For The Soul of England; The True Story of Hereward the Wake
I originally wrote this to be performed at Ely Folk Festival (and touring) by the Penland Phezants folk-storytelling quartet. Two of that number later recorded a one hour studio album version as Peacock's Tale: https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/for-the-soul-of-england
As someone once said, we need roots and the folk tale of Hereward the Wake is one of the deepest taproots of England. Of course, Hereward the hero lives on forever in legend but the man lived in an England as real (and also as diverse) as ours. While there is a historical dimension even to the timeless King Arthur - and a vast deal of history and social realism in the ballads celebrating that legendary outlaw Robin Hood - Hereward the Saxon's life is as historical as William the Conqueror's, his reputation (like William's) based on real deeds. You could call Hereward the real Robin Hood and the inspiration for all the other Saxon outlaws celebrated under that name. Some of his exploits (eg the Potter) are even later retold as Robin's.
The 12C monks who chronicled his exploits justify their compilation to their Abbot by declaring that it will "encourage noble deeds and induce tolerance" to know him. When Hereward errs - burning down a Norman church; or being foolishly unfaithful to his wife Torfrida and his cause - the narrative does not spare him (and his successes end) and, while the Norman conquerors are often the villains of the piece this is because (with exceptions clearly noted) they usually were. It is the moral scale - and Hereward's frequent moral superiority - that interests the narrating monks.
This moral imperative and the placid tone of their chronicle - letting actions and facts speak for themselves - encourages us further to trust their word. They are also oddly (being monks) more modern in their attitude to women than Hereward's great Victorian bard Kingsley was: the Flemish lady Torfrida ("independent, determined and brave") is narrated as a noble character, at least Hereward's equal, even though strong wise women have not always endeared themselves to the holy men compiling his-story for other men in monasteries.
So for all the animus against dispossession and demotion by Normans of Saxon churchmen, the 12C compilers are not making a Saxon 'case' but a detached record - a morality tale - of an Englishman behaving nobly in dire staits- yes with great physical heroism and 'derring do' but as the better man not just as the better fighter, and always on the side of the underdog. Telling the truth (as they see it) seems to matter more to these Christian chroniclers than any national loyalty (and the monks' 12C Abbot reader was more likely to have had Norman blood and loyalties in any case.)
Hereward's life was a very real model of English Resistance but it would misread history to understand him as some kind of one-eyed 11th century Brexiteer or Europe as the collection of nation states it is 1000 years later. Before returning from exile to lead the English Resistance (some say on Sep 7 1067) he was serving the Duke of Flanders as a brilliant young general after adventures in Cornwall and famous service for the King of Ireland. He married a lady of Flanders, Torfrida. He was no 'Little Englander' but spoke the 'European Union' Latin of Christendom and several other European languages and had studied warcraft with Normans. His rejection of the Normans was not a wider rejection of European culture. A mere 5,000 desperado Normans had 'won England in war' and now ruled it as a self-made 'nobility' (with brutal ferocity) and all of the countries mentioned - Ireland, Cornwall, Flanders, France - were tribal, their tribes perpetually warring with each other.
Hereward's England had been culturally and ethnically diverse for centuries: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Celts, Picts and (especially in the North and East, including Hereward's own Lincolnshire ) Danes and Vikings. He has a great deal of the world-adventuring Viking about him (the Normans even spread false rumours that he had a Danish father rather than a Saxon one: his name 'Hereward' means "head of the army" in both Saxon and Danish.) The Norman 'French' were in any case merely third generation Norsemen who had conquered and given their name to a region of France - Normandy. Hereward's English Resistance was perhaps why they never gave their name to 'Angleland'.
This moral imperative and the placid tone of their chronicle - letting actions and facts speak for themselves - encourages us further to trust their word. They are also oddly (being monks) more modern in their attitude to women than Hereward's great Victorian bard Kingsley was: the Flemish lady Torfrida ("independent, determined and brave") is narrated as a noble character, at least Hereward's equal, even though strong wise women have not always endeared themselves to the holy men compiling his-story for other men in monasteries.
