The Peacock's Tale

Several members of the Beatles have asked us how we came up with our name “Peacock’s Tale” ‘Did a man appear appear in a flaming pie and declare, ‘And thy name shall be Peacock’? asks one. ‘We understand why you were once called Phezant’s Tail (being the mere backing vocalists, lyricist and drummer emerging phoenix-like from the end of the Penland Phezants folk storytelling quartet) but why PEACOCK'S Tale? asks another. So we wrote this song to explain. No parrots or peacocks were harmed and no leylandii hedge was chainsaw massacred in the making of the field recordings. Krishna always wears a peacock feather around his neck given him by the king of the peacocks in gratitude for making all his flock dance with joy. 'Neti neti' (Sanskrit, 'not this, not this') is a meditation technique for rejecting the non-divine. Various celebrity couples are referenced: Krishna and Radha; Zeus and Hera (the Greek goddess of marriage); Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Argus had eyes all over his body so could see everything - hence his frequent use as a newspaper name - but he really ought to have covered them when he saw The Goddess of Marriage bathing naked. She consigned his eyes to the peacock's tail. Agamemnon the King of Argos sacrificed his and Clytemnestra's daughter to the gods for a fair wind to Troy and, though he eventually won the war and returned home in gory, he rather lost his wife. Welcome home, dear... lyrics Haunted Middle English suburban castle leylandii battlements TIPSY half cut LAWNS concealing parrots concealing peacocks.... Not this luscent fan Of massed sunrise With its strutting mail Of blinkless eyes. Not this Argos fake news That our daughters must die For a West to burn down An Eastern sky Not this parrotry perched In Love's poetry A deaf world applauds Nor this fame miscalled Immortality Immortality. This unheard dance Of the peacock’s heart Is our joyous love And our secret art. Not this heaven train lost Up a Khuber pass Not this gold and blue vision Lost up its ass. Not this marriage vow caught In the All Together Nor this false ‘I’ blind To the blaze around Krishna. Not this parrotry perched In Love’s poetry A deaf world applauds Nor this fame miscalled Immortality Immortality. This unheard dance Of the peacock’s heart Is our joyous love And our secret art.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (featuring the actual song!)

We did actually have think twice because the previous film went up without sound.

Reprising our Joan'n'Bob act ( see Diamonds and Rust Gareth-calway – Diamonds-and-rust) with a return fixture, Bob's trademark protest song against one of his early women. His second album but the first to feature a more or less complete sweep of his own songs, unlike the first which mainly showcased him as a performer of other people's. In other words, the real Dylan. Who was the discarded lover? Some internal evidence suggests this may even be pre-New York with its rustic setting of roosters and dark roads and sense of setting out and travelling' on in which case it might be a memory of some Mid Western affair rather than Suzi Rotolo but who knows. "You just kinda wasted my precious time" is pretty damning but mild compared to some of his later accusations and restless attacks on whoever was upsetting him at the time. We both bought this album about 8 years after it came out probably on the strength of Blowing in the Wind as one of those must have vinyl classic albums from one of the masters of folk rock and Americana and fellow architect of the 60s (with the Beatles) first heard as children but now understood as teenagers and were sent back to it recently by the brilliant film about Dylan's early years (up to 1966) 'A Complete Unknown' which ends with him roaring away from Pete Seeger type folk on a rocknroll motorbike. Around the time of Hendrix there was a rumour that Dylan couldn't really play guitar but made up for it with a unique dramatising voice and the poetry of the lyrics but one listen to the original will banish that thought: his guitar picking (honed by all those folk club performances) is astonishingly good and drives the song.. And contrary to most people's recall, this is not a solo track but has a band behind him playing drums, two bass guitars, piano and a second guitarist. Our version concentrates on the heart-yearning pretty tune. We have a female lead vocal, bass, percussion and add some vocal layers. On the liner notes Dylan protests that it isn't a (slow and easy going) love song. And so of course that's exactly the way we do it.

