The Light Within The Lamp of Britain

 @PeacocksTaleMusic  "Logres is the light within the lamp of Britain" says King Arthur in Rosemary Sutcliff's thrilling version of the stories. And whenever I go on the train through Westbury, I feel again what I felt as a boy growing up in nearby Frome - that the white horse God-huge atop the valley side is Arthur's, eternally about to ride again to save us from mundanity. The musical soundtrack is "Gwenhwyfar" which we wrote together in different centuries. I wrote the words in the 1980s; Maz the music in 2022 and we recorded it in 2024. Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Cross on invincible shield, blood-red, Dragon on young-summer green, red, The terrible clatter of returning hooves. I never quite believed. Always feared him Dead. But he always came. Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Swift white charger swooping like a spear On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women, Scourging the rat run barbarian inroads, Animal tracks of attacking Saxon, His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast. And little the faith I had yet in Arthur, The Angel campaigner, strong as light, His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard, Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. At last I understood. The flincher from spears, Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow, Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned: Avalon. And I’ll run no more. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens Will flock on the gore. Let others keep A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight Until the dawn. My confession’s done. Still my heart waits for hoofbeats. (Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…) © Gareth Calway 1991 (first published by Aude Gotto in my King of Hearts publication "Coming Home")

Gwenhwyfar

All our own work, though in different centuries. I wrote the words in the 1980s; Maz put them to music in the 2020s. This is the grand finale of the British folk front side of the new Sapphire Wedding album ("Peacocks Tales, launch and listening party on Bandcamp Sunday Dec 1 5 pm) and, particularly after the instrumental section recapitulates the various strands we've pursued in unison and harmony: folk song, poetry, British storytelling and the combination of all three. It's a worthy subject for this, the long glories of the Arthurian legend narrated in the style of ancient Welsh alliterative verse as they come to their tragic end, imbued with ancient mysticism and Celtic myths of the cycle of the seasons, and from the point of view of Gwenhwyfar, joined by Bedwyr, the dwindling Round Table and the centuries of elegising bards after the bridge.) A very different Gwenhwyfar from the cocky Norman minx of track 6. Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Cross on invincible shield, blood-red, Dragon on young-summer green, red, The terrible clatter of returning hooves. I never quite believed. Always feared him Dead. But he always came. Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Swift white charger swooping like a spear On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women, Scourging the rat run barbarian inroads, Animal tracks of attacking Saxon, His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast. (Then Llugh fought battles within himself, Cei fought his own rule, Bedwyr fought Llugh, And some sought long for the holy caldron, Sought it like a spoil of war, And, gentle as light, my Beloved loved me.) And Medraut gnawed through the golden years Myrddin called a threshold to the dark, And its beacon. Medraut, eyes on me Like a dog’s on the moon, snapping his moment. To Camlann the coastland, carried me off. Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn. Bridge And little the faith I had yet in Arthur, The Angel campaigner, strong as light, His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard, Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. At last I understood. The flincher from spears, Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow, Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned: Avalon. And I’ll run no more. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens Will flock on the gore. Let others keep A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight Until the dawn. My confession’s done. Still my heart waits for hoofbeats. (Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…) © Gareth Calway 1991 credits from PEACOCK'S TALES (The Sapphire Wedding Album) Maz: lead vocal, acoustic guitar Gaz: bass, percussion, harmonium, howls, vocals and voice in Part 2, common flute The film combines a seasonal cycle - Medraut the winter king to Arthur's May king and with Gwenhwyfar's autumnal mood as Logres falls into the dark - with a lake supplying the hints of Celtic water divinity and our splendidly spacious heathland-situated alma mater (UEA) standing in for Logres, Camelot and civilisation.

Bring Me To Fring All Saints - the remake

A new recording and a new film for the anniversary of its subject, Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Williamson, 1920-1945, late of this parish who died on July 13 1945 after five years service in the RAF on two major fronts of the Second World War, aged 25. He joined the RAF in 1939, aged 19. He was agonisingly close to surviving the entire war when, by a cruel irony, he died in a plane crash on a solo training flight in Derbyshire just after his last home leave in Norfolk. 'Percy' hailed from Eaton Farm Sedgeford, went to school in Fring, sang in Heacham church choir and (a week before his death) played cricket for Sedgeford and is buried next to his older brother at Fring All Saints, North West Norfolk.. We performed this homage as part of the Remembrance service at Fring All Saints in November 2023 since when the gravestone has happily been cleaned and made much more legible, hence the new film. Our thanks to the person who carried that out as well as to Tim Snelling Sedgeford village historian whose excellent research gave us many of the images and press cuttings you see here and in the new abridged companion spoken word version (link to follow) The tune is a traditional folk song about a good young man cut down in his prime. The aircraft you hear at the end of this film was flying over as we finished recording so we left the mikes open. (A similar happy accident occurs in the new spoken word version). I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter, 5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames, In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise And came down to Earth but lived up to my names. Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin, Six Logres ladies to walk by my side, Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July.

Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only, Play up the dead march as we go along And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy, I lived in the free air that breathes through this song. Instrumental break Repeat first verse.

