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.

The Penland Phezant's Tale (Goodbye Cruel World) - Live at SHARP July 5 2019 FAREWELL SHOW/REVIEW

A folk music/ storytelling concert in a boneyard in Norfolk prefaced by a radio interview about it in Cambridge

Review: It’s not all that often that a band can say that they played an Anglo-Saxon cemetery but last Friday the Penland Phezants added Boneyard Field, Sedgeford (summer home to the Sedgeford Historical & Archaeological Research Project) to their list. In fact there is a motif that brought the group of local folk/storytellers to the historic site. Friday 5th July marked the bicentenary of the remarkable death of Sedgeford resident Susan Nobes, who was killed by a lightning bolt in the vestry of St. Mary’s Church, Sedgeford; part of the band’s set was dedicated to commemorating her death with The Ballad of Susan Nobes.

The Penland Phezants, comprising of poet and percussionist Gareth Calway, Andy Wall (lead vocals & guitar) Vanessa Wood-Davies (harp & backing vocals) and Melanie Calway (vocals) have for the past few years been performing a lively set of musical local histories. What the Phezants have managed to achieve through their well-researched and finely crafted songs and poems is the voice of the ‘Commoner’; words from those who were at the sharp end of history and in many cases have had their voices erased. 

From the 1816 Littleport and Ely Bread Riots, Hereward the Wake and Margery Kempe of Lynn, the songs and poems of the group display a sensitive and well-researched retelling of local history from the ground up. A fact that I am sure that the Anglo-Saxons (who loved a good story themselves) buried nearby would have no doubt appreciated as well.

Gary Rossin, Sedgeford Archaeological and Historical Research Project

A Happy Christmas and A Lynn Carol from the Penland Phezants

As we reach the end of our hectic first year,  may I on behalf of the Penland Phezants wish all our listeners (including the 70 more lovely people who helped bring alive our True Story of Hereward the Wake at Elmswell History group at our last gig of the year last night!)  A Very Happy Christmas and a Brand New Year. 

Press Release: A Lynn Carol

Sedgeford folk music-storytelling combo The Penland Phezants have released a Christmas carol especially for and about Lynn.  The carol embraces the timeless message of Christmas by linking Lynn across 600 years. 

The writer of the first autobiography in English the mystic Margery Kempe lived all her life on the Lynn waterfront at the turn of the 15C. In her "Book of Margery Kempe", she describes many extraordinary visions of love and joy including one in which she hears the Holy Ghost as a robin redbreast singing merrily in her right ear!

Hear it here- https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/the-penland-phezants-christmas-single

The Phezants bring this story timelessly into the present amid the Christmas rush as follows. 

Now starry angels on the tree 
Grow larger in the dusk 
To heaven-blue and Eden-green 
And gold and reindeer-musk. 

And what was heard by Margery, 
The Visionary of Lynn, 
Rings out on tills for checkout girls 
Who hear that robin sing. 

The only gift left on the shelf, 
That nothing else can rise above, 
Includes all treasures, lasts forever, 
And grows when shared with others: love. 

The carol was enjoyed by a packed Lynn Minster when it was performed by a full cast as part of "Skirting Heresy: The Life and Times of Margery Kempe" last September.

The CD "Songs for Skirting Heresy" with songs (including the two featured here) about Lynn through the ages is on sale at True's Yard fisherfolk museum or online at:

https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-skirting-heresy-the-life-and-times-of-margery-kempe

Vardy up front for England v France?

Fenland storytelling combo the Penland Phezants are conjuring up the spirit of '66 as their Hereward the Wake tour comes to All Saints Church Fring (9 July) and the Ely Folk Festival (July 14) next week.

That's 1066 and the English defeat at Hastings, folks, not the 1966 victory at Wembley, but there are hopeful parallels across (almost) a thousand years.

The title song - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/for-the-soul-of-england-by-the-penland-phezants

Herwardi Saxonis (Hereward the Saxon)  - 'Vardy' for short - is the original English underdog who won his day, in the wake of a crushing English defeat that seemed like the end of the world at the time. 

