The Peacocks' Talking Christmas Card

Our favourite carol in a Peacock's Tale full band arrangement of Bert Jansch's Pentangley solo folk guitar version, prefixed here with the octave of my sonnet "Journey of the Magus". Also featuring bells from the church down our lane. 

The poetry of the carol (1872 ) is by Christina Rossetti and the tune (1906) by Gustav Holst. Rossetti has the distinction of having modelled the figure of Christ in the pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World".

lyrics

To have turned to the East is then to be
Conscious of the chaos behind the plan,
Mindful of the terror behind the calm,
Eyeful of darkness in lit Western cities;
Now I’m called at last to God’s own country
Disbelieving in switch and tap and fan,
A Western, hygienic, jetted Dis-Man
Orientated by your love of me...


In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen
Snow on snow, snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter
Long ago

Heaven cannot hold him,
nor Earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign.
In then bleak midwinter
a stable place sufficed
The Lord God almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Angels and Archangels
May have gathered there
Cherubim and Seraphim
Thronged the air
But his Mother only
In her maiden bliss
Worshiped the beloved
With a kiss

What can I give him
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would give a lamb
If I were a wise man
I would do my part
What I can I give him
Give him my heart.

credits

from PEACOCK'S TALES (The Sapphire Wedding Album), released December 1, 2024
octave from Journey of the Magus © Gareth Calway 2015 

Carol lyric by Christina Rossetti 1872, tune by Gustav Holst 1906.

Maz- Lead vocal, acoustic guitar.
Gaz - Voice, bass, foot bells, foot tambourine, djembe drum, bodhran, hand drum, triangle, common flute, support vocal, hi hat, starry cavern angels harmonium, Fring church bells.

Saints and Singers; Our Christmas LP

 

First released in 2021 as a 6 track EP and now expanded to showcase  all our Christmas material including new recordings for this year. 
The whole attempts to be greater than the sum of its jolly parts by evoking a journey Eastward - part mediaeval/allegorical orientation, part benighted rural Look East of England-  culminating in an arrival at Whatever Christmas Promises around track 13.

https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/saints-and-singers-our-christmas-album

https://youtu.be/xdBI4GQp-eY  The video

Being Santa

 

As I waited for our grandchildren to arrive and witness my premiere of this most iconic of roles, I shivered slightly. Not just with the damp December cold but with the responsibility. Here was Isla's encounter with the magical childhood Santa we all treasure in our memories. (Theo at a year old so as was unlikely to be find it any less strange and wonderful than his normal encounters with his grandsire)  I felt the weight of generations and centuries on my shoulders. Was my cod Nordic yodel and white beard sufficient disguise to sustain the magic of otherness in the familiar garden den Isla had helped me prepare? Would I fluff my vaguely Scandinavian up and down lines ("Ho ho ho! Have you been a good girl for your mummy and daddy?") overwhelmed by the epiphany of heaven's generosity and earth's humanity I was suddenly embodying, sotto voce, centre-stage and spot-lit in the radiance of a childhood delight? No Method actor (three months living with reindeeer in Lapland on mince pies in a thin red suit communicating only in High Elvish; then matching every word uttered to a motivation and a movement of the stuck on eyebrow so that I really 'felt' it,  - whether the audience did or not) could have felt any less charged and apprehensive. I recalled terrified moments behind the curtain at my Edinburgh fringe shows listening to the audient come in.

In the event, I needn't have worried.  "Grandpa! she shouted through the gap in the trees (top left) from the road below. The stocking hanging off the bough and the red and white through the depleted winter hedge succeeded in bringing delight but not it seems even a willing suspension of disbelief. And then it unravelled even more spectacularly and unexpectedly when she arrived at the grotto entrance and shared that sudden childhood terror of seeing a white bearded loon in the gloom.

"But don't you want your present?"

"No! it's too scary."

Ah well, maybe next year. (Theo will be two so you never know.) Fortunately our daughter, their mother, was old enough to deputise and console.