Harp Song of the Dane Women (Redux) by Rapunzel and Sedayne

Rehearsal take from December 2010, live in the Barley Temple; very different from the version we recorded for Oak Ash Thorn as owing the ongoing problems with the harmonium we ditched it in favour of the guitar which changed the groove rather.

Rapunzel : electro acoustic guitar and singing
Sedayne : kaossilator, citera and singing

WHAT is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre.
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken—

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

The image is of one of the old Fleetwood-Larne ferries sailing out of the River Wyre in the summer of 2009 not far from Hakensall Hall, once the Viking settlement of Hakon whose women would have lamented similarly, though it must have been as a fine a sight as this.