As every English schoolchild knows, after an exhausting victory at Stamford Bridge in 1066, King Harold, the last Saxon king of England, fought bravely and his defenders were well on top at Hastings until tactically outwitted.  Harold's Saxons thought they had won the game when the Norman French dropped deep into their own half only to be caught by a devastating counter attack. A speculative arrow through the air into the penalty area hit Harold in the eye and the rest (including Saxon England as we knew it) is history.

Hereward (of Bourne in Lincolnshire) was in Belgium at the time - adding to his international reputation as a brilliant mercenary general - but returned in September 1067 to join and swiftly to lead the growing English resistance to William the Conqueror's harrowing invasion. Hereward did so most famously at Ely, leading a solid defensive formation of mighty Saxon warriors and monks and Danish diehards, all secure in local knowledge and the impregnable native fen and forest, soaking up wave after wave of attack on a waterlogged fenland pitch, then catching those offensive Normans napping on the break. Not even the services of a French witch deployed on a wooden tower could shift Hereward and his men from their fastness and the Conqueror was losing heavily and on the verge of giving up when, alas, the Abbot of Ely betrayed the secret paths through the fens to the invaders.

One loyal monk warned Hereward just in time and the great Saxon hero escaped with his men to fight (and win) many another day - in a series of madcap adventures in the greenwoods of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Warwickshire, and at Peterborough Abbey, many of which are the real originals of Robin Hood legend.

The 'overdog' Norman conquerors brought many positives into English culture but love of the underdog was not one of them. Our  enduring love of an underdog defying the odds plus the sturdy survival of English rather than Norman French as our national language can both be traced to Hereward's timely resistance.

The Penland Phezants  90 minute musical show "A Very English Resistance: The True Story of Hereward the Wake" words written and narrated by poet Gareth Calway, music by Andy Wall and Vanessa Wood Davies, the whole performed by the trio on guitar, harp and drum, plays Fring and Ely Folk Festival as the World Cup enters its Final week. If France and England are still contenders by then, it might make an interesting replay!  

Advance tickets for Fring here http://www.wegottickets.com/event/443249

 or on the door. £10 incl. glass of wine/ light refreshments.

Ely Folk Festival bookings -http://elyfolkfestival.co.uk/tickets/

1966 and all that - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/1966-england-win-the-world-cup

Phezants tour off to a Phlyer!

The Lynn News spreading the good news

We chronicled everything and now he is gone we keep his story alive like a robin singing i' the woods...

Sedgeford-Ely folk-storytelling combo The Penland Phezants got their Hereward The Wake tour off to a flying start with a sell out show at the Bury St Edmunds Arts Festival last week.

The show, whose full name is "As Free As The Waters That Flow Through The Fen; A Very English Resistance; The True Story of Hereward the Wake"  had to be moved to a bigger venue when the original venue provided by the Milkmaid Folk Club passed its capacity. 

There was more good news for the Phezants as Fring Church booked the folk trio for a performance of Hereward's adventures on July 9, just before their performance at Ely Folk Festival on July 14. All of the words and half of the music of the 90 minute extravaganza have been written in Sedgeford and the show has had all of its rehearsals there. West Norfolk Phezant spotters now have an opportunity to see the show performed in the idyllic setting of Fring's 13C church, near the band's home ground. 

Further local interest may be piqued  by the working up of the one key incident in Hereward's story which actually happened in Norfolk, which writer Gareth Calway has plausibly set in a historically researched 11th century Lynn, then a tiny new development on the south eastern corner of the Wash.

Hereward's story is told through the eyes of the Green Monk, played by the author, who fights at Hereward's side during the underdoggéd English resistance of Norman cruelty and arrogance, and through the stirring folk ballads of  Sweyn Freeborn, the Viking, played by gifted folksinger and guitarist Andy Wall. The spirit of the Greenwood is evoked by the harp melodies and harmonies of Wood, a Fairy harper played by Vanessa Wood-Davies.

The Full Phezants Phirst Phlight! - photo gallery (part of the Cambridgeshire Libraries Presents Arts Alive project)

THE PENLAND PHEZANTS AT WISBECH LIBRARY SAT. 24 FEBRUARY 2018

TELLING THE STORY OF THE 1816 LITTLEPORT AND ELY RIOTS

(OUR FIRST GIG AS A THREE PIECE)

Foisting the Hezant! Pholk tales and music.



