1. |
Sambucus
02:30
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~~~~~~~~~~
O, Lady Elder, give me some of thy wood.
Then will I give thee some of mine when I become a tree.
A child that's beat with elder withe,
will fade away and never thrive.
O, Lady Elder, give me some of thy wood.
Then will I give thee some of mine when I become a tree.
~~~~~~~~~~
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2. |
Dance of the Mummers
05:28
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~~~~~~~~~~
’68, summertime, July, papier mache magpie.
Seven miles of ashen smog and brume blotting out the sky.
A cascade of hail and sheets of rain bringing down the dark.
The iconoclasts shod in bast shoes, they hoot and squawk and bark.
Midnight at midday.
Hessian sackcloth covered face.
Empty playground and the only sound is thunderous drumfire.
Praying parish folk swept from the streets into a new born mire.
The question posed, how is it this is what comes of the true devout?
Knocking at your door, the question asked, are you coming out?
Midnight at midday.
Scattered coins in an ashtray.
Take a sip from the cup, take a look directly up.
They are in your kitchen.
Revel in the night, rest in the day.
We don’t need the light to stage our play.
What looks like a storm is just a bad thought clouded in your mind.
Take a step of the dance and soon enough you will be fine.
What feels like a flood is so called good beliefs that chill your skin.
Let us in to entertain you and the gaiety begin.
Midnight at midday.
These are games that we play.
I was once a proud and sullen child, fearful of the gales,
That blew half the Tees up from the valley and down on our shales.
Now I am a horse, now I am a kiln, now I am a queen.
Now I am the Tees, now I am the great unseen.
Midnight at midday.
Burn it all, burn it all away.
Take a sip from the cup, take a look directly up.
They are your sisters.
Revel in the night, rest in the day.
We don’t need the light to stage our play.
We don’t need a drum to beat out our tune.
We don’t need to work to make a fortune.
Michael, you are a man.
Michael, you more than a man.
Michael, you are a man.
Michael, you are more of a man than I will ever be.
~~~~~~~~~~
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3. |
Cuckoo Pint
03:33
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~~~~~~~~~~
Whilst havering on the way to the bash, I see,
Wild arum down in the grass.
Devil’s men and women all in a line.
Bulls, cows and calves laid out like a shrine.
Parson in the pulpit, be my boon.
As I walk neath the verdant festoon.
Wake robin, give me hope.
I know, I know I’m this close to the end of the rope.
I place you in my shoe.
Let all the girls be drawn to you.
Hendrunk in my favour.
Sweet taste I will savour.
A cuckoo pint tonight I know.
The only place here where they grow.
Dress myself with the liquor here.
Keen as a sickle, sharp as a spear.
Lords and ladies come have a piece.
They laugh like apes, they honk like geese.
~~~~~~~~~~
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4. |
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~~~~~~~~~~
Off out fetching eggs for making wor mam-in-law’s weekday tea.
Corvids race in all directions, shadows spilling over me.
Spen Lane’s chickens in their hutch are feeling such a great unease.
Eyes meet eyes that grow on shapes that swiftly empty great hornbeams.
Red kites ower Butcher Hill.
A wind whips cold and fair backendish 'cross the field to the dogwood.
And I know that they would be here with us if they only could.
Caked in plother, hands together, necks bent, rent skyward and clear.
All I’ll ask is that you’ll not let me come back another year.
Red kites ower Butcher Hill.
Something great to talk about with people that you’d never met.
Such fearful things as this could drown in oceans of regret.
Sometimes his friends and family come ower to help him out.
These are the only times he ever gets to leave the house.
Red kites ower Butcher Hill.
~~~~~~~~~~
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5. |
Howdy Wife and the Trow
05:48
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~~~~~~~~~~
To the Howdy Wife's surprise, there comes a knocking at the door.
The Trow betrays himself, no more than four foot off the floor.
Next thing she's garbed in her overcoat, stalking the footsteps of the Trow.
"I do not recognise this monument! I do not know where I am now!"
Inside a house just like her own, a clamour puts on guard the maid.
She follows cries to the bedchamber. "Please help deliver me my babe!"
The child bearer is surveyed, and cooled with water from the firth.
The Howdy Wife works expertly. A squealing bairn is proudly birthed.
The new father proffers gold and shepherds the midwife back home.
Cockcrow comes and the landscape lights up, still this is a place she does not know.
He stops and produces a flask from which a lotion he decants.
Applies it to the midwife's eyes. A blink or two, she is enchanted.
She's back where she knows. These are familiar roads.
Her bearings are now cleared, but the Trow is disappeared.
And no matter where she scouts, she cannot find that house.
She'd think it was a dream but for the blood on her hands.
When summer comes around, the jobs are to be done.
To pull fish from the stream.
To pull roots from the crofts.
To pull wool from the sheep.
In amongst them is the Trow, spotted only by one eye.
It's the Howdy Wife, she calls, "Are the child and wife alright?"
Shocked to be seen, he smiles and reaches up.
"They are both doing fine. Let me look at your face."
A whistle through her eye, and now she is blind.
For the rest of her life.
~~~~~~~~~~
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6. |
Hob Headless
04:20
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~~~~~~~~~~
Lay a stone for the turncoats.
