[1] She was one of seven children who lived beyond childhood to Rev William Kermode (1815–1890), and his second wife, Jane née Bishop (1818–1858), of Shelton Hall, Staffordshire.

"[5] They lived in a secluded house in Glen Auldyn, with the river running through its garden and a meadow next to it for the grazing of their horse, Brownie.

The English press received Cushag's collection in a positive though reserved manner, as shown by a review in the Manchester City News: “a modest little volume of seventy-two pages, contains some forty short poems, mostly tales in verse, in all of which the introspective temperament so characteristic of the Manx people, with its resultant note of sadness, is well reflected.

While not soaring to empyrean heights, “Cushag,” in pleasing rhyme and varied measure, sings of the love, the longing, the parting, and the griefs of the Islanders, heightened here and there with homely philosophy, or tinged with the superstition still lingering in the scattered hamlets or lonely farmhouses of Ellan Vannin.

The dialect verse, in which most of the poems are written, presents an almost insuperable obstacle to English readers, but if this difficulty can be surmounted, there is in the volume ample reward for the trouble involved"[11] In 1908 Cushag published Peel Plays,[12] a collection of three short plays: ‘Rosy Basins’, ‘The Lazy Wife’ and ‘Eunys (or the Dalby Maid)’.

Written in the Anglo-Manx dialect and with a realist tone, the plays are a clear defence of the Manx folk heritage against the encroachment of modern scientific rationalism.

This is shown most clearly in 'Eunys (or the Dalby Maid)', where the foundling daughter returns to her fairy family to escape the unjust and destructive influence of the progressive English priest.

[14] The plays focus on women, children and family and so stand out in Manx literature, which was, at that time, otherwise dominated by traditional male types.

The house is all through others, the childher's late for school, The man is spendin' all his time in lookin' for a tool, The wumman's tired thremendjus with clearin' up the flure, An' the wan that's doin' all the jeel is wickad Traa-dy-Liooar.

The fields is full of cushag, the gates is darned with gorse, You'll hardly see the harness for the mire upon the horse; The cows is shoutin' shockin', an' puzzlin' them for sure, Is the waitin' doin' on them at that tejus Traa-dy-Liooar.

There's a power of foes within us, and enemies without, But the wan that houls the candle is that little lazy lout; So just you take an' scutch him, an' put him to the dhure, An' navar let him in again, that tejus Traa-dy-Liooar.