Phirst night! Looks like a phull house!



Show them the instruments!



Once upon a time, when people might as well be hanged as starved...

Our mime section. Upwardly mobile farmer's daughter Mary Martin plays bad harpsichord.

There's a riot going on around here. (But I don't think it's going to end well, Jack...)

Told you!


That's all pholks!

JINGLE JINGLE THE PENLAND PHEZANTS CHRISTMAS SINGLE!

The recently formed East Anglian folk trio the Penland Phezants have released an online Christmas single inspired by the Lynn mystic Margery Kempe. The song,  'A Lynn Carol' has a happy Christmas message and a strong local connection.

Margery Kempe of Lynn was not your average mediaeval woman. She wrote the first autobiography in English, 'The Book of Margery Kempe.' It begins with an account of her traumatic first pregnancy (she went on to have 14 children) and what we would call a 'post-partum psychosis' during which she received visions of heaven and hell. Her 'Book' describes visions of devils, Jesus, God, the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary and how her spiritual experiences were regarded by the authorities of the time. In a revolutionary (and at the time heretical) direct personal address to God, she requested that the Holy Spirit she heard like thunder in her right ear be changed to something more homely, merry and English: a robin singing. God obliged! 

 
The idea behind the lyric is that while 'Mystic Margery' and a young modern Lynn shopgirl would probably gape at each other's lives in astonishment, they would both understand and share the experience of love. The moment in the song where the girl falls in love is as much a vision as Margery's.

Now starry angels on the tree
Grow larger in the dusk
To heaven-blue and Eden-green
And gold and reindeer-musk.

And what was heard by Margery,
The Visionary of Lynn,
Rings out on tills for checkout girls
Who hear that robin sing. 

The only gift left on the shelf
That nothing else can rise above
Includes all treasure, lasts forever,
And grows when shared with others: love. 

The Penland Phezants are a combination of Ely folk musician Andy Wall and Waywood, the Sedgeford storytelling duo made up of harpist Vanessa Wood Davies and poet Gareth Calway. They are currently seeking to add further engagements to their Hereward the Wake tour next year, which already includes two nationally acclaimed folk festivals.  The Phezants' Christmas single may be heard via the trio's Bandcamp site, from which listeners can add it to their Christmas playlists or purchase a digital download. https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com

And a little robin also tells us that Margery Kempe's extraordinary story may be coming home to Lynn in 2018, 600 years after she wrote her Book there, with some musical assistance from The Phezants. Watch this space.

The Phezants' next appearance is at Wisbech Library in February, where they will perform "Bread or Blood" the story of the Littleport and Ely Riots of 1816.  (part of the Cambridgeshire Library Presents series) Album sampler here  
Phezant photoshoot by Bhas Allan

A Very English Resistance - The True Story of Hereward The Wake

As Free As The Waters That Flow Through The Fen - The True Story of Hereward The Wake

(Composed, written and performed by the Penland Phezants)

This is a new project being developed by a new combination - a poet, a folk musician and a harpist. The Penland Phezants. We are seeking dates to add to our existing 2018 festival, folk club, library, theatre and arts centre engagements.

Video clip here

Audio clip here

950 years ago, in 1067, Hereward the Wake returned from outlawry, exile and a gallery of bold and magical adventures in Cornwall, Ireland and Flanders which had established him as a famous warrior and the leading military genius of his age. But he did not come home to rest on his laurels. He came home to join, and quickly to lead, the growing English Resistance against the Norman Conquest, which then was at a critical stage. Hereward first avenged the Norman murder of his brother and theft of his manor in his home town of Bourne in Lincolnshire, then established himself in the Isle of Ely alongside the Earl of Morcar (the dead King Harold's brother) and King Sweyn of Denmark, repeatedly outwitting a desperate siege of the Isle personally led by William the Conqueror himself. So successful was Hereward's defence that William, incredibly, was on the point of offering peace terms when Hereward was betrayed by his erstwhile military allies, the fighting Abbot and monks of Ely Abbey. Thanks to the early warning of one brave monk, the ever-elusive Hereward escaped to further historic triumphs against William's armies in Fenland, at Burgh (Peterborough) and the Bruneswald and Saxon greenwoods of Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire.

