One More Time For Eternity...

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]

The Rebel Jesus

A Jackson Browne 'carol' from the days ( late 60, early 70s) when Christmas songs were Jesus-bearded hippy protests against commercialisation and losing your soul to gain the world.

All the streets are filled with laughter and light

And the music of the season

And the merchants' windows are all bright

With the faces of the children

And the families hurrying to their homes

While the sky darkens and freezes

Will be gathering around the hearths and tables

Giving thanks for God's graces

And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by 'the Prince of Peace'

And they call him by 'the Savior'

And they pray to him upon the seas

And in every bold endeavor

And they fill his churches with their pride and gold

While their faith in him increases

But they've turned the nature that I worship in

From a temple to a robber's den

In the words of the rebel Jesus

Well we guard our world with locks and guns

And we guard our fine possessions

And once a year when Christmas comes

We give to our relations

And perhaps we give a little to the poor

If the generosity should seize us

But if any one of us should interfere

In the business of why there are poor

They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But pardon me if I have seemed

To take the tone of judgement

For I've no wish to come between

This day and your enjoyment

In a life of hardship and of earthly toil

There's a need for anything that frees us

So I bid you pleasure

And I bid you cheer

From a heathen and a pagan

On the side of the rebel Jesus

Christmas in Paradise

Mary Gauthier's 2002 alt-country Christmas song set in a town called Paradise. The lyrics form a typical country music first-person narrative, realistic and gritty about the subject - in this case Christmas (so not a chirpy pop song to overspend in the supermarket by). The alternative aspect is that the narrator is giving a homeless person’s perspective of the season ; and that the gritty realism about the material poverty is actually the means by which the festive cheer and love shine through.

Davy stole a Christmas Tree

From K-Mart last night

Red ribbons and silver bells

Angels dressed in white

He tied it to the bridge rail

Where passing cars could see

Did a little dance up there

Looked down and smiled at me

My bed is a lawn chair

Cushions keep it soft

I sleep in the open air

Under the Southern Cross

Next to the golf course

By the Hyatt Hotel

Davy he's a friend of mine

And we get along pretty well

Christmas in paradise

Under the Cow Key Bridge

Where the warm breeze blows so nice

And the landlord forgives

Snowbirds on the golf course

Wear Bermuda shorts and polo shirts

Some play pretty good

Some play so bad it hurts

We pick up their golf balls

That fly over the fence

We shine them up a little bit

Sell them back for fifty cents

Christmas in paradise

Under the Cow Key Bridge

Where the warm breeze blows so nice

And the landlord forgives

I won't lie we just get by

But we'll be eating good tonight

Christmas dinner's at five o'clock

Over at the Church of Light

They don't care who you are

They don't ask what you done

Come on down and bring a friend

There's plenty for everyone

Christmas in paradise

Under the Cow Key Bridge

Where the warm breeze blows so nice

And the landlord forgives

The radio plays Christmas songs

While we get high

And Davy shouts "Merry Christmas, y'all"

To the cars passing by

Davy shouts "Merry Christmas, y'all"

To the cars passing by

A Fairy Tale of New York

A much punkier and lost Irish dream take on Christmas than the Leninist laments we grew up with - from the Pogues from 1987. The title is taken from a novel by Irish author JP Donleavy. The song narrates the story of an Irish couple striving to pursue their dreams in New York. Set on Christmas Eve, the eternal romance and hope of Christmas contrasts with the gritty reality but both are given full whack by the song. 

It was Christmas Eve, babe

In the drunk tank

An old man said to me

"Won't see another one"

And then he sang a song

"The Rare Old Mountain Dew"

I turned my face away

And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one

Came in eighteen-to-one

I've got a feeling

This year's for me and you

So happy Christmas

I love you, baby

I can see a better time

When all our dreams come true

They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold

But the wind goes right through you, it's no place for the old

When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve

You promised me Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome, you were pretty, queen of New York City

When the band finished playing, they howled out for more

Sinatra was swinging, all the drunks, they were singing

We kissed on a corner, then danced through the night

And the boys of the NYPD choir were singing "Galway Bay"

And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day

You're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy wazzack

Happy Christmas, your arse, I pray God it's our last

And the boys of the NYPD choir, still singing "Galway Bay"

And the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day

"I could have been someone", well, so could anyone

You took my dreams from me when I first found you

I kept them with me, babe, I put them with my own

Can't make it all alone, I've built my dreams around you

And the boys of the NYPD choir, still singing "Galway Bay"

And the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day

A Musical Christmas Card

A Very Happy Christmas 2025 to all our listeners. G/M XX PS. Need a Christmas playlist while you make the mince pies/ wrap the gifts? Try ours! https://soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/sets/the-peacocks-christmas-party

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.

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.