So for all the animus against dispossession and demotion by Normans of Saxon churchmen, the 12C compilers are not making a Saxon 'case' but a detached record - a morality tale - of an Englishman behaving nobly in dire staits- yes with great physical heroism and 'derring do' but as the better man not just as the better fighter, and always on the side of the underdog. Telling the truth (as they see it) seems to matter more to these Christian chroniclers than any national loyalty (and the monks' 12C Abbot reader was more likely to have had Norman blood and loyalties in any case.)
Hereward's life was a very real model of English Resistance but it would misread history to understand him as some kind of one-eyed 11th century Brexiteer or Europe as the collection of nation states it is 1000 years later. Before returning from exile to lead the English Resistance (some say on Sep 7 1067) he was serving the Duke of Flanders as a brilliant young general after adventures in Cornwall and famous service for the King of Ireland. He married a lady of Flanders, Torfrida. He was no 'Little Englander' but spoke the 'European Union' Latin of Christendom and several other European languages and had studied warcraft with Normans. His rejection of the Normans was not a wider rejection of European culture. A mere 5,000 desperado Normans had 'won England in war' and now ruled it as a self-made 'nobility' (with brutal ferocity) and all of the countries mentioned - Ireland, Cornwall, Flanders, France - were tribal, their tribes perpetually warring with each other.
Hereward's England had been culturally and ethnically diverse for centuries: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Celts, Picts and (especially in the North and East, including Hereward's own Lincolnshire ) Danes and Vikings. He has a great deal of the world-adventuring Viking about him (the Normans even spread false rumours that he had a Danish father rather than a Saxon one: his name 'Hereward' means "head of the army" in both Saxon and Danish.) The Norman 'French' were in any case merely third generation Norsemen who had conquered and given their name to a region of France - Normandy. Hereward's English Resistance was perhaps why they never gave their name to 'Angleland'.
lyrics
For The Soul of England
For the soul of England
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift up your heart and voice
For Hereward the Wake.
A thousand years ago
In woodland and fen
A Goliath-slayer,
A David of men.
For the soul of England
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift up your heart and voice
For Hereward the Wake.
His underdog spirit
And story lives on
In the Freeborn English
Of this robin-song.
For the soul of England
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift up your heart and voice
For Hereward the Wake.
I am The Green Monk. I used to be Leofric the Deacon, confessor to Hereward the Wake, but habits change: mine now reflects the greenwood, the Here-woods, I hide in. Legend has made a Robin Hood of Hereward but in truth even Robin Hood is only the ghost of the greenwood Hereward left behind; just as legend has made me his jolly fat friar, when the truth is a great deal hungrier and lighter-footed. After his own father outlawed him at court in 1060, I became his faithful companion in exile. I fought at his side in the English Resistance at Ely Abbey against the Normans in the late 60s and, after his betrayal by the monks, as an early 70s freedom fighter in the Lincoln greenwood and the Bruneswald, ministering the word of God ( defiance of overwhelming odds, protection of the weak, valour and honour and knightliness) to the great warriors who flocked to his banner. We chronicled everything and, now he has gone, we keep his truth alive like a robin singing in the woods. This is Wood, a Fairy Harper we found wandering lost in the Celtic mists of Cornwall. If you have ever lost yourselves in some ancient Saxon forest of oak, ash, elder, lime, yew and hazel as old and deep as England, under a dazzle of elven stars, you may have heard us hymning our patron saint Edmund, the one they replaced with a Norman...
Red as Christ's Blood
White as chivalry
But shouldn't our saint
Ben an angel like me?
You can shoot me with arrows
And chop off my head
But the Christ within me
Will never be dead.
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift up your heart and voice
For Hereward the Wake.
A thousand years ago
In woodland and fen
A Goliath-slayer,
A David of men.
For the soul of England
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift up your heart and voice
For Hereward the Wake.
His underdog spirit
And story lives on
In the Freeborn English
Of this robin-song.
For the soul of England
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift up your heart and voice
For Hereward the Wake.
