The Prophesy of Merlin from "King Arthur and Me - The Opera"

"Druids have the roots and springs of Britain at their fingertips.  They can soar like eagles through all the light and dark places of the heavens. They can know the stars, read the future, even change shape. And this is The Myrddin, the Oak Druid, the greatest of them all. He and Britain are one. Let him help you."  from "Jennifer's Gwenhwyfar" a playscript about some school students and their drama teacher putting on a play abut King Arthur which comes alive in their lives which will be published to accompany the Opera on May 1st on  https://www.blogger.com/blog/pages/1688276452031645275

The old Welsh tune is a treat to sing and you can feel why the armed forces still use it to inspire themselves in tight places. It dates from the Wars of the Roses and the 1461-1468 siege of Harlech Castle which the usual lyrics describe but I know it from a later 60s in my Somerset primary school - where the folk boom found its way onto the curriculum - and from the film 'Zulu.'

The background collage of football crowds represent the warring tribes of Britain (then as now) over which High King Vortigern presided. We don't know his name - Vortigern is just his title - so I've called him King Breck (= breached, broken). The Romans had left and taken with them the political idea of 'Britain' (Britannia) which before Rome only the Druids (and briefly Boudicca as an anti-Roman alliance) had ever conceived. 

The Oak Druid Merlin's vision of a strong and united Britain requires a stronger, wiser, larger and less self-centred ruler than Breck.  Uther gets closer but his son Arthur achieves it. 

That's all in the future. Behind this dialogue between Merlin and Breck, the noisily divided crowd is not really won over and will only be quieted on the next track "Arthur Britain's Making".

Breck’s small eye revolving his treasure -
Little Britain and all it contains -
From Merlin he steals a vision
His tiny mind hardly sustains:

"Your castle, King Breck, keeps collapsing 
Because built on the underground lair
Of two warring dragons, the red split
In the white's jaws of victory there.

"The red dragon stands for Britannia, 
The white for the English-to-be 
And your red worm is turning - and driving
The white dragon into the sea."

"But the red dragon's head is young Uther!"
Says King Breck, "And it ought to be mine!"
"My Breck's Isle exists on division,
I’m the crack in Great Britain's behind."

Merlin magically helmets young Uther,
Who cleaves to his dead captain's wife.
She believes he's her lost war-dead husband 
In the hottest night of her life

And bears him a son, an Arth/Ursus,
A high noon in our deepest night sky,
The May-Winter King of a Lost Land
That Was Never, but Is, and Can't Die.

Let a nation divided/
In battle be joined,
Raven and Eagle 
Conceiving the dove ||
As the Little is lost in the Greater Britain
Let Arth/Ursus cleave with heart unfailing
Till dividers learn with quailing

Hate is conquered by Love.credits

Why are you all dressed up Gaz?

Airplay!!! And a Listening Party

Blood on the Corn : from King Arthur and Me - The Opera

In AD 60, at the time of Boudicca's revolt, the Romans slaughtered the druids, unique to Britain, on their holy island of Mon (modern Anglesey). Mon (Roman Mona) was the druids' stronghold and the druids gave the British Celts their only shared sense of 'Britishness' . They were otherwise a collection of warring tribes, easy to divide and rule, initially as client kingdoms. Destroying the druids and their unifying spirit - which Boudicca mobilised into an actual British army of united Eastern British tribes - was key to Roman Imperial annexation of Britain. The legend of King Arthur is an enduring and ever-developing expression of that Celtic Britishness through many centuries, two different faiths, two different genres (mythology and romance) several invasions, different ethnicities and languages not to mention transmutations through Brittany and Normandy into the whole of Northern Europe and back to Britain form Europe after 1066 and from Tudor Wales after 1485. It has a reality beyond reason and historical intellectualising. In a way it is a phantom but as CS Lewis said no less real for that. Besides, legends have to start somewhere. Real people got killed. As with the druids, behind the mists of history, there was blood on the corn.

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.)

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry. (Sonnet 66)

The rap version

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,

As, to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned. Avalon.

 

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…)

On our forthcoming Arthur album "King Arthur and Me- The Opera" , this is a song with tune written and sung by Maz in the role of Gwenhwyfar. Here it is as spoken word in the style of the old Welsh elegies/ eulogies on the death of a beloved lord.

Rosemary Lane

We know nothing about the woman pictured (and in the first frame of the film) except that she was Maz's great grandmother and that she was in service. But it's a very eloquent picture. All the other pictures of people in service - England's largest occupation even at the height of the industrial revolution (higher even than the vast numbers employed in agriculture) - are from the website www.thisvictorianlife.com. The sailor is from bbprivateer.ca . The boy and the girl are childhood pictures of Peacock's Tale the duo you hear playing and singing.

Like many folksongs, this one sounds like multiple stories being told at once, not all of which add up. Such is folk music, the collective tale of ordinary folk. It's even possible to hear a happy ending and no doubt there were some for people like the women pictured but many of course ended like the last word of the song in 'misery'. It doesn't have a miserable feeling though, because it's such a lovely tune. And perhaps because of "I wish that short night had had been seven long years". The song has also had an after-life in folk clubs and bars as a bawdy singalong - there was always that "Maggie Mae" innuendo element to Beatles songs like "A Hard Day's Night" and "I'll Get You (In The End)". But that would sacrifice the human comedy and tragedy. The strongest strain in this folk tale is surely the human sympathy, the social comment and the yearning for a better life. 

Lancelot and the Grail Maiden (the remake)

A most enjoyable collaboration with Bhas Allan who created the visuals for our atmospheric ballad. Lancelot and th Grail Maiden is about how the desperately grail-seeking but never quite finding Lancelot was seduced by the Grail Maiden (aided by the magic of Morgan le Fay who made her look like Guinevere) and thereby bore his son Galahad, who would replace his father as Arthur's Best Knight, find the Grail and thereby fructify the Wasteland. And that, Ron, is the paradox of our entire post-lapsarian exisence.

‘Come hither, Captain,’ the Grail Maiden sighs,
‘Thither away with me
To the rich wooded valley and holy well
My Waste Land dies to be.

‘Look! into the burning wilderness sun
Above the shadeless tree,
The high hawk of summer, hovering still,
The shadow of what will be:

‘The Shadowless One who waits above
To be born to you and me,
A Knight of Truth out of traitor arms
And infidelity.

‘Galahad the Pure, God-armed and winged
To bless our impurity
Unbearably born to steal your quest
And all of your shining glory.

‘Come hither, Captain,’ the Grail Maiden sighs,
And turns him a face so free:
His forbidden love, the queen of his dreams,
The end of all Chivalry.’

A faithless false knight in a failing light 
Fallen under a spell to see/ be
A Knight of Truth out of traitor arms
And infidelity.

Says he, ‘My heart is set on the grail
And wholly raised above!’
Says she, ‘It’s broken, and half is set
On your true adulterous love.’

‘I am her champion, she is my king’s,
I am their faithful knight!’
‘The Grail can’t be had for half a heart,
You can have that queen tonight.

‘Whisper my name, any name you like,
Any lover you want me to be,
A night of Truth in my traitor arms
And in fidelity.’

‘Come hither, Captain,’ the Grail Maiden sighs,
‘Thither away with me
To the rich wooded valley and holy well
My Waste Land dies to be.

 

 

She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd 
           The rein with dainty finger-tips, 
A man had given all other bliss, 
And all his worldly worth for this, 
To waste his whole heart in one kiss 
           Upon her perfect lips

Blackwaterside

One evening fair to take the air Down by Blackwater side It was gazing all, all around me Towards the Irish lad I spied

All through the first part of that night Well, we lie in sport and play

Then this young man, he arose and gathered his clothes He said, "Fare thee well today"

Well, that's not the promise that you gave to me When first you lay on my bed You could make me believe with your lying tongue That the sun rose in the west

Then go home, go home to your father's garden You go home and weep your fill And you think of your own misfortune That you brought with your wanton will

For there's not a girl in this whole world wide As easily led as me Sure, it's fishes will fly and the seas run dry Tis then I'll marry thee.

Trad/arr Peacock's Tale. The tune is Irish as is the young man. The images are of the River Blackwater in Essex, the probable scene of the story and the words are an old English folk lyric telling the same old folk tale of a young woman beguiled, though we adjust it slightly so that she sees through him before the end. We got it in one take and in one lump (apart from the brief hand drum on the instrumental) as I'm playing a foot drum with each foot under my bass while Maz is doing her usual multi task thing. Nice and simple.

The Parting Glass

Quite pleased with this.

 https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/the-parting-glass-3

The last song we did at Burns Night 2024. (That's our Chaucerian host John McRuddy in the picture). The song is often sung at the end of a gathering of friends and it is reportedly the most popular parting song sung in Scotland before Robert Burns wrote "Auld Lang Syne." Its popularity in Ireland has deeply influenced its sound and led to it being claimed as an Irish folk song. It was definitely not written by Joseph Haydn, as once claimed.

lyrics

Of all the money that e'er I had
I have spent it in good company
Oh and all the harm I've ever done
Alas, it was to none but me
And all I've done for want of wit
To memory now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be to you all
So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate'er befalls
Then gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all
Of all the comrades that e'er I had
They're sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e'er I had
They would wish me one more day to stay
But since it fell into my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I'll gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all
So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate'er befalls
Then gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all
But since it fell into my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I'll gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all
So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate'er befalls
Then gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all
Good night and joy be to you all

credits

released January 30, 2024
Songwriters: Trad / David Anthony Downes

Maz - lead vocal, acoustic guitar

Gaz - bass, glass, foot drum, hi hat, shaker

Fatea showcase Spring 2024

https://www.fatea-records.co.uk/magazine/

neilfatea

Fatea Showcase Sessions Spring 2024:Skin
Fatea is proud to announce the new Fatea Showcase Session Spring 2024:Skin is ready to download
Once again we've looked at the fantastic releases that have come through the Fatea office and put together an eclectic mix of some of the best rising names across the acoustic spectrum for your enjoyment.

