"Skirting Heresy" is the title of an epic play by New York author Elizabeth MacDonald which I edited for a production in Lynn Minster in 2018, mainly adding several existing songs from a previous play of my own which which you'll find on the Peacock's album https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/a-mass-of-carols-for-margery and - in different versions - on the album the Penland Phezants ( Andy Wall, Vanessa, Melanie and me) created for the Skirting Heresy show.  Andy and Vanessa wrote the folk tunes; I wrote the lyrics and the beat-based rap and chant bits.  The "Skirting Heresy" score is collected on https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-skirting-heresy-the-life-and-times-of-margery-kempe 
This track "Skirting Heresy" using the title of the play as a refrain was written by Andy and I to cover a lengthy curtain call for the epic cast of 70 and to tell the whole story of the Book in a summary form. We both rather extended ourselves and we were all still performing it about 4 minutes after the epic curtain call ended! I recall pointedly singing "You're a menace to churchman but a mystic to me" to possibly the least facilitating churchman ever to host a play about one of his most famous ancestral parishioners.  
This is the abridged Peacock version. The full Peacock version is here- https://soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/skirting-heresy-in-full
The lovely upbeat Andy-led folk performance is on the Phezants album link above. This version features the three other performers on that track (adding   Vanessa's beautifully measured harp to our usual Peacock duo) taking it somewhere more mediaeval.


('Born before your time
It would take an eternity
To redress their abyss,
Skirting heresy.

'They would fetter your soul
With wedlock-maternity,
Apron and stain,
Skirting heresy.

'You fore-saw what the spirit
Of a woman could be
And clothed your flesh in it,
Skirting heresy.'

'In the arms of your soul
You may take me as boldly
As a good wife her spouse,'
Skirting heresy.

The sun of love in your heart
Burns so hot and fiercely
It scares you to life,
Skirting heresy.

'This vestment of heat
Is the heat of the Holy.
It will burn away your sins,'
Skirting heresy.)

Magic water, magic sky,
What land appears to be,
Shift across your vision -
Skirting heresy.

On Lynn's ebb and flow,
Dock and dreaming friary
Unravel like wool -
Skirting heresy,

As England revolts
In Plague and Lollardy,
Old habits cleave -
Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -
Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy
But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There
Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:
Andy only:
'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,
There is none so pure as the mother who gives
This world to so many and her soul to me.

Your unsung fishwife Word,
Your un-nun livery,
Your Magdalene hair-shirts,
Skirting heresy,

Chat to God without a priest;
As His Mother in Galilee,
Nurse and feed Him like a Babe,
Skirting heresy,

In the dance of the Hanse,
Out of step, off the quay,
Walk on water like the sun,
Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -
Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy
But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There
Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:
'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,
There is none so pure as the mother who gives
This world to so many and her soul to me.

Skirting heresy.

Gaz - lead and harmony vocal, bass, harmonium, tabla
Maz - lead vocal
Vanessa Wood-Davies - harp
Pic is of Maz playing Margery at Elsing Church, Norfolk.
 
from A Mass of Carols For Margery, released December 25, 2022
https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/a-mass-of-carols-for-margery

Skirting Heresy (featuring Vanessa Wood-Davies, harp)

A complete introduction to Margery Kempe, housewife, mother, author of the first autobiography in English, pilgrim  and Visionary of Lynn, in one song. The title and refrain is from a play by New York author Elizabeth MacDonald to which composer Andy Wall and lyricist Gareth Calway (me) contributed this song for an epic prodiuction at Lynn Minster in 2018. This is the last song Andy and I wrote together and perhaps the crowning achievement of our work on Margery. 

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -
Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy
But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There
Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:
Andy only:
'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,
There is none so pure as the mother who gives
This world to so many and her soul to me.

'Born before your time
It would take an eternity
To redress their abyss,
Skirting heresy.

'They would fetter your soul
With wedlock-maternity,
Apron and stain,
Skirting heresy.

'You fore-saw what the spirit
Of a woman could be
And clothed your flesh in it,
Skirting heresy.'

Margery of Lynn...

'In the arms of your soul
You may take me as boldly
As a good wife her spouse,'
Skirting heresy.

The sun of love in your heart
Burns so hot and fiercely
It scares you to life,
Skirting heresy.

'This vestment of heat
Is the heat of the Holy.
It will burn away your sins,'
Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn...

Magic water, magic sky,
What land appears to be,
Shift across your vision -
Skirting heresy.

