Alison O'Donnell

Harbour Boy

Tow headed harbour boy who could not hear
You faced the dangerous dive and did not fear
We quaked in our flip-flops
Thrilled by your long drop

You fashioned a set of magic steps
From the grassy verge to impress
You passed the test, every test
Who cared that you were deaf

I was drawn to your garbled speech
Your dazzling displays beyond my reach
No child poked fun
We could not do what you had done

You fashioned a set of magic steps
From the grassy verge to impress
You passed the test, every test
Who cared that you were deaf

Some thought you slow, but I know
You swam under the boats below
A place only the boldest go

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

No Meek Chrism

I sailed away on a slender thought
Mushroom into a brimming dream
Tiny threads were finely wrought
Into a crystal cut scene
Magnify the lord the mothers said
Shrouded in their sacred gowns
Speech that skimmed my Cecilia head
Smashing Virgin Mary’s crown

I confess I have departed
For the glory and the shine
Of the magic spinning disc
That could one day be mine
And all that I will suffer
Will torment me to my rest
I recall the robed sisters’ words
And the way that they were blessed

I arrived on the wings of hope
Dressed in patch and print and pleat
Ready for the subway smoke
But not the burn of defeat
The weight and wisdom of all my time
Is lifting up my leaden feet
Universe spare me a dime

To fan my flaming heat

Habits darkest and of the modest
Deserving flowers of the rarest
Their gift of space
Their friendly face
Their state of grace

I recall the robed sisters’ words
And the way I have been blessed

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

The Plant and The Page

After the rigours of state to state
The drag of coast to coast
The golden hill could no longer wait
Snowdonian healing host

A stride in the woods with the blue merle
By the side of the rocky plant
Hats off and ideas begin to unfurl
Castanets and candlelit chant

Electrical help is not at hand
And water does not gush free
Isolation is a maid yours to command
And become what you want her to be

The man who put his words to the page
Was the seed planted by his father
Watered by mother’s tears in the age
When the occult had harvest to gather

The hangman appears on a tarot card
And he looms by the gallows pole
Waiting in vain to hand out a pardon
In return for silver and Welsh gold

Sounds heard down in the kitchen sink
Spoons and fingers snap
Things that give off the right sounding clink
Deserve a round of handclaps

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

Come Unto Me

Mother could not face the task
Despite the holy words bestowed
Brother ripped from sister’s clasp
And set upon a narrow road
Down the deep dark winding stair
The beating demon lay
Foul of mind with hands in prayer
All decency in disarray

Will I ever lie in springy heather
Or walk a dog beneath the moon?
Oh no, I fear that it is never
Will I run the egg and spoon

Do you lad take this old John Thomas
To be thy bedded lover?
For you will not fulfil your promise
Nor marry with any other

Will I ever lie in springy heather
Or walk a dog beneath the moon?
Oh no, I fear that it is never
Will I run the egg and spoon

His life flickered to its dismal close
The plagueful day descended
Into blessed night his spirit rose
To be one day remembered

Will I ever lie in springy heather
Or walk a dog beneath the moon?
Oh no, I fear that it is never
Will I run the egg and spoon

For my soul flits like a white feather
On my dark journey far too soon

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

Fires Down Under

A million bushes crackle and burn
Beneath the roaring of a red rage
Carpeting bracken and feathery fern
Are ashy clouds on a Victorian stage

House is all a smoulder
No home to living creature
Flame snakes in its crazy, crazy, crazy dance
Black flakes

Beast and human charge and flee
Failing hearts ablaze with fear
Greasy grey as far as the eye sees
The spark starter sheds no tears

House is all a smoulder
No home to living creature
Flame snakes in its crazy, crazy, crazy dance
No firebreaks

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

Song of the Gael

Arís arís he hungers for the brisk Atlantic shore
The sounding bell tower and mother tongue
The peaty flame and old wives’ lore
He calls forth the fields he ripened among
The tune filled biting nights of his beggared boyhood
Upturned faces so pinched, raw-boned and pale
Cold feet are scattered to gather wood
For evening’s thrall to the lilting of songs of the Gael

They sing songs of the Gael
They tell of all the old tales
For him to stow them away

Ciúnas ciúnas they cry out when he steps away
Our boy takes leave this day so youthful and slight
The elders wave while rowdy children play
He is gone forever more into an uncertain night
Dimmed is the king’s shilling and long gone
And his true faith discarded far in the past
Lying in the liquid grip of a requiem song
Those songs of the Gael are now within his grasp

They sing songs of the Gael
They tell of all the old tales
For him to stow them away

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

The Gay Balladeer

(I’m so very pleased to meet you said the gay balladeer
I am charmed by your acquaintance and delightful company
But you have found me wanting as we walked the road together
You found me someone else, thought me rather queer
Half-breed dog or rough tomcat, does it matter in the end?
I’m good enough to know or I’m not
Sing you a fine lament or sing a patriot’s song
Can’t you read my body language says I am not right nor are you wrong?
On corners left and right crossing landscapes of this earth
Will you wave me from your window at my partner or my wife?
In the time of twenty twenty-eight will you greet me at your gate
Or will you turn me and my kind away?
In trucks and trainloads, refugees from our life
Living with our neighbours through death and throughout birth
My aims are universal said the gay balladeer
I bring yesterday to tomorrow with each passing new year

But your greeting is not quite on your lips
I can walk with you part of the way
Or on every step of your straight path
We will speak a language that you like
I’m a good companion to swim with deep
Beneath the swirling seas you fear
I only wish to glance into your culture
We can go along with Eos and Hespera
Or set sail on passing ships
Go along with Eos and Hespera
Or set sail on passing ships

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

March of the Strawberry Blondes

Oh sister once burned at the stake
For your bloody hair glinting in the sun
The proverb says that such a one
Could never a Russian saint make
The rusty fox behind redbrick wall
Saw red and grey squirrels brawl
Oh sister with your burnished mane
It will fade in time but not disappear
Forevermore we know the fiery name
Of the titian queen, warring pioneer
So do not mock the ginger heads
Their ancient wondrous shades of red

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

Pointed Thinking Cap

All my faces to the world
Each one hiding something
Don’t want you to see the girl
Crying over nothing
Got a hat for every problem

So I pull on my purple pointed thinking cap
To brew a bout of witchy feminism
Green fool’s cap for the leaky jealousy tap
And rainbow tam for an air of mysticism

If you see the one that I am
You won’t be offering apple pie
Your loaded weapon going bang
When you catch me out in a lie
I’m no good to you dead

The black skullcap of Machiavellian mischief
Suits me well when I am being shrewish
An Englishman’s white-knotted handkerchief
For hot humiliation when I am being foolish

I draw the line at the dunce’s cap
I’m brighter than the average sap
Ring them jester cap bells
Give me heaven, give me hell

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

The Flight of the Valiant Earls

(The ancient Brehon law unjustly swept away
Scholar and bard with only English words to say
Battle and skirmish scorching northern land
And Crown planters granted the upper hand
Powers of lord and chieftain diminish in a day
Spanish sailors fail to join forces in the fray
Gathering their goods the Earls and retinue
Fled the lough forever to an exile’s lonely view
Their gold cross shone beneath the salty sails
Glinting off the waves in its precious cargo’s trail
To France and Flanders and along the Swiss pass
Whose wintry claws seized their fortune in icy grasp
Would counties unite as the men at Vinegar Hill
(Bitter the memory of those chronicles still)
Allied against the doings of Ironside and King Bill?
Would the Hunger and the Rising not have hit home
(Many were lain beneath rock and stone)
If the valiant Earls had not met their death in Rome?

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

Sparking the Flame

Barely an acorn of innocence remains from childhood
The slit-eyed cynic’s stance does not make me feel so good
Sweet nothings are far too old-fashioned to utter
The scarlet organ on my sleeve trampled in the gutter

O my heart, oh thou art so cold

The kaleidoscopic things I can’t tell that were done and said
The years of writing them up are too immoderate to be read
The well of my depths is too deep for your reception
Don’t let go of our euphorically fragile connection

O my head, two in the bed no more

Knotted together through a few dark and silent hours
A parallel existence germinates its roots and its flowers
But soon this new world bids a fond farewell
And we are summoned back by the clanging of the bell

O my hand, its love line’s span cut down

And when two worlds collide and separate
We will turn away and we will contemplate
It was not for long
It is not for long
It shall not be for long

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

Dated but Still Lovely

Charity shops and the need to be thrifty
Flea markets beckon again now I’m fifty
Belles with bottoms spreading their flares
Festival stalls calling out their wares
What goes around comes around once more
Then goes away again like fine folklore
That tall tree is a thousand books tomorrow
Bought and sold, loaned and borrowed

Deli meals and road rage
Kitsch and kin
Come and go come and go like everything
Dying young and hippy
Living in sin
It all goes round and round again
It all goes round and round again
Dated so dated but still lovely

Told her mother she was misunderstood
The music I like you don’t think any good
Now she’s in a house and garage full of soul
She’s a retro girl with a head full of goals
Jack The Ripper holds in his murderous hand
Quartered clockwork oranges for the damned
But wise Madiba tries to lead us to a better way
Be it thistles and thorns or rosebuds in May

Peace and love and wicked wars
Makes us want to settle scores
Turn your cheek from the burning flame
To the still of a lake or a kitten’s soft paw

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

To the Brow of the Hill (and Back)

I do not remember the clock’s location too well
When we lay beneath newspapers to sleep for the night
And though enviously young it was still a living hell
As the cold crept over all my bones until the morning light
So I left the three day working week far, far behind me
And we made a big dog kennel for our little patchy cat
My mother’s image shrank away as the ship it sailed free
I’d seen statues with their faces pale and stony like that

Stone it cannot move
Not like I was moved
And I was truly one of them
Like granite when on the deck I sat

Just two weeks on the ocean on the cheapest fare assisted
The clamouring seagulls they did dine on the rarest roast of beef
The sparkling night sky views could not ever be resisted
And a woman crushing sugar lumps we watched in disbelief
To the land of the Dutch and Dingaan from Dublin and from London
Caused lively consternation in the circle where I was known
And as new ground obscured my roots I felt I was undone
But when the springbok leaped up something new had also grown

The little bok he springs
My heart rose up with him
And I was truly one of them
No longer was I alone

In time to come the culture shock had all but disappeared
But it stabbed me sharply in the breast when injustice shook me awake
Eleven years experience passed both wonderful and weird
And Joburg claimed a slice of my soul and a bond not to break
In the townships and the towns the writing marched along the wall
In an angry overdue parade whose progress could not be ignored
So I stepped away from troubled times to answer Europe’s call
But to this day I fiercely guard memories safely stored

Then I was drawn
To the place where I am from
And I am truly one of us
Back to where I was born

(Hey Hey Hippy Witch 2009 A.O’Donnell PRS for Music)

The Wooden Coat

You are trapped in a fading being
Nothing works quite like before
Help the aged whose eyes aren’t seeing
Close to going but no cigar (I’m at the door)

Lay me down in troubled slumber
To not awaken encumbered

Cut me adrift you beg everyone
I want to don the wooden coat
I have made no pact with the Evil One
Immortality sticks in my throat

I am ready to walk the wire
Feel the shining of my desire

Follow me down to the old oak (follow, follow)
Will you follow me down there (follow, follow)?
That is where you’ll find the old folk
In answer to your fervent prayer (follow, follow)

And you will see what I mean
When you kneel at the gnarled tree

(A.O’Donnell/S.P.Collins ‘The Fabric of Folk’ MCPS/PRS 2008)

Hangover from Hell

Someone posts a fish in the mailbox
Along comes a recruit with work ethic intact
He held his nose and fished it out
Cursed his colleagues for all they lacked
It seems like every young one has a baby
For there’s not a lot else to aspire to
Got to get away from hearth and home
‘Cause there’s not much there to live up to

Poor girl waiting four years for somewhere to live
Clutching straws and infant’s limbs
She’s closed her books and shut the doors
No chance of exchanging wedding rings
Hand on the bible and hand on heart
We can cross ourselves and hope to die
Even though our sin can be heinous
We swear we didn’t do it and swear we didn’t lie

Get me to the chapel get me to the temple get me to the shrine
Anywhere away from disappointment down the line
Give me holy water to douse this hangover from hell
I drank too much of everything in my quest to live life well

I see them all around me see it everywhere
Girls in first bud and boys in full bloom
Got so much going but they’re going too far
They went too quickly they came too soon
Death-defying substances doled out at the door
Where the preacher used to reign supreme
Some city spots have gone to the dogs
But others are still every tourist’s dream

Get me to the chapel get me to the temple get me to the shrine …

Get on the good roads and even if we must
Sometimes live too fast in the slow lane
And though big issues call to us
Perfect intentions are tough to maintain

Get me to the chapel get me to the temple get me to the shrine …

(Alison O’Donnell & Isabel Ní Chuireáin Mise agus Ise 2006 MCPS/PRS)

Mother of Pearl (and Invention)

Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?
In our bleached desert we await a cool green oasis
In our parched garden the rose will wither and die
Is that your perfect silhouette in the doorway?
Will you brush your powdered cheek against mine?
Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?

I recall the swish of heavy velvet and thick satins
You came for a while bringing chocolate and puzzles
The plants that you knew in English and also in Latin
Can you answer my letter to your box number
Or close the shutters when the night wind is rattling?
Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?

Won’t you come along soon mother of pearl and invention
To take us to the fair in the playground of our dream?
I cannot soothe your brow my lost and lonely children
I am bound by brutal circumstance and cruel extreme

I relinquish my little ones les pauvres choux de mon coeur
I could not prevent the twists and turns of my fate
I hold their hands in my reverie but the rest is a blur
Their faces are faint through the glaze of my pane
They’ll forget me when many times clocks whiz and whir
Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?

Won’t you come along soon mother of pearl and invention
To paper over all your absence before it takes its toll?
I cannot fold you in my arms today or tomorrow
But I will bear you in my heart forever fused in my soul

(Alison O’Donnell & Isabel Ní Chuireáin Mise agus Ise 2006 MCPS/PRS)

In the Web

When first I stood against you
I had to stand my ground
If I’d shown a tender weakness
You would have struck me down
A line was carved upon the floor
Beyond which I could not tread
And if I dared to look askance
You’d file me with the dead
Never raise me from the dead

Stormy days and dreamy nights
Brought you boiling to the brink
Your glistening web of slow deceit
Forged strong and fallow links
I do not want to play your game
The stakes are steep and high
Come one day I will write you off
You all know the reason why
Know the reason why

There’s no more fury there is only scorn
Count myself lucky I could walk away
Won’t help this world that you were born
Won’t let you cripple me today
What does your conscience have to say?

I am choking in this stuffy room
I need some fresher air
fog descends with every day
This treatment’s most unfair
You drowned me in a river
Tied a wreath around my neck
You hoped that I would float away
But you’re the washed-up wreck
Washed up like a wreck

There’s no more fury there is only scorn
Count myself lucky I could walk away
Won’t help this world that you were born
Won’t let you cripple me today
What does your conscience have to say?

And now I’m far removed from you
The web it weaves no more
I am out of this equation
You have shown yourself the door

(Alison O’Donnell & Isabel Ní Chuireáin Mise agus Ise 2006 MCPS/PRS)

Brave Face

If the postman comes knocking at my door
Put on a quick lick of paint
Can’t open up without putting on a face
But he seems pleased I’ve gone to the trouble
Flushed with rouge but I feel pale and faint
Smear of lipstick but no colour at the core

And I do that for everyone
Brave face for everyone
And I do that for everyone
I’ve a brave face for everyone

I was like a hedgehog at that point in time
But I’ve been a Christmas tree angel
Prickly as pins and pine tree needles
I’ve an avalanche of news too bleak to report
So I’ll probably lie low and not tell
All the bad stuff and just say I feel fine

I should talk to someone
But I can’t really tell anyone
I should talk to someone
Somebody somebody anyone

I want to sink without trace for a while
Off the road full of dizzying bends
Become a recluse for a few precious weeks
Bury my head in cooling sand
I long to have reached the bitter end
Of many tomorrows that pass without a smile

I feel like I’ve turned into no one
Nobody nobody no one
I feel like I’ve turned into no one
Nobody nobody no one

But my life will be so different in ten years’ time
My heart could be soft as a fruit inside
But still hard to the touch
I thank my good friends for expecting so much

And these dark days have come to pass
And I can save face for everyone
Open the door up for everyone
Put on a brave face as bold as brass

(Alison O’Donnell & Isabel Ní Chuireáin Mise agus Ise 2006 MCPS/PRS)

Seals in the Sound

My soul rises up with the morning
It rests in the depths of the night
And in between it embraces the pleasures
Sometimes twisted with woe beyond measure
And it swirls through Deilginis in the trail of a kite

I walked with my togs along Vico
I stood on the stones at White Rock
And I waded in cold murky shallows
Felt seaweed fronds flutter in the eddies and flows
And homewards I bounded without shoes or socks

Dip doo da doo dip doo da doo di dee di da da dum
Dip doo da doo dip doo da doo di dee di da da dum

I learned doggy paddle in the harbour
By the bright coloured boats tethered there
I rowed round the island with the redheaded Mac
Nursing my blisters all the way back
And I pocketed apples and daffodils just for a dare

But it’s farewell to my familiars
I must now sail across the Irish Sea
And it’s many long years I’ll not be there
For trying to make some fortune
And when I return to that place so rare
I will see from many thousand feet
That speck of Dalkey Island
And its monuments from the air

I hid in the gorse in Sorrento Park
I was too late home for my tea
I climbed to the mosaic of Dowland
I skated my way round the bandstand
And I thought that this was the best life for me

I went up and down the Cat’s Ladder
I knew every woman and man
I cycled the streets like a gale force wind
Battled the boys for some venial sins
And I kissed one or two of them on Mrs Lavery’s land

But it’s farewell to my familiars
I must now sail across the Irish Sea
And it’s many long years I’ll not much care
For trying to find some fortune
But when I return to that place so rare
I might see from many thousand feet
That speck of Dalkey Island
And seals in The Sound playing there

(Alison O’Donnell & Isabel Ní Chuireáin Mise agus Ise 2006 MCPS/PRS)

The Blackcap

As I passed over browning lands
To the sound of flapping wings
I saw ten miles ahead of me
A storm upon the sands
And I saw three horsemen travelling on
All dressed in bright clothing
The dust thrown up beneath their heels
Was seaward blowing

When I few over the darkened shore
I heard the gulls lamenting
And I knew that they would not follow me
As northwards on I soar
And I glimpsed an island far below
It was standing vast and empty
I thought to stand upon those rocks
That they might harbour me

Before I see my colony
The clouds should all have parted
And presently the sky is clear
The waters calm for me
And many will join me where
The days are long and quiet
And I know that we may meet again
Before the sun has set

Flibbertigibbet Whistling Jigs to the Moon & Alison O’Donnell & Isabel Ní Chuireáin Mise agus Ise 3rd Ear Music 1978

Armistice Day

Look up at the old man on the screen
His one good eye still twinkling
Rousing his voice for a verse or two
He becomes again what he has been
A brave little song full of fighting talk
Once rang across the trenches
On a cold day in hell at the Flanders fields
Eighty years ago
It’s a miracle that he’s not dead
He’s a hundred and two
On this Armistice Day
A story to be told for when he’s gone
There’ll be no one left to tell
How the poppies got so red
High time he had an audience keen to hear
All of his recall
I stare at the shapes coming from his mouth
Bold images of fear
A defiant smile and a jaunty nod
Survived the futile conflict
Friend and enemy sank in the mud
The bones of the fallen turn in the sod
Eighty years on
It’s a miracle that he’s not dead …
I recline on a bed of red rose petals
Safe from his tale of slaughter
Weapons scattered to the sky
Shards of gun grey metal
I dine off fine china plates
He’s scalded by a tin can mug
Split seconds then transmitted now
Tell how he deals with his fate
On the Flanders fields
It’s a miracle that he’s not dead …

(Éisthlinn éist linn 2001 Kissing Spell & Alison O’Donnell & Isabel Ní Chuireáin Mise agus Ise 2006)

The Talk of the Arcade

They shouldn’t have lived together but they couldn’t live apart
Divided by the head and ruled by too much heart
They often used to dance on the edge of borderline
Smooching in the silence still juggling all the time
All the time, all the time

Both could strike with passion in the kitchen or the hall
Dodging the delivery and bouncing back with the ball
Well it was pretty public when the door was kicked in
And we heard those bitter words that said they’d given in
Given in, they’d given in

She ran a classy shop from a downtown arcade
He biked in from time to time to pass the time and light of day
Sometimes they were loving and sometimes they were cruel
But often they would raise the roof with a mighty loss of cool
Almighty loss of cool

By the end of it all she was coiled up like a spring
Bird of bright plumage had to mend its broken wing
At first he stayed at home and turned the volume down
Then he put on his helmet went out spinning on the town
On the town, on the town

They didn’t care if they were the talk of the arcade
Going on and going off like old albums overplayed
The more they tried to shout it out or keep an icy cool
The more they knew they’d fallen in a shark-infested pool
A shark-infested pool

Do they reminisce about those days sometimes?
It’s safer not to scratch beneath the surface of one’s life
There’s possibly an earthquake and a raging tidal storm
Waiting to devour us when we think we’ve been reformed

It’s all very well with hindsight to saunter with the smug
But i knew that disaster and in particular that drug
It’s always such a pity and a belated crying shame
When the door is locked and barred with such permanent blame

Éisthlinn éist linn 2001 Kissing Spell

Blackberry Bush

The winter season harsh and cold upon the sycamore tree
That stands against the silent hills quietly growing old
Where men crossed swords in sympathy with those who might be free

At night I’ll go to the monument to see who can be there
Sometimes a soldier is waiting for some greeting to be sent
Another girl to touch the stone and twist a lock of hair

She stood three hours so afraid till the sky grew dark ahead
She thought she heard the battle sound, the tune the piper played
The wind sighed on and the rain blew down, tears for those who led

But no one spoke and no one came enquiring of a love
Just the image of a drummer boy reminding us again
And the rain still beating from the sky among the shivering flowers

Every evening endlessly by the blackberry bush
Even when the moon is small by the blackberry bush
Until the earth is almost gone by the blackberry bush

(Flibbertigibbet Whistling Jigs to the Moon 3rd Ear Music 1978)

Episodes

Woman dusted powder
From jars of vanity
Turned to face her mountain
Loved its sanity

Talked with people on the road
The smoke of every flame
Caught a country morning
Loved the straightfoot plain

Woman downed a glass of port
Cheer of berries bright
Knew she lived a million years
Loved the sea at night

Bending in her boldness
To scoop the blackleaf tree
Her gesture and he listened wisely
Loved his majesty

(Flibbertigibbet Whistling Jigs to the Moon 3rd Ear Music 1978)

Heaven Heath

Bring snowy lady with the laughing
Spread your sailing angels over me
Tell a tale of old sinfuls
Look for you to change their face
Do not cry for all your leaden tears
Graced a lorded man whose gift was all too free
He came to fall upon a faithless smile
Leaning eyes towards the clay

And on my stone there where the flowers lie
Sleep the growing years of my dusty day
Gone the time of a heathen child
To the godly grounds to play
Weep the women on a watery leaf
Caught in browning robe all on my silent breath
I come to rise upon the Heaven Heath
With a timeless child to pray

Forget the garden of my graceless youth
Glimpse the wilting rose in my faded eye
Slip the shade from my shoulders
For a cobwebbed lake to catch
Bleed your soul for my silvered fate
Take the ageing cross to bury days gone by
Receive my own into your Heaven Heath
Towards my waiting bed to lie

(Mellow Candle Swadding Songs Palace Music 1972)

Sheep Season

Winding up a hillside where the shepherds roam
Counting their flocks in the gloaming
Shining the sea
Winking its light to the froth and the foam

Chilling the air with his shady tread
On came the wolf with surprise
Filling his eyes
With soft silent creatures soon to be dead

Hurry the shepherd man wizened and olden
Go and wave your staff at him
He has come to bury you for claiming his fold

Stillness came into the misty meadows
Down from the banks to the woodland
Clouds gather in skies
Giving their rains into mountains to flow

(Mellow Candle Swadding Songs Palace Music 1972)

Messenger Birds

She sat thinking under a black sky
With a white child, a white child on her knee
Leaning to the dim, grim, grey sea
Into a silent sleep

He lay wondering under the same coal sky
What the white child and she had gone to see
It was the clouded and cold night, bright sea
A woman kneel where her child used to be

Along the wind will bring them secret tears
Wash away their smiles in a rain across the sand
Seagulls take to a land where they’ll not hear of his cries
Nor see the fallen tears of the white child’s eyes

(Mellow Candle Swadding Songs Palace Music 1972)