I am The Green Monk. I used to be Leofric the Deacon, confessor to Hereward the Wake, but habits change: mine now reflects the greenwood, the Here-woods, I hide in. Legend has made a Robin Hood of Hereward but in truth even Robin Hood is only the ghost of the greenwood Hereward left behind; just as legend has made me his jolly fat friar, when the truth is a great deal hungrier and lighter-footed. After his own father outlawed him at court in 1060, I became his faithful companion in exile. I fought at his side in the English Resistance at Ely Abbey against the Normans in the late 60s and, after his betrayal by the monks, as an early 70s freedom fighter in the Lincoln greenwood and the Bruneswald, ministering the word of God ( defiance of overwhelming odds, protection of the weak, valour and honour and knightliness) to the great warriors who flocked to his banner. We chronicled everything and, now he has gone, we keep his truth alive like a robin singing in the woods. This is Wood, a Fairy Harper we found wandering lost in the Celtic mists of Cornwall. If you have ever lost yourselves in some ancient Saxon forest of oak, ash, elder, lime, yew and hazel as old and deep as England, under a dazzle of elven stars, you may have heard us hymning our patron saint Edmund, the one they replaced with a Norman...
Red as Christ's Blood
White as chivalry
But shouldn't our saint
Ben an angel like me?
You can shoot me with arrows
And chop off my head
But the Christ within me
Will never be dead.
Edmund's people lost one another in a thick wood until they found his saintly head between the paws of a mighty wolf. Our story tells of a wolf-like defence of a life before the Normans sank their castles like a ring of steel into our land; when that magnificent Norman power bloc of holy terror crowning the Isle of Ely, its Cathedral, holding a unconquerable native fen and forest in sway, was a thinner-walled but better founded Saxon abbey. And it was no Little England we defended either but a rich and diverse one even then. 'Here' means 'army' and 'Weard' means 'head' or 'guard' in both Saxon and Danish. And 'Wake' means 'The Watchful'. But few Saxons or Danes have so embodied all aspects of his name.
Look at me, dread me!
I am the Hereward
The watcher, the champion,
The Berserker, the Viking,
The land-thief, the sea-thief,
Young summer-pirate,
Famous land-waster,
Slayer of witch bears,
Queller of Ogres,
Fattener of ravens,
Darling of grey wolves,
Wild widow maker.
Touch me - to wolf
And to raven I give you.
(Thank you, Sweyn) So the Vikings chant his praises, in their unholy fashion. But I also do so , in my multicultural Latin, reporting his deeds to my Abbot, onwards and Here-wards for as long as Christendom may last. Why? Because Saxon churchmen - dispossessed, demoted and our faith tested beyond endurance by Norman cruelty and arrogance - became an armed part of Hereward's story and believe it will encourage noble deeds and induce tolerance to do so.
His is a tale of brave men and he indeed the bravest of them all, trusting neither in fortification, nor in garrison, nor in the tide of time which indeed was against all Saxons, but in himself, who alone and with his companions waged war against kings and kingdoms and fought against Conquerors, ogres and tyrants, and on all of whom he left the mark of the unbowed.
Will you have our story of Hereward? If you would, say aye! (Aye)...
Flanders and Torfrida
Hearing of his father's death, Hereward now set sail for home but a terrible storm took him instead to Flanders....
Flanders was a deeply entrenched and ravaged land. Its Count was at war with the neighbouring Count of Ginnes, and losing ground every day, and when the Flanders nobles saw our ship's equipment and the splendid men it contained and how well we were armed, they regarded us as precursors of some army or else spies.
But within four days of service in his lost cause, Vardy was re-arranging the Count's lines, leading a thousand horse and 600 other armed men and overcoming a Ginnes army much greater in number but badly arranged.
Many adventures followed. On one, he gained an ugly mare of miraculous speed which he named Swallow. On another, he gained a magical suit of armour. This is how it happened.
At that time there lived at Saint Admarus, a young lady of Flanders, noble and beautiful, much devoted to liberal knowledge and a gifted artist. Her name was Torfrida. She fell in love with Hereward, having heard of his deeds, and she 'displayed many of his accomplishments', as they say, for love of him.
