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.