TEN
Whenever You Look Up There I Shall Be
There's many a dark and a cloudy morning
The South Downs, and their songs, had claimed me; I was to walk them for many years. And I was fortunate enough to find a companion who would walk them with me.
One evening in 1978 I was in the bar of the Cottesloe Theatre with my sister Dolly at an end-of-run party, when my eye was drawn to a tall, dark-haired man, with a rather wonderful profile. I pointed him out to my sister who smiled and suggested I go and say hello. I didn't have the nerve, but Dolly grabbed my hand, led me over, and introduced us. He told us his name, Philip Barnes, and he said he knew who we were, as he worked part-time in the evenings at The National Theatre to help him through his actor's training at Central School of Speech and Drama, and that as often as he could he came backstage towards the end of the Lark Rise performances, and had also been to Albion Dance Band gigs. So – my heart sank – a student? How young a student was he? I hoped he was at least in his thirties… As we talked, he mentioned that his parents lived in Brighton, and that he often went down to visit. ‘Oh,’ I said – the words came out without thinking – ‘I live in Bexhill – just along the coast. Come and say hello if you're ever that way.’ I wrote down my telephone number, Bexhill 411343, on a Lark Rise programme, and handed it over. He still has it.
A couple of weeks later, there was a phone call from him saying that he was in Brighton, and free – could he come across? The panic of being unprepared reared up – what should I do in the hour or so it might take him to get to Bexhill? Wash my hair? Tidy up the front room? What should I wear? In no time at all it seemed, he arrived on a moped, jacket flying. When I answered the door in my black corduroy trouser suit and a pink check shirt with a cluster of tiny pink fabric roses pinned on the lapel, he greeted me with the words ‘You're smaller than I thought.’ He explained later that he'd been used to looking up at me on stage…
I hadn't had a date for some eight years or more and I didn't quite know what to do with him, so thought it best to wander up the hill to the pub at Sidley, have a drink and talk. We dived into conversation easily, found a shared love of Shakespeare, books and music, and when it was time to go home, bought greasy spring rolls at the Chinese restaurant and wandered back down to Sea Road, with oil almost dripping off our elbows. It seemed taken for granted that he was going to stay the night, as indeed he did: it was the start of a relationship that has lasted nearly four decades, passionately as lovers for the first few years, then changing, as I knew it must, since I was eighteen years his senior, into a friendship that I value above all else. Philip soon became ‘Pip’ (after Philip Pirrip in Great Expectations).
We had such easy, good times in Bexhill in those early days, swimming from the peaceful beach, and on summer evenings sitting on the balcony of the De La Warr Pavilion drinking gin and tonics and smoking long, slim, elegant More Menthol cigarettes. We'd watch the sun go down, the domes of the bandstand growing luminous in the evening light. Pip got on very well with Polly and Rob, now teenagers, and we played endless and raucous games indoors of Mah Jong and cards. I still had a turntable then, and we played favourite albums: William Boyce symphonies, The Transports, Peter Bellamy's remarkable ballad opera with Dolly's arrangements, David Munrow's Two Renaissance Dance Bands, Ry Cooder's Paradise and Lunch and Irish singer Paul Brady's Welcome Here Kind Stranger. Curled up on the long sofa, we drowsily watched much-loved films, It's A Wonderful Life, Casablanca, The Philadelphia Story, The Big Sleep – which became a household joke, as I was never able to stay awake till the end!
I had also found someone who loved walking as much as I did…
Through woods and green meadows we oft times have walked
And of sweet conversations together have talked
Where the lark and the blackbird so sweetly did sing
And the lovely thrushes’ voices made the valleys to ring…
From ‘All Things Are Quite Silent’, Ted Baines, collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1904.
…and we must have walked thousands of miles together in that time, conversation never flagging except when a peaceable silence was right. We've sat with our backs against the sun-warmed flint wall of Jevington church, eating our sandwiches before setting off along the track that climbs up to Windover Hill, the path knotted with roots that almost form steps, except that they're uneven, and will trip you; where wild garlic grows on either side. We've traversed High and Over, and Windover Hill, walked from Lewes across to Mount Caburn and Glynde; sat gazing down at Alfriston, walked along the river Cuckmere from there to Exceat, where one time there was a swarm of bees in front of us, but just over the tops of our heads. At Pip's insistence, we braved it… I closed my eyes and he steered me through.
