meka, the musical project of Melissa Lingo, blends introspective indie folk with intricate fingerpicking influenced by Nick Drake and Vashti Bunyan. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, meka explores themes of grief, hope, and nature. Raised in a mountain town dedicated to astronomy, her music reflects a fascination with the cosmos and ecology, shaped by travel and solitude. Her songs turn life’s pain into ethereal beauty, like candlelight in dark corners.

Listen:
https://idol-io.ffm.to/temperance

Connect with meka https://www.instagram.com/singingblackhole/

meka - Temperance

perfect with prod v1.m4a (old)

easy (old)

On January 17, 1712, after a furious and partisan Parliamentary debate, the British Secretary of War in a whig ministry (Robert Walpole) was committed to the Tower and expelled from the House of Commons. In a pre-democratic/post-democratic mirror reverse image of our own time, Britain’s future Prime Minister was imprisoned for corruption even though he wasn’t found guilty whereas the incumbent President of the United States (in Walpole’s time a British colony) hasn’t been imprisoned even though he was.

“The Ballad of Sir Robert Walpole” was originally written to mark the bicentenary of Walpole’s return to Parliament in 1714 and published in “Doin’ Different”, a collection of new folk ballads about  Norfolk notables the following year. Walpole was larger than life in every way, seeming to belong naturally to the Hogarth cartoons in which his era is preserved and extravagantly embodied in Houghton Hall, Norfolk, the immense and palatial neoclassical stately home – a “Neptune and Britannia Rampant Counting House as Castle” - he built in the West Norfolk woods. We have tried to convey something of Walpole’s formidable largeness of life and Hogarthian cartoon spirit, the latter most especially in the choruses (which in the film the feminine side of our duo sings live to a bucolic audience of horned cattle in the January grounds of Houghton Hall.) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpYbaw4g3X4


Knight of the slightly drooping Garter,
King of Bankrupt Hall,
Lord of the Backstairs Tower Tryst,
Stout Adam of the Fall.

Richeldis, Julian, Sawtrey, Nelson,
Boleyn and Boudicca tall,
Margery, Fanny, Turnip, Kett,
Old Tom Paine and all-

Norfolk and good our heroes stand
With something pure about ’em
But none more Norfolk nor more good
Than Dodgy Bob of Houghton.

Sir Robert Walpole, King of Sink,
The Pharaoh of the Flaw,
The not so bumpkin nor so dumplin’
Loophole in the Law.

The first Prime Minister and still
Unequalled in that office;
The backwoods front-man, laughing loud,
The Prince of Peace – and Profits.

The Age he named is hero-free,
No children need to know.
They keep it off the syllabus,
No killers boldly go.

No Bonnie Charlie anthems, saints,
No bagpipe calls to arms;
Just German Georges 1 and 2,
Enlightenment and farms.

The beau, the rake, the dandy, fop,
The mistress-paying knights,
The hypocrite with itchy palm:
‘All thesemen have their price.’

Sir Robert Walpole, Count of Cash,
The Pharaoh of the Flaw,
The not so bumpkin country speakin’
Loophole in the Law.

His Babel built ‘too far from London’ 
Under a Norfolk bushel
The Neptune and Britannia Rampant
Counting House as Castle.

His bust and Caesar hairdo placed
A British cut above
The classic Mantle he assumed
Of Wisdom, Justice, Love.

Removed the timber duty while
He ordered his supplies,
Avoided Finished Buildings tax
With one unfinished frieze.

Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Ease,
The Pharaoh of the Flaw,
The ruddy cunnin’ Norfolk rulin’
Loophole in the Law.

Our burly boisterous backhand Bob
Was bawdy in his cups
Had heart-to-hearts with kings and queens
Yet kept the common touch.

And when the South Sea Bubble burst
And drowned both Whig and Tory,
He saved the country with a speech
And rode the tide to glory

Avoided War for eighteen years
Of Profit weighed with cost,
‘They ring the bells, they’ll wring their hands,’
He said when Peace was lost.

Sir Robert Loophole, Laughin’ Bob,
The Prophet of the Flaw,
Three hundredweight of Killed Cock Robin
Loophole in the Law.

Warwick Jones composed the tune and plays it.

Peacock's Tale (Gaz n Maz) do the rest. From our double album of new Norfolk/East Anglian folk ballads  "Done Different" https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/done-different-2

The Ballad Of Sir Robert Walpole

terrence loves uuu

Music video here- https://youtu.be/C6blyzMegXk

The setting for this ghost ballad is Blickling Hall, Norfolk, where Anne Boleyn was born in 1507 (probably) and which she is said to haunt every May 19 since her execution for alleged treason and adultery on that date in 1536.

'True Thomas' refers to Sir Thomas Wyatt the Tudor courtier whose forbidden love for Anne Boleyn ("hands off this deer, it belongs to the King") is described in his poem "Whoso List To Hunt."

