NORTHERN ECHOES

A poem from earlier in the year, reflecting that whilst we in the North may have had our historic differences, we have so much more in common than those down in the ‘south’ espoused by certain politicians.

Northern Echoes

Somewhere along the Pennine chain

beside the jumble of blackened stone wall,

a shifting line determines you’re a ‘lanky’ or a ‘tyke’,

whether you live within brick or stone,

support the red or the white,

which side you’re on in the cricket wars

But there’s another history you need to know,

of Northern folk coming together.

Chartist radicals fighting

for democratic reform, standing

atop Blackstone edge,

addressed by Ernest Jones in poetic form:

waved the wind on Blackstone height

A standard of the broad daylight

And sung that morn with trumpet might

A sounding song for liberty!

Now we are united again in echoes

of those chartist fears

whilst It’s alright for ‘them down south’,

up here it’s northern tiers.

On Blackstone Edge a wind is stirring,

injustice as clear as broad daylight

Lanky and Tyke sound a clarion call

Listen up you ‘Southern bastards’,

it’s liberty for all!

Peter Kay

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