A favourite haunt of ours, set on the brow of a hill, is Friston Church, one of the most beautiful of the Sussex Downland churches. It's one of my delights to swing open the rare tapsel gate (one of only six in Sussex and found only in this county), and head into the churchyard. On a spring day it is bright with daffodils and shining celandines, the grass fresh and green. At the eastern end is a traditional handmade split-rail fence, bleached by sun and wind, and with a tracery of silvered myrtle-green lichen, and a wicket gate that opens onto a long sloping meadow bordered all down one side by a thick-set hedge of blackthorn, white with blossom, known here as a blackthorn winter. It leads down to the village of East Dean.
Here you can sit outside The Tiger Inn, overlooking the village green that is surrounded by flint cottages, sipping a glass of Harvey's best bitter, and contemplating your walk down across to Crowlink and the great chalk cliffs, the Seven Sisters, and to the sea, the English Channel.
But back to the churchyard, which holds the most touching of simple graves; a plain wooden cross, topped by a little arch, with the words WASHED ASHORE carved there. I am moved by the compassion shown by the villagers who brought that unknown body to this peaceful churchyard and buried it here.
As a lady was walking down by the seaside
A poor drowned sailor she chanced there to spy
She put her arms round him, she called him her dear
She wept and she kissed him ten thousand times o’er
In yonder green churchyard this couple was laid
And a stone for remembrance placed over their grave
‘The Poor Drowned Sailor’, collected in Oxfordshire by Cecil Sharp circa 1911. Singer not named.
For the most part Pip and I have walked in benign weather; just once though, we stood sheltering under a stand of hawthorns at the top of Black Cap in a frightening, elemental howling gale. We've walked through fields of almost impenetrable head-high rape from Lewes to Rodmell and back along the Ouse, keeping a sharp lookout for herons lifting themselves away from the river; then resting by the reed beds on the Old Railway Nature Reserve at the edge of Lewes, listening for the hidden warblers there. In the other direction, heading inland along the river, is Hamsey, where a Saxon church sits in isolation. It's a favourite place, and one that we liked to visit in the springtime. There's a hawthorn tree that grows aslant behind a gravestone, and when the May is in blossom, it froths and tumbles over the headstone.
Three years back, Julian Bell the artist, who lives in Lewes, said he'd like to paint my portrait. He asked me what parts of the Sussex landscape I loved best so that he could set me in the right background, and Hamsey was one of several that I mentioned. Julian cycled out, made a quick oil of the little tombstone, with great trees behind it, painted so incredibly that you could not only see the movement of wind in their branches, you could almost hear it as well. When I saw this painting in Julian's studio, I begged him not to sell it to anyone but me. A short while later, when the large portrait was finished, he made me a gift of the Hamsey oil. Two years after that, his studio caught fire and everything was lost – everything – hundreds of paintings including this portrait. ‘That must feel like a bereavement,’ I said to Julian. ‘No’ he replied, ‘Nobody died, nobody was hurt. I can always paint again.’ I doubt if I could have been that philosophical, but I am so grateful that I was given the Hamsey painting in time.
Pip and I have walked every one of the Seven Sisters, the name given to that serene and majestic range of chalk cliffs that fall and rise between Eastbourne and Seaford where they end in a thrift-covered cliff edge. There were two constants on our walks – larks singing, and a twin-engine plane slowly droning in the sky; it had a 1930s feel to it, almost as if we were characters in a pre-war railway poster. We have never tired of their beauty and always valued their power to restore. Pip was occasionally anxious and a little depressed at the precarious career he'd chosen; it offered no security, no guarantee of work. Occasionally these moods would lower over our walks on the Seven Sisters, until one day I made up a mnemonic for them: How Shirley Rebuked Barnsey For Being Woeful: And once recited, Pip would ruefully smile his way out of his mood.
