The Ghost of Mann Page

Barker:

Step right up! Step right up!
Their sorrow has rung throughout the ages.
Meet three from the line known as the “Black Pages”.

Mann Page

The curse rises each night anew from long buried bones.
Each generation must atone for ancient misdeeds.
There is greed in the dead,
a need to keep people away from their beds.
They have no rest. So think it best
to see that we don’t either.

No one knows when our curse began.
Some say it all started with Ann Boleyn.
We were on the court that did her in.

Others say it reaches as far as the Crusades
when a knight named Rowland first earned the name Page.
It’s origins lost in some Genni’s bottle
he brought back that brought blackness and trouble.

Whatever the origin, forever through the ages
our line was known as the “Black Pages”.
Not blackhearted, no rather in the black shadow of hell
It echoes like the knell of an ever toiling bell.

Lightening struck Rosewell three times.
Bad luck then struck like the grind of bones.
Sounds of anguish ran through the very stones
it was built upon.

I am gone. We are all gone,
sucked down into the mirey muck
Of all our crumbled glory, all our bad luck.
We saved the nation, harbored Bacon,
helped with the Declaration of Independence’s very first draft.
It didn’t last.
We shone brightly but fate cast her dice
and wasn’t nice.
The Black Pages walk in Shadow through the ages.