Gwenhwyfar (from "King Arthur and Me - The Opera")

Part 1 The recorded version omits verse 3. Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Cross on invincible shield, blood-red, Dragon on young-summer green, red, The terrible clatter of returning hooves. I never quite believed. Always feared him Dead. But he always came. Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Swift white charger swooping like a spear On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women, Scourging the rat run inroads of Europe, Animal tracks of attacking Saxon, His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast. (Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn: Then Llugh fought battles within himself, Cei fought his own rule, Bedwyr fought Llugh, And some sought long for the holy caldron, Sought it like a spoil of war, And, gentle as light, my Beloved loved me.) And Medraut gnawed through the golden years Myrddin called a threshold to the dark, And its beacon. Medraut, eyes on me Like a dog’s on the moon, snapping his moment. To Camlann the coastland, carried me off. Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn. Part 2 And little the faith I had yet in Arthur, The Angel campaigner, strong as light, His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard, Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. At last I understood. The flincher from spears, Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow, Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned: Avalon. And I’ll run no more. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens Will flock on the gore. Let others keep A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight Until the dawn. My confession’s done. Still my heart waits for hoofbeats. (Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…) credits Maz: lead vocal, acoustic guitar Gaz: bass, bodhran, howls, cymbal, support vocals in Part 2

The closing aria of "King Arthur and Me- the Opera" (releases May 1st). The lyric, first published in 'Coming Home"(King of Hearts Publishing) in 1991, is based in form and spirit on the elegies, eulogies and 'death bed confessionals' of ancient Welsh poetry. From memory, while Celtic poetry shares the unrhymed alliterative qualities of Anglo-Saxon poetry, the line is unbroken and more lyrical, the rhythms and cadences more lilting and the assonance more marked. In other words, I tried to make the English sound as Welsh as possible.

Maz wrote the minor key tune and sings it beautifully here. Gwenhwyfar ( "white phantom") is very much the dark age Celtic wife of her beloved chieftain Arthur here, not the Norman courtly lover she later became in French romance tradition. ("Guinevere", track -.) Over these earlier versions, the atmosphere of Celtic mythology in which Arthur (Artos) is a god and Gwenhwyfar the land itself, still hangs like a mist, just as Robin Hood was the eternal spirit of the greenwood as well as an outlaw in a specific period of Norman-Saxon England. 

So here, partly in the tradition of a warrior's praise of a fallen lord, we have Gwenhwyfar elegising and eulogising Arthur as a god-like Dark Age Celtic warlord resisting Saxons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain and Gwenhwfar as both his lady and the Britain he was protecting.

(Medraut is the earlier Welsh name for Mordred.)

Woke King Arthur

The title track from our forthcoming Arthur project "Wake King Arthur" and one that contrives to wake him up from his long sleep and come and save us from the appalling mess we are in at the moment. When a British government proudly adopts a motto like "Stop The Boats" as its shining motto and ideal you know we have fallen a long way from the Lost Land of chivalry and mercy, of might defending justice, which thrilled and inspired me as a boy. Wake me, wake me He come out on top, he beat Hordes of heathen, he pluck Swords of lightning from the 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.

The Ballad of Breck's Isle!

The Ballad of Breck's Isle    (click to hear it)

"No man is an island but a part of the main." John Donne

As our sandy shores rock Euro-vision
With our white Cliff-Engelbert noir
And seize back control from green Brussels
And win a No Deal with Nil Points

The UK will win Eurovision again;
Cilla, with Ringo's hair.
The Tories will be Winston Churchill again.
(Except that they never were.)

You can keep your French shtick, your double Deutch,

Your Dolce-clad discothèques

Your  tiqui-taca, your Peps and your Klopps

Your Lattes and Pilsners and Becks.

You can keep your fromage, your Nordic noir,

Your Breughel and Brendan and Brecht,

Your Christendom, culture and 'civitas,'

Let me live on the Isle of Breck

Where coiffure d'Albert is Albert's of Heacham

And le bistrot a gastritis-pub;

Where mange tout de chef is Chav's All You Can Eat 

 And pure white folk rules at the club.

As our sandy shores rock Euro-vision

With our white Cliff-Engelbert noir

And seize back control from green Brussels

And win a no-deal with 'nil points',

England will win the World Cup again,

Harry Kane will be the hot Spur

The Who will be Number One again

(Except that they never were.)

You can keep your Rioja, your Pinot, your Brut,

Give us Spitfire and Bombadier

And Broadside and Bomber and Brexile Bitter

And rationing, hatred and fear.

It's the new party line, the new Civil War, 

Breaching kin, class, friend and Union

Eyes right, all salute the all-white flag

Of our half-mast donkey-led kingdom.

Full steam ahead to Breck's Isle, Ahoy!

A hundred percent right and sure

Or 52 on a confident day

Which it might not be anymore.

As our sandy shores rock Euro-vision

With our white Cliff-Engelbert noir

And seize back control from green Brussels

And win a no-deal with 'nil points',

Wales will win the World Cup/ beat the All Blacks/ again;

Real Madrid/ Warren Gatland/ the Spur;

The valleys be home-grown and funded again

(Except that they never were.)

100 percent for a four point turn

Going back where we weren't before

Back from the Front and that Normandy beach

Home to Brexile's doughty white shore.

We will fight in the plazas where families dine out,

Kick over their wine and cuisine;

We will never surrender our country and cod

And chip on the shoulder and Queen.

We are the champions of Europe we were

And will be, by running away

Backwards up Winston Churchill Drive 

Though his soft 'Will' has shrunk to hard 'May.'

As our sandy shores rock Euro-vision

With our white Cliff-Engelbert noir

And seize back control from green Brussels

And win a no-deal with 'nil points',

Northern Ireland will win the World Cup again,

A backstop midfield be the Spur,

Our Lost Lands will be Arthur's England again

(Except that they never were.)

Note

'Breck' is Middle English for breached, broken. 

A corner of a Norfolk field that is forever Europe