Crowlink is still a favourite spot even though my ability to walk is somewhat curtailed nowadays. The steps down to the beach that were there a couple of hundred or so years back have been taken by the sea, but it once was a place much frequented by smugglers who landed gin from Holland. It was known as Crowlink gin, and was of such a good quality that it was mostly sold in London for a better price.
We were there, sitting on a tussock close to the cliff edge one summer's day, when the Naked Rambler came swinging by, deep in conversation with a clothed companion. They were about to start up an incline as a group of young women were coming down it; we could hear the giggles from quite a distance. We watched both parties negotiate the meeting… And then, a rhinoceros appeared behind us – well, a walker in a bulky sea-green rhino costume bearing a sign that said he was walking for the Save the Rhino charity. So we gave him a fiver and a bottle of water to help save him, and off he went, pleased.
Four months after Dolly died in 1995, Pip and I took ourselves to Venice for a week. I had found it so hard to come to terms with her too-early death, and needed something to lift my spirits. It was winter and the days were bitterly cold but sunny, the city suffused with a beautiful light, the skies apricot and lavender at sunset. Without intending to, we were there at Carnevale, and we bought masks; it was an extraordinary, transforming experience. Mine was a harlequin mask that just covered my forehead and eyes, and I felt safe behind it, gazing out at the world, but invisible to other people. Pip, on the other hand, chose a bird mask with a long curved beak, and he said that he felt predatory behind it. Not that he behaved in any way that was unseemly, but he rather enjoyed feeling that he could have if he chose.
We caught the vaporetto out to the peaceful island of Torcello to visit the beautiful Byzantine church there. (Although I am not religious, I love churches.) We lit candles – mine for Dolly, Pip's for his father who had died two years back, and for his mother who was ill. And we both felt better.
When my ‘renaissance’ started, a decade or so back, Pip became a colleague, as well as a friend. He helped and encouraged me, worked alongside me on my ‘talk’ shows as an actor, and most recently playing on my Lodestar album, and at the Lodestar concerts as musician, singer and compere. Ours has been an enduring friendship. And that makes us smile, as back in the days when I first started seeing Pip, certain members of the Albion Band warned me that I was making a mistake! It's good to have proved them wrong.
Pip was, and is, in every show, and to stand on one side of the stage, with him on the other, is always reassuring as we share an evening.
Whenever you look up there I shall be, and whenever I look up there will be you.
I consider myself fairly sceptical when it comes to ghosts and inexplicable happenings, and yet – I have seen ghosts, of sorts…
On one occasion when Pip and I were walking across the Downs on our way to Jevington, as we came down a slope towards the Bottom (the name given to the valleys in the Downs), a small flock of little dark-woolled sheep appeared out of a hawthorn thicket to our right and stood directly in front of us, facing us in what seemed like a rather challenging stance. We stopped and stood still, not wishing to disturb or alarm them. Then as suddenly as they had appeared, they vanished. There was no sound of hooves trampling through the thicket. We looked at each other astounded, and walked into the trees to see if they were there. There was no sign of them, no droppings, not even the tufts of wool you would have expected to find, tugged from their fleeces by the sharp thorns of the may trees. One minute there, next minute vanished without a trace. Perhaps it was a mirage – after all the words downs and dunes have the same derivation…
Two other memorably strange experiences occurred on the Downs as well, this first back in the 1970s. Ashley (my then husband) and I were out with Mardi Gras, a very tall woman I had met while queuing in the Post Office in Etchingham. (The service at the counter was always rather desultory). ‘I say, what's your name?’ she asked me in very upper-class tones. ‘I rather like the look of you. I'm Barbara Huelin. My friends call me Mardi Gras.’ And friends we became for many years. She had red hair and a heart of gold. We'd driven over westward from Etchingham to walk at Chanctonbury Ring, high up on the South Downs, the site of an Iron Age hill fort, where later, two Roman temples were built within its defences. Old legends have it that you might meet the Devil there; more recent ones that it was a good place to see UFOs.