Never thought they would sink so low.
I am headless and I’m alone.
A collier bird in a field of woe.
I have not yet been put away.
Elsewhere yet not been led astray.
Headless, I lead both night and day.
A spug with worm but nothing to say.
In the end we all must be as the winding tributaries.
Acuminating at the close, head or no head, we’re deposed.
Everything that is real, all the feelings that are good.
I will walk with you in arms and minds and blood.
Trade a fiction for fortitude.
Or a blade with your own blood imbued.
Dreamless sleep is a fickle finger food.
A shuffle wing lost in the hedge.
I admit my obliquity.
For we all sail in the self-same sea.
Colourless and reversed for we.
A clutch of white worms spanning the Earth.
In the end we all must be as I am, a buried tree.
No place safe from the ceaseless clack, no grace found in looking back.
Everything that is real, all the feelings that are good.
You could walk with me in arms and minds and blood.
Hob headless hob, I have half the time.
Hob headless hob, I halve all the time.
Hob headless hob, I have no insides.
Hob headless hob, I do not survive.
~~~~~~~~~~
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7. |
Hymn for the Ancients
02:20
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~~~~~~~~~~
Anchorite, Anchorite, walk beyond the candlelight
Anchorite, second sight, what was once a parasite
Acolyte, Acolyte, walk again into the night
Read the signs, read them all, and be ready for the fall
Neophyte, Neophyte, standing at tremendous height
Make it right, make it good, make the signs all understood
~~~~~~~~~~
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8. |
Pignut
05:59
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~~~~~~~~~~
Husband dear, I'm packed.
The boys are in the back.
The journey it is long.
To find where we belong.
I telt him once, that man's a toad.
Now he lies dead in the fucking road.
Survived by an empty pack of crisps.
I am glad it's come to this.
Son, have yourself packed.
Put a bin bag on your back.
The journey it is hard.
To find where you will start.
They ask me where I'll go to next.
Some say the steeplejack is blessed.
He is not a child of man.
I'm so glad you understand.
We're only halfway home.
Mother dear, I've packed.
Just lie there on your back.
The journey here is done.
No more, you've had your fun.
I telt him once some years back now.
There is a limit to what is allowed.
Survived by a very angry man.
I hope you die as fucking planned.
I'm only halfway home.
I don't believe in you.
Kids they can be so cruel.
Honesty is truly terrible.
Kids they can take so much pain.
Kids they gave so much to gain.
~~~~~~~~~~
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9. |
Gannet
06:25
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~~~~~~~~~~
Hold each other. Don’t you dare cry for me.
I hope at least you can be happy.
This island is full of stupid things.
How far can you fly with concrete wings?
I’ve waited here at the cold clifftop.
Eloquence hushed by a blanket of rocks.
This was supposed to bring us together.
This was supposed to help.
Where did you go? Where did you go, if not here?
Where did you go? Where did you go, if not here?
Three forms outlined on the crest of a crag.
Apprehension is waving a flag.
Swift come, swift go, and again alone.
Although I die, I die at home.
Why did they go? Why did they go, if not for me?
Why did they go? Why did they go, if not for me?
~~~~~~~~~~
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10. |
Peg Powler
08:29
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~~~~~~~~~~
Down by the bank of the River Tees, just by Preston Hall,
a moss-green shadow stirs beneath the water.
She moves like foul breath from the river mouth and off inland,
bound by neither time nor law, God help us.
Whilst oggy-raiding down Bassleton Beck, I tracked the movement
with my nose and a good pair of binos.
Given as a gift to wor Granda in 1974,
after 20 years of service at the ICI.
Lost in the trees I hear the wheeze of some shan kid,
not listened to his dear mam’s words.
Slowed by clag and far too late to save the wee lad from his fate,
from auld Peg Powler.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children play.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children cry.
It’s been one week and four long days since that Pearce lass was took away,
from her auld cottage down in Middleton One Row.
She had no sense to do as told and kicked her shoes off in the cold.
Now she’s kicking in the stomach of the hag.
They’ve said they’ve seen her as far along as Mickleton.
Well that explains the well behaved bairns, the few that’s left.
Tanking down at dead of night or mafted in summer’s sun,
there is no one time or place that’s safe.
All things come and go. New cultures. The same bad ideas.
The same teeth and nails draw new blood.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children jest.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children scream.
There was an auld fool who knew of a cogg hole where she dwelt.
Armed with a butcher’s knife, he went and sought her.
A ring of foam where he descended, in the currents where it ended.
He never returned from the water.
It’s supposed in 1179, at the birth of hell’s kettles,
she was displaced.
And after years of poverty, in exchange for a roof and full belly,
she entered a pact with a mask.
To sisters she was Pickle-nearest-the-wind.
Thout, tout-a-tout, throughout and about.
There can be blame but not of her, this is a cruel world.
In a rootless age, people turn often to strange gods.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children play.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children cry.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children howl.
No more. No more. No more. No more do those poor children greet.
~~~~~~~~~~
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11. |
Forebears
06:10
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Platitude Queen Stockton On Tees, UK
Platitude Queen is a folk project by Teesside based musician and certified daft apeth J. S. Gordon (formerly based in Leeds).
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