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Will Newman
Angela Wilkinson
Catherine Mills
Charlotte Hodgson
Frances Hall
Ruth Gordon
Stephen Booth
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Mysterious Mermaid in Derbyshire Find!
Interesting to see the way this site is working. Angela posted an entry about a long forgotten ballad on The Mermaid's Pool near Hayfield and this has triggered a response from Derbyshire poet, Jeremy Duffield, who was inspired to write about a mermaid after his visit to Whaley Bridge last year. Was he picking up the vibes? Does this mermaid still exist? Anyway, Jeremy has been kind enough to send his poem below.
THE MERMAID AT WHALEY BRIDGE
There is no sand here,
no waves to hide between
nor rocks to bask upon,
but in this still backwater,
deep and green,
where blown petals pepper like confetti
the rain-rippled surface,
I roll and twist, dive
then shoot upwards,
snatch at docks and nettles,
the clocks of dandelion heads and yellow vetch;
and then he spies me
through the doorway of his narrow-boat
from where the smell of late breakfast streams.
He almost speaks,
then remembers his wife is there below.
He holds the door ajar;
I slip onto the bank,
arrange my hair to show I know he's watching.
He takes a watering-can to fuchsias
on the roof, unaware of the rain.
He hears me singing,
thinks he can walk on water.
Jeremy Duffield
21 August 2009 from Will Newman
Finds
- The lost villages of Derwent and Ashopton
- Fludd by Hilary Mantell
- A Beautiful Place for a Murder
- Jeannie of White Peak Farm
- Unrest of their Time
- Derbyshire wins the Booker Prize!
- John Buxton Hilton: Rescue from the Rose
- The Mermaid poem by Henry Kirke
- Poems of Peak and Dale
- Arnemetia
- Poole's Cavern, Buxton
- In Place of Execution....
- Scared to live
- The Jane Eyre Connection
- Haunted Derbyshire and the Peak District
- Narnia in the Peak District?
- The Wonders of the Peake...
- Night Angels: a scary episode on the Snake Pass
- Blue John
- Buxton under the crust.....
- Mysterious Mermaid in Derbyshire
- Ghost walks
- The poet and the pool.....
- More murder in the Peak District
- Inspired by the Peak
- Bygone Derbyshire clues
- Finished!
Recent posts
- Derbyshire Reading Detectives finale
- Reading Detectives in the News
- Buxton Ghost Walk
- Days at the Museum
- Stephen Booth
- Ghostwalkers in Buxton
- First meeting
Help the team
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