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

Skirting Heresy: an introduction to Margery Kempe

FOR LIZ MACDONALD

Hear the song here 

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

'Born before your time

It would take an eternity

To redress their abyss,

Skirting heresy.

'They would fetter your soul

With wedlock-maternity,

Apron and stain,

Skirting heresy.

'You fore-saw what the spirit

Of a woman could be

And clothed your flesh in it,

Skirting heresy.'

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

'In the arms of your soul

You may take me as boldly

As a good wife her spouse,'

Skirting heresy.

The sun of love in your heart

Burns so hot and fiercely

It scares you to life,

Skirting heresy.

'This vestment of heat 

Is the heat of the Holy.

It will burn away your sins,'

Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

Magic water, magic sky,

What land appears to be,

Shift across your vision -

Skirting heresy.

On Lynn's ebb and flow,

Dock and dreaming friary

Unravel like wool -

Skirting heresy,

As England revolts

In Plague and Lollardy,

Old habits cleave -              

Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

Your unsung fishwife Word,

Your un-nun livery,

Your Magdalene hair-shirts,

Skirting heresy,

Chat to God without a priest;

As His Mother in Galilee,

Nurse and feed Him like a Babe,

Skirting heresy,

In the dance of the Hansa,

Out of step, off the quay,

Walk on water like the sun,

Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to me like a Song in my heart:

Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

New York playwright Liz Macdonald's play about Margery Kempe of Lynn plays Lynn Minster, Margery's own beloved parish church, on Sep 22 2018. It has 54 roles including a young Margery, an older one, England's first proto-Protestant martyr (William Sawtrey late of this parish) and King Henry IV (part 1). This is such an exciting prospect.

It also has a suite of songs for which I'm delighted to have written the lyrics. An album of these and several others about Margery's life and times has been recorded by the Penland Phezants. The lyrics of the title track of the album (which is not in the show but has a special place on the album as a tribute to the author, her title and her subject) are printed below, along with a typically captivating extract from Margery's Book and some notes about her. This song will have its premiere at a special fund-raising concert for the project as part of Heritage Day at Hanse House on Sep 16 2018.

"Our Lord also gave her another token that lasted about 16 more years and increased ever more and more, and that was a flame of fire of love - marvellously hot and delectable and very comforting, never diminishing but ever increasing, for though the weather were never so cold she felt the heart burning in her breast and at her heart, as veritably as a man would feel the material fire if he put his hand or finger into it. 

When she first felt the fire of love burning in her breast she was afraid of it, and then Our Lord answered in her mind and said, "Daughter, don’t be afraid because this heat is the heat of the Holy Ghost, which will burn away all your sins, for the fire of love quenches all sins."  (Ch. 35)…

"At last the Archbishop (of York) came into the chapel with his clerics, and he said to her abruptly "Why do you go about in white clothes? Are you a virgin?

She, kneeling before him, said, "No, sir, I am no virgin. I am a married woman."

He ordered his household to fetch a pair of fetters and said she would be fettered, for she was a false heretic, and then she said, "I am no heretic, nor shall you prove me one."

The Archbishop went away and left her standing alone. Then for a long time she said her prayers to Lord God Almighty to help her and succour her against all her enemies both spiritual and bodily, and her flesh trembled and quaked amazingly, so that she was glad to put her hands under her clothes so that it should not be noticed." (ch 52)

