Lyrics

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1 The Beauties Of Autumn

A seasonal song that Rosie wrote at Halsway Manor Artists’ Retreat last year, inspired by the name of an Irish march by John Brady.

Stags and bucks join the rut, to try their luck in sporting
And all the day through vale and glade you’ll hear the victors roaring
The murmurs moving through the flocks say, “Time we were away
For winter’s dark steals summer's light, night bringing down the day."

The sun sinks south, winter bound, she’s calling her birds to the wing
And the swallows of summer slip away as the beauties of autumn roll in…

The silken webs that thread the dew between the gorse and heather
They shiver with the changing course and temper of the weather
The squirrel stores her hips and haws to keep the cold at bay
As winter’s dark steals summer’s light, night bringing down the day.

On wooded down sits nature’s crown, the beech and maple flaming
Whilst the apple and the sloe stoop low with branches heavy laden
The blackbird in the bramble whistles merry as she may
But winter’s dark steals summer's light, night bringing down the day.

And what of those that brave the cold in den and dray and burrow
They hunker down as frost abounds the fields now ploughed and furrowed
Heed not the call that draws the swallow half the world away
But let winter’s dark steal summer's light, night bringing down the day.

2 A Bruton Farmer

A beautifully formed murder balled in 5/4 that we first heard from James Patterson and couldn’t stop singing... take warning all cruel brothers - hell hath no fury!

Now a famous farmer, as you shall hear,
He had two sons and one daughter dear.
Her servantman she much admired,
None in the world she loved so dear.

Said one brother to the other:
“See how our sister means to wed.
Let all such a courtship soon be ended:
We'll hoist him unto some silent grave.”

They called for him to go a-hunting.
He went out without any fear or strife.
And these two jewels they proved so cruel:
They took away that young man's life.

It was near the creek where there was no water,
Nothing but bushes and briars grew.
All for to hide their cruel slaughter
Into the bushes his body threw.

When they returned from the field of hunting,
She began to enquire for her servantman:
“Come, brothers, tell me, because you whisper:
Come, brothers, tell me if you can.”

“Sister, we are so much amazed,
To see you look so much at we.
We met him where we'd been a-hunting
No more of him then did we see.”

And she lay musing all on her pillow.
She dreamed she saw her true love stand.
By her bedside he stood lamenting,
All covered with some bloody wounds.

“Nancy, dear, don't you weep for me,
Pray Nancy, dear, don't weep nor pine
In that creek where there is no water
Go and there you shall my body find.”

So she rose early the very next morning
With many a sigh and bitter groan.
In that place where her true love told her
It's there she found his body thrown.

The blood all on his lips was drying,
His tears were salter than any brine.
And she's kissed him, loudly crying:
“Here lies a bosom friend of mine.”

Three days and nights she stayed lamenting
Till her poor heart was filled with woe.
Until sharp hunger came creeping on her:
And homeward she was forced to go.

Sister, we are so much amazed
To see you look so pale and wan.”
“Brothers, I know you know the reason,
And for the same you shall be hung!”

These two brothers both were taken,
And bound all down in some prison strong.
They both were tried, found out as guilty,
And for the same they both were hung.

3 In A Fair Country

Rosie wrote this song while exploring the vast wealth of folklore surrounding our less renowned native trees. Once so familiar to the people of this country, their uses and stories have all but disappeared with our detachment from the natural world. The chorus is a traditional floating verse appearing in many songs in different guises – here adapted for a time when Britain is still being stripped of its woodlands.

The yew in the churchyard she sighs and she groans
Under the weight of old sins and old bones
She’ll find no relief for she cannot die
Only suck a life from the dead that in their graves lie

The oak and the ash and the apple tree
Would blossom and bloom in a fair country...

