Half God Half Nelson the steady version

Video -  youtu.be/TYrQWHVJPWU

This hero ballad was the Ringo track on our  
peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/not-quite-the-kings-shilling-ep 
(a reminder of the shanty form Kate Rusby deconstructs on 'Cruel') but it's not quite the 'Not Quite' mood so it's here as a standalone track. The tune is based on an old Liverpool shanty (brilliantly disguised by Admiral James Paul McCartney as a psychedelic pop song) which I'm sure all members of our island nation will recognise with a shiver of pride.

lyrics

Our Admiral’s head it has one eye
Heave away! Heave away!
His empty sleeve’s the flag we fly.
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

He hunted polar bears, the lad
Heave away! Heave away!
‘To fetch a white rug to my dad.’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

Mosquitoes bit him half to death:
Heave away! Heave away!
‘I’ll die a hero’s life instead’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're gone tomorrow but we're here today.

Off Corsica, his eye foresworn,
Heave away! Heave away!
‘I got a little hurt this morn.’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

Off Cape St Vincent, breaking ranks,
Heave away! Heave away!
He won the day and England’s thanks.
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

Our king’s right hand at Santa Cruz;
Heave away! Heave away!
A night to seize; an arm to lose.
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're gone tomorrow but we're here today.

‘A peerage or Westminster crypt!’
Heave away! Heave away!
He sinks the French from here to Egypt
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

‘You’ll discontinue!’ flagged his Admiral.
Heave away! Heave away!
‘My blind eye does not see your signal!’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

‘Redoubtable’ sharpshooters spy him
Heave away! Heave away!
‘They’ve done for me at last. I’m dying.’
‘Tell my wife I’m killed,’ we say.

Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're gone tomorrow but we're here today.
Heave away Horatio’s boys
Heave away! Heave away!
Heave away and make a Victory noise
We're heroes tomorrow but we're gone today.

credits

released April 14, 2022 
Thanks to Warwick J as always for the musical advice. COYB.
Carola Oman's massive tome "Nelson' was my main reading for this and each verse distils an enormous amount of meticulously considered biography. Introducing it (and the entire Doin Different combined arts project) with a brief summary of Nelson's character at a folk club, I was infuriated to hear a smug guitarist in the third row chunter "Wikipedia' like he had my number.

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Half God Half Nelson by Peacock's Tale folk indie duo

Wordsworth Comedy Night

https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/wordsworth-comedy-night  AUDIO

Every month or so, a group of disreputable West Norfolk wits meet to get drunk and read uproariously funny PG Wodehouse passages at each other. In March, we made it a Wordsworth Comedy Night instead. A challenge as, for all his beauties and Miltonic grandeur, there are no jokes in Wordsworth.

No intentional jokes that is. His first draft of 'Daffodils' really wandered lonely as a 'cow' until Coleridge - "if I might make a suggestion, Sir"- recommended the more aptly sublime 'cloud'; and the hysterical measuring of a muddy pond and a weed in the notorious 'The Thorn' will bring a snigger to the stoniest face. If I've improvised a couple of parody lines, they are much in the spirit of these and not necessarily distinguishable from the Great Man's own. 

Finally, he really did carry his sister rather than his bride over the threshold on his wedding day as she had fainted in church after crying throughout the ceremony and lived with them permanently thereafter (an unacknowledged researcher/co-writer of some of his most famous pieces) and if this isn't farce, I don't know what is. 

This track is a sample of a rip roaring evening. We are only sorry we don't have a record of the 1950s comic turns, recitations, jazz poems, daffodil excursion (see picture) complete with tape measure and other treats. Not to mention the beef bourguignon. (I told you not to mention the beef bourguignon).

lyrics

(mostly by Wordsworth) 

My heart leaps up when I behold 
My heart leaps up when I behold
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky!

So was it when my life began
So is it now I am a man
The child is father of the man
Is married to his sister.

I wander lonely as a cow
That floats on high o’er dales and hills
The Spring has sprung the grass has ris,
I wonder where the birdies is?

Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Ear-lie in the morning.

And to the left, three yards beyond
On a moss hill half a foot in height
Not five yards from the mountain path 
I see a little muddy pond.

I’ve measured it from side to side
Tis three feet long and two feet wide
And six feet deep and stood beside
A grave man looking like he’d died.

A poet could not be but gay
In such a jocund company
For then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Ear-lie in the morning.

Oh a slumber did my spirit seal,
I had no human fears,
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force,
She neither hears nor sees,
Rolled round in Earth’s diurnal course.
With rocks! And stones! And trees!

She died alone and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be
But she is in her grave and oh!
The difference to me.

And when she was up she was up
On a hill above the town
She was three feet four, five stone, but now
She is six feet underground.

credits

released April 5, 2022 
For a more Romantic view of Wordsworth, visit  peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/weirdsworths-lucy

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