Maz sings a 'weeping' motif originally composed on the harp by Vanessa Wood-Davies.

Our Lady never cried, so why do you? 
They asked, when my prayer had doused the fire… 
"For joy of weeping on His passion abused: 
Brooding on one's own woes does not aspire." 

Lynn is Mass en masse, not Norwich, church-a-bloc. 
We're one deafened parish, cheek-by-blessed-howl! 
"For thinking on Christ's precious wounds, how can I not? 
Which, Dame Julian assured me, will make the Fiend yowl." 

(reading) "Then the Archbishop took his seat...and for so long she melted all into tears. And at last she cried out so loudly, so that the Archbishop and his clerics, and many people, were all astonished at her, for they had not heard such crying before. 
When her crying was passed, she came before the Archbishop and fell down on her knees, the Archbishop saying very roughly to her "Why do you weep so, woman?" 
She answering, said, "Sir, you shall wish some day that you had wept as sorely as I".

Lyrics by Gaz. Prose from the Book of Margery Kempe. Pic Maz as Margery at Elsing church, Norfolk.

Margery's Tears

Dance tune by and performed on the harp by Vanessa Wood-Davies arr. Peacock's Tale. Vocal Maz. Percussion and dance calls Gaz. Lyric by Peacock's Tale. We tell the story of the Great Fire of Lynn and what the visionary Margery Kempe did there and also what she said and did when a heresy court threatened her with death by fire and on a late voyage when confronted with death by water.

St Margaret's is burning but Jesus tells me
Here in my mind that all shall be well.
"Shall I carry the Sacrament towards the fire?"
Asks our priest. - Sir, yes. And to hell.

St Margaret's is burning; I'm urging the Lord
Here in my mind, let the high heavens snow
To quench this fire and ease my heart's woe.
"A Miracle!" cries Lynn, till my heart's tears flow.

Out of my gender, out of my class and out of my mind,
Out of my body and leaving the age I was born to behind,
Where priests hurry Mass, to get back to their lusts, pies, slanders and beer:
Fruit gorged by a bear and discharged from its rear.

Now I'm old and wounded, the Lord God tells me
Here in my mind, You must go to Danzig.
I excuse you, escort you and lead you, for I
Am above your confessor, although he bans it.

Who shall be against you, the Lord God tells me
Here in my mind, then a friar says it too.
In storm and war, through slander and curse
Who shall be against, if I am with you?

Out of my gender, out of my class and out of my mind,
Out of my time and leaving the life I was born to behind,
Where priests hurry Mass, to get back to their lusts, pies, slanders and beer
And my woman's words must be wasted in tears.

Originally composed with Vanessa for the Songs from Skirting Heresy album (and the soundtrack for the play of that name performed in Sept 2018 at Margery's church, Lynn Minster) and performed by we three as part of the Penland Phezants.

From the Book of Margery Kempe:

After this she went homewards again, until she came to West Lynn. When she was there, she sent into Bishop's Lynn for her husband, for Master Robert (Springolde) her confessor, and for Master Aleyn, a doctor of divinity, and told them in part of her tribulations. And afterwards she told them that she wold not come home to ~Bishop's Lynn until such time as she had been to the Archbishop of Canterbury for his letter and his seal.
"For when I was before the Archbishop of York," she said, he wold give no credence to my words, inasmuch as I didn't have my Lord of Canterbury's letter and seal. And so I promised him that I would not come to Bishop's Lynn until I had my Lord of Canterbury's letter and seal."
And so she took her leave of the said clerks, asking their blessing, and went on with her husband to London. When she got there, she was soon successful over her letter from the Achbishop of Canterbury. And so she stayed in the City of London a long time, and was very well received by many worthy men.
Afterwards, she was going towards Ely on her way home to Lynn, and she was three miles from Ely, when a man came riding after them at great speed, and crested her husband and her also, intending to take them both to prison. He cruelly rebuked them and utterly reviled them, repeating many reporting word. And at last she asked her husband to show him my Lord of Canterbury's letter. When the man had read the letter he spoke handsomely and kindly to them, saying, "Why didn't you show me your letter before?"
And so they parted from him, and then came to Ely, and from there home to Lynn, where she suffered much humiliation, much reproof, many a scorn, many a slander and many a curse.
And on one occasion a reckless man, caring little for his own shame, deliberately and on purpose threw a bowlful of water on her head as she was coming along the street. She, not at all disturbed bu it, said, "God make you a good man", highly thanking God for it, as she did if many other things at different times.