Don't Think Twice It's All Right

Reprising our Joan'n'Bob act ( see Diamonds and Rust Gareth-calway – Diamonds-and-rust) with a return fixture, Bob's trademark protest song against one of his early women. His second album but the first to feature a more or less complete sweep of his own songs, unlike the first which mainly showcased him as a performer of other people's. In other words, the real Dylan. Who was the discarded lover? Some internal evidence suggests this may even be pre-New York with its rustic setting of roosters and dark roads and sense of setting out and travelling' on in which case it might be a memory of some Mid Western affair rather than Suzi Rotolo but who knows. "You just kinda wasted my precious time" is pretty damning but mild compared to some of his later accusations and restless attacks on whoever was upsetting him at the time. We both bought this album about 8 years after it came out probably on the strength of Blowing in the Wind as one of those must have vinyl classic albums from one of the masters of folk rock and Americana and fellow architect of the 60s (with the Beatles) first heard as children but now understood as teenagers and were sent back to it recently by the brilliant film about Dylan's early years (up to 1966) 'A Complete Unknown' which ends with him roaring away from Pete Seeger type folk on a rocknroll motorbike. Around the time of Hendrix there was a rumour that Dylan couldn't really play guitar but made up for it with a unique dramatising voice and the poetry of the lyrics but one listen to the original will banish that thought: his guitar picking (honed by all those folk club performances) is astonishingly good and drives the song.. And contrary to most people's recall, this is not a solo track but has a band behind him playing drums, two bass guitars, piano and a second guitarist. Our version concentrates on the heart-yearning pretty tune. We have a female lead vocal, bass, percussion and add some vocal layers. On the liner notes Dylan protests that it isn't a (slow and easy going) love song. And so of course that's exactly the way we do it.

On Cley Hill

The rest is history, or Arthur Lee legend A lost summer country hollow, an Inn, The Green Man, cheering on a great British win, An Avalon that isn't there in the morning. A dream awoken to this light's cold day Where in spite of my shin-struck wounded need For thundering hooves in defence of these islands, Thundering hooves in defence of these islands, He doesn't come back. 'And he was never Called Arturus Rex, whoever he was And in some accounts not even Arthur And he was never mediaeval and never a king.' And who cares? Not Me. I stand on tis tumulus Of boyhood, layers of chalk written on clay, Craters and knolls, his monk-buried legend Scarred in my flesh, his doubt-defying Desperate defence of wonder (which Is what he was) an earth ditch like mine; His weapons, TOYS of tin and strapped wood and skin Like mine, on a May hill that may have been Badon And may have not, blades of peaceful grass troubled only And not just now - by rain and ghosts And a White Horse, God-large in memory, God-large still.

Siegfried Sassoon

​ ⁨@PeacocksTaleMusic⁩  Wandering around the churchyard of Mells (an idyllic Somerset village near Frome) we found the grave of the great First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon so in the presence of such integrity, I ransacked my memory for this, a war poem I remember being printed incorrectly in our O level history book and corrected in an addendum. The General Good morning, good morning the General said When we met him last week on our way to the Line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of the dead And we're crying his staff for incompetent swine. He;s a cheery old card, grunted Harry to Jack As we trudged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both with his plan of attack. The video and stills from Mells church are framed by the beautiful Stations of the Cross carvings at Frome St John's and the music (our homage to Edith Cavell) opens out into a general meditation on the First World War.