It was a weekday, and we had the place to ourselves. As we stood gazing down across the Weald from the beautiful stand of beech trees that had been planted in 1760 (and would later be destroyed in the Great Storm of 1987) I could hear the sound of Morris bells on the air. I asked Ashley if he could hear anything. ‘Yes, Morris bells,’ he replied. I asked him to sing the note he could hear, and it was the same as mine. Mardi Gras couldn't hear them. We looked and looked to see if there were any errant Morris dancers up there or in the fields far below, but nary a one, as Grandad would say. Mind you, Ashley was recording the album Morris On at the time!
The third encounter was a somewhat more unsettling experience. The name of the place is Balsdean, between Brighton and Lewes. Pip and I have walked through it twice, and vowed never to go there again. It's a deep valley with steep slopes on either side, so that the daylight scarcely reaches the floor, especially in winter when the sun is low in the sky. And it is always cold, whatever time of year. Both times I've walked it I've had the distinct feeling that I am being watched, and as I looked up to the top of the slopes, there at the corners of my eyes I thought I glimpsed Roman soldiers in ranks lining the ridge of the hillside, and they weren't pleased that we were there. And beyond them I had the impression of Stone Age people watching – or might they have been the Celts that once inhabited the Downs?
Pip doesn't see the figures, but he, too, feels uneasy in the place. Fanciful? Maybe. But the memory of it is a powerful one.
Although I am fascinated by signs and tokens as they appear in songs, I am, generally speaking, a down-to-earth person, but strange things can happen to us whether or not we choose to believe in them.
On rare occasions in my life I've felt that I could pluck thoughts out of peoples’ minds. When I lived in Blackheath with my first husband Austin John Marshall, a small garden fete was held on the green lawn opposite our house, and I entered the ‘guess the weight of the cake’ competition. I picked up the two-tier chocolate cake, looked at the stall-holder, and said ‘Three pounds, thirteen and a half ounces.’ I could see by her startled look that I had guessed it right. Polly and Rob were so thrilled when at the end of the day we carried it home for tea. And at the same fete Rob entered a charity balloon competition. You wrote your name and address on a printed slip attached to the balloon with the request that whoever found the balloon would post the card back to the charity, and whichever balloon had travelled furthest would win. About three weeks later, there was a knock at the door, and a gentleman had come to give Robert his £10 prize (a lot of money then). His balloon had been picked up by an English couple on the beach at Rimini!
Once when Uncle Fred was presiding over an evening of literary quizzing at his home with family and friends, he read a quote and asked who wrote it. Everything went silent until I yelled out ‘William Hazlitt’. The silence then was a stunned one – even Fred looked amazed. I'd never read anything by Hazlitt, but it was the right answer. Fred congratulated me which made me feel very proud, but I knew it was right because I'd taken it from Fred's head! I wish it would happen more often!
Once in around 1970, when I was singing solo at a folk club in Sudbury, I was given accommodation for the night with the people who ran the club. They lived in a beautiful period terrace, and had just bought the house next door which they were in the throes of redecorating – and they put me up all alone there, in a bedroom on the top floor. It was midsummer, and very warm, but the minute I went into that room, I felt icy cold. I sat on the bed for a while and decided not to undress. But being tired after the travel and the performance, I got under the covers and tried to sleep. I still couldn't get warm, and I felt very afraid; there seemed to be some dread presence in the room. I lay there until daylight – happily early as it was high summer, then got up, picked up my bag and my banjo and walked to the station and waited for the first train to take me back to London. I mentioned this one day to Dave and Toni Arthur. Toni's immediate response was to say that she'd experienced the same thing in that room – but she had actually seen what it was – an old woman sitting in a chair at the end of the bed, staring malevolently at her…
My mother saw a few ghosts, and she told of the family stories – ones that I think must have occurred in many families during the First World War. My Grandfather had been conscripted into the Army – all in secret of course, no one knew where he was. But Granny dreamt one night that he walked up the garden path to the cottage, waved, then turned aside and vanished before he got to the door. She learned later that was the day his regiment was sent to South Africa, India and Burma, and it would be five years before she saw him again. He kept a diary of that time which I have; here's a part of it. It starts in Lewes, outside the Town Hall, in the days before there was a War Memorial opposite.
