The lyric is from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’ (LII), the tune is mine. I only recently realized that I hadn’t put it on any of my blogs. It’s likely to reappear shortly on an album, though.
[Backup]
Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
There, in the windless night-time,
The wanderer, marvelling why,
Halts on the bridge to hearken
How soft the poplars sigh.
He hears: long since forgotten
In fields where I was known,
Here I lie down in London
And turn to rest alone.
There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.
So Sound You Sleep: My Shropshire Songs and Their Stories was initially based on the album Tears of Morning, but the book added so much new material that it became an album in its own right.
This is the first (main) book in a series of books based on the music of David Harley. This one is based on the album ‘Tears of Morning’, which comprises songs and settings of poetry with a sometimes tenuous connection to Shropshire and the Welsh Marches. One such connection is that several (not all) of the poetry settings are from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’. The book contains a wealth of commentary information on the historical, traditional, musical and/or biographical background to the songs and poems.
Hands of the Craftsman is a song, an album and a book.
The Song
The song was written for the revue Nice…if you can get it (a revue about work) in the early 1980s. It was included with other songs and verse on the album Hands of the Craftsman, and that album was the basis for the book Hands of the Craftsman, which includes much material that wasn’t included on the original album
The Album
The song and (now expanded) album are available from Bandcamp (my music sales channel of choice). Updating via other channels is a little more complicated, so for the moment only the original album is available through other music retail/streaming services. I’ll probably have to release the expanded version as a separate album, which I can hopefully do in the near future.
The Book
The print edition is at present only available through Amazon, though this is intended to change.
The eBook is currently available through Kindle, Nook, ScribD and Smashwords and some others: there are links to it on Books2read.com here, and there may be others on the same page in due course. The print edition is also linked there, and there may also be other links there eventually.
Book description
In the early 80s I contributed much of the songs and music (and some other bits and pieces) to a revue called Nice, if you can get it directed by Maggie Ford, which was centred on the world of work. Some of that material appeared more recently on the album Hands of the Craftsman. That album formed the basis of this book: however, it includes much supplementary material. This includes not only historical and anecdotal material, but material that wasn’t included in the revue, and other material that wasn’t originally intended for the revue, but fits the topic. Some of this material has never been published previously in any form.
I learned this from Ewan MacColl’s album ‘The Manchester Angel’, though, hearing that version again recently, I see I’ve changed the words slightly. I think he collected it from the Dorset singer Caroline Hughes in the 60s, but Hammond also collected two very similar versions, also in Dorset, in the first decade of the 20th century. I noticed around then that the tune is clearly related to one associated with the rather more spiritual The Carnal and the Crane and The Holy Well, though Martin Carthy also used it for a version of the less-than-spiritual ballad of adultery and murder Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.
When I sang The Sheepstealer in the 70s, I always sang it unaccompanied, as did MacColl.
Much more recently, though, I started to play The Holy Well as an intro to my own Song of Chivalry (though not for the song itself, which uses a more-or-less original tune). Even more recently, when the Dorset song came up in conversation in a Facebook group frequented by Cornish songwriters, it occurred to me that a somewhat similar guitar part would work quite well with it. And I think it does: your mileage may vary, of course!
Same version, but tidied and remastered.
[backup]
If you’re familiar with my album So Sound You Sleep, you may notice that I used the same tune for my lyric about Twm Siôn Cati. (Which I also sang unaccompanied.) Fortunately, I also recorded a version using The Limerick Rake as an alternative tune: having rediscovered The Sheepstealer, I think I prefer to sing it as I learned it and use the Irish tune for the Welsh outlaw story.
Rough mix, for the present, and possibly forever, since I’m currently recording a more ambitious version with David Higgen. The updated lyric (finally!) is added below.
A cheerful rock ‘n’ roll-ish ditty about the breakdown of the global economy, written in the very early 80s. These days I wonder which will go first: the economy, or the globe.
I woke up with my mind’s eye facing your direction:
I looked hard and I saw you needed help.