A Trip To Badon Hill

Filmed on location on the A362 (from Frome, Somerset, to Corsley Heath) and Cley Hill in Wiltshire. The consummate British victory at Badon Hill is one of the only two Arthurian facts recorded in the Anglo Saxon chronicle as occurring around AD 515-8. (The other is his death at Camlaun around 537-9: both these historical facts are key moments in the legend but the rest is the stuff of Arthur Mee children's encyclopaedias, Celtic myth and glorious mediaeval romance.) It's very unlikely that Cley Hill was the historical Badon Hill but that's not the point about this or any other aspect of the legend: for me as a boy it was and that is Arthur's most potent (and super-real) realm. The town you see some 3 miles from the hill is Frome, where I grew up, learned about and enacted King Arthur, from which I used to hike to this summit and from which we bussed on this baking hot July day. The soundtrack is our own "Woke King Arthur" and William "Billy" Blake/Gustav Holst's "Jerusalem" from our album "King Arthur and Me: The Opera". https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/al... Wake me, wake me He come out on top, he beat Hordes of heathen, he pluck Swords of lightning from the Stone and rippling BC AD 6 and 6/9teenth Century Justice might and mercy king of all chivalry. Wake me, wake me He Arth and Ursus, he yoke Rome and Logres, he ride Wings and horses, he steal Grails from Annwn as a Norman knight a bird of prey an earthed angel tree, Celtic god a Dark Age white horse galloping free. Woke King Arthur In the 20th Century. Wake me, wake me He ever present, he a Church-hilled dragon, he the King of Europe, never Heard of England, he a Druid henge a hollow hill a forest a sea British May King ever changing eternity. Woke King Arthur In the 20th Century. (spoken) You who think you defend This lost land of Logres From drowning migrants For your offshore profits You're not Arthur's Britons Follow your money GO! He fights invaders who claim Lost Land acres from the Drowning migrants, for their Offshore profits, he’s the Lose yourself to save yourself they don’t want to see Release the Pax Britannia brand of Arthur-ity. Woke King Arthur In the Twenty first Century. Wake King Arthur Yeah Wake King King Arthur Yeah Wake King Arthur YEAH! The rest is history, or Arthur Lee legend A lost summer country hollow, an Inn, The Green Man, cheering on a great British win, An Avalon that isn't there in the morning. A dream awoken to this light's cold day Where in spite of my shin-struck wounded need For thundering hooves in defence of these islands, Thundering hooves in defence of these islands, He doesn't come back. 'And he was never Called Arturus Rex, whoever he was And in some accounts not even Arthur And he was never mediaeval and never a king.' And who cares? Not Me. I stand on tis tumulus Of boyhood, layers of chalk written on clay, Craters and knolls, his monk-buried legend Scarred in my flesh, his doubt-defying Desperate defence of wonder (which Is what he was) an earth ditch like mine; His weapons, TOYS of tin and strapped wood and skin Like mine, on a May hill that may have been Badon And may have not, blades of peaceful grass troubled only And not just now - by rain and ghosts And a White Horse, God-large in memory, God-large still. And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold Bring me my arrows of desire Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

The Light Within The Lamp of Britain

 @PeacocksTaleMusic  "Logres is the light within the lamp of Britain" says King Arthur in Rosemary Sutcliff's thrilling version of the stories. And whenever I go on the train through Westbury, I feel again what I felt as a boy growing up in nearby Frome - that the white horse God-huge atop the valley side is Arthur's, eternally about to ride again to save us from mundanity. The musical soundtrack is "Gwenhwyfar" which we wrote together in different centuries. I wrote the words in the 1980s; Maz the music in 2022 and we recorded it in 2024. Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Cross on invincible shield, blood-red, Dragon on young-summer green, red, The terrible clatter of returning hooves. I never quite believed. Always feared him Dead. But he always came. Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Swift white charger swooping like a spear On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women, Scourging the rat run barbarian inroads, Animal tracks of attacking Saxon, His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast. And little the faith I had yet in Arthur, The Angel campaigner, strong as light, His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard, Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. At last I understood. The flincher from spears, Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow, Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned: Avalon. And I’ll run no more. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens Will flock on the gore. Let others keep A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight Until the dawn. My confession’s done. Still my heart waits for hoofbeats. (Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…) © Gareth Calway 1991 (first published by Aude Gotto in my King of Hearts publication "Coming Home")

Peacock's Tale and a Pixie Harpist... In an English Country Garden live music video

https://youtu.be/ZJ_XCoPB080

We get together with our old bandmate and soul mate Vanessa Wood-Davies to play this homage to a young man from our village of Sedgeford who spent his 19th to his 25th year flying and fighting above the two main fronts of the Second World War (Europe and Asia) before dying in a tragic crash trialling an advanced training plane at home a month before the hostilities finally ceased. Our hosts and most of our audience were already born and have lived the entire 80 years since, grateful for the many young men like him who risked (and lost) it all on a wing and a prayer.

