Bonfire Night of the Vanities

A collage of words and music suggested by bonfire night and its demonic origins in burning heretics/martyrs/subversives/insurrectionists/visionaries/traitors and of one of them nearly blowing up Parliament. We imagine the hell of the burning and the glimpse of their visionary heaven (or hell) beyond. This evocation of the afterlife merges into a more general exploration of the heaven and hell as a state of our bodiless minds we all might find after death, in this conception seen, as Dante does, as a living soul among the dead. The mystical lyrics chanted throughout to a drum beat which explore this are composed in the form of a Persian ghazal, a lyric poem often describing states of heavenly love and yearning. There are also sustained references to William Sawtree burned as a pro-Protestant heretic and Margery Kempe who narrowly escaped burning as one and who was later credited with the miracle of saving her church by prayer from a Great Fire in Lynn.

"Bonfire Night has pagan origins in ancient Celtic festivals like Samhain, which marked the end of harvest and the beginning of winter with bonfires to ward off spirits and for divination. These traditions were later Christianized, with the Church incorporating some of the pagan customs into celebrations like All Saints' Eve (Halloween) and eventually being overshadowed by the 1605 Guy Fawkes plot in Britain." In Catholic Ireland the Guy Fawkes connection is of course absent. "Bonfire Night, or Bonna Night as it is known in Cork, is celebrated on June 23rd. It involves many communities burning bonfires across the City on the night. The tradition is an old pagan Celtic celebration to honour the goddess Aine."

St Margaret's is burning but Jesus tells me
Here in my mind that all shall be well.
"Shall I carry the Sacrament towards the fire?"
Asks our priest. - Sir, yes. And to hell.

St Margaret's is burning; I'm urging the Lord
Here in my mind, let the high heavens snow
To quench this fire and ease my heart's woe.
"A Miracle!" cries Lynn, till my heart's tears flow.

Out of my gender, out of my class and out of my mind,
Out of my body and leaving the age I was born to behind,
Where priests hurry Mass, to get back to their lusts, pies, slanders and beer:
Fruit gorged by a bear and discharged from its rear.

Now I'm old and wounded, the Lord God tells me
Here in my mind, You must go to Danzig.
I excuse you, escort you and lead you, for I
Am above your confessor, although he bans it.

Who shall be against you, the Lord God tells me
Here in my mind, then a friar says it too.
In storm and war, through slander and curse
Who shall be against, if I am with you?

A Roman candle – both ends – a seized handful of lightning,
She fires through the heavens like light streams off an angel’s wing.

So mighty and subtle, a charge off of yin and yang,
The craft’s me, and I’m her: love-fuelled, she flies to every whim.

The Maimed King’s white-robed daughter, her eyes red with strange desire,
Steers dreamland below – wakes life from dead Earth - by wishing.

Above dreams, I see hereafter’s warp-speed joy and pain: trance
Of soul-sending bliss; agony of sins’ un-thinking.

Debt-ridden nightmares redeem themselves in galloping hells:
Thick sins in deep shit, thin in shallow - below my high living.

Six hundred and sixty six rockets shoot over like stars:
Flight paths clear of congestion and endless delaying.

It’s not sober in heaven, Calypso measures pour down;
Pure spirit unstopped by flesh; wild uncorporate singing.

I’ve pub-crawled from the plane into this heavenly city,
Tavern drinking to an Absent Friend I should be meeting.

Stuck. A Catherine Wheelspin Lotus to Nowhere. Fast. I’ve stalled
The mission, the Earth and its peril, the Master’s calling.

“O God-dazzled, leave this dream, which is heavenly shadow
Of Grail light, and follow Me where such wish-life is nothing.”

Thanks: Harp - Vanessa Wood-Daves "Oh God dazzled vocal sample - Gabriella Tal

Halloween

 ⁨@PeacocksTaleMusic⁩  

 This track stumbles terrified through the cellars and attics of England's haunted house. These famous nursery rhymes are said to record the gothic cruelties of opposing religious regimes during the Reformation.

The old man who wouldn't say his prayers was the Catholic or priest who wouldn't conform to the new State religion under Edward VI and (after Mary) Elizabeth. My lady's chamber could be a forbidden chapel dedicated to Mary in a house or a suggestion that the priest was having improper relations with the Catholic lady of the house. The left leg meant a Catholic out of step with the rest. Some readers also see Protestant taunts of Catholic Mary Tudor (and Catholic Mary Queen of Scots') childlessness.

The cockle shells were instruments of torture used by the Catholic regime against Protestants under Bloody Mary (quite contrary) the pretty maids all in a row the graves of Protestant martyrs who had suffered such genital torture. The silver bells were thumbscrews. The garden was a graveyard: England under Mary.