You’re choking on paper and tape and legislation,
But you can’t produce one thing to help yourself.
Paper city at the heart of a paper empire: You’ve got strings to pull, you’ve got wires all over the earth. Sky-climbing parasite, concrete and paper jungle, You’ve got money to burn, but I know you’d rather freeze to death.
You’ve got stacks of stocks and shares and bonds:
You’ve got telephone and telex,databank and dateline too.
But you can’t produce as much as one lead pencil,
Or a bar of soap, or a rubber band to pull you through.
The media twitch at the flash of freemason’s handshake
Speeches are made and the punters gather round;
Paper politicians and faceless company men,
Taking the pulse of an ailing paper pound.
I bet you know just what you’re worth on paper:
When the market crumbles, what will that do to you?
So many cold people don’t own the earth they lie in:
Will you be all right in your green-lined paper tomb?
Paper city at the heart of a bankrupt empire:
Your towers get higher as your assets hit new lows.
Nose-diving parasite, I wouldn’t mind you dying,
But you’ll take so many with you when you go.
Updated lyric (recording not yet available);
I woke up with my mind’s eye fixing your location:
I looked up and I saw you needed help.
You’re floating on algorithms that you can’t understand,
But you can’t produce one thing to help yourself.
Paper city at the heart of a paper empire:
You’ve got strings to pull, you’ve got wires all over the earth.
Sky-climbing parasite, stalking a paper jungle,
You’ve got money to burn, but I know you’d rather freeze to death.
You’ve got stacks of stocks and shares and bonds:
You’ve got more data than you’ll ever know how to use.
But you can’t produce as much as one lead pencil,
Or a bar of soap, or a rubber band to pull you through.
The media twitch at the flash of a freemason’s handshake:
Speeches are made and the punters gather round;
Paper politicians and faceless company men,
Sucking the sap from an ailing paper pound.
I bet you know just what you’re worth on paper:
When the market crumbles, what will you do?
So many cold people don’t own the earth they lie in:
Will you be OK in your green-lined paper tomb?
Paper city at the heart of a bankrupt empire:
Your towers get higher as your assets hit new lows.
Nose-diving parasite, I wouldn’t mind your dying,
But you’ll take so many with you when you go.
The Inclosure Acts enabled the passing into private hands land that had previously been designated as either ‘common’ or ‘waste’. This process preceded by several centuries the formal Inclosure Acts (which began with an Act of 1604) and continued into the 20th century, resulting in the enclosure of nearly seven million acres. While enclosure facilitated more efficient agricultural methods, that increased efficiency and loss of communal land was a factor in the enforced move of so many agricultural labourers into towns. There are a number of variations of this poem, which is usually assumed to date from the 1750s or ’60s, when enclosure legislation started to accelerate dramatically. The tune here is mine: the repeat of the last line is not in the original text, but I thought some chorus harmonies might be nice. 🙂
There are a number of variations of the text, and often just the first two verses are quoted. There’s an alternative four-verse text from ‘Tickler’ magazine dated 1821, but I like this text better.
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common’
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
Close to where I stand on Trecobben
Pilgrims walk the St. Michael’s Way
Few today will reach Santiago
Most will cease their journey at the Bay
The Mount is rising from the distant water
Yet barely seems an arm’s length away
Causley on the road to Marazion
Dreamed of one last summer on the Med
Sheets are dancing Morris in the wind
A buzzard slowly circles overhead
Engine houses march along the skyline
A sea fret daubs the coast in brown and red
Beyond the darkening horizons
Beyond the hills to the West
Beyond Pendeen and Cape Cornwall
The Longships founder off Lands End
Sea nymphs and mermaids pluck the heartstrings
But the bells no longer ring in Lyonesse
Around me march the ghosts of long-dead armies
Recalled among these ancient stones
The engine house beyond the farm
Still offers shelter to the crows
I watch the sun sink slowly to the West
Back into the sea from whence it rose
Notes:
Trecobben is an alternative name for Trencrom Hill and the giant who is supposed to have lived there and passed the time by throwing stones at his counterpart Cormoran on St. Michael’s Mount, which can clearly be seen from the top of the hill (weather permitting).