We left Lewes on Feb 8th 1917. At 9a.m. we had orders to have everything ready to take to the Town Hall at 10.30p.m. we paraded there with kit bags and packs, etc. and marched to the station and by the time we were all in the train it was 12.o.c. midnight. We arrived at Exeter 7.45a.m. Friday where the Mayoress supplied us with tea and buns and cigs.
After another 12 hours in the train we arrived at Devonport, looking worse for a shave & wash. After standing on the Quay for 2 hours we boarded the Royal Mail Boat - the Balmoral Castle - a liner of 13.361 tons, seven years old.
Then we had a good look round and wondered what sort of time we were in for. It was fun to see us trying to get in our hammocks; in fact the first night most of us fell out, for it's very funny the way they have of tipping you out.
Feb 12th Monday: We left Plymouth for Cape Town, South Africa. The convoy consisted of six destroyers, five troop carriers and one armed cruiser. The night we left, the German submarines were waiting for us. The leading boat of our three had a torpedo fired at her and we all scattered. Some went miles out of the way, but I'm glad to state that none got hit and two of our destroyers rammed the submarine and she went to the bottom. For a few days we were all separated, one boat for instance went up the Irish Channel, but eventually we found each other in mid-Atlantic, a destroyer to each boat. On Feb 20th these left us, as we were supposed to be out of danger – to a certain extent.
Feb 26th: We first sighted land at 11.15a.m. and 12.30 we anchored at Free Town, Sierra Leone and stayed there three days. Officers and passengers went ashore and brought back fruit and things. Every day natives came alongside the boat in canoes, dozens at a time. Some were quite naked, others wore loin cloths; they brought fruit, beads and curios to sell.
A mail boat called and departed on the 28th; she took some of our letters. This boat had General Smuts1 on board, so we knew that our letters would get home safely. We took on a fresh supply of water and started for Cape Town at 11.a.m. We were inoculated for cholera. After two days sailing we crossed the Equator. We had a most terrific thunderstorm. I have never seen anything to equal it and being on the ocean made it so much worse. We all got soaked. What a night!
Tuesday March 13th: At Cape Town the passengers left us and the Colonel went ashore and got permission to take us for a March. I were in the drums then. We disembarked at 1.30 and our Bugle Band played the troops through the town. What a lovely place it is. As soon as we broke off I went to the Town Gardens and had a good look at the lovely flowers there.
We left Cape Town the next day for Durban, 860 miles up the coast; it took three days to arrive there.
Saturday March 17th: Soon after breakfast we disembarked and put our kits on waggons, then marched thee miles to the Camp which is called The Imperial Rest Camp where we were put under canvas. After a good night's rest we were up at 5 o’clock and taken for a good bathe in the sea, and I can say we wanted one jolly bad! We were never allowed to go there again as sharks were frequently there. A horse had his legs bitten off and several natives lost their lives.
Sunday March 18th: We were allowed in the town in the afternoons. My pal and I had some fine trips out. First we went to Umbilo all over the banana plantations and pineapples. Every day my pal and I used to go for these trips through the native villages. We saw some lovely sights – but don't the natives just keep their eyes on you! I had plenty of rickshaw rides and such fine chaps to pull you about! They dress in such queer fashions – some have horns and feathers, some paint their legs and body.
We left Durban Friday April 13th on The Empress of Britain and anchored in the bay for seven days. This boat is 18,000 tons, a fine one, but so dirty, full of lice, bugs and beetles. My Company – A – were put down the very lowest – you couldn't open the port holes on account of them being below the water. We had to take our meals, and sleep there. We used to strip, for it was just red hot. One of the Somersets died, and another taken ashore in a serious condition.