Green Shirt

The song was written by the poet Elvis Costello and appeared on his corruscating third album "Armed Forces".

There's a smart young woman on a light blue screen
Who comes into my house every night
She takes all the red, yellow, orange and green
And she turns them into black and white

[Chorus]
But you tease, you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it

[Post-Chorus]
Better cut off all identifying labels
Before they put you on the torture table

[Verse 2]
'Cause somewhere in the Quisling Clinic
There's a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes
She's listening in to the Venus line
She's picking out names, I hope none of them are mine

[Chorus]
But you tease, you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it

[Bridge]
Never said I was a stool pigeon
I never said I was a diplomat
Everybody is under suspicion
But you don't wanna hear about that

[Chorus]
'Cause you tease, you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it

[Post-Chorus]
Better send a begging letter to the big investigation
Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?

[Chorus]
You tease, and you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it
You can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it.

It's a brilliant lyric. Describing a female newsreader distilling all the impossible conflicts of the world (red, yellow, orange and greens- note the Irish reference of the last two colours) into an acceptable BBC 'black and white'. Then the green shirt which is both the British army and the Irish Republican one. But it's also seething with sexual energy; the news a kind of flirtation with a gagging public. Plus he puts this poem - which I prefer to almost any actual contemporary 'proper' poem - to blistering sound-poem music. That classic Buddy Holly channeling Costello combination of a ravishingly melody with an infuriatingly teeth-clenched delivery.

duplicitous vocals, bullet bodhran and punk harp - Gaz

The Keeper

https://youtu.be/z7ToRgsL8RU

‪@PeacocksTaleMusic‬ for all our videos We performed this at our recent summer solstice party expecting our pagan friends to know it and join in. They didn't and didn't, citing a Christian-indoctrinated primary schooling. My class in Milk St Primary School Frome (the one before the 11 plus year) used to sing this with hip, miniskirted Miss Millington who possibly got it from the Pete Seeger version and worldview. Seeger was deeply involved in the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King and no doubt enjoyed the progressive implications of the song, the keeper freeing the doe into the woods (among the leaves so green-o) rather than killing her or holding her captive. In the early 70s, as the English folk rock band Steeleye Span took Irish Republican folk songs like "All Around My Hat" ("I will wear a green willow) and McCartney singing "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" up the charts, I assumed "The Keeper" was a similarly progressive song about the changing relationship between England and Ireland. It could be though I'm not sure it started out like that. Apparently, it's just one of those eternal hunter/hind songs about sex, "under his cloak he carried a bow for to shoot a merry little doe." I prefer the green 1965 version with miniskirted Miss Millington where, despite our incipient pubescence and a propensity for innuendo, Class 7 thought it was about a keeper hunting and then releasing an elfin doe among the trees into a semi-magical wood, like the ones we knew in Somerset. (It was a progressive school but also marked by the limitations of its time : when the whole year group sang together, the 'remove' class was always and only given the percussion instruments. Pic of me as the Keeper by Bhas Allan.