From Book 1. Chapter 55.

St Margaret's Is Burning (with Vanessa Wood-Davies)

https://youtu.be/ajVfKAQeLWg (second half)

A comedy song with a howl at its heart ("we're anchorless and quite alone") and some scholarly research into an obscure period, 14C Hanseatic Lynn. 

(spoken at start) I send ambassadors to scold
The Grand Teutonic Chief
And stops all England trading till
Lynn funds that royal brief:

It’s trade that makes the world go round:
Their timber for our wool;
War by another name, not love,
Who dreams it's love's a fool.

He’s 5 times Mayor, the Merchant Prince,
Twice MP of his town;
He’ll rope you in, he'll haul you up,
Make waves where others drown.

He represents His Majesty
Against the Prussian threat;
Their ships attack ours over there,
We make theirs pay the debt.

We're anchorless and quite alone,
Is all he says to me;
I say we're washed in Jesu's love,
He says we're all at sea.

I hear the angels’ soaring song
In whipped sails and Wash gulls;
Their wings in trade winds fair and foul,
The bumping of the hulls.

The privateers and pirates steal
Where merchants wheel and deal;
Our Hanseatic treaties keep 
A kind of even keel.

We're anchorless and quite alone,
Is all he says to me;
I say we're washed in Jesu's love,
He says we're all at sea.

The biggest fish in Lynn's great pool,
Lynn's news, its Public Face;
It all comes out, or in, his Wash,
His Tuesday Market Place.

“It’s trade that makes the world go round:
Their fish and pitch; our salt;
War by another name, not love,
Who dreams it's love's a dolt.”

We're anchorless and quite alone,
Is all he says to me;
I say we're washed in Jesu's love,
He says we're all at sea.

“You can't wed Jesus, daughter dear,
Unless you are a nun,
There's plenty more fish in the sea
With a house and shop to run.

“It’s trade that makes the world go round:
Their furs; our cloth and grain;
War by another name, not love,
Who dreams it's love's insane.”

Margery is usually portrayed as proud of her merchant prince father, Richard III's royal agent in the then premier league Hanseatic port of Lynn and - by contrast - highly critical of her less high-ranking burgess husband There is certainly no explicit antagonism in the Book towards her father and plenty towards the husband who got her pregnant 14 plus times in 20 years. If in  "The Book of Margery Kempe" Book 1 Chapter 46, she sounds proud of her husband, it is surely only because she is emphasising the respectability of her kindred under threat of prison.
So if we can perhaps question the father pride too. True, she doesn't disparage him elsewhere in the text as she does John and the common people of Lynn; but she doesn't show much interest in him either. Except when she drops his name in a tight spot, the autobiography is silent about the father who, under Richard III, was the prime mover and shaker in one of the biggest ports of the Hanseatic world. Margery's two efforts at business - brewing and a horse mill- both failed dismally and seem amateur. She doesn't seem to have been prepared for anything except marriage and endless childbearing.
Tune by Andy wall. This track imagines her dreamy-teen thoughts about her very worldly father. Pic is Maz at Brandon Creek, source of Lynn's prosperity.

The Ballad of John Brunham

"The priest who wrote down this book (The Book of Margery Kempe" pictured, in the British Library) , in order to test this creature's feelings, asked her questions many different times about things that were to come - things of which the outcome was unsure and uncertain to anybody at that time - asking her, through she was loath and unwilling to do such things, to pray to God and discover when our Lord would visit her with devotion, what the outcome would be, and then truly, without any pretending, tell him how she felt, or else he would not have gladly written the book....

And so this creature partly compelled by the fear that he would not otherwise have follwowed her intention in writing this book, did as he asked her and told him her feelings as to what would happen in such matters as he asked her about, if her feelings were true. And in this way he tested them of their truth. And yet he would not always give credence to her words, and that hindered him..." Book 1. Chapter 24.

Note the nervousness of her amanuensis and their uneasy relationship, asking her to ask God (for example) whether people who seemed plausible in the present would continue to be so in the future, much against her inclination. She reluctantly divines how a plausible young man will betray the trust he currently enjoys for this purpose, rather like Miss Marple on a high-powered interview panel correctly advising against the dodgy candidate to whom the experts gave the job.