We sigh for the summer as we summon the May
Seeking the favour of fortune and fey
But less now she blushes in hedges and groves
Curse he that harms hawthorn as she blossoms and grows

The willows that flank the river bank side
Watch lives wax and wane with the pull of the tide
From cradle to coffin they’ll weave and they’ll spin
And the willows weep low for lost love and lost kin

Alder, oh alder her feet in the water
Flame in the forge and stone in the stream
Though the blacksmith the dyer and the cobbler court her
She shields in her shady carrs, her Robin the Green

And over the land man strips barren and bare
Where the spirits that linger are death and despair
Sweeps the Lady of Birch with her silvren skin
And all that was tainted will be pure again

4 Queen & Country

This is our arrangement of a song that Rowan originally wrote for his Songhive project to highlight the current crises facing our native bee population.

I'm a worker by nature I freely admit
And I spend all my days in the fields
At a tiring old trade which may well be unpaid,
But it brings all the farmers their yields.

When the sun has dropped down I will take to my bed
In the cell that my own toil has made
To arise again early and tend to the gardens
Of folks who are in their beds laid...

Oh for Queen and Country,
Though the latter is no thought of mine,
I work for all and sundry,
I'm a labourer come rain or shine.

Gone are the days when on jelly I dined
A bumbling old fool I've become,
And I hum as I go the old chants that I know
From our glory days spent in the sun.

Well the people are swarming for honey & milk
And that land that was promised of old,
But they don't understand that the crops are unmanned
And the colonies now all stand cold.

Where there once was a gate to palace of gold
Flanked by guards in their striped livery
You'll find corpses piled high 'cause the honey's run dry
To pay those from the mortuary...

5 Chalice Well / The Welcombe Hills

While staying at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, at a meditation retreat where no electronics were allowed, Philippe finally had to put his phone away and write a new tune. Hopefully you can hear the sense of calm in the melody!

Rowan wrote the second tune for his friend Felix, who has the good fortune to come from the Welcombe Hills near Stratford-upon-Avon.

6 Woman Of The Woods

A song about a woman compelled to help others despite her own hardship and in spite of being ostracised by the very people who come calling for her aid.

Many a time I've been woken to find
A frantic man upon my door knocking,
He begs me to hurry and tend to his wife,
For the child won't be too long in coming.

Weary I follow him up to the farm,
And there I find his young wife is labouring,
I pray to the Lord for one easy birth –
For the child in it's mothers arms laying...

There's many who'd shun a woman like me,
Though many I have had hand in helping,
When times are hardest or hope nearly lost,
It's into the the woods they come calling.

Many a time I've returned home to find,
A young girl on my doorstep crying,
Her face it is drawn and her belly is tight,
For a child won't be too long in coming.

Some girls I've had they've been barely fifteen,
Their bodies still too slight to carry,
The lads take their pleasure and next day move on,
Take with them their promise to marry....

There's many who'd shun a woman like me,
Though many I have had hand in helping,
When times are hardest or hope nearly lost,
It's into the the woods they come calling.

These days I'm often called into the town,
To tend to the needs of the dying,
When they cross over it's me lays them out,
And pray I have eased their passing...

There's many who'd shun a woman like me,
Though many I have had hand in helping,
When times are hardest or hope nearly lost,
It's into the the woods you come calling.

7 Song Of The Whale

We paired this beautiful anti-whaling song by the great Eric Bogle, with an old Irish air. Two hundred years ago, fishermen on the Blasket Islands heard a lamenting that they decided was Port na bPúcaí – The Music of the Fairies. We now know that they were hearing the song of the humpback whales reverberating through the hulls of their wooden & canvas boats. There were two families on Inisvicillane at the time who had the melody; the Guiheens and the Ó Dálaighs. Rowan's family in Dingle is entwined with the last Guiheens to leave the island in 1953... and so we have the story on good authority!

