers lay, "memorials o'langsyne." They attempt to lift the spirits of the old soldier by touring him around. However, he tells them,

Ye sons to comrades o'my youth, forgie an auld man's spleen,
Wha midst your gayest scenes still mourns the days he ance has seen:
When time has past and seasons fled, your hearts will feel like mine;
And aye the sang will maist delight that minds ye o' langsyne!

Blamire returns again and again to the theme of change over time; the expectation, doubt, and bewilderment in returning to a place and the wistful disappointment in what has been lost. Other songs that incorporate this theme include "The Soldier's Return" and "When Home We Return." In "The Chelsea Pensioners," the old soldiers in a home for retired soldiers reminisce about their bravery when they were in their prime.

All of her poetry is not so melancholy. Perhaps "Barley Broth" illustrates that particular quality of "gauciness" that Tytler and Watson detect. This Cumberland song contains seven quatrains with rhyme scheme of abcc and describes a kitchen argument between husband and wife over the broth that the kitchen dame has made. Jwohn claims it is barley, claiming it "guid and varra neyce." Whereas his equally strong minded wife Jenny says he's wrong, "its reyce." The argument goes on and on with neither conceding until at last Jwohn has the last say.

An' what's the lot that I have drawn?
Pervarsion is a woman's neame!
Sae fares-tae-weel! I'll sarve my king,
An never, never mair come heame.

So Jenny "puts barley in the broth, / An hates the varra neame o' reyce." The poet's clever comment on this domestic dispute:

Thus treyfles vex, an' treyfles please
An' treyfles mek the sum o' leyfe;
An treyfles mek a bonny lass
A wretched or a happy weyfe!

Tytler and Watson describe this poem as a reading "like the argument of a song in a French vaudeville"(261).

Blamire's lively wit and charitable eye illuminate the everyday problems of working men and women. She was one of the first to use Cumbrian dialect in poetry and Wordsworth applauds "Wey, Ned, Man" as the great Cumbrian ballad (3-4). It is based on a discussion overheard by Blamire about the game laws between Joe Stalker of Lambfield and Ned Ward, another local farmer (Wordsworth 18). The six-stanza, eight-line poem addresses the "Reets o'Man," specifically concerning the game laws that allowed hunters to roam freely over the land, damaging farmer's crops, and taking the "hares" from farmers like Ned who says,

True liberty never can flourish,
Til man in his reets is a king, —
Till we tek a tithe pig frae the bishop
As he's duin frae us, is the thing.

The conversation continues between Joe, who, not convinced that Ned should be "sae down-hearted" as the game laws are the only "hard laws in England," explains

Man, were we aw equal at mwornin
We couldn't remain sae till neet;
Some arms are far stranger than others.
And, some heads will tek in mair leet

But, Ned, remains skeptical questions a less than "parfet" world where no "law stands by us, / While we stand by country and king?"

Blamire's most substantial poetical effort is her 1,156 line poem, Stocklewath; or, The Cumbrian Village, written sometime after the appearance of Goldsmith's The Deserted Village in 1770. Her debt to Goldsmith is clear in her rendering in vivid detail of the reality of village life and ordinary people. While the heroic couplet she uses in Stocklewath does not read so natural or melodic as in her songs, the poem brings together her themes as she illuminates village life. And, her vision expands beyond the village as she recounts stories of human tragedy, of lost love, of war in the larger world of her era. She chronicles the everyday lives of a variety of men, women, and children-the school dame, school children, old women spinners, the soldier, housewives and servants, lovers, the innkeeper, husbands and wives, parents, the healer. In Stocklewath, the home is portrayed as the nurturing, redeeming base for human activity on a wider stage.

The stories passed down to us about Blamire describe her as scribbling her poems on the backs of old envelopes or bills. However, Stoklewath was left in fair copy demonstrating the seriousness she felt for this poem. In an age when publishing poetry was considered inappropriate for a woman, she describes herself as a poet in a charming poem "Epistle to her Friends at Gartmore" (c. 1772). She denigrates her rhyme in this effort as "hobbling," observing that "sublimity of style / Takes up a most prodigious while;" But, in this poem/epistle, the words come trippingly off her tongue as she describes her everyday life. Upon waking at eight, she takes tea and medicine for her "rheumatics," then cocoa with her Aunt Simpson. She takes a walk around the garden and works (probably at the spinning wheel) a while. At noon, she fixes her hair, turned "the loveliest brown," but uses no make up, for "Nature adopts me for her child." Little Fan, her "pretty maid" lays out her clothes. They talk about an upcoming dance. Here Blamire philosophizes about class,

Rustics have balls as well as we;
And really as to different stations,
Or comforts in the various nations,
They're more upon an equal par
Than we imagine them by far.
They love and hate-have just the same
Feeling of pleasure and of pain;
Only our kind of education
Gives ours a greater elevation.
I oft have listened to the chat
Of country folks 'bout who knows what!
And yet their wit, through unrefined,
Seems the pure product of the mind.