Epiphany

Saints and Singers; Our Christmas LP

 

First released in 2021 as a 6 track EP and now expanded to showcase  all our Christmas material including new recordings for this year. 
The whole attempts to be greater than the sum of its jolly parts by evoking a journey Eastward - part mediaeval/allegorical orientation, part benighted rural Look East of England-  culminating in an arrival at Whatever Christmas Promises around track 13.

https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/saints-and-singers-our-christmas-album

https://youtu.be/xdBI4GQp-eY  The video

Being Santa

 

As I waited for our grandchildren to arrive and witness my premiere of this most iconic of roles, I shivered slightly. Not just with the damp December cold but with the responsibility. Here was Isla's encounter with the magical childhood Santa we all treasure in our memories. (Theo at a year old so as was unlikely to be find it any less strange and wonderful than his normal encounters with his grandsire)  I felt the weight of generations and centuries on my shoulders. Was my cod Nordic yodel and white beard sufficient disguise to sustain the magic of otherness in the familiar garden den Isla had helped me prepare? Would I fluff my vaguely Scandinavian up and down lines ("Ho ho ho! Have you been a good girl for your mummy and daddy?") overwhelmed by the epiphany of heaven's generosity and earth's humanity I was suddenly embodying, sotto voce, centre-stage and spot-lit in the radiance of a childhood delight? No Method actor (three months living with reindeeer in Lapland on mince pies in a thin red suit communicating only in High Elvish; then matching every word uttered to a motivation and a movement of the stuck on eyebrow so that I really 'felt' it,  - whether the audience did or not) could have felt any less charged and apprehensive. I recalled terrified moments behind the curtain at my Edinburgh fringe shows listening to the audient come in.

In the event, I needn't have worried.  "Grandpa! she shouted through the gap in the trees (top left) from the road below. The stocking hanging off the bough and the red and white through the depleted winter hedge succeeded in bringing delight but not it seems even a willing suspension of disbelief. And then it unravelled even more spectacularly and unexpectedly when she arrived at the grotto entrance and shared that sudden childhood terror of seeing a white bearded loon in the gloom.

"But don't you want your present?"

"No! it's too scary."

Ah well, maybe next year. (Theo will be two so you never know.) Fortunately our daughter, their mother, was old enough to deputise and console.

JOURNEY OF THE MAGUS by Peacock's Tale folk indie duo

Saints and Sinners Christmas EP by Peacock's Tale Audio

 

	1.	Fring Church Bells 01:52
	2.	Saints and Sinners (with bells on) 04:23
	3.	Journey of the Magus 01:43
	4.	You Gotta Move 02:00
	5.	The Parting Glass 02:06
	6.	Down To The River To Pray 02:53
	7.	Saints and Sinners live (amps off) 04:23

about

Press Release 

‘Saints and Sinners' is a cover of a folk song by Scots-Canadian David Francey performed live to camera on YouTube from our cottage in Sedgeford. 

“We set up the studio so that everything – voices, harmonies, guitars, percussion – rings out like a bell. In case the audience is in any doubt, we’ve blended some Fring Church bells (as rung on a Sunday morning by our local vicar) into the live mix.” 

The song’s composer won a John Lennon award for songwriting in 2010. The down to earth message of the lyric is that “it’s a long way from heaven to Bethlehem”but with a deep sympathy for “the joy and the sorrow of my fellow man.” Fellow survivors of the early 70s will recognise the nod to Lennonism in the jingly jangly hippy 60s mix. 

The EP covers the 'Christ' and the "Mess' of Christmas with a sonnet set to a drum and bass soundtrack narrating the 'Journey of the Magus' and an a capello cover of the Scots folk song 'The Parting Glass.' This Saints and Sinners motif is further pursued with two gospel covers 'You Gotta Move' and 'Down to the River To Pray'. 

The whole package may be streamed or downloaded from Bandcamp (search for ‘Peacock’s Tale folk indie duo’) and the ‘A’ side viewed on YouTube from December 6.

credits

released December 6, 2021

See also - https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/the-peacocks-talk-turkey-the-meanings-of-christmas

license

all rights reserved

tags

indie alternative americana folk gothic rap Sedgeford

about

X

Peacock's Tale Folk/Indie DuoSedgeford, UK

It's all right, folks, we're married. A marriage of melody and rhythm. Indie folk, Norfolk noir, historical ballads, musical ... more

edit artist bio

1. garethcalway.co.uk
2. Bardonthewire
3. SoundCloud
4. garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk
5. Facebook

discography

Phezant's Tail on BBC Upload

 

Tune in to

@BBCNorfolk

between 6 and 7 pm tonight for our uplifting 15C "The Only Gift (A Lynn Carol)" soaring across Norfolk into your 21C devices (at a safe social distance!)

@YourLocalPaper

@Voluptuia

@KingsLynnLive

@BBCUpload

Whet your appetite with https://youtu.be/R1xdN1QynoQ 

And check out "Who Killed Cock Robin, the Covid Case" our new double concept murder mystery album released today. https://phezants-tail.bandcamp.com