On Lynn's ebb and flow,
Dock and dreaming friary
Unravel like wool -
Skirting heresy,

As England revolts
In Plague and Lollardy,
Old habits cleave -
Skirting heresy.

Margery lf Lynn...

Your unsung fishwife Word,
Your un-nun livery,
Your Magdalene hair-shirts,
Skirting heresy,

Chat to God without a priest;
As His Mother in Galilee,
Nurse and feed Him like a Babe,
Skirting heresy,

In the dance of the Hanse,
Out of step, off the quay,
Walk on water like the sun,
Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -
Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy
But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There
Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:
'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,
There is none so pure as the mother who gives
This world to so many and her soul to me.

Skirting heresy.

Gaz - lead and harmony vocal, bass, harmonium, tabla
Maz - lead vocal
Vanessa Wood-Davies - harp
Pic is of Gaz and harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies performing Margery's story at the Hanse House as part of Lynn Heritage Day 
 
from A Mass of Carols For Margery, released December 25, 2022
peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/a-mas…for-margery

Skirting Heresy (in full) with Vanessa Wood-Davies

hustle and bustle

This track bears the heavy imprint of an arts and history/archaeology collective in which I piloted and performed quite a few of the Doin Different ballads prior to their publication. 'Diggers' achieved considerable things in its one year life through 2012, a sell out gig at Binham Village Hall on July 7 celebrating Boudicca’s Country from the Bronze Age to the Ballad Age combining practitioners in archaeology, theatre, folk ballads, music and visual arts and with a launch on the nearby Bronze Age barrow known as Fiddler’s Hill probably its apotheosis. ( See DD1 track 1). We even published a touring book combining visual art, history and a dramatic monologue the following September, the first (and as it turned out last) of a planned series. The troubled life and fabulous stormy times of this magnificent, doom-haunted ‘Notre Dame of Norfolk’ - Binham Priory - is a fitting memorial for the starry project’s Icarus-like ambitions, the unachieved parts of which the Doin Different project went on to achieve ( or not) with different personnel.
lyrics
The Ballad of Binham Priory

Call their names from the rubble: Alexander de Langley,
Mad as a scholar – ‘here’.
William de Somerton, William Dyxwell,
Priors and bad boys - ‘here.’

A mad monk in solitary, buried in chains,
Tortured to brake his devil;
Alchemy funded by holy sales,
Double and bubble and trouble;

Monks eating bran and drinking rain
Till King John raised the siege;
A wanderlust prior, administ-truant,
Deposed and then reprieved.

Chorus
‘As the green of summer breaks in spring
From hedgerow, field and tree
So let our souls in freedom burst
From the walls of this Priory.’

The peasants were revolting here
In 1381
When Master Lister led the charge
That started all the fun.

‘Enough!’ he cried, ‘of fattened bishops
Fed on Priory rolls,
Enough of tenants, rents and lords
And serfdom’s heavy loads.’


The old order stood another six generations,
Its dead Norms carved in art
Then the ghost of Lister came back to haunt
The Priory’s stony heart.

‘Whitewash these saints from the walls of the nave,
A clear new page for the Word,
Your bishops’ bank is ruined now
There are no serfs to herd!

Chorus

This high Notre Dame of Norfolk shrunk
To a nave-sized Parish Church,
Abandoned wings sold off for stone
To men scarce more than serfs

But when Paston quarried the haunted pile
To build a house in the grounds,
A wall killed a workman and none to this day
Will build in Priory bounds.

Three miles to the West, Roman relics and smoke
Rise again from Celtic Earth
Like the re-appeared saints whose rooted gaze
Reclaims the walls of this church.

‘Let the holy rain of autumn fall
From the solitary tree
And the grass grow wild and the four winds blow
Through the grounds of this Priory.’

© Gareth Calway 2015, first published in the Poppyland volume Doin Different.
credits
released October 31, 2023
Words and music by Peacock's Tale

From our album Done Different https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/done-different

The Ballad of Binham Priory

another tune

This track was created using Suno AI. Music and vocals are AI-generated, with custom lyrics written and adapted for vocal performance. The style blends medieval, rock, melodic, czech male vocals

CZ-Medieval

Robin Hood

untold tales

plantation (outro)

Trial (demo)

Embers

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.

Thoughtless Noise, Thoughtless Sounds.

I Pray That You Find Ya Way

New tracks tagged #Mediaeval