She recounts how her afternoon is taken up and describes visiting sick friends and neighbors as she is "famed for skill/ In the nice compound of a pill." As healer, she describes some of her patients. In the evenings, she reads, writes, socializes, or plays her guitar for others to sing. The poem ends on a happy note praising friendship.

As the poet of friendship, she sometimes composed poems for her friends and she wrote several with her good friend, Miss Gilpin of Scaleby Castle. One of their collaborations, "The Cumberland Scold" narrates a quarrel between a man and woman supposedly witnessed by Blamire and Gilpin. The dialogue renders an animated and comic drama between a husband and wife over nothing. The wife narrates an exchange with her husband Dick.

Our Dick came in, and said it rain'd,
Says I it meks nae matter;
"Ay, but it dis, tou silly fuil!—
But women-fwok mun chatter;
They're here an' there an' ev'ry where,
And meakin sec a rumble,
Wi' te-te-te, an' te-te-te,
An' grumble, grumble, grumble!"

But the wife comes back with equally strong words, ending with

I'se ass, and fuil, and silly snuil,
I's naething but a noodle;
I's ayways wrang, and never reet,
And doodle, doodle, doodle.

The poem continues back and forth with feisty rhythmic dialogue and, in the end, the husband is revealed the bigger scold. So much of Blamire's appeal is her empathy and forgiveness of the foibles of human nature.

Several of her last poems address her rheumatic disorders and the associated debilitating disease which caused her death at forty-seven. For example, in "Of Hygia (I)," she complains because the Greek Goddess of Health will not hear her prayer as she is left "drooping midst her jocund throng." She finds strength in her friendships,

My hours ne'er shine, but when my brightening friends
New gild the scene, and give that genial glow
On which my all of happiness depends
And forms the whole of every wish below.

These lines reveal Blamire's modesty, her own bright nature, and the importance she gives friendship. She ends the poem with a striking metaphor of weather linking the "heavy sky" to her "lungs" and "aching bone" through which Lygia becomes an "absorbing beam" to drink "the drops of every watery eye."[1]

Throughout her work, Blamire reminds us that regardless of class or education or place of birth, we are alike in our humanity. It is her strong belief in friendship and community that enabled her to demonstrate such sensitive insight into the everyday lives of Scottish, Cumbrian, and English people from different walks of life. As a poet, she expands poetic diction in using the natural dialect of the people she called "Rustics." In theme, she opens a rich vision of life and ideas from her time.

1. "Of Hygia" (1) is one of the "unpublished poems" found in the recently published Susanna Blamire "The Muse of Cumberland": A Tribute with Selections from her Work.

Blamire, Susanna. The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire, "The Muse of Cumberland." Comp. Henry Lonsdale. Preface, memoir, and  notes by Patrick Maxwell. Edinburgh: Menzies, 1842.
Chambers, William and Robert. "Poems of Miss Blamire." Chamber's Edinburgh Journal, XI, 1843; 238-39.
Findlay, Jessie P. The Spindle-Side of Scottish Song. London: J. M. Dent, 1902.
Gilpin, Sidney. "Life of Miss Blamire of Thackwood." Songs and Poems by Miss Blamire, Together with Songs by her Friend Miss Gilpin. Ed. by  Sidney Gilpin. Routledge: London, 18.
Maxwell, Patrick. "Preface, Memoir, and Notes." The Poetical Works of Miss Susanna Blamire, `The Muse of Cumberland.'" Menzies:        Edinburgh, 1842.
McCue, Kirsteen. "Women and Song 1750-1850." A History of Scottish Writing. Ed. Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan. Edinburgh:           Edinburgh UP, 1997. 58-70.
Tytler, Sarah [pseud. For Henrietta Keddie], and J. L. Watson. The Songstresses of Scotland. London: Strahan, 1871.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. "Foreword." Susanna Blamire "The Muse of Cumberland": A Tribute with Selections from her Work. Carlisle:           Lakeland Dialect Society, 1994.