Sing out the old, Sing in the new, a woodland carol for 2025

Singing in the new year for you all with this merry little carol steeped in winter glory.

lyrics

1 The holly and the ivy
when they are both full grown,
of all the trees that are in the wood
the holly bears the crown.
Refrain:
The rising of the sun
and the running of the deer,
the playing of the merry organ,
sweet singing in the choir.
2 The holly bears a blossom,
white as the lily flower,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
to be our sweet Saviour. [Refrain]
3 The holly bears a berry,
as red as any blood,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
to do poor sinners good. [Refrain]
4 The holly bears a prickle,
as sharp as any thorn,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
on Christmas day in the morn. [Refrain]
5 The holly bears a bark,
as bitter as any gall,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
for to redeem us all. [Refrain]
6 The holly and the ivy,
when they are both full grown,
of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown. [Refrain]

credits

released January 1, 2025
Maz - lead vocal, acoustic guitar
Gaz - support vocals, bass, percussion, harmonium

The Holly and the Ivy

The holly and the ivy
When they are both full grown
Of all trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown

[Refrain:]
O, the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing in the choir

The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flow'r
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To be our dear Saviour

[Refrain]
The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good

[Refrain]
The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn

The Christmas Party

A broadcast on behalf of the Christmas Party! An accidentally profound film about human aspiration, longing, suffering, the expression of these in literature, art and music the possibility (but by no means the certainty) of God and what that means as discussed amicably by four old and slightly tipsy friends. The sax episode “I can’t play for laughing!” steals the show - funny and musical (not always at the same time!) and I think we all come together more during that than on anything else, though we are definitely 'together' as a group throughout. Carols and Nativity poems (by U.A Fanthorpe and T.S. Eliot) and songs (Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”) offer their mixture of divine longing and wry realism, holy and broken hallelujahs, true and bum notes. And no Christmas story would be complete without a compelling modern tale of an Inn too busy cashing in to offer warm rooms of welcome. John’s emotion at the end of the Muggeridge is a revelation, a powerful ending that one doesn't expect but which resolves all the rest in a way one feels was always coming.

The new album in 489 seconds

	1.	The Peacock's Tale 03:00 video
	2.	Rosemary Lane 03:20 video
	3.	Crazy Man Michael 03:39 video
	4.	In The Bleak Midwinter 03:22 video
	5.	The Rise of an April Leaf 03:04 video
	6.	Lady Guinevere 03:01 video
	7.	Bring Me To Fring All Saints 04:02video
	8.	Listen Listen 02:43 video
	9.	Blackwaterside 03:02 video
	10.	Tired With All These 02:03 video
	11.	Gwenhwyfar 05:40 video
	12.	Summer Wine 04:37 video
	13.	The Swimming Song 01:58 video
	14.	Walk on the Wild Side 04:52 video
	15.	Diamonds and Rust 04:14 video
	16.	Twenty Years 01:58 video
	17.	Transatlantic Arti 04:29 video

T S Eliot's Journey of the Magi

T.S. Eliot's proof in a single poem that the experiments of modernism - adopting a personae rather than the personal voice of the poet, free verse "composed in the rhythm of the musical phase (or of speech and thought patterns) rather than the metronome", concreteness, imagism, detachment, feeling delivered through object correlative rather than sentimentality and bombast - could produce a masterpiece as good as any. The symbolist details arranged in the narrative like a painting (a triptych), foreshadowing Christ's future at his birth and which produce in the middle section the 'temperate valley' in which the wonderful Nativity unsentimentally and realistically yet heartwarmingly occurs flanked by the two colder pictures of the journey and then the living death of the old world they no longer belong to. Performed over our version of the Nativity carol "In The Bleak Midwinter" which seemed to fit beautifully at every point and lit by a serendipitous burst of winter sunshine through the window during filming. If I remember my 'O' Level correctly, I think this was around the time that T.S. Eliot the great modernist iconoclast of the Castle Land and Prufrock threw a curve ball towards a crypto-Christian conversion in his Ariel poems. The Journey of the Magi (1927) "A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter." And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. T.S. Eliot

Say Good Buy To £7 - A Tacky Christmas Advert For Our New Album

1.	The Peacock's Tale 03:00 video
	2.	Rosemary Lane 03:20 video
	3.	Crazy Man Michael 03:39 video
	4.	In The Bleak Midwinter 03:22 video
	5.	The Rise of an April Leaf 03:04 video
	6.	Lady Guinevere 03:01 video
	7.	Bring Me To Fring All Saints 04:02video
	8.	Listen Listen 02:43 video
	9.	Blackwaterside 03:02 video
	10.	Tired With All These 02:03 video
	11.	Gwenhwyfar 05:40 video
	12.	Summer Wine 04:37 video
	13.	The Swimming Song 01:58 video
	14.	Walk on the Wild Side 04:52 video
	15.	Diamonds and Rust 04:14 video
	16.	Twenty Years 01:58 video
	17.	Transatlantic Arti 04:29 video

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.