Cruel

@PeacocksTaleMusic for all our videos. Our take on Kate Rusby's "Cruel". Traditional folk but also a deconstruction of it, as is Rusby's thoroughly contemporary way; the 'female' side of all those 'heave away, haul away' shanties, revealing a tender human story of cruelly divided lovers. Nowadays, they'd probably stay and build a home together... Cruel were my parents, to tear my love from me Cruel was the pressgang that took him to the sea Cruel was the little boat that rowed him off the strand And cruel was the big ship, that took him from the land Haul away, boys, haul away Haul away, boys, haul away Cruel was the water, that ship it sailed upon Cruel was the fair wind, for now my loves he's gone Had you blown a roaring gale they'd have left him on dry land Where he would walk besides me and I would hold his hand Haul away boys, haul away Haul away boys, haul away The ring beneath my pillow, is the ring he gave to me I'll wear it on my finger, for all the world to see But cruel was the captain, the bo'sun, and the men For they didn't give a farthing if I saw my love again Haul away, boys, haul away Haul away boys, haul away Cruel were my parents, to tear my love from me Cruel was the pressgang that took him to the sea Cruel was the little boat that rowed him off the strand And cruel was the big ship, that took him from the land Haul away, boys, haul away Haul away, boys, haul away from Poachers on the Common (LP), released September 8, 2022 https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/poachers-on-the-common-lp Song by Kate Rusby

In An English Country Garden (Peacocks' Photoshoot with Bhas Allan)

  https://www.tiktok.com/@peacocktale/video/7511661056788303126 for Bhas's film of the performance

“I tried to save The Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.” (Frodo in LOTR) Tolkien wrote that during World War Two (and with his own front line memories of friends lost in World War One) and it probably sums up how many survivors felt; as well as summing up the plight of those who didn't survive. Recording this in an English country garden in Lancelot's own Norfolk parish - the bee loud glades, the tidal wave of birdsong - it really did feel like this was what Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Wiliamson fought 5 years, aged 19-25, to save. What he HAD helped to save in July 1945, on home leave from a year in the Burma campaign (after 4 years in the skies above Europe winning two mentions in despatches and not getting shot down, winning those existential battles) But not, alas, for him. A fatal training flight on the early morning of Friday 13 July above Little Eaton in Derbyshire meant he never got the chance to enjoy the 'Shire' we are sitting in here. This is our thank you. We'll be playing this homage (with our neighbour and musical friend harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies on harp) at the church in which Percy is buried on his 80th anniversary, Sunday July 13 2025 as part of a special memorial service starting at 9.30 am. Three generations of his family will be present. I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter, 5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames, In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise And came down to Earth but lived up to my names. Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin, Six Logres ladies to walk by my side, Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July. Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only, Play up the dead march as we go along And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy, I lived in the free air that breathes through this song. Instrumental break Repeat first verse. Lyric © Gareth Calway 2023

Skirting Heresy (The Story of Margery Kempe of Lynn) with Vanessa Wood-...

"Skirting Heresy" is the title of an epic play by New York author Elizabeth MacDonald which I edited for a production in Lynn Minster in 2018, mainly adding several existing songs from a previous play of my own which which you'll find on the Peacock's album  peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/a-mas…for-margery and - in different versions - on the album the Penland Phezants ( Andy Wall, Vanessa, Melanie and me) created for the Skirting Heresy show. Andy and Vanessa wrote the folk tunes; I wrote the lyrics and the beat-based rap and chant bits. The "Skirting Heresy" score is collected on thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/son…ery-kempe
This track "Skirting Heresy" using the title of the play as a refrain was written by Andy and I to cover a lengthy curtain call for the epic cast of 70 and to tell the whole story of the Book in a summary form. We both rather extended ourselves and we were all still performing it about 4 minutes after the epic curtain call ended! I recall pointedly singing "You're a menace to churchman but a mystic to me" to possibly the least facilitating churchman ever to host a play about one of his most famous ancestral parishioners.
This is the abridged Peacock version. The full Peacock version is here-  soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/skirting-heresy-in-full
The lovely upbeat Andy-led folk performance is on the Phezants album link above. This version features the three other performers on that track (adding Vanessa's beautifully measured harp to our usual Peacock duo) taking it somewhere more mediaeval.