He confessed to me he was greatly in love with her, but was ignorant of how he could approach her, dreading the tricks of a notorious rival.
On the Road to Torfrida, his rival arranged
Troubles at every last twist and turn,
Twenty five robbers and rascals attacked him
But the fire in his heart continued to burn.
He laid every one of those ambushes low
Then stormed at the gate of her dead father's house
She appeared in an upstairs window to frown
But this was a man; not the usual mouse.
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
" Torfrida I am, but who are you?"
Hereward faltered - "I’m Hereward…'s herald."
The name pierced her armour like an arrow so true.
Torfrida descended, alarming her household,
They stood face to face for the very first time.
What their tongues couldn't speak, their eyes deep conveyed,
The lovestruck music of two hearts in rhyme.
"You're not the messenger, you are the man!"
She burst out at last, "I embrace in my arms
Hereward the Warrior, every girl's hero,
The desire and the object of all my charms!"
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
"Torfrida I am, but who are you?"
Hereward faltered - "I’m Hereward…'s herald."
The name pierced her armour like an arrow so true.
"Don't deny me your comely face, golden hair,
Your famous and valorous battle scars;
No Beloved can hide from the eye of true Lover
It's Hereward I love, Famous Hereward you are!"
Come within to my chamber, to my hidden treasure,
A fairy helmet, silver, gold, an elven corslet
Exquisitely worked, as light as the air
As long as you love me, no enemy can pierce it.
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
"Torfrida I am, but who are you?"
Hereward faltered - "I’m Hereward…'s herald."
The name pierced her armour like an arrow so true.
"Many powerful men enquire of this armour,
Many tricks for these treasures have vainly been tried,
Many threats and deceptions, attempts made to force,
To beg, steal or buy them; all their gambits denied.
"Now these, all my forefather's dearest possessions,
Which my father's dead hand has willed on to me
To bless one alone, one bold true Beloved,
It's yours for 'amour' holds this armour's sole key."
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
"Torfrida I am, admit you are 'he'."
Hereward faltered - "I am Hereward... Hereward."
The name unlocked her heart like a mystical key.
And so the lady Torfrida became his wife...
Flanders was a deeply entrenched and ravaged land. Its Count was at war with the neighbouring Count of Ginnes, and losing ground every day, and when the Flanders nobles saw our ship's equipment and the splendid men it contained and how well we were armed, they regarded us as precursors of some army or else spies.
But within four days of service in his lost cause, Vardy was re-arranging the Count's lines, leading a thousand horse and 600 other armed men and overcoming a Ginnes army much greater in number but badly arranged.
Many adventures followed. On one, he gained an ugly mare of miraculous speed which he named Swallow. On another, he gained a magical suit of armour. This is how it happened.
At that time there lived at Saint Admarus, a young lady of Flanders, noble and beautiful, much devoted to liberal knowledge and a gifted artist. Her name was Torfrida. She fell in love with Hereward, having heard of his deeds, and she 'displayed many of his accomplishments', as they say, for love of him.
He confessed to me he was greatly in love with her, but was ignorant of how he could approach her, dreading the tricks of a notorious rival.
On the Road to Torfrida, his rival arranged
Troubles at every last twist and turn,
Twenty five robbers and rascals attacked him
But the fire in his heart continued to burn.
He laid every one of those ambushes low
Then stormed at the gate of her dead father's house
She appeared in an upstairs window to frown
But this was a man; not the usual mouse.
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
" Torfrida I am, but who are you?"
Hereward faltered - "I’m Hereward…'s herald."
The name pierced her armour like an arrow so true.
Torfrida descended, alarming her household,
They stood face to face for the very first time.
What their tongues couldn't speak, their eyes deep conveyed,
The lovestruck music of two hearts in rhyme.
"You're not the messenger, you are the man!"
She burst out at last, "I embrace in my arms
Hereward the Warrior, every girl's hero,
The desire and the object of all my charms!"
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
"Torfrida I am, but who are you?"
Hereward faltered - "I’m Hereward…'s herald."
The name pierced her armour like an arrow so true.
