Howdy Everybody!
We’ve got a great line up of songs I wrote and covers comin’ up for ya on this holiday season of Bron Trogan/Lughnasa/Lammas and Earth’s liberation in general. Friends we met through our solidarity network, OCC, are providing their recording equipment and education on using it as common capital. Yesterday Mikhale showed me the ropes of self-production and I created this lovely version of my favorite folksong — John Barleycorn. [lyrics below] ❤
Let us take a deep breath, give out our offering of the troubles and torments we’ve endured with state capitalism for generations and generations and let us receive the blessings from the underworld of which our brother and great grandfather John Barleycorn is made. He grins in the fields around the thuaidh, Ir. “north,” half of the talam, Old Ir. “earth,” where the spirit of the grains prepare their soul’s plunge into the watery depths. The scythe is ready and the people are under the day-to-day weight of collecting an abundant harvest. Gaimred, Old Ir. “winter” begins now, as we approach that 45 degree angle line between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. This perspective of the seasons gives us gaimred mostly as a time of daily shortening of sunlight and samrad, Old Ir. “summer,” mostly as a share of the year with sunlight lengthening. The true sun timing of the cross-quarter this Gregorian year is 7:36am on August 7th. The old crow watches us now and sees what we have made. What are you collecting, gathering, winnowing, hulling, milling, grinding, pounding, parboiling, soaking and brewing into medicine this year? What is your John Barleycorn? And in this time of gratitude and gifting, what will you give him to ride down with into the realm of fae and soul?
These lyrics are from Robert Burns’ preservation of the song, documented 1782. The last verse is a combination of other traditional lyrics. I combined tracks playing banjo, vocals, autoharp, bongos, and maraca. Again I’d like to acknowledge the help of my fellow Wobbly comrade, Mikhale, in this process. I’m gifting this song to be distributed freely and the proceeds of tomorrow’s songs will go toward funding my travels and improving Mikhale’s common capital for the making/recording of music. I also acknowledge The Imagined Village and Damh the Bard who’s take on the song & lore deeply shaped my relationship to this Old Bearded Granddaddy ❤ Here’s to you John, and may your great posterity n’er fail anywhere y’ go:
There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
They took a plough and plough’d him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.
But the chearful Spring came kindly on,
And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris’d them all.
The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm’d wi’ pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.
The sober Autumn enter’d mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show’d he began to fail.
His colour sicken’d more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.
They’ve taen a weapon, long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then ty’d him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.
They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell’d him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn’d him o’er and o’er.
They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim;
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.
They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe;
And still, as signs of life appear’d,
They toss’d him to and fro.
They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a miller us’d him worst of all,
For he crush’d him between two stones.
And they hae taen his very heart’s blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.
John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise;
For if you do but taste his blood,
‘Twill make your courage rise.
‘Twill make a man forget his woe;
‘Twill heighten all his joy;
‘Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,
Tho’ the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland!
There’s Little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl,
And there’s brandy in the glass!
And Little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl,
Proved the strongest man at last!
The huntsman he can’t hunt the fox
Nor loudly blow his horn,
And the tinker cannot mend his pots
Without John Barleycorn!
** Images at top are prints of the first fruits harvest festival Lammas, sources not found
Floréal Valériane 