Poems — Context and Discussion

Dialect and the Domestic Voice

Cushag uses Manx dialect sparingly but strategically, often in dialogue or direct address. In 'The Wans from Up,' the child says 'lave a piece of my supper' and 'dhrop of milk,' while the mother's narration remains standard English. This contrast marks the child's speech as intimate and local. Similarly, 'Little Boy Beg' opens with 'Where are you going, little Boy Beg, / With your little grey dog an' all?'—the 'an' all' a colloquial tag that softens the question. In 'Oie-Vie,' the Manx phrase 'ma chree' (my heart) and 'oie-vie' (good night) recur as refrains, embedding the domestic into the lyrical. These choices root the poems in a specific Isle of Man setting without overwhelming the reader with unfamiliar terms.

Recurring Motifs: The Cushag and the Fairy

The opening poem 'To the Cushag's Friend' establishes the cushag flower as a symbol of humble beauty and fairy power: 'The cushag flower had fairy power / In olden times, you know.' The poem contrasts the farmer's view of it as a 'shocking weed' with its golden, star-like appearance 'along the rills in the heart of the hills.' This motif recurs in 'The Phynodderee' and 'The Passing of the Fairies,' where fairy beings are linked to natural features. In 'The Wans from Up,' the child's 'lil wans' are ambiguous—fairies or angels?—and the mother's final line 'An' she went to the Wans from Up' suggests a death that is both loss and transcendence. Cushag repeatedly uses fairy lore not as mere fantasy but as a lens for grief and hope.

Dialogue as a Window to Character

Cushag often builds poems around a single exchange or repeated question. In 'Little Boy Beg,' the speaker asks 'Where are you going?' and the boy replies with a quest for the King and Queen to cure him. The poem never reveals the outcome, leaving the reader in suspense. In 'The Mountain Maid,' the maid's monologue traces her emotional arc through four stanzas: 'What could I do but sing? ... but long? ... but love? ... but die?' The progression is stark, each stanza ending with a rhetorical question that deepens her isolation. 'John the Priest' uses third-person narration but includes the priest's internal curse of 'his dreary days,' contrasting his scholar's 'bay' with the 'savage Corna dale.' These dialogues and internal voices give the poems a dramatic, almost theatrical quality.

Structure and the Use of Refrain

Many poems employ a refrain that shifts slightly with each stanza, creating a cumulative effect. In 'The Wans from Up,' the mother's refrain 'I'm thinkin' 'twas Wans from Up' changes to 'I knew it was Wans from Up' and finally 'An' she went to the Wans from Up,' marking the child's departure. 'Oie-Vie' repeats 'Oie-vie, ma chree' as a lullaby-like anchor, while the content moves from the speaker's departure to divine protection. 'The Baby-Boy Carol' uses a parallel structure: each stanza describes Jesus's simple surroundings ('No broidered robes,' 'No gilded toys,' 'No pictures'), then contrasts them with heavenly presence. This repetition reinforces the theme of humble holiness. Cushag's refrains are not mere decoration; they carry the emotional weight of each poem's argument.

Cushag's poems reward attention to small verbal details: the shift from 'Fayries' to 'Wans from Up,' the recurring 'cushag' as both weed and star, the way a child's dialect marks her as vulnerable. Readers may find it useful to read aloud, especially the refrains and dialect passages, to hear the interplay of local speech and formal verse. The poems are brief but layered, and their emotional directness—whether in a mother's grief or a maid's despair—gains power from the restraint of Cushag's diction.

Cushag’s golden gorse and fairy whispers always leave me with a particular ache—a longing for a grace just out of reach. That same unhurried searching surfaces in the older verse of Davies, whose quiet, measured lines feel like a lantern held up in a dim room. Something about The Complete Poems of Sir John Davies. Volume 2 of 2. — A Reader’s Guide comforts me in that same familiar, half-mournful way.