The Bronte Tour Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Step off the road. Here’s where we start the tour
Top Withens lies up there: the Heathcliff moor
Beyond the side wall of the parsonage
Wind takes your skin off there, when storms rage
And there’s the Black Bull Inn where Branwell drank
Took Laud’num on the sly, the drooling skank
He sat upon the Temperance Committee
A butt for village gossip. Nothing pretty
About his sorry tale. It’s best forgot
He blamed his fall on love, and died a sot.

But you- and you-and you- where did you meet
Your partners? In a tavern? On a street?
This pavement’s narrow…let those dodgers pass
They haven’t paid to join my master class
Oops! Pardon me! I’ll switch my phone off now!
Look folks, it’s my friends Ron and Sal from Slough
He once taught geography at Heptonstall
You want to see them jive at the Hunt Ball!

A short aside. Come into this allotment
The Mecca of the veg. A grand assortment
Of characters you meet each village show
A Yorkshire man could make a desert grow
Our Swedes and cauliflowers are judged dynamic
And every single one of them’s organic.
Our Haworth brass band has won stacks of prizes

I’ve loads more facts like these, tasty surprises
The Brontës published their own poetry
1,000 copies. Just sold two or three
D’you hear that sooty rook on the church wall
Beside the outside lavs? Your skin will crawl
When I tell you what Haworth’s drains were like
Cholera, typhoid, seeped from every dyke
4,000 bodies packed in like sardines
In graves with corpse-juice oozing from the seams
And stinking houses! Mill workers crammed in
Like runner beans inside one damaged tin.
And now we’re in the church. Please take a pew
What’s that? You’ve been short changed? Learned nothing new?
Where’s Charlotte’s grave, that writer you so honour?
My dear, the best’s to come. You’re sitting on her.