Category: Song

All My Devotion

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This is a devotional song for my patron God Gwyn ap Nudd. It began as an experiment in singing in trance whatever came into my mind in a monastic chant style linked with the repetition of the line ‘I bring all my devotion to you’. Slowly the verses Gwyn wanted me to sing coalesced. Hopefully this explains its misty dreamlike nature which I think fits with the meaning of His name ‘White son of Mist’.

White Son of Mist, mist-filled wanderer, Your hound haunts the cloud mountains where Your horse grazes on nothing…

…and I bring all my devotion to You…

Bull of Battle, undying warrior, Your sword parts the veil where carrion birds circle and the past unfurls…

… and I bring all my devotion to You…

Guide of Souls, gentle hunter, the graves lie open and the dead ride the storm of my soul…

… and I bring all my devotion to You…

King of Annwn, Your star shines brightly, I kneel before it at the end when silence rules…

… and I bring all my devotion to You

You are Gone

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A mourning song for Gwyn

Dawn arrives yet You are gone. 
The birds are singing yet You are gone.
The flowers are turning their petalled heads
towards the sun yet You are gone.

Your absence is like the spinning of the Void. 

You are gone to its bottommost depths
with Your castle of cold stone.

You are gone but Your haunting
is everywhere with Your promise of return.

You died but You are not dead but only sleeping.

We share a heartbeat and a breath and every one 
brings us a little closer together.
I remember this when 
You are gone.

This is a gifted song that I have been singing for Gwyn at His altar in my morning and evening devotions since His death in His seasonal battle against Gwythyr on Calan Mai after which He sleeps over the summer months in His castle of cold stone. (At night I replace ‘dawn’ with ‘dusk’ and ‘towards’ with ‘from’).

This is the first time I have sung on video and I’ve only sung in public once before in a performance group. I was put off when a friend jestingly told me I ‘sing like a nun’ in the sense I am not rock ‘n’ roll enough. Well I am a nun now so I can sing like a nun!

The image on my altar is a visionary painting by Meg Falconer of Caer Ochren ‘the cold castle under the stone’ from King Arthur’s Raid on the Underworld.

Song for the Nine

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This is a song for the nine
who stood against fracking:
the nine who stood firm
the nine who stood
against the tyrants’ gall.

This is a song for the nine
who stood for land and people:
Little Plumpton,
Roseacre,
democracy and hope.

This is a song for the nine
who stood for Lancashire:
clean rivers,
unfractured land,
our children free from harm.

This is a song for the nine
the nine we will remember
for standing firm
standing for us
in centuries of song.

~

This song came to me near whole and of its own accord the morning after Cuadrilla’s proposal to frack at Little Plumpton was refused by Lancashire County Council’s Development Control Committee 9-4 (2 abstained).

I e-mailed it to Peter Dillon, who was also involved in the protests. He told me that night he’d dreamt of a tune. With a few tweaks it fit the wording perfectly and  wasn’t far off the tune I had when the song came to me.

I’ve sent a copy with a thank you e-mail to the nine at Devcon today. We may be singing it somewhere in Preston soon.

Mary of the Marsh

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Enduring years of disconnection,
incredulity of stars,
anger beneath the heavens,
she scathed the priests and walked alone,
drifting among chapels, knowing she didn’t belong,
her robes of night fell on soft rushes.

They say she walked along the marsh.
They say she walked out to the river.
They say she looked out to the sea.

In the damp, dark parishes
paradise was never hers,
she walked amongst the outcasts and the sick
healing wounds that should never open,
seeing what shouldn’t be seen,
her robes of night fell on troubled waters.

Mary of the lepers,
Mary of the marsh,
I saw you running to the river,
I saw you running to the sea.
How you longed to sail away…

Birch Wood

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Birch trees. Carr Wood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a land of ash with no future.
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers
Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds

And singing do you remember, remember
The ice age and peat and lost Vindolanda,
Sentinel cities and burying oaths
Enstyled on bright birch to placate the world?

And singing do you remember, remember
The strange black peal of the blacksmith’s hammer,
Street lights of amber and echoing roads,
Cities estranged by the gathering smoke?

And singing do you remember, remember
How empire fell that fatal November,
Civilized monuments crashing to dust,
Swaying white fields and the soft song of ghosts?

Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers.
Their land was ash, with an unknown future.

Birch trees, Carr Wood

Belisama Changing Queen

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Belisama changing Queen
Of the Ribble’s shining waters
Shaper of the dales and plains,
Towns and cities and their dreams.

A sparkling sight of sweet repose
You speak serenely under daylight
Shallows shifting playful hint
At beauties strange as subtle tides.

Your hurtling force rocks roaring stones
When fair folk blow their horns at midnight
Enigmas flow in endless throes
Your current’s drowning change or die.

Changing queen of transformation
Streams unite within your basin
Bridges cross- worlds in collision
Town and dale and rushing dream.