On April 20th we steamed out of Durban en route for Bombay, and when we were three days out we passed some islands which was supposed to be inhabited by cannibals. On the fourth day, a chap in the Black Watch died, and was buried the same day, then another died. Some of the Bedfords were inoculated but their arms began to give them trouble. The first to die through this was Sgt Evans and Private Harris. Some more and I were picked out for the Burial Party, and I think anyone who has done this sort of thing, think it most sad. They just put a sacking around and sew it and put weights on their feet, lay them on a plank and let them slide off into the sea. Such a hard way of doing things.
Grandad lived into his eighties and died before Granny did, but when she was an old lady, a widow, I heard her say on two occasions as she sat on her bed sorting through her belongings: ‘I'm not ready to come yet, Fred.’
My mother had several ghostly experiences, some frightening, some amusing. In 1957 she, Dolly and Jonathan had moved from Athelstan Road to an isolated and dilapidated Tudor farmhouse, Bridge Farm, where they hoped to be self-sufficient. It was nicely isolated down at the far end of Rocks Lane near Coghurst, with an orchard and fields at the back sloping down to the railway line that ran between Ore and Rye, the noisy steam trains belching their way through the countryside. As children we'd loved being on the bridge at Coghurst (see photo on page 62), waving hello to the driver, then dashing through a cloud of smoke to the other side to wave goodbye; it was always a thrill when the driver waved back. The bridge was made of cast-iron, its floor of heavy, thick, bleached wooden planks, sun-warmed on a summer's day to our bare feet, but full of large and spiteful splinters.
Soon after the three of them had settled in, Uncle Fred and his wife Jacquie joined them, and became part of the self-sufficient smallholding. They kept chickens, geese and goats, and grew all their vegetables, with an abundance of apples from the orchard. Uncle Fred and Jacquie weren't perhaps the best suited to country life; they both disliked the goat and were scared of the geese, and while Jacquie gardened with enthusiasm, she found it impossible to tell the difference between young vegetable seedling and weeds. They returned to life back in town after a couple of months.
It was here at Bridge Farm that Mum saw, more than once, in the large kitchen, a very cheerful man naked in a bath, apparently singing and scrubbing his back. Of course, everyone dismissed this as foolishness, until the day the floorboards had to be taken up for some reason. There, in the space beneath the floor was an old-fashioned iron bath tub… but unoccupied!
One night at Bridge Farm, when Mum was there alone, Dolly and Jonathan having gone up to London for a couple of days, Mum had this experience that she wrote down:
June 23rd 1957 Monday: ‘I had gone to bed at 10.30 – night was dark – went to sleep – woke with a start at 11pm to see white and green flashes on the ceiling. Watched for a while wondering what caused them, then thought perhaps the caravan was alight – 300 yards away – jumped out of bed and looked across the field – caravan OK, but thought I saw more rays, green and white, coming down through trees – thought it was an illusion or eyes playing tricks. So concentrated on one space between trees to prove that I did see rays – presently ray appeared in chosen spot. Began to get apprehensive as I was in cottage alone. Looked at caravan once more – about half an hour had elapsed – tested my pulse – normal – or at least not racing, pinched myself to see if I was definitely awake – turned cold tap on in wash-basin and bathed my face and eyes to ensure that I was definitely awake – walked around room quietly. Had another look out of the window – time 12.15. As I looked through trees saw outline of space ship – stared horrified at it. Tested myself again – and mentally – was I mad? Tried to think rationally – seemed quite normal, definitely awake. Space ship made, as far as I could see of some very light material – or metal rather (in weight) seemed very pale khaki in colour – but it was a very dark night. Also could not judge distance away – seemed close and not much larger than our cottage – but might have been more distant and larger. While wondering about it and beginning to feel –though frightened as I was in cottage alone –interested. I hear strange humming – like from a huge army of bees – but not so high pitched – a beautiful, deep, melodious sort of humming – wavering – began to get frightened – felt cut off from the rest of the world – tested myself again – moved as little as possible because I didn't want to be seen as I was standing at the open window. As I listened and watched, waves of gentle light, well, only a glow of light, came from the space ship, wider and wider like waves made when stone thrown in pond – really frightened now – shut window noiselessly and crept back to bed. Time 2.17 – lay trembling in bed watching white and green light on ceiling still – wishing it was morning – feeling terrified – felt that waves of sound and gentle glow were trying to draw me into their folds – resisted with all my might the wish to go to the space ship – felt pulse, a bit erratic, heart rather loud – thought I was mad or going to be ill, lay as quietly as possible and tried to keep calm and think rationally. Now a sound like some soft material nibbling the window – peeped over bed clothes – time 3.01am. Saw little silver being beckoning me through the glass – silver skin or clothes – beautifully soft and as flexible as my own skin – seemed to be non-porous, curious shaped hands. I'm afraid to draw them as I feel I shall be committed to their influence or make them earth-bound.