"Don't deny me your comely face, golden hair,
Your famous and valorous battle scars;
No Beloved can hide from the eye of true Lover
It's Hereward I love, Famous Hereward you are!"
Come within to my chamber, to my hidden treasure,
A fairy helmet, silver, gold, an elven corslet
Exquisitely worked, as light as the air
As long as you love me, no enemy can pierce it.
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
"Torfrida I am, but who are you?"
Hereward faltered - "I’m Hereward…'s herald."
The name pierced her armour like an arrow so true.
"Many powerful men enquire of this armour,
Many tricks for these treasures have vainly been tried,
Many threats and deceptions, attempts made to force,
To beg, steal or buy them; all their gambits denied.
"Now these, all my forefather's dearest possessions,
Which my father's dead hand has willed on to me
To bless one alone, one bold true Beloved,
It's yours for 'amour' holds this armour's sole key."
"Torfrida, Torfrida," he called it up to her.
"Torfrida I am, admit you are 'he'."
Hereward faltered - "I am Hereward... Hereward."
The name unlocked her heart like a mystical key.
And so the lady Torfrida became his wife...
Bourne
(This is sung by a turncoat English minstrel at Bourne, just before Hereward's return to England in September 1067 to avenge his brother's murder and the dispossession of his family's manor there)
The English are a motley bag -
We pocket them like money -
Of Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes
But 'ereward's really funny;
The dozy brute, the son of a nun
Godiva and a Dane,
Ereward the Wake was 'alf asleep
Till William the Conqueror came.
We'll turn your stagnant fens around,
Your farms and mills advance,
Make lazy Saxon manors French
And work-shy peasants dance.
If 'alf a Dane with 'alf a brain
Can stop us, where was 'e
At 'astings when ze arrow fell?
Pah! skulking o'er the sea.
Viking round the world just like
The half-blood Dane he is
Now let me civilise you, wench
With French embrace and kiss!
We'll turn your stagnant fens around,
Your farms and mills advance,
Make lazy Saxon manors French
And work-shy peasants dance.
Our brutal Norms are cultured now
By three French generations,
Our hot Norse blood cooked into wine,
Our priests don’t have relations.
The English are a mongrel race,
Their priests the marrying kind,
Their Rome with Celt and Viking Crossed,
Their kings are Cnuts and Sweyn-
We'll turn your stagnant fens around,
Your farms and mills advance,
Make lazy Saxon manors French
And work-shy peasants dance.
We pocket them like money -
Of Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes
But 'ereward's really funny;
The dozy brute, the son of a nun
Godiva and a Dane,
Ereward the Wake was 'alf asleep
Till William the Conqueror came.
We'll turn your stagnant fens around,
Your farms and mills advance,
Make lazy Saxon manors French
And work-shy peasants dance.
If 'alf a Dane with 'alf a brain
Can stop us, where was 'e
At 'astings when ze arrow fell?
Pah! skulking o'er the sea.
Viking round the world just like
The half-blood Dane he is
Now let me civilise you, wench
With French embrace and kiss!
We'll turn your stagnant fens around,
Your farms and mills advance,
Make lazy Saxon manors French
And work-shy peasants dance.
Our brutal Norms are cultured now
By three French generations,
Our hot Norse blood cooked into wine,
Our priests don’t have relations.
The English are a mongrel race,
Their priests the marrying kind,
Their Rome with Celt and Viking Crossed,
Their kings are Cnuts and Sweyn-
We'll turn your stagnant fens around,
Your farms and mills advance,
Make lazy Saxon manors French
And work-shy peasants dance.
Come To Ely
They have no real foundations so they're building thick and vast,
Want to bury Freeborn England, petrify it like the past,
Turn our halfdays into Domesdays, burn our livings into dust,
What have the Normans ever done for us?
Come to Ely all you outlaws, discontents and dispossessed,
All you harrowed freeborn Herewards and Sweyns and Aethelreds,
Come you Morcar, Harold's brother, in a Saxon Earl we trust,
What have the Normans ever done for us?
Come to Ely, island-fortress in impenetrable fen,
Though they ship their French priests in to be heads of our churchmen
We'll return them, ducked in sea and sacked, by 'Iron' Brumannus
What have the Normans ever done to us?
Come to Ely all you outlaws, discontents and dispossessed,
All you harrowed freeborn Herewards and Sweyns and Aethelreds,
Come you Morcar, Harold's brother, in a Saxon Earl we trust,
What have the Normans ever done for us?
(Come to Hereward, loved in Ireland, son of sea air and free Bourne,
With a magic suit of armour won in Flanders and a sword
Of Cornish giants; from Scaldimariland his horse.
What have the Normans ever done for us?
Come to Ely, island-fortress in impenetrable fen,
Though the Nose guards try to catch us, they will fail and fail again
Though their towered witch cast evil, curse and moon us, ass and cuss,
What have the Normans ever done to us?)
This was the Norman age and William was its greatest military genius and the Conqueror took personal command of the Siege of Ely. First he moved his army to Aldreth, where the swamp was narrowest and ordered that a causeway be constructed there. He directed that very large trees and beams, bound together, be placed across with inflated sheep-skins tied together beneath, so that the weight of men going over it might be better borne. Heathen ordered that the first soldiers to cross and inflict some damage would be rewarded the gold and silver said to be plentifully hidden in the Isle. It was a foolproof plan.
But this was Ely - and Hereward. Such a great multitude of men rushed on to the causeway at once that it collapsed into the marsh with them, drowning all the front-runners in one gulp. Those that were in the middle were also swallowed up in deep watery swamp. A few who followed last escaped with difficulty with only the loss of their arms and their dignity, tabling out of the depths in rotten armour. Of all those mentioned, not one got into the Isle, except the absolute frontrunner, a single eminent knight called Dada.
Dada was taken prisoner and Wardi told me to show him round the grandeur of Ely's defensive works, how well strengthened they were by troops of distinguished soldiers and companies of mighty men. There was no need to exaggerate... much but I decided it wouldn't do Dada any harm to have a tour of our plunkiest pantries, plumpest pies, most impregnable positions, scariest companies and nastiest weapons. Released on oath of bringing a true report of all this back to the Conqueror, Dada extolled 'ereward and ees men not only above the Normans but above all knights he had ever seen in France or in the Roman Empire or in Constantinople! "We should make peace - we cannot starve them out and we cannot beat zem."
credits
Is Hereward Awake?
Twilight in the greenwood, is Hereward awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a hooded man that winds a shadowy horn.
In the Lincoln greenwood,
In the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
A wild swan, a curlew,
A fen-son, a tiger;
His high blood-tide exiled
By Edward the Confessor.
Performs magic deeds
In the North, Cornwall, Ireland;
Fights fearless and feared
For Flanders, his wife-land.
Family home 'Normaned'
With his brother's severed head;
Returns, puts the murderers'
15 heads there instead.
In the Lincoln greenwood,
In the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
As free as the waters
That flow through the fen,
As the limitless skies
In the eyes of good men,
To the Saxon Abbot
Of Ely he speeds;
Lords, with King Sweyn of Denmark,
Its marsh, mere and reeds.
His wood-spirit leaves-drops
The Conqueror's hush-biz
Then is gone like a breeze
Through the secret rushes
Through the emerald horse-fen,
The diamond and gold,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
With Saxon Earl Morcar
Defends Ely Isle
Fights witch-fire and war-craft
With fire, bow and guile.
The Norman machine
Cannot conquer his fastness;
Greed's causeway goes down
In full armour and harness.
Though our monks will give up,
Afraid for their lands,
Their arms and his paths,
He will slip through their hands
To the Lincoln greenwood,
To the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
Raids Peterborough Abbey,
Frees God's Saxon gold
From the thief-Norman grip
Of its tyrant monk Turold.
As free as the waters
That flow through the fen,
As the limitless skies
In the eyes of good men,
From the Normans learns war,
Bonds with Flemings and Danes
But when King Sweyn makes peace,
Stays true to the thanes
In the Lincoln greenwood,
In the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a hooded man that winds a shadowy horn.
In the Lincoln greenwood,
In the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
A wild swan, a curlew,
A fen-son, a tiger;
His high blood-tide exiled
By Edward the Confessor.
Performs magic deeds
In the North, Cornwall, Ireland;
Fights fearless and feared
For Flanders, his wife-land.
Family home 'Normaned'
With his brother's severed head;
Returns, puts the murderers'
15 heads there instead.
In the Lincoln greenwood,
In the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
As free as the waters
That flow through the fen,
As the limitless skies
In the eyes of good men,
To the Saxon Abbot
Of Ely he speeds;
Lords, with King Sweyn of Denmark,
Its marsh, mere and reeds.
His wood-spirit leaves-drops
The Conqueror's hush-biz
Then is gone like a breeze
Through the secret rushes
Through the emerald horse-fen,
The diamond and gold,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
With Saxon Earl Morcar
Defends Ely Isle
Fights witch-fire and war-craft
With fire, bow and guile.
The Norman machine
Cannot conquer his fastness;
Greed's causeway goes down
In full armour and harness.
Though our monks will give up,
Afraid for their lands,
Their arms and his paths,
He will slip through their hands
To the Lincoln greenwood,
To the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
Raids Peterborough Abbey,
Frees God's Saxon gold
From the thief-Norman grip
Of its tyrant monk Turold.
As free as the waters
That flow through the fen,
As the limitless skies
In the eyes of good men,
From the Normans learns war,
Bonds with Flemings and Danes
But when King Sweyn makes peace,
Stays true to the thanes
In the Lincoln greenwood,
In the Bruneswald,
Yellow-haired, sky-eyed,
Great-hearted and bold,
For the soul of England;
For your own spirit's sake,
Lift your heart and voice up
For Hereward the Wake!
The Ballad of St Edmund
Red as Christ's blood,
White as chivalry
But shouldn't our Saint
Be an Angle like me?
You can shoot me with arrows
And chop off my head
But the Christ within me
Will never be dead.
In a thick wood my people
Lose one another
"Where are you? And where's
The head of our Martyr?"
You can shoot me with arrows
And chop off my head
But the Christ within me
Will never be dead.
"Hic hic, over here!"
My head wolf-cries,
Holy spirit of England
That never dies.
Between a wolf's paws
They find, in wonder
My head that to body
Returns un-sundered.
You can shoot me with arrows
And chop off my head
But the Christ within me
Will never be dead.
Yeah George kills for Christ
And worships Victory
But shouldn’t our saint
Be an angel like me?
Peterburgh
... In the winter of '69,
The Abbot of Peterborough, my Uncle Brant, died
He who blessed me and loved and made me a knight
In the old English way, to fight the good fight:
I swore by that naked sword on my neck,
By that altar and blessing, to be true to his beck.
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
Now all of the men in my freedom-fighting ranks
Are knighted by the monks and for that I give thanks
For I've seen that any knight's sword from a good monk of God
Has an edge as sure as Truth and brings a fire to the blood
So when the Fightin' Bishop Turbold, loving power more than prayer,
Was by King William sent to Peterburgh, God gave him a scare
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
The wild Danes of Sweyn and my heaven-serving knights
At the Bolhithe Gate balked, we set the Golden Burgh alight,
And in a blaze of glory, secured the Abbey's Saxon art,
The jewels of God's crown and England's golden heart,
With which King William then bought off those fickle Danes
Who would lose it all at sea, save what our prior saved from the flames.
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
The Danes brought out their swag, Prior Aethelwood brought the rest,
The finer treasure hoard, in a humble wooden chest.
The Danes to Ely Vespers came, nearly caught him concealing,
But he splashed with cold water, while pointing at the ceiling,
His face flushed and heated, a face which set them kneeling
To their Saxon father-priest, and so saved the stash from drowning.
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
The Abbot of Peterborough, my Uncle Brant, died
He who blessed me and loved and made me a knight
In the old English way, to fight the good fight:
I swore by that naked sword on my neck,
By that altar and blessing, to be true to his beck.
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
Now all of the men in my freedom-fighting ranks
Are knighted by the monks and for that I give thanks
For I've seen that any knight's sword from a good monk of God
Has an edge as sure as Truth and brings a fire to the blood
So when the Fightin' Bishop Turbold, loving power more than prayer,
Was by King William sent to Peterburgh, God gave him a scare
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
The wild Danes of Sweyn and my heaven-serving knights
At the Bolhithe Gate balked, we set the Golden Burgh alight,
And in a blaze of glory, secured the Abbey's Saxon art,
The jewels of God's crown and England's golden heart,
With which King William then bought off those fickle Danes
Who would lose it all at sea, save what our prior saved from the flames.
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
The Danes brought out their swag, Prior Aethelwood brought the rest,
The finer treasure hoard, in a humble wooden chest.
The Danes to Ely Vespers came, nearly caught him concealing,
But he splashed with cold water, while pointing at the ceiling,
His face flushed and heated, a face which set them kneeling
To their Saxon father-priest, and so saved the stash from drowning.
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night we burned Posh Abbey down
And all the Saxons were singing
Waes heal, Waes heal.
St Peter's Candles
I wassailed with the best of them, but in the long watches of the night I was troubled at our sacking and burning a church. And that night Hereward had a vision. He saw standing by him a man of indescribable form, terrible of aspect, in clothes more remarkable than anything he had seen or imagined, threatening him with a great golden key carried in his hand, and with a terrible injunction that he should restore in their entirety all those belongings of his church which he had taken on the past night, if he wished to provide for his own safety and escape a miserable death the next day.On waking, Hereward was seized with a holy terror ad the same hour returned everything he had taken away, including the holy Word-breaking Abbot Turold and then with all his men he departed. For not even a Hereward can look upon the gatekeeper of Heaven, without pause. On our journey we went astray in the night from the right road into the deep woods of Rockingham Forest and a terrible storm. But a marvellous thing happened as we strayed. A huge wolf came in front of us, fawning upon us like a tame dog, and walked before us.
Thinking the wolf in the darkness to be a white dog, we followed the animal closely, believing it had come from some town. Just as we emerged from our lost path and recognised our right road, a silence fell which not even the roar of the storm could comprehend, and gthere appeared flames like candles on our lances and on the trees , like those which the common people call Fairy Lights. Nothing the storm could blow at them could disturb the stillness of the flames nor could any man shake them off or put them out.
At dawn to our astonishment, we discovered that wolf had been our guide. Some if us recognised as the night wolf of St Edmund, the real patron saint of England, between whose paws the saint's severed head had once been found, before reuniting with its body. While we marvelled, the wolf disappeared and the flames went out, and we came to the place we had intended, beyond Stamford. Seeing that the journey had been prosperously accomplished I gave thanks to God and still do for...
The Miracle of St Peter's Candles
credits
Forever Robin Hood
And so the last blow in Vardy's long resistance was struck. And with Frederic dead and Hereward's other enemies at court silenced at last by the fear of also facing him in single combat, the Conqueror gave command that Hereward have the land of his father and retain quiet possession of it.
Thus Hereward the Saxon was received into full favour by the Norman King, and with his father's lands and possessions lived afterwards for many years, faithfully serving his many friends. But his story does not really end there. Some believe that, under one variant of his name, Howard, his descendants became dukes of Norfolk and perpetual Earl Marshalls of England and that under another variant - Harvard - they founded a college in a land called The Home of the Brave. It would have amused Hereward how keen the later Harvard - and Wake - families were to claim him, unlike his own father. Some believe he himself returned in person at the time of the English Civil war by God's will to restore ancient Saxon rights. In the words of John Milton 'the most heroic and exemplary victory for civil freedom in the history of the world' ...and in mine:
Some say that he came back to Ely
To be painted by Sir Peter Lely
First as Lord of the Fens
Then of all Englishmens
As ‘warts and all’ Cromwell, so steely.
(And you can see that very painting at Oliver Cromwell's House, in Ely)
But however historical or mythical all these stories may be, what is as true as oak is this: conquest stayed a foreign word and his under-doggéd spirit of English resistance lives on in the greenwood and the Saxon heart of the English language forever.
Thus Hereward the Saxon was received into full favour by the Norