George Crabbe Poetry Competition 2025 – 3rd Prize
Adjudicator: Elizabeth Cook
‘Look, daughter,’ said Our Lady. ‘Take the measurements of my house and erect another one like it in Walsingham’*
I’d begun as a child, counting steps as I skipped. Adding
each to each, numbers divided and multiplied, I crammed
my head with their names, sang them out loud to make my own
litanies. I got my satisfaction from pure computation.
A length of spun thread held against a wall; how many
hand-spans to get it right? I could gauge a scoop of meal
at once exactly flat, and my ladles of broth never overflowed.
I found intense pleasure, working out a suitable measure.
A round hem stitched with a thousand stitches.
The ten good nails to hold a shoe-sole in place.
Thirty-six pales to keep piglets penned in safe.
Nothing ever wasted. Everything counts.
Berries on the rowan set my fingers flying.
Jackdaws flocking in the elms tested me.
The number of thorns to set on the carder.
Checking weft threads on a loom before weaving.
Sizing up silk-moth cocoons for collection.
How many bales of broken flax for linen?
So many churns to make bowls of butter.
Round and round like the numbers in my head.
Later, and my husband dead, I spent my life in prayer,
helping the sick, doing what I could. Years passed
until the day She came to see me, Our Lady, straight
from heaven – three times I had the vision, before
she flew me off to Nazereth to measure up Her House.
She told me what she wanted, no expense spared,
the best seasoned timber, in a well drained spot,
and where I had to build it, here, in Walsingham.
The builders started arguing, carpenters couldn’t agree.
I was ready, with my measuring rods. They ignored me.
Against my advice, they laid foundations in the marsh.
Water seeped through wattles, like I said it would,
so I sent them all packing, put their chisels on the shelf.
This was one imprtant thing I could do by myself.
I worked through the night and when morning came,
There stood Our Lady’s House, square and soundly framed.
It looked just as Our Lady’d said it should. I was quite tired
so I’d knelt to pray by the healing spring, when up turned
the workmen, somewhat shy. They ran away quick enough:
I said I’d seen archangels, beating up, up, into the dawn sky.
Copyright © 2025 Pam Job
Note: The epigraph is taken from a later legend which has it that in 1061 Richeldis de Faverches, the widow of a Norman Knight and lady of the manor of Walsingham, saw a vision of Our Lady who took her in spirit to the Holy House at Nazereth where Jesus had lived as a child and told her to take measurements and build a replica in her Norfolk village