The recurring qualifications in the text, that she saw God "in her soul", "in the city of her soul" that He spoke to her "in her mind" that her tears make her weak "in her bodily strength" perhaps reflect the tension of the enterprise. While such qualifications sometimes advocate her genuine credentials, (look, she said this would happen and it did) they often they seem to be steering her though potential heresies and gaffes as well ( as with all the potential Lollard assertions about not needing to confess sins to a priest in this track.) It's like writing a book with a canonical lawyer, meticulously underwriting your vision. 
lyrics
I cut a dash through Bishop’s Lynn,
Proud daughter of its Mayor,
My cloaks with modish tippets slashed,
And gold pipes in my hair.

I burned to die, I sinned a sin
That’s never been confessed
- Except to God - a Lollard sin
To hold it in my breast.

This Book I weep in blood
Up from the heart’s deep well
Would drown the earth in heaven tears
And church the tongues of hell.

But hearing heaven’s Song of Songs
I shun the gutter’s Ouse
And though you rule me, husband, priest,
A single life I choose

And every pilgrim step I trudge
From wedlock’s grave mundane
And married flesh and churchman’s plot
Is singing with God’s name.

This Book I weep in blood
Up from the heart’s deep well
Would drown the earth in heaven tears
And church the tongues of hell.

I bend my will to holy men,
Confessors clerks and seers
Yet drown their prayers and sermons in
A Noah's Flood of tears.

I wash away my sins with tears
That heaven and earth should meet.
My heart is bleeding as I kiss
His tender face and feet.

This Book I weep in blood
Up from the heart's deep well
Would drown the earth in heaven tears
And church the tongues of hell.
credits
from A Mass of Carols For Margery, released December 25, 2022
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/a-mass-of-carols-for-margery  Tune by Vanessa Wood-Davies arr Peacock's Tale. Words © Gareth Calway 2016.


This Booke I Weep In Blood

(Verse 1)
They point to the kings on their gilded thrones,
Blood on their hands, yet we worship the bones,
But the crown’s just a mask for the rot underneath,
A system that thrives on corruption and grief.

(Verse 2)
The suits in the towers, the wolves in the halls,
Smiling like saviors while plotting our falls,
But they’re not the source, just the face of the crime,
A cog in the machine, grinding out time.

(Alternative Chorus - More Anthemic)
We kneel to the crown, but the throne is a lie,
The real king’s a ghost in the stock-market sky.
They’ll name you the villain, turn your heart into stone,
While the blood of the world buys a new golden throne.


(Verse 3)
The markets decide who gets left in the cold,
While fortunes are made from the lives they’ve sold,
The oligarchs laugh from their castles of gold,
But they’re just hollow shells with no soul to hold.

(Verse 4)
Psychopaths dancing on strings they don’t see,
Puppets who think they were born to be free,
But the masters don’t sit in the spotlight’s glare,
They pull from the shadows—you won’t find them there.

(Alternative Chorus - More Anthemic)
We kneel to the crown, but the throne is a lie,
The real king’s a ghost in the stock-market sky.
They’ll name you the villain, turn your heart into stone,
While the blood of the world buys a new golden throne.

(Bridge 2)
The script was set long before they arrived,
A game of monopoly, rigged from the start,
We fight for the scraps while they feast on the lies,
And the sickness grows deep in the heart.

(Verse 5)
They tell us to hate while they pocket the gain,
Divide us with borders, with color, with pain,
But the enemy’s not just the face on the screen,
It’s the code in the system, the death of the dream.

(Verse 6)
The wars never end, but the profits still rise,
A currency built on our tears and goodbyes,
Yet we scream at the pawns while the architects grin,
Another day lost to the noise and the din.

(Bridge 3)
Break the illusion, tear down the veil,
The prison’s not just made of steel,
It’s numbers and ledgers, the ghost in the machine,
A sickness we’re trained not to feel.

(Alternative Chorus - More Anthemic)
We kneel to the crown, but the throne is a lie,
The real king’s a ghost in the stock-market sky.
They’ll name you the villain, turn your heart into stone,
While the blood of the world buys a new golden throne.