Brave Unselfish Loving (VE Remembrance)

https://soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/1aafa1f7-32e8-40a7-9cf3-b8f93b0c5e51

A new recording for the 80th anniversary of VE Day of this remembrance anthem for a "brave, loving and unselfish" youth late of this parish.

Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Williamson, 1920-1945, died on Friday July 13 1945 after five years service in the RAF fighting Fascism on two major fronts of the Second World War, aged 25. He joined the RAF in 1939, aged 19. He was agonisingly close to surviving the entire war when he died in a plane crash on a solo training flight above Little Eaton in Derbyshire just after his last home leave in Norfolk.

Lancelot 'Percy' Williamson is the last name on the unbelievably long roll call of Sedgeford war dead from two world wars called out (across the village green where we live) every Remembrance Sunday. My ear was struck by the Arthurian resonances, not just Sir Lancelot the greatest knight but Percival the purest (and finder of the Holy Grail). Maz and I have the honour in absentia familias of tending his grave at Fring and also of occasionally remembering him at the church with this song or the poem.

He hailed from Eaton Farm Sedgeford, North West Norfolk. went to school in Fring, sang in Heacham church choir, played cricket for Sedgeford a week before his death and is buried next to the small grave of his 'older' (10 year old) brother at Fring All Saints.

The tune is a traditional folk song about a good young man cut down in his prime. The aircraft you hear at the end of this film was flying over as we finished recording so we left the mikes open. The same thing happened when I was recording the poem in the graveyard.

I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter,

5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames,

In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise

And came down to Earth but lived up to my names.

Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin,

Six Logres ladies to walk by my side,

Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies

And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July.

Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only,

Play up the dead march as we go along

And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy,

I lived in the free air that breathes through this song.

Instrumental break

Repeat first verse.

Lyric © Gareth Calway 2023

from PEACOCK'S TALES (The Sapphire Wedding Album) peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/peaco…dding-album
Percy's gravestone has recently been cleaned and made much more legible, as you will see in the final frame of the film (see link below). Our thanks to Carol Townsend of the Commonwealth Graves Commission who carried out that excellent work as well as to Tim Snelling Sedgeford village historian whose diligent research gave us many of the images and press cuttings you see on the film and which gave us the material for our song. You can also watch the music video on YouTube. youtu.be/j3LRhwEYIsA That film gives you a bit of the poem as well.

Beltane (The Rise of an April Leaf)

The rise of the subtitle ("Rise of an April Leaf") implies the fall and in this poem the leaf at its unfurling nervously considers its mortality and all the things that can go wrong. The second voice representing all the things urging it on - sun, spring etc - riffs on the old moral 'he who saves himself loses himself'

Puckered,
Helpless,
Grizzly,
Clenched
Ugly as a newborn face;
Scared to let myself go:
And where can I go
Except towards death?
And what if I grow
In the wrong directions,
Abnormal or twisted,
And how do you do it anyway?
Thoughts crumpled,
Feelings crushed.
Perhaps I’m not even a leaf?
Just scared to stand out
From the crowded branches?
So what am I? – yellow?
Or just painfully shy
Soft virgin green
Closed against the urging sun?
Do I have to do anything?
Will I just become – me?
Or do I have to force myself out?
Safer to sit tight;
But then I get scared
The rest of the branch
Which had seemed so wooden
Is unfolding faster;
Best to let go then;
But what if my flower
Hardly out of bud
Gets pollinated?

The May blossom light
Of the still warm evening;
The birdsong high
Above distant traffic:
The Sun become mild
And expansive, beaming:
The breathless wind:
All give their answer:
He who saves his dances

Will never be a dancer.