Gareth Calway's 90 minute narrative tells the full story, from the magical folk tales of Hereward's early career, to the historic defence of Ely and the glittering later rearguard victories against all odds in fenland and greenwood. Based closely on the honest Latin chronicles compiled by 12C monks, this historically-based narrative gives full rein to the Freeborn English humour and derring do of a real life Robin Hood. (The Robin Hood legend borrows much of the spirit and many of Hereward's real-life adventures.) The compelling narrative is given a period flavour by harp music composed and performed by Welsh Romany-influenced harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies and a folk perspective by interweaving a sequence of new real life Robin Hood ballads (written by Bread and Blood team Gareth Calway and Andy Wall.)  Andy Wall's classic and authentic folk performance of these is a particular highlight of and perfect fit for this great English folk tale. A  30 minute showcase will also be available.

The Penland Phezants are:

Gareth Calway (narrative, backing vocals, drum)
Andy Wall (acoustic guitar, lead vocals)
Vanessa Wood-Davies (harp, harmony vocals)

http://www.elystandard.co.uk/what-s-on/music/fen-trio-form-new-folk-band-1-5297836

http://www.wisbechstandard.co.uk/what-s-on/music/fen-trio-form-new-folk-band-1-5297836

https://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/hereward-the-wake-is-brought-back-to-life-1-8271354

https://www.musicglue.com/the-penland-phezants/

www.facebook.com/The-Penland-Phezants-451818025213031/ 

Phezant photoshoot (above) by Bhas Allan

The picture at the top of this blog has been described as follows: "The fen, the belligerent battered tree, the Robin Hood, the elf, the stubborn Freeborn Dane, the moat, the sublime light, the understated majesty: it is the complete realisation of the title of our project: A Very English Resistance, the True Story of Hereward The Wake. Genius."

Screen grab

Is Hereward Awake - the outdoor clip

The following two didn't make the official photographer's cut but I like 'em!

Ely Cathedral through train window by Bhas. 
"Hereward led a wolfish defence of an England before the Normans sank their giant Cathedral-Castles like ring of steel in our land, when that magnificent Norman power bloc of holy terror (pictured) holding a previously unconquerable native fen and first in thrall, was a thinner-walled but better founded Saxon Abbey." 

Fenland photoshoot of the late 1060s Norman-Saxon front line (below) by A Mateur.  Pic 2 is an Ouse bank shot along the old Littleport Road; the rest are just above Ely itself (with a new invader - pennywort!)

Bread or Blood is Back

First half: Doin different at the Milkmaid Folk Club, Bury St Edmunds. (singing a song of Freeborn John) Video here

Andy's set, which included The Ballad of St Edmund (video) and  also the wonderful Louisiana (video) which he does like no other.

Gareth's Badass King John rap (as seen on TV! - BBC Look East News) 
Grail maiden and harp as one
See video here
More live Waywood on the folk circuit here

 2nd half: The corrupt scales of British justice, 1816

Hear an extended excerpt from Bread or Blood - here

Andy Wall performs a solo set and then joins Gareth Calway to perform 'Bread or Blood', the story of the Littleport and Ely Riots of 1816' (commissioned by the Ely Folk Festival in 2016). In between, Andy, Gareth and harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies perform ballads from Gareth’s 2015 book ‘Doin different, 39 new ballads from the East of England.' This will include a complete performance of Gareth and Vanessa’s new album 'Lancelot and the Grail Maiden'. 

Starts: 8pm
Tickets: £10 (£8 for Milkmaid Members), £2 discount off top price band for Festival Friends 
Venue: Constitutional Club

This event is promoted by Bury Festival

Dates and times   Book tickets

  19 May 2017 - 20:00 (Fri)   

If you hold a membership subscription you may be eligible for discounts. Log in and these will be applied to your order automatically.

The Ballad of Death By Hanging (from the Ely Folk Festival show 2016)

The Ballad of Death By Hanging (Ely, 1816)

"I might as well be hanged as starved" (Richard Rutter, a rioter at Ely 1816) 

(right- plaque on the tower of Ely Church commemorating the five rioters hanged. Note the chilling threat at the end "May their awful fate be a warning to others." It certainly was. East Anglia was subdued throughout the riotous decades which followed.)