(Verse 7)
So burn all the temples where money’s the god,
Where the hungry are cursed and the greedy applaud,
The puppets will fall when the strings are cut loose,
But the system’s the beast—will we dare turn it loose?

(Outro)
The men in the power are just passing through,
But the system remains if we don’t change the rules,
So look past the faces, dig into the root,
Or we’ll crown a new king—just another sick fool.

Puppets of a Sick World (demo)

A ghost story from our home village of Sedgeford. The tale of Susan's death in the terrible storm of 1819 made the national newspapers. We performed our memorial and a dramatic recreation of "the fatal thunderstorm in Sedgeford" on her 200th anniversary there at 9 pm (see pic). 

‘Come out in the dark lane, lonely boy,
Leave your laptop and play with me.
Leave your father and mother and holiday home
For my wildwood and wicked sea.’

A gone-tomorrow full-moon face
In bonnet and Sunday best;
A goose ran up and down my flesh,
My hair stood stiff as a crest.

‘I’d die to hold a girl like you,
So fashion-hungry thin
But fear there is no heart behind
That sly come-hither grin.

‘There’s maggots in your Sunday best,
Your bony heroine chic’s
A shade too grave about your mouth,
Your vulture-grinning beak.’

‘I’ve been Death’s bride two hundred years
And much too young to die,
Let me take you back to 1819,
The Fifth Day of July.’

The Squire rode down my father’s door
‘All hands to the pump!’ honked he.
‘Sir, I’m weary from working your bone-dry fields,
‘My family hath need of me!’

‘You’re weary from working my golden fields
But my House expects a neighbour
And my Stream has dried in the lower field
And my Pump demands your labour.’

Our childish shrieks filled the heaven-blue
Played hide and seek round the paves
Laughed under the leaves of Eden-green
And kiss-chased through the graves.

The tardy teacher at the gate,
Seized my pretty lobes,
My spray of pretty graveyard flowers:
‘You’re a hell child, Susan Nobes!’

The sunlit schoolroom candle burned
A flame that barely lightened;
A stroke before the clock struck nine
It devilishly brightened.

A growl and rumble at the door,
As dark as pitch in the room,
A sizzling hiss, like a snake on the roof,
An ear-exploding boom.

‘Prayer,’ scorned the teacher, ‘is stronger than rain!’
The dark began to splinter
In lightning tongues as bright as noon,
It grew as cold as winter.

‘God save us!’ screamed the children all,
The teacher tore her gown,
The rain came down in ice and hail,
The sky turned upside down.

A stained glass window-angel smashed,
I kneeled and tried to pray,
A fiery crack of sulphur took
My girlish breath away.

The flickering lightning licked the tower,
Scorched a yard-wide hole in the wall
And from where my Saviour hung on high
Great blocks began to fall.

‘O Robert, our Susan’s lost in the storm.
What kept you away so long?’
‘The Squire needed water, he got his wish,
But where is our daughter gone?’

‘I sent her to Sunday School, oh Robert,
And I fear my choice was cursed.
For none alive has seen such a Flood
Of gravesoil in the church.

He forged the cross under baked Dove Hill
Its Wash rolled like a tide,
He climbed over hill to the rain-drenched crowd
And took the teacher aside.

‘Where’s Susan?’ he said, as quiet as Death,
‘I believe she is with her Saviour.’
‘You left her alone in the schoolroom and fled?’
His question got no answer.

He waded past the porchway Flood,
The font they’d named his daughter
And into a schoolroom as chill as the tomb
Awash with blocks and mortar.

He found me lifeless upon the floor,
My temples charred with flame,
He clenched me in his arms and wept
A tide he’ll never stem.

‘Come out in the dark lane, lonely boy,
Leave your laptop and play with me.
Leave your father and mother and holiday home
For my wildwood and wicked sea.’