I longed for day – felt terribly cut off from the rest of the world – felt that everything had changed for me and I could never be the same again. Presently an owl flew across the orchard and I felt at least another earth mortal was alive on this awful night – felt comforted – did not feel frightened – that space ship and occupants meant me no harm physically – it was all too gentle. I felt that the power in it, or controlling it was benign. BUT I did not want to be controlled by any other mind than my own, and resented tiny beings coming from anywhere and trying to make me do things – also was not sure that I was not suffering an hallucination and felt that to step out of window and follow my strange madness – if it was madness – was harmful to me and I might not regain my sanity. I lay in bed, fists clenched, fighting. Last time looked at clock 4.27 am. Afraid to look over bed clothes any more – very frightened – dawn appearing, suddenly without at first being aware of it, all noise, all fear, all light had gone. I felt safe, fell asleep, woke at 8 am or thereabouts.
After effects: warned my household not to get too near me as I felt in some way I was dangerous to other people – or felt different, a feeling that persisted for a month very strongly – laughed at of course, they didn't know what to think of it all, but that night is all still vivid to me. Regarding the glass in the windows and why the little beings didn't come through it, had some strange knowledge – though how I came by it – that sand in glass was not passable by silver people. The silver beings seemed to be in control – happy control – of larger beings – not seen but felt, and benign. My daughter had a strange dream on the same night – dreamt that space ships had landed by the cottage and that I was terribly frightened.
Dolly went back to the cottage the next morning, so anxious was she; and there was another strange coincidence – a farmer wrote to the local paper looking for an explanation of the green and white flashes he had seen that same night…
Amusingly enough, three years earlier I'd sung a song written by Ewan MacColl called ‘Space Girl’:
My Mother told me I should never venture into Space,
She said no girl on Earth should trust the Martian race,
A rocket pilot asked me on a voyage to go,
And I was so romantic, I couldn't say no,
I doubt if Mum's account of her visitation will endure, but there are strange and unlikely events, held to be true, that have lasted in songs and ballads for centuries, notably for me, the ballad of Lord Allenwater, a story over three hundred years old. It's the true story of the arrest and execution in London in 1716 of James Radcliffe, third Earl of Derwentwater for his part in the first Jacobite Uprising a year earlier. He was just twenty-seven when he was beheaded for treason, and he left a wife, a son and newly born daughter. He was said to be much loved by the tenants on his great estates in the Lake District; and the legend sprang up that on the night he was executed in London, the rivers on his land ran blood, and that the Northern Lights shone more brightly than they ever had before, and were known ever after as Lord Derwentwater's Lights. The ballad was found only rarely in England, but in 1904 a Mrs Emily Stears of Horsham in West Sussex (and great-aunt to Ian Anderson, musician and proprietor of the world music magazine fROOTS), sang it to Ralph Vaughan Williams, although by the time it had reached Sussex, the name Lord Derwentwater had vanished, becoming Lord Allenwater. The song is full of signs and portents, and James Radcliffe is quite clearly a hero, maintaining that he was not a traitor, defiant to the end.
