Beardism

OF THE LONG SOLEMN MARCH OF THE SILENT MAN By Richard Everret-Hyde

The coach arrived at Statton-on-Moor before the sun spiked golden rays through Gibson’s Wood and webbed the curve of the Guild House on Bennet St.
 Seven Coachmen; oiled beards all, fully girded up in their trapping and pomp, stiff as any cigar, and as brittle, too, in the brace of morning, air in spiralled white burst forming. They tread a path unseen but by the early eye of the fishmonger, the market-tradesman, and still sacred, still profane, they set a brisk pace past the long red arc of the dye-works down Aldwich St., and out to the Seven Cedars, bearing seven crows each and standing as solemn, as inscrutable as them that pass beneath. Now, with manicured and rough, stained and clean hands – for history has no prejudice in this matter – the Coachmen remove both stocking and boot, and return them to their feet reversed – stocking over boot.
 

Now the golden dawn rays dust the cut-out edges of the gathering clouds and the Coachmen honour they that came before, they that knew, they that built the first and would be recalled until the last, the fathers and fallen, in the long and lonely March of the Silent Man.