Historical and other details here - https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/edit_album?id=3169869118

The Ballad of Susan Nobes

Robert Kett (d 1549) - a tanner and small landowner, holding the manor of Wymondham in Norfolk, - was unusual among leaders of peasant risings for his organisational skill. The insurgents set up camp for six weeks at Mousewold Heath, overlooking Norwich, and Kett imposed a remarkable discipline, electing a governing council and maintaining law and order. Kett's oak, which you can still see growing beside the B1172 between Wymondham and Hethersett, was the famous site of Kett's address to the rebels. Kett had himself enclosed his estate's local common, part of the Tudor economic revolution to replace poor arable with much more productive sheep farming, but reversed the process when he saw the distress it caused to his tenants. Kett's forces occupied Norwich, then the second town of England, and defended it successfully against a force sent in by the royal government under Lord Northampton, whom they routed. Three weeks later a much more brutal second force, stiffened with mercenaries and less prone to sympathy, under Earl Warwick, cut Kett's rebels to pieces at Dussingdale. Kett was hanged as a traitor on the walls of Norwich Castle and his brother William on the abbey walls at Wymondham. 

Poachers on the Common (The Ballad of Kett’s Rebellion) (1549)

As I lay down on Mousehold Heath,
I heard two corbies beak to beak,
‘It’s cold as death, fifteen below.
To Norwich Castle let us go.

‘Upon its wall, a traitor hangs
Who led last summer’s rebel gangs:
Twelve thousand men, a city strong,
Unfencing nine and twenty wrongs.’

The Commons’ land, he gave it back
Then led their time-honoured attack
And his bare bones shall be his plaque
Till crows are white and snows are black.

At Dussindale they broke his army;
His brother hanged on Wymondham Abbey;
His name is blood in church and state,
We’ll pick his bones to celebrate.

His brave old England: shabby crops
Outselling woollens in the shops;
The oak its heart until its bark
Is cut to build a new car park.’

‘His brave new England on the hill
In narrow streets and arms fulfilled;
Its oak near Hethersett will stand
While people matter more than plans.’

The Commons’ land, he gave it back
Then led their time-honoured attack
And his bare bones shall be his plaque
Till crows are white and snows are black.

"This Memorial was placed here by the citizens of Norwich in reparation and honour to a notable and courageous leader in the long struggle of the common people of England to escape from a servile life into the freedom of just conditions" (Plaque on the wall of Norwich Castle.) Pic is wood cut of Kett in Chapelfield Park, Norwich.

released June 15, 2023 https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/the-ballad-of-ketts-rebellion


Poachers on the Common (The Ballad of Kett's Rebellion)

A new recording for the 80th anniversary of VE Day of this remembrance anthem for a "brave, loving and unselfish" youth late of this parish. 

 Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Williamson, 1920-1945, died  aged 25, on Friday July 13 1945 after five years service in the RAF fighting Fascism on two major fronts of the Second World War. He joined the RAF in 1939, aged 19. He was agonisingly close to surviving the entire war when he died in a plane crash on a solo training flight above Little Eaton in Derbyshire just after his last home leave in Norfolk.

Lancelot 'Percy' Williamson is the last name on the unbelievably long roll call of Sedgeford war dead from two world wars called out (across the village green where we live) every Remembrance Sunday. My ear was always struck by the Arthurian resonances, not just Sir Lancelot the greatest knight but Percival the purest (and finder of the Holy Grail). Maz and I have the honour in absentia familias of tending his grave at Fring and also of occasionally remembering him at the church with this song or the poem.

He hailed from Eaton Farm Sedgeford, North West Norfolk. went to school in Fring, sang in Heacham church choir, played cricket for Sedgeford a week before his death and is buried next to the small grave of his 'older' (10 year old) brother at Fring All Saints.

The tune is a traditional folk song about a good young man cut down in his prime. The aircraft you hear at the end of this film was flying over as we finished recording so we left the mikes open. The same thing happened when I was recording the poem in the graveyard.

I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter,

5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames,

In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise

And came down to Earth but lived up to my names.


Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin,

Six Logres ladies to walk by my side,

Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies

And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July.


Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only,

Play up the dead march as we go along

And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy,

I lived in the free air that breathes through this song.


Instrumental break


Repeat first verse.
credits

Lyric © Gareth Calway 2023

from PEACOCK'S TALES (The Sapphire Wedding Album)  https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/peacocks-tales-the-sapphire-wedding-album
Percy's gravestone has recently been cleaned and made much more legible, as you will see in the final frame of the film (see link below). Our thanks to Carol Townsend of the Commonwealth Graves Commission who carried out that excellent work as well as to Tim Snelling Sedgeford village historian whose diligent research gave us many of the images and press cuttings you see on the film and which gave us the material for our song.. youtu.be/j3LRhwEYIsA This film gives you a bit of the poem as well.