"John Dennis of Littleport, aged 42,

For 'Felonious Riot and Burgling'

Fifty Pound Notes from an Ely house,

I sentence you - death by hanging.

William Beamis of Littleport, aged the same,

For 'Felonious Riot and Robbing'

A One Pound Note from a Littleport man,

I sentence you - death by hanging.

Isaac Harley of Littleport, 33,

For Housebreaking, Riot and Stealing

The plate, linen, china of John Vatchel, clerk,

I sentence you - death by hanging."

The 11th hour comes, lads, we won't see a 12th,

Only parson and hangman and darkness,

We're names on a church wall, a cautionary tale,

Of the rigged scales of British Justice.

James Newell, James Rutter, John Jefferson

For Riot and Felony in Ely,

John Easey, John Walker, Mark Benton,

I sentence you… transportation.

Thomas South of Littleport, aged 22,

For Riot and Breaking and Burgling

A Littleport drapers and grocery shop,

I sentence you - death by hanging.

George Crow of Littleport, aged 23,

For Riot in Ely and Burgling

Of Cutlacks and Waddlelow's of Littleport,

I sentence you - death by hanging.

The 11th hour comes, lads, we won't see a 12th,

Only parson and hangman and darkness,

We're names on a church wall, a cautionary tale,

Of the skewed scales of British Justice.

The Jury has no doubt, it wants us put

In our place of execution,

A moment to pray, then to suffer the price

Of our faux-French revolution.

On the brink of eternity, five men stand,

Witnesses keenly attending,

We acknowledge our crimes and the justice received

Then a jolt - and five bodies swinging.

"May the awful fate of these unhappy men

Produce the intended effect

Deterring all others from similar crimes

…With an iron heel on your necks."

The 11th hour comes, lads, we won't see a 12th,

Only parson and hangman and darkness,

We're names on a church wall, a cautionary tale,

Of the stacked scales of British Justice.

The 11th hour comes, lads, we won't see a 12th,

Only parson and hangman and darkness,

We're names on a church wall, a cautionary tale,

Of the corrupt scales of British Justice.

'Bread or Blood' written by Gareth Calway and with music composed by Andy Wall tells the story of the Littleport and Ely Riots, which broke out 200 years ago on  22 May 1816, a year after Waterloo. Many people view post-war Regency England as an ideal time of graceful buildings and refined civilisation but Jane Austen's description in 'Northanger Abbey' of "a mob of three thousand men assembling in St George's Fields; the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood" was not as ironic as may appear. The 'Iron Duke' of Wellington, was not called so because of his military mettle at Waterloo but because he had to have iron shutters erected on his windows afterwards against the threat of mob attacks on his house. Landowners and manufacturers alike went in fear of violent revolution and dukes could not safely walk the streets of London in their ordinary clothes in the almost incredibly dreadful conditions faced by the working population after the Napoleonic wars. It is a sign of how desperate things were that even the normally docile agricultural labourers of East Anglia rose in bread riot in the 'year without a summer' of 1816 - when things got even worse - of which the one at Littleport and Ely became a symbol. And it is a sign of how scared the rich and powerful were that the revenges taken upon a mob of aggravated burglars was so appallingly harsh.

Gareth Calway is an author and performer whose historical works include ‘Bound for Jamaica' (Collins Education, 2012, about the Atlantic slave trade) and 'Doin different, 39 new ballads from the East of England’ (Poppyland, 2015.) He writes regular features for the Eastern Daily Press and other East Anglian journals and his one man show ‘Cromwell’s Talking Head’ brought a ‘wonderful local flavour’ to Ely Folk Festival in 2013.

Andy Wall is a director of the Ely Folk Festival and a veteran of the folk circuit, recently performing in Folkstock's East of England showcase  and a great favourite wherever he performs. 'Bread or Blood' is the first collaboration of Andy and Gareth and both will be appearing separately at this year's Folk in a Field  festival in Norfolk as well as touring 'Bread or Blood' in East Anglia culminating at the Ely Folk Festival in July.