The saddest sound I've ever heard
Is the song of the hump-backed whale
His moans and sighs and his eerie cries
Sing a sad familiar tale 
For he sighs and blows as if he knows
His race is nearly run
And soon with all of his kind he'll fall
Beneath the whaler's gun 

For every living thing on earth
Nature found a space
Each a living strand of a fragile plan
That can never be replaced 
And not from need, but from wanton greed
Man has torn down nature's web
With greed possessed he will not rest
Till the last of the whales is dead 

In my mind's eye I can see them die
As the whaler finds his mark
Hear the muffled boom of the cruel harpoon
As it blasts their lives apart
I see the flood of their rich dark blood
As it stains the ocean red
And that bloody green will not wash clean
Till the last of the whales is dead

8 Hjältedyrkan

A polska written by Rowan as a birthday present for Ben Paley, who inspired his love of Scandi music when he taught him his first Swedish tune all those years ago!

9 The Thrush's Anvil

Our ode to the Thrush – a bird with so much folklore and very few folksongs! Rowan wrote this for his grandma who worked for the RSPB her whole life and loved thrushes.

Our master has a-courting gone
Our mistress up above
And she has asked him for a gift
As a token of his love.
He’s ventured forth across the land,
Spreading seeds of his own demise,
Through wind and rain his voice will strain,
As he seeks a worthy prize. 

Singing high, low,
The tune that we know
To the hammer of shell on stone,
Come, come
The search has begun
The Thrush’s anvil rings alone.

He’s found a church up on the Downs
Of Sussex diamond built,
He’s asked the father for a sign
But he’s given naught but guilt.
By that church was an old yew tree,
With rubies it was blessed,
He’s taken one for his own true love,
To treasure in her nest.
 
He’s flown through seven countries 
And to their monarchs sung 
To beg exotic presents  
He’s studied every tongue, 
But nothing for our mistress 
Save a berry black as coal 
He’s taken from the elders 
As an incidental toll. 

He’s met her at the trysting tree 
Among the woodland glades
He’s found his miss a mistletoe kiss 
Just as the daylight fades, 
This trinity of gems he’s brought 
Of black and white and red 
Lie gleaming in the moonlight  
All upon Miss Thrush’s bed.

The stormcock’s call beckons one and all
To the shelter of safer boughs
For the tempest’s nigh, the water's high,
And dark are the evening clouds...

10 Of Men Who'll Never Know

We took this melody from a haunting Swedish love song, Ack högaste himmel, and Rowan supplied some equally haunting lyrics about the end days...

The sharp prongs of winter
Bleed blunt hours of light
As short summer days
Give way to long nights
And creatures of bush and briar
Leave feetings in fresh snow
On highways and byways
Of men who'll never know...

We worked and we wept
For the pains of our kind
As grief grew unchecked
In our hearts and our minds
Now gone are the gods
And all their creatures great and small
They stand hand in hand
At the ruin of all...

The last of us waiting
A question on her breath
Knows well that an answer
Will always bring a death
With sap in her veins
Her tongue collecting rust
Sing "Ashes to ashes"
Sing "Dust to dust..."

11 Pete's Jig / Poor Hildegard / Joan Brodie's

Philippe wrote the first tune for Sussex based fiddler Pete Lyons - the man responsible for indoctrinating him fully in folk music. Rowan took the air of the second tune from the notes of O frondens virga by Hildegard von Bingen and shoe-horned it into jig form. Joan Brodie's was written by Philippe for his Scottish, accordion playing granny.

12 The Wilderness Yet

This started out life as a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called Inversnaid. Rowan set it to music and added three stanzas to build on the message of that iconic last verse which we sing here as a chorus.

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Chorus: What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

Where hares hold council and dread-drakes sport
The cope-carlied trout to the turf resort
And boglarks flout their fine fanfare
Corkscrewing song through the high sky air.

Hear the bleating heather-blades
And bitterns as the daylight fades
A symphony of sound and then
The silence from the world of men.

When all is seared and smeared with toil
Man’s smudge and smell ploughed through the soil
He’ll plod his shod unfeeling feet
Onwards ‘cross the cold concrete.