Bring Me To Fring All Saints (new recording for VE 80th anniversary)

Dellwood is the latest musical chapter from Minneapolis-based artist and producer Chris Bartels, known for his expansive catalog of deeply atmospheric and emotive music under various monikers, including Elskavon, Blurstem, Olma, Glass Echoes, and more. With Dellwood, Bartels returns to his acoustic roots, blending intricate folk storytelling with cinematic ambient production to create an organic soundscape that is both intimate and expansive.

Inspired by the natural beauty of Minnesota and the vulnerability of personal experience, Dellwood’s music captures raw emotion through layered rubber-bridge-muted guitars, sonically stirring production, and haunting-yet-familiar vocals, ranging from airy falsetto to deep, rich bellows. Bartels’ love for adventuring his home state and the surrounding Midwest plays a central role in the creative process, with nature not only inspiring the songs but often acting as a co-writer of sorts. Frequently taking pen, pad, and guitar outside the studio walls, Bartels allows the landscapes around him to shape the emotional and sonic tones of Dellwood’s music.

Drawing influences from artists like Bon Iver, Novo Amor, Hazlett, and RY X, Dellwood finds beauty in quiet spaces, crafting songs that explore themes of longing, loss, and connection. The project highlights Bartels' ability to merge the organic with the atmospheric, utilizing field recordings and delicate guitar work to create soundscapes that resonate with listeners on a deeply personal level.

Alive

(spoken) There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,
And o’er him, drawing it, the winter moon,
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled...


(sung) "Throw back, throw back, Excalibur!"
I begged Bedwyr - and twice more -
"Throw back, grown black, Excalibur
That I might live forever
That Light might strike forever!
In wicked shifting thickets, the thorn
Of my heart's bursting must be:
Rose-clad, at home, and sleeping,
Or gone is the dazzling dream
That Artos, once man Arthur,
(Mis-mothered where life faltered
On long-fought malice Mordered)
Is God, is lord immortal:
A dream too real to live, thrown
Out of your world and hurled, look!


A Christ sword to Word your sky!"

(spoken) Dry clash’d his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clang’d round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels—
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.

sung lyrics © Gareth Calway 2011

From our Matter of Britain set "The Lost Land". The tune is Llwyn Onn (the Lonely Ash Grove.)

From our Matter of Britain set "The Lost Land," this interpretation of the famous moment in the Arthur legends when the Mordred-conquering but broken king of Logres commands Bedivere (originally Bedwyr, first friend) to throw his enchanted sword Excalibur ('lightning blade') back into the Lake form whence it came, takes a number of things for granted which alas one cannot. First, that the Arthur legend is not the property of the English (as often believed) but of an older Celtic Britain which fought them for what became known as "Logres" the Lost Land - (modern Welsh Lloegr, England) - hence our use of a haunting Welsh tune. Second, the (to me) attractive Celtic 'otherworldliness' of the lyric is due - as in the verses of our "Morgan le Fay" - to my alternating use of two of the most common medieval Welsh meters (Morgan uses the other two) known collectively as cynghanedd (literally 'harmony')

The required intense focus on word-sounds and patterns here and in its sibling piece Morgan cast a spell over my composition which allowed magical thoughts to form. This in turn affected the choice of tune and the overall performance.

released September 19, 2023
Main lyric by and tune arr. by Peacock's Tale  https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/excalibur
Music video - https://youtu.be/DJ231bQrlpU

The Ash Grove (Welsh: Llwyn Onn) is a traditional Welsh folk song whose melody has been set to numerous sets of lyrics before this one, the most famous ones ("Down yonder green valley etc") by Thomas Oliphant in the 19th century.

Lake photography by Bhas Allan.

Extracts from "Morte D'Arthur" by Tennyson. Always nice to have Alfred Lord Tennyson in as a guest artist.

Excalibur: A Dream Too Real To Live

We are NOIR GRIS GRIS, a music band  of Fred STZ (composer) and Kipanga Cha Radi (lead vocal), passionate about punk rock, rock, metal and hyperpop. Our music reflects what we would have loved to listen to when we were younger. We believe in music without borders, open to all influences from around the world. Join us for a unique and authentic musical journey!

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.

New tracks tagged #Folk ballad