The first two lines Lord Allenwater read they struck him with surprise
The next two lines Lord Allenwater read made tears fall from his eyes
He goes up to his gay lady as she in childbed lay
Saying ‘Up to London I must go for I'm sure there is great need’
‘Well it's if to London you must go, before you go away
Make your will my dear’ she said, ‘lest you should go astray’
‘Well I will leave my only son my houses and my lands
And I will leave my dear wedded wife ten thousand pounds in hand’
He goes out to his stable groom to saddle his milk white steed
And says ‘To London I must go, for I'm sure there is great need’
And he put his foot upon the stirrup, the other across his steed
And the gay gold rings from his fingers burst and his nose began to bleed
And as he was a-riding along the road his horse fell against a stone
‘O there's signs and tokens enough I've seen, I'm sure I'll never return’
And as he was a-riding up a merry London street, so close by to the Whitehall
O the lords and ladies stood looking hard, and a traitor he was called
‘No traitor at all,’ Lord Allenwater cried ‘No traitor at all,’ cried he
‘Why I vow I could find you three score men to fight for King Georgie’
Then up and spoke a grey-headed man, a broad axe in his hand
‘Deliver yourself, Lord Allenwater, your life's at my command’
‘My life I do not value at all, my life I do give unto thee
And the black velvet coat I have on my back, you take that for your fee
There is forty pounds in one pocket, pray give it unto the poor
And there's forty-five in the other one, pray give it from door to door’
And he laid his head upon the block, the man gave a mighty blow
‘Now there lies the head of a traitor,’ he said. But it answered and it said ‘No!’
In spite of the stark cover of our 1970 album Love, Death & the Lady, with Dolly and me dressed heavily in black and gazing moodily out, and which caused some people to believe that we might be witches, it wasn't, and isn't true. But it was at a time when there was a great interest in songs about magic, fairy and elfin visitations, the most popular of which was ‘Tam Lin’, recorded by Fairport Convention on their 1969 album, Liege & Lief. Once heard, almost everyone wanted to perform it, and as time went by, the new cover versions grew more and more frenzied. People started to hunt through Child's Popular Ballads2 searching for similar magical ballads, or wrote their own. Even though the Fairport version was thrilling, I was never quite convinced of its authenticity, and indeed, A L Lloyd confessed that he had ‘cobbled it together’ partly from Child's Ballads book and partly from fragments that had turned up, he claimed, from ‘mostly Scots travelling people.’
Fairies and transformations weren't of interest to me; I cared far more for those more subtle mysteries that were in the songs, relics of past beliefs now accepted as a part of the story that didn't require explanation or even understanding by the singer. This is where field recordings come into their own; the song is intact in that version the singer has given.
Take ‘George Collins’, for example, a ballad sung by 80-year-old Enos White of Axford, Hampshire, to Bob Copper in 1956. Rarely found, it tells how young George, while out riding one day, encounters ‘a pretty fair maid a-washing her white marble stone’ by a stream.
Although he is betrothed to Fair Ellender, he kisses the girl (and here is an element of magic) who turns out to be a water-sprite. George divines this and, realising that the kiss is fatal, returns home to die.
Not only does he die, but his Fair Ellender too, and in the final verse:
The news being carried to London town
There are several theories, the water sprite being the most common, but more recently it has been suggested that George had a venereal disease, which might account for the multiple deaths… but I think I'll pass on that one. In any case, not everything has to be explained. I doubt that Enos knew the full implications of the story – he certainly didn't mention them – and I wouldn't expect that the word ‘water-sprite’ ever passed his lips. He was a farm worker, a carter, a man who could neither read nor write, but accepted the ballad as he had heard it sung by the singer before him from whom he learned it. So the mysteries remain there buried in the song.
There are, of course, many songs that contain a frisson of the supernatural; for instance, is Reynardine a man or a fox?
There are many songs that tell of ghostly visitations from dead lovers whose souls are prevented from finding rest because of the over-weening grief of the loved-ones left behind. After a year-and-a-day of mourning, the dead return to beg to be let go.
It's I, my love, sits by your grave
We sing these words although we know that in our world, this isn't real or true, but in the song that age-old belief holds us and convinces us still. So for me, the fascination is that the songs still contain these golden shards of long, long memory, and are enhanced by them.