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.

Lovehearts and red wine

Lovehearts and red wine: maiden recording session -

Hear the Christmas single here

A Sedgeford Christmas Card

The elements of Christmas -

Fire and ice -

In this tempered Arctic sun

That burns in the trees.

In these pools like skating rinks

Deep and dark and even.

Ice

In the flinty ground

And the bitter Easterly.

Fire

In the solstice sunset

Bleeding the black woods

And its ice-pink afterglow

And its fire-blue areola.

Ice

In the barn-wide rising moon.

Ice

In my soul as I'm turned

To the unlit wings

That cradle and grave

The sunset's light show.

Fire

In my soul

At a rising star

Burning like ice

In the polar blue.Fire

In my hearth at home

(Crackling through logs),

In the farmer's field

(Roaring through twigs),

Red-raw and orange

Tongues of life-lust:

The vital, stripped down

Simplicities of winter.

Sedgeford druids Vanessa Wood-Davies and Goliath Dylan-Calway performed http://garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/p/poem-of-month.html (November 2014) together at the Wolf Folk Club on 30 Oct and (with amplification and as part of Bob Bones' undercover Beautiful Days event at which Julie Bones and her band of bears and cardinals divinely regaled) at the Lynn Arms, Syderstone on Halloween itself.

Bats and spiders, witches and ghouls, Werewolf ale and some rather persistent  cobwebs prevailed. That pub is going places and it was a privilege to broomstick-ride with them for the evening.  Pictures and further details of the general event in companion blog post here

Lovehearts and Red Wine step out

 Nuclear fusion

A duet has been born, premiered and named at the Wolf Folk Club on Oct 30 (someone mentioned Dylan - not sure if it's Thomas or Bob) and love-labouring into the world like a bat out of heaven on Hammereen. We shall return and see if the accident can be conjured again.

Vanessa provided the devilish fiddle interruptions on 'Fiddler's Hill 'and a heavenly tune ('Snow') and performance on harp behind the words on 'Susan Nobes'. Helped by three bottles of red wine I Hamm(er-House of Horror)ed up the spooky verbals . It's not easy to hold the attention of a pub audience, especially one drinking shots, but we did it. 'Fiddler's Hill' recounts a famous Norfolk legend- read about the legend here; Susan Nobes is a true Sedgeford tragedy I unearthed in the British Library by mistake while failing to trace the history of our own cottage. It deserves to be better known. Read Lynn News item about it here.

The Artist Still Known As Tom Conway

Tom Conway, the Bert Jansch of Norwich

https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/a-lynn-carol

Hear him doing the BJ version of 'In The Bleak Midwinter' too- probably on a Norwich pavement!