Featuring 16 incredible artist we think you'll be amazed and captivated by the strength of the songs that will be available for you to download on the Fatea Showcase Session Spring 2024:Skin compilation. www.fatea-showcase-sessions.co.uk

01. Filkin’s Drift - The Girl I Left Behind Me
02. Hevelwood - The Banks Of The Dee
03. Siobhan McCrudden - Iron Goddess
04. Harry Bird - Cerberus
05. Elena Duff - The Forest Song
06. Holly & The Reivers - The Three Danish Galleys
07. Piskey Led - Ashton Famine
08. Annown - Like The Roses
09. Lauren South - Tiny Boat
10. Wychbury - Geordie
11. Foxbridge - Sirens Used To Sing
12. Ellie Walker - My Heart Beats On
13. Luke Giles - Boating Up Sandy/Nancy Blevins
14. Veronica Drozdowski - Out
15. Peacock’s Tale - Lancelot And The Grail Maiden
16. Holly Carter - Stella

"Skin" is the 64th download in the Fatea Showcase Sessions series and will be available from February 1st until April 30th 2024. This is the 17th series of releases

The download comes to you at no charge. Support the artists involved by listening to the download and then more of their songs, buying their albums, going to their gigs, writing about them on Facebook, publicising them on Instagram etc.

The 2024 Fatea Showcase Session Front Covers are artworked by Jon Loomes
#download #music #fatea #free #singersongwriter#americana #folk #instrumentals #enjoy

10 h

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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.

International Burns Night, January 25 2024

Six old friends/ 3 old married couples/ in kilts and tartan celebrate friendship and the immortal memory of Robbie Burns with banter, banquet, bonhomie, a fist-load of poems and songs in a warm and winter-banishing Norfolk interior. The poems - and what poems they are, brimming over like a good ale and whisky with life, love, joy, sorrow, music and laughter- include Address to the Haggis, The Selkirk Grace, To A Mouse, Ae Fond Kiss, A Man's a Man For A' That, My Soldier Laddie, The Henpecked Housewife, The Wife's Lament, "recently discovered" 'Burns' first drafts (satires on Burns targets in our own day including an Elegy for The Year 2023 based on his Elegy For The Year before the French Revolution, 1788) and the songs - ostensibly led by Peacock's Tale folk indie duo!- include Auld Lang Syne (which Burns wrote) The Parting Glass and Will Ye Go Lassie Go which he probably sang. Robbie, you have given us many a glorious evening - none more so than this one - God bless you for it and (as you may have noticed we say in the film a bit) lang may yer lum reek!

Evoking Spring From The Clued Ouija Board. No? Yes!

Colonel Mustard, in the Dining Room with smoking Revolver, 

Asks where any secret passage to Happiness is.

"There's no Way Out," sighs Eve Lady Peacock, "no 4-cornered flights

From this Clued-Ouija Board, just the Night Train to Dis.”

 

DIS APPEARS! The plot convenes. Its Argus vision pans. “We indict!

In every room. With every weapon...  The Snow Queen of Has-beens,

The Black and Cock Robin, breakfast cereal murderin’ … MRS WHITE!" …..                           

"I ’AD TO BLEACH THE ’OUSE OF ALL THE BLACKS, BROWNS AND GREENS!”

 

“You’re not Lady Peacock!” Mustard tears off her mask, 

“What have done with my Lady P?” “I AM her and shall forever be

Eng-land as it is in Heritage! Your Lady Daily Male, your buried Hastings,

Your Mustard-servin’ Cod-Psycho Private I, survivin’! Your ‘Me.’ Marry Me!”

 

Mrs White is marched away and Winter goes with her.

Spring is back on the menu, multi-coloured and diverse.

Dis approves as Jack Green is betrothed to Miss Scarlet;

Dis agrees as Poirot blossoms and a primrose Jane demurs.

 

Dis untangles the Brown Lady, reveals Parvati-Proserpina

In a Wife-of-Turnip-Townshend ghost-disguise!           

Dr Black blows his trumpet, England's foundations rock,

Green Eyes dances Blue Eyes into the sunrise.