Keepsake Mill

My setting of a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. From the New Silver Jug Band’s first album Farewell Reunion. The poem is from ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’.

Link on recording on Bandcamp (you don’t have to buy it to listen). Keepsake Mill

Over the borders, a sin without pardon,
Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,
Down by the banks of the river we go.

Here is a mill with the humming of thunder,
Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,
Here is the sluice with the race running under—
Marvellous places, though handy to home!

Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,
Stiller the note of the birds on the hill;
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.

Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away.

Home from the Indies and home from the ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all will come home;
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion,
Turning and churning that river to foam.

You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
I with your marble of Saturday last,
Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
Here we shall meet and remember the past.

Words by Robert Louis Stevenson: ‘Dublin Shop Window’ image, tune and vocal by David Harley. All instruments by David Harley and David Higgen.

‘Keepsake Mill’ on radio

‘Keepsake Mill’ from the new ‘Farewell Reunion’ album by myself, Dave Higgen and Nancy Higgen (masquerading as the New Prize Silver Jug Band) is scheduled to go into the ‘Here We Are’ section of Stuart Green’s show  ‘The Folk Club’ (on various platforms as shown below) on and after the 5th of February.

The show broadcasts as follows:

Folk Friday Radio www.facebook.com/folkfridayradiostation/

Every Weds 6.30pm  (Repeat Sunday 2pm)

Folk Music Notebook The Folk Music Notebook – Home

Every Thurs 10pm ET / 7pm PT /  UK  Fri 3am & 11am UK

West Norfolk Radio 

Saturday 7pm UK Time [West Norfolk Radio]

Mixcloud

Every show is available to catch up on The Folk Club