The St. Michael’s Way is part of the network of pilgrim’s paths that converge on the pilgrim route that leads to St. James Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. It’s believed that pilgrims and missionaries from Wales and Ireland would land at Lelant and walk overland to Marazion rather than risk sailing/rowing around Lands End.
The second verse refers to Charles Causley’s ‘The Seasons In North Cornwall’ where he talks of meeting ‘Old Summer’ on the road to Marazion.
Living around Trencrom, we’ve had lots of time to observe that the horizon is often obscured by low-lying red-brown cloud, especially when pollution levels are high.
The Longships are a series of islets a mile or so off Lands End, known for the lighthouse on Carn Bras.
In Arthurian legend, the kingdom of Lyonesse was said to have bordered Cornwall but to have sunk beneath the waves between Lands End and the Scillies. Walter de la Mere’s ‘Sunk Lyonesse’ refers to Nereids playing lyres in “sea-cold Lyonesse”, while the Mermaid of Zennor has her own place in Penwith mythology.
There is a plaque on the Iron Age fort at the top of Trencrom that reads:
“This property was presented to the National Trust by Lt Col C L Tyringham, of Trevethoe in March 1946 & at his wish is to be regarded as a memorial to the men and women of Cornwall, who gave their lives in the service of their country during the two world wars. 1914 – 1918, 1939 – 1945”
There are a good many engine houses in the area, but the one beyond Trencrom Farm is the one variously known as Wheal Alice and Wheal Foxes, part of the former Trencrom Mine.
Now available as a single on Bandcamp, and coming to other sites and services in the next week or so, so MP3 removed from here for now.
First (and possibly last) single from the forthcoming Swan Songs album.
It’s late and the driver has nothing to say
One more stop ahead
On an endless highway
One more place to be, and nowhere to stay
For the road was the ruin of me
The tour bus, the tranny,
The fluffed chords of fame
The days in the airport, the runaway train
You don’t care for my songs
And you don’t know my name
For the road was the ruin of me
I was never a drifter, I’d no urge to roam
But somehow the tour bus
Became my home
The scenery fades
And the scene is long gone
And the road was the ruin of me
The smoke and the pipe dream,
The whisky, the beer
There’s nothing to treasure
And nothing to fear
There’s no one here now
To send out for some gear
And the road was the ruin of me
The call of the wild,
And the song of the road
The end of the game
And the call of the void
There’s no one to meet
And there’s nowhere to hide
The road was the ruin of me
The heroes and villains,
The bait and the switch
The hole in my sock
And the travelling itch
I’ll never be famous,
I’ll never be rich
For the road was the ruin of me
I drank much too deep at the wishing well
I knew what I wanted but never could tell
Now I’ve only these dreams
And these few words to sell
For the road was the ruin of me
All that I’ve learned is how little I know
All I’ve come home to is a new place to go
And it’s never a place that I wanted to be
For the road was the ruin of me
Rain, the gentle rain that hung upon the grass
The autumn rain that touched the fields so early
When the summer sun returns, will you hold me in your arms
Once again, among the fields of golden barley?
Summer was a burning wind that raised a bitter crop
That came and went so quickly and unfairly
Then the autumn rain put a rust upon my heart, left alone
Among the fields of golden barley
A pale song, a sad song to hold within my mind
A bitter song of summer love gone from me
Such a pale song, a sad song to hold within my mind
Left alone among the fields of golden barley
Rain, the gentle rain that hung upon the grass
The autumn rain that touched the fields so early
When the summer sun returns, will you hold me in your arms
Once again, among the fields of golden barley?
![So Sound You Sleep: My Shropshire Songs and Their Stories (David Harley: Words and Music Book 1) by [David Harley]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41hdHG9wPdL.jpg)
Wheal Alice Music 