It's all anti-Mary in the sense that it is about as far away from the Christian love and forgiveness the Virgin Mother is supposed to personify as possible, on both sides.

A more innocent reading of the Mary rhyme is that the maids in a row are nuns praying, the silver bells are the bells of Catholic cathedrals (forbidden since Elizabeth) and the cockle shells are pilgrim badges (also forbidden.)

These rhymes come out of a divided country. The animus felt against Catholicism by Puritans fearing that Charles I was trying to reintroduce 'Bloody Mary's' faith (and Spanish and French power) into Protestant England by the back door has roots in these kind of experiences; and vice versa. 

Mary Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

Goose-a, goose-a, gander

Where shall I wander?

Up stairs, down stairs

In my lady’s chamber.

There you'll find an old man

Who wouldn't say his prayers.

I took him by the left leg

And threw him down the stairs.

Mary, Mary...

Goosey goose gander

Whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs

And in my lady's chamber.

A priesthole for the old Guy

Who crossed the new State God,

The left-footed southpaw

Gutted for His Love.

Mary, Mary...

Mary Tudor, Bishop Gardner

Killing and Torturing Prots,

Silver thumbscrews, Manhood carvers,

Maidening their anti-Mary plots.

Anti-Mary maidening their plots.

The Queen of Heaven's makeless idol

Of childless Mary Tudor and of Scots,

Maids in waiting, headless-churchbells,

Pilgrim badges, nuns and empty cots.

Goosey goose gander

Whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs

And in my lady's chamber.

There I met an old man

Who would not say his prayers.

I took him by the left leg

And threw him down the stairs.

Goosey goose gander

Eyeing up the totty

Necklines and waistlines

Fronty and botty.

Mary Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

from https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/the-english-civil-wars-and-other-nursery-crimes, released August 22, 2021 

Pic by Bhas Allan.

Alternative music video - youtu.be/TDCbetcIG2I

Betjeman Cabaret at the Fring All Saints Parish Lunch

In celebration of Harvest Festival, National Poetry Day and the joys of feasting, friendship and community, here is Peacock Gaz dressed as a mouse and reading Betjeman's "Diary of a Church Mouse" to kick off our after-mains cabaret. Your After Dinner Squeaker as it were. The cabaret then continues and concludes with Corrine Tereszczuk's rendition of Betjeman's Hymn, after which she was told she'd passed the audition for the Fring Singers. Filmed at Sedgeford Village Hall Oct 5 2025 by Peacock Maz. We leave you to imagine the running about and squeaking at every table by the mouse before the reading (which did happen) and the ladies standing on chairs during it (which actually didn't.) The three carved church mice in whose honour all this occurred may be viewed behind the pulpit in All Saints Church Fring. Diary of a Church Mouse Here among long-discarded cassocks, Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, Here where the vicar never looks I nibble through old service books. Lean and alone I spend my days Behind this Church of England baize. I share my dark forgotten room With two oil-lamps and half a broom. The cleaner never bothers me, So here I eat my frugal tea. My bread is sawdust mixed with straw; My jam is polish for the floor. Christmas and Easter may be feasts For congregations and for priests, And so may Whitsun. All the same, They do not fill my meagre frame. For me the only feast at all Is Autumn's Harvest Festival, When I can satisfy my want With ears of corn around the font. I climb the eagle's brazen head To burrow through a loaf of bread. I scramble up the pulpit stair And gnaw the marrows hanging there. It is enjoyable to taste These items ere they go to waste, But how annoying when one finds That other mice with pagan minds Come into church my food to share Who have no proper business there. Two field mice who have no desire To be baptized, invade the choir. A large and most unfriendly rat Comes in to see what we are at. He says he thinks there is no God And yet he comes ... it's rather odd. This year he stole a sheaf of wheat (It screened our special preacher's seat), And prosperous mice from fields away Come in to hear our organ play, And under cover of its notes Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats. A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I Am too papistical, and High, Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong To munch through Harvest Evensong, While I, who starve the whole year through, Must share my food with rodents who Except at this time of the year Not once inside the church appear. Within the human world I know Such goings-on could not be so, For human beings only do What their religion tells them to. They read the Bible every day And always, night and morning, pray, And just like me, the good church mouse, Worship each week in God's own house, But all the same it's strange to me How very full the church can be With people I don't see at all Except at Harvest Festival. -- John Betjeman The Church's Restoration In eighteen-eighty-three Has left for contemplation Not what there used to be. How well the ancient woodwork Looks round the Rect'ry hall, Memorial of the good work Of him who plann'd it all. ... Of marble brown and veinéd He did the pulpit make; He order'd windows stainéd Light red and crimson lake. Sing on, with hymns uproarious, Ye humble and aloof, Look up! and oh how glorious He has restored the roof!