! The Un-Ked

Words are like unicorns – come from nowhere without any one’s permission or request because there’s a need for them. Whose painful, sudden, desolate need called this word to be? Market gardeners pushed further out of towns, their customers now too far a wagon-ride away; sheepherds too, pushed further out of valleys to the barren windswept hills; refugees from starving lands across the sea; the many orphans motherless from too many birthings, childbirth fever, fatherless from cotton-lung; all these knew what unked meant; but they had lived with it; it strikes with sudden, hope-drained emptiness the comfortable, too, when they least expect it; it can visit monks and other religious and devout, praying in their solitary cell; even parish priests about their rounds; or princesses, put into cold storage until that right dynastic husband is found; princes, knowing that they one day must rule after their hated father’s hated rule… the Psalmist knew it strike his heart; John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul; Rilke said, leaning over the chasm of myself.. say the word, sound it, roll it round your mouth, savour its sour aftertaste; live it for a moment. What does it tell you? A little like ‘unfed’ – and that they often were; ‘unshod’ – and that often, orphans were; ‘ked’ – a short word with the certainty that it’s known exactly what it should be; so when it's missing, we know just what's lost.. or maybe, just a curt, abrupt abbreviation for ‘uncared for’… its suddenness beyond all family and friends then, in that moment, a desolation of the soul; no ease from god or man; you’ll know it; or you won’t: unked. [a Lancashire dialect word, which Mrs Gaskell found invaluable]