Lamb Island Storytelling Festival

 

This weekend I am presenting at the Lamb Island Storytelling Festival as a songwriter, and talking about two or three songs I've written, under the trees at the community garden. My auspicious company for the session includes Joe Geia, Vicky MacDonald, John Willsteed and Esther Bertram. Check out the island and the festival here. This afternoon at 1pm, the songwriting session is called "Words that change the World".

Here are the lyrics of two songs I'm singing and discussing in case you'd like to consider the words.

The Wooden Spoon

© Nicole Murray

The wooden spoon is in my fingers, it is dancing in the dough

Creaming butter in with sugar, beating egg-whites into snow

Folding milk and flour in turn, and fragrant tablespoon of liquor

Lightly rising with my thoughts as little candles burn and flicker.

I'm the cook of all the ages, in my arms the mixing bowl

Baking tray or double saucepan, raising up a banquet for your soul.

I make rituals to mark you rites of passage, spoon and knife

Dancing as I place along the table all the courses of your life

Sweetest mother's milk I gave you, at the triumph of your birth

Filled with magical protection, honouring your first day on this earth

Every year a fine confection of a cake to mark that day

Candles, sparkles, cats and spacemen,

Princesses in sugar-spun array.

Clashing bells and petals floating, wedding breakfast in the park

Platters of sublime invention, sailing round your incandescent spark

When you slid the blessed knife through royal icing's counterpane

Moistened depths of fruit lay open, all the ringing crystal bubbles sang

When your final course was served, the table's merry disarray

Told of splendour and reknown, a wondrous life resumed into the clay

I was there to play my part, for smooth as marble sat the cake

Clinking glasses, glowing stories, all the love that gathered at your wake.

Fruit cake, fruit cake, Christmas cake is fruit cake, wedding cake is fruit cake

Nuts and cherries, rum or brandy,

Fruit cake, fruit cake, wrapped in paper new-baked,

Festive journeys we make to mark a grand occasion with a.....

Violet Sarah

© Nicole Murray

We are travelling through a town this day and must have bread

And it’s where can I find a good baker in this town she said.

When we have supplies on board we shall both thirsty be

And it’s where can I find a good alehouse in this town said she.

On the Violet Sarah, Violet Sarah, beauty of the cut, jewel of the travelling waters.

In the Beehive Tavern by the tow path on the right

We will sup on the finest of real ale pint by pint.

In the Beehive Tavern there’s an ale called Dove’s Delight

And it tastes of the raspberries in summer, honey and sunlight.

Do you see that cloud-white swan with trailing cygnets three?

She comes asking for scraps at the galley, snapping viciously.

Don’t throw aught into the cut for cygnet or for duck,

Nor to wash in the vile green water only brings bad luck.

Climbing through the hedgerow not a mile or two from Bath,

We go dancing along in the meadow all about the path.

Down the reedy bank unto the river’s shady brim,

We can hear that the Avon is calling us to come and swim

Nancy, dearest Nancy, do not fall into the drink

As you’re painting the name on your vessel, toes upon the brink

Don’t be so foul-tempered, dearest Nancy dripping wet

With a bruise like a blackberry and a mouthful of regrets

[Sitting in the bow we sing the Green Man song again,

And reprise it all afternoon, we sing hundreds of green men.

Don't break my green man, don't break my green man

Don't break my plaster cast of him, I like him a lot.]