© Gareth Calway and first published in 'Encounter' Magazine in April 1987.
Watch the video on YouTube youtu.be/0K8LiK9rFlA

Marie Mouri

‪@PeacocksTaleMusic‬ for all our 250 plus videos A very sad song but a joy to play    • Marie Mouri by Peacock's Tale Musical...   Same recording technique and target sound as Pallet On Your Floor. lyrics Chère 'tit zozo quoi t'apré fé? T'apré sauter, t'apré chanter To pas connais n'a p'us Marie Marie mouri, Marie mouri 'Tits herbe tout vert, 'tits herbe tout moux Faut p'us to fais un lit pou nous To pas connais n'a p'us Marie Marie mouri, Marie mouri Quand jou fini n'a p'you soleil Quand nuit fini n'a pas sommeil Quand monde content mo p'us ca ri Marie mouri, Marie mouri credits from Untied States of Americana (LP), track released January 24, 2022 peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/untie…mericana-lp Maz - guitar, vocal; Gaz - drum & bass. A David L. Greely song which we learned in the version by Linda Ronstadt/ Anna Savoy.

Septuacentenary of a Parish Church

scenes from the Passion 
in an Easterly procession
line a Norfolk lane
and heavens above

turn heaven-lent snowdrops
through an orientation
to daffodils of fire…
through death
we remember 
with bread
poppies
wine
music
good 
words
thoughts
deeds
to 
LOVE

A real communion with infinite repercussions
Bringing all Faiths together like beads on one string
(Though whether preventing, or after, a Flood, God knows.)
I am Not. You and I are not We but One.

Let there be:

Light broad-churched in through
angel wing mirror-rainbowed
clean glass, open door

ONE
heaven-blue earth-green blood-stained 
eastern window;

An orientation; a turn to the East.

This Early English new build that went up all in one go
(The Tower taking a tad longer) as English emerged
From Norman French as the national language. And
Structurally stable for seven hundred years.
Unusual. Amid a green and pleasant, wooded farmland
(Non-Satanic mills!) well pastored, well wardened,
Well furnished with flowers, cheerful, friendly,
On a well-lit, airy hill and reached by idyllic lanes. A
Congregation with an ear for a Book of Common Prayer,
An uncommon hymn and a warm word of welcome. This
Is the heart of the matter. This has lasted. This is eternal.

Genesis of a Church (Fring All Saints AD 1330)

Genesis of A Church, Fring, 1330 AD

 

 

On this higher ground

Let us house an altar

Where the Word may resound

Through time, prayer and psalter.

 

On this heavenly spur

Let us grow a tower

Where the great stir of Easter

May bud, leaf and flower.

 

He cam also stille

Ther his moder was

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the gras.[1]

 

Defeats, factions, debts,

A weak tyrant king’s

Gone the way of all flesh

Burns for higher things[2].

 

In these emerald trees

Lifting monks’ eyes above

Earthy labour, dis-ease,

Let us sing divine love.

 

He cam also stille

To his modres bowr

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the flowr.

 

In these sandcastle days,

A boy on the throne[3],

Let us hold fast and raise

Firm foundations of stone.

 

Let here be Light

To summer the heart

Through spring, heyday, fall, blight,

Candling the dark.

 

He cam also stille

Ther his moder lay

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the spray.

 

Let here be stillness

On strips, hill, vale, farm,

Green pastures and waters

That flow like a Psalm.

 

Frea’s[4] folk, we are grass, bone,

We come to pass;

But soul-fashioned stone,

We build to last.

 

 

 

 

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[1] The refrains in italics are from an anonymous mediaeval lyric about the Annunciation.

[2] Edward II, murdered at Berkeley Castle in 1327, his reign defined by usurping nobles and humiliating defeats in Scotland.

[3] Edward III, heir at 14, 18 when he assumed direct control in 1330. 

[4] The place name Fring is according to the ONC “probably ‘ingas’ (the settlement of) the family or followers of a Saxon named Frea.” That his name may be a nod to the Norse goddess Freya (from whence ‘Friday’ ‘Freya’s day) is a poetic reminder that churches were typically built on sites sacred to earlier faiths. The beautiful natural setting on a low hill overlooking a timeless rural England is strikingly numinous.