from "The Book of Margery Kempe", the first autobiography in English. c 1441

The Dean of Norwich Cathedral asked in 1996 was Margery Kempe mystic or menace and, like the Archbishop in 1417, concluded (with perceived Norwich bias) menace. She was born in 1373 - the year Julian of Norwich was offering her visions of certainty and comfort amidst a crisis of Faith - into a England riven with the Black Death and about to experience the Peasants' Revolt. Her birthplace Lynn had been a thriving port only since Brandon Creek re-routed the Ouse to flow out there a hundred years before but was now one of the premier ports of Hanseatic Europe. Her father John Brunham, 5 times Lynn mayor and twice MP, was its leading merchant, exporting cloth (& importing pitch, wax, timber, fish and wine) but in the 1390s, as Margery married a Lynn burgess and began her family of 14 children, the English wool industry slumped. Her traumatic first pregnancy and birth caused a mental breakdown and lifelong visions of heaven and hell. She was a great frequenter of monks and clerics, holy men and women and anchorites like the one in the cell at All Saints Church, Lynn and Mother Julian in Norwich and was much attracted to such world-renouncing people but did not join them. She had grown up as a merchant's daughter on the teeming Lynn waterfront - as a young married woman had run four Lynn (ale) pubs. After raising her family, she spent years travelling and pilgrimaging out in the world, often without the required husband's written permission or confessor's licence, incurring the wrath of archbishops and others for her holy shrieking through sermons and Masses at any mention of Jesus' suffering and for loud and sustained criticism of the church patriarchy's spiritual shortcomings. Yet she was also very soft-hearted, weeping at the sight of lepers (whom she embraced) and easily hurt by gossip and criticism, so the frequent risk she ran of being burned on a heretic's bonfire is testament to a faith well beyond her personal disposition. 

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!

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!)

The Ballad of Hereward The Wake by Waywood - World Premiere

Welcome -you are the 100+ reader of this post.

Published below for the first time the full text of our new ballad "Hereward The Wake."

SPOKEN INTRO…

Twilight in the greenwood, is Hereward  awake?

Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,

Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,

Dreaming of a hooded man that winds a shadowy horn.

HARP MUSIC STARTS

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

A wild swan, a curlew,

A fen-son, a tiger;

His high blood-tide exiled

By Edward the Confessor.

Performs magic deeds

In Cornwall and Ireland;

Fights fearless and feared

For Flanders, his wife-land.

Family home 'Normaned'

With his brother's severed head;

Returns, puts the murderers'

14 heads there instead.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

As free as the waters

That flow through the fen,

As the wide heaven-skies

In the eyes of good men,

To the Saxon Abbot

Of Ely he speeds;

Lords, with King Sweyn of Denmark,

Its marsh, mere and reeds.

Raids Peterborough Abbey,

Frees God's Saxon gold

From the thief-Norman grip

Of the tyrant monk Turold.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

From the Normans learns war,

From Flems love, bonds with Danes

But when King Sweyn makes peace,

Stays true to the thanes.

With Saxon Earl Morca

Defends Ely Isle

Fights war-craft and witch-fire

With fire, bow and guile.

The Norman machine

Cannot conquer that fastness;

Greed's causeway sinks

In full armour and harness.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

His wood-spirit leaves-drops

The Conqueror's hush-biz

Then is gone like a breeze

Through the secret rushes.

Though our monks will give up,

Afraid for their lands,

Their arms and his paths,

He will slip through their hands.

As free as the waters

That flow through the fens,

As the wide heaven-skies

In the eyes of good men.

In the Lincoln greenwood,

In the Bruneswald,

Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,

Great-hearted and bold,

For the soul of England;

For your own spirit's sake,

Lift your heart and voice up

For Hereward the Wake!

© Gareth Calway 2017

This celebration of Hereward is folk duo Waywood's latest. The world premiere as performed by the poet with harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies' latest melody was performed  at Hereward's birth-place of Bourne, Lincolnshire on Thursday 7 September, the 950th anniversary of the great Saxon's homecoming.  It tells the famous (and truer than you might think) story of how Hereward - delinquent son of Leofric Lord of Bourne and (some say) Lady Godiva - came to lead the English resistance to William the Conqueror from the woods and the fens, with star turns in the years 1067-72 for Bourne, Peterborough and Ely. The timeless style of Waywood's performance art -  ballad verse and harp as the days of the mead hall - is a perfect fit for this hero tale. Waywood will also be performing homages to Robin Hood and Wicken Fen. And that's only our bit - there's a Bayeux tapestry to see, Hereward scholarship for a popular audience, storytelling, film and much else besides.

Waywood harpist Vanessa Wood-Davie spreparing for action in  Hunstanton last June, 

paying homage to a local Norfolk hero. Pic by Elaine Bird.