The ghost is accompanied by recordings of Norfolk night birds and beasts, which listeners may be expert enough to identify. We would love to hear from any who manage to do so. (We can confirm that the set of suggestions sent in by a Mr and Mrs J. and K. D*vi*s of Norfolk, viz animals: crocodile, giraffe, lion, birds: vulture, pelican, raven, while featured in an over-celebration of underachievement assembly near you, are not precisely the answers we're looking for, though do try these elsewhere....)

The tune is 'Greensleeves' traditionally composed by Henry VIII in his thin Tudor Rose period.
lyrics

I stole to the door of Blickling Hall
On the nineteenth night of a moonlit May
And met the ghost of Anne Boleyn
Shining bright as day.

Six headless horses drew her coach
A haunted headless coachman drove,
‘Give them their head!’ she laughed, then turned
On me her look of love.

‘I lost my hart in the darkest chase,
On the dying fall of a hunting horn.
I lost my head for the rose of the world
And the rose withered on the thorn.

‘A death-white moon with a raven head
And a smile like a blossom of lovely May
I sold my heart for a worldly crown
And I’ll take your breath away.’

‘I’m not your True Thomas!’ I cried in dread
And her witch head turned in its rotting shroud
‘Ah! You’ve named the angel who guards my grave,’
And she hid her moon face in a cloud.

‘I lost your hart in the darkest chase
On the dying fall of a hunting horn.
I lost my head for the rose of the world
And the rose withered on the thorn.
credits
from Bringing In The May (EP),https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/bringing-in-the-may-ep
Lyric © Gareth Calway published in the Poppyland volume Doin Different garethcalway.blogspot.com/p/doin-different.html

The Rose of the World

​ @PeacocksTaleFolkIndieDuo  for all our music videos. Watch this one here - https://youtu.be/yXIy0qNWFDc

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 beguiling tune is Irish as is the young man. The River Blackwater in Essex is 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 in homage to Mary Wollstonecraft and of modelling a more modern female 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.

Blackwaterside

chelsea hotel no. 2 (cover)

february 26 2025
written by leonard cohen 
performed & recorded by charlotte bagwell

chelsea hotel no. 2

NJ Transit

This song is as old as us! Dusty Springfield's sprightly country folk version with the Springfields was the first British single to reach the top 20 in the American Billboard chart in 1962 (over a year before the 1964 British invasion). youtu.be/uz6HB9HYQz4 Written by Jack Rhodes and Dick Reynolds, it was first recorded by Wanda Jackson in 1956 and covered by Linda Ronstadt in a kick-ass country rock version in the 1970s. youtu.be/pmQpYSBkwag
Not to mention Dolly Parton's happy honky tonk take on it youtu.be/VO4SYPRa3pI
Ours is nearer the much slower, much sadder version by Sandy Denny on her 'Rendezvous' album. If the lyric really does have an arch reference to the recreational drug use of the rich ('silver threads' 'golden needles' 'dare not drown my sorrows in the warm glow of your '"wine"') it rejects it (along with all the other consolations of money) as actually solving anything. Only 'the love you promised' can do that.
lyrics
I don't want your lonely mansion
With a tear in every room.
All I want's the love you promised
Beneath the haloed moon.
But you think I should be happy
With your money and your name
And hide myself in sorrow
While you play your cheating game.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
And I dare not drown my sorrow
In the warm glow of your wine.
You can't buy my love with money
Cause I never was that kind.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
...
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
And I dare not drown my sorrow
In the warm glow of your wine.
You can't buy my love with money
Cause I never was that kind.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
Silver threads and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine.
credits
from Untied States of Americana (LP), released September 8, 2022
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/untied-states-of-americana-lp
Songwriters: Jack Rhodes / Dick Reynolds
Silver Threads and Golden Needles lyrics © Campbell Connelly And Co. Ltd., Campbell Connelly And Co.ltd.

Maz - lead vocal, acoustic guitar
Gaz - bass, bass drum, hi hat, tambo, tom, floor tom, bells, backing vocal.

Silver Threads and Golden Needles

Credits:

OG Track & Lyrics: Sweet Little Lady - The Big Push
Voice (Cover): Uriel
Mastering: Uriel

Sweet Little Lady - The Big Push - Cover by Uriel

A marriage (and we are actually married, 45 years so far) of melody and rhythm. We do folk, indie, Americana, Norfolk noir, beat poems &  ghazals. Traditional tunes with contemporary beats. Music videos  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb8wV0-DNiFs1R5G2VSytBQ
Maz lead & harmony vocals, acoustic guitar. Gaz vocals, voice, bass, drums & percussion, harmonium, recorders, lyre harp, field recordings.

The Rose of the World

Peacock's Tale Musical Storytelling

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