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Channeling our inner Steeleye Span...

Robin Hood as the May King - a King of the Common and of the Common People. A legend based on the Saxon resistance of the historical East of England freedom-fighter Hereward the Wake, Robin would be more at home than some with Mayday’s later association with workers’ rights, being a people’s champion.

lyrics

(And faster around the chessboard Maypole three four...)

It was on a somer’s evening,
The merry month of May,
When buds are free and briddes sing
And leaves are brave and gay.

I met a surly bishop,
Cruel steward at his side
And now his guards lay slain or fled
But at me he did chide,

‘Pawn so soiled and churlish,
Living like a beast,
Your king crusades against the Turk,
Spare me and join the feast.”

“Norman,” I laughed, your danelaw’s
Ploughed every inch of this land,
You’ve snatched your danegeld twice and thrice
With chainmail on your hand,”

“Now stubborn as Danish sokeman
And true as Saxon thegn
With a ‘waes heal’ and a freeman’s shout,
We snatch it back again.

“In the name of good King Alfred
And the nation that he saved,
In the Lincoln green of an English knight,
We make our own crusade.”

“There’s knight blood on my longstaff
Fresh as the day I fled:
I hit him and hit him and hit him
And hit him until he was dead.

I’m much too far gone, Abbot,
For you to save my soul,
Besides in that great pile of flesh,
Where’s yours? The devil’s hole.

“For all your noble churches
With turrets and with towers,
For all your royal forest laws
The venison is ours.

“Call for beef and mutton,
It tastes like sheep and cow,
Stuff your pork till you’re blue in the face,
It’s villein’s boar and sow.

“You can keep your cuckoo’s feathers,
Your fancy foreign drawl,
All we want back is the silver and gold
You loot by cross and law.

“In the name of good King Alfred
And the nation that he saved,
In the Lincoln green of an English knight,
We make our own crusade.”

The swift as the sunlight’s flicker
Behind the still-leafed tree,
I caught the chink of a tinkling spur
And a mounted lady’s plea.

“Stout yeman, I beg your mercy
Upon yon abbot’s life,”
Golden hair flowed from her golden crown,
In my heart went a long cold knife.

“She’d never meant to parley
Though she used the English tongue,
You slew a knight whose daughter I am.
Now your bowstring music’s sung.”

I planted my last arrow
Deep in the forest green,
“Where it lands I live an outlaw forever.”
I fell at the feet of my queen.

Now the light is painfully fading
On the merry songs we sang
And the flight for our lives through the trees
And the future left to hang…

“In the name of God’s King Alfred
And the harvest that he saved,
Against these king of the castle knights,
We’ve made our last crusade.”

credits

from Bringing In The May (EP), released March 12, 2024
Lyric © Gareth Calway published in the Poppyland volume 'Doin Different' garethcalway.blogspot.com/p/doin-different.html

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Peacock's Tale Musical Storytelling image

Peacock's Tale Musical Storytelling Sedgeford, UK

It's all right, folks, we're married. A marriage of melody and rhythm ( flirting with harmony & timbre.) Old married woke folk, indie, Norfolk noir, beat poems, ghazals & Americana for the world from NW Norfolk. Maz lead & harmony vocals, acoustic guitar. Gaz lead & harmony vocals, drum & bass. Traditional tunes with contemporary beats.
garethcalway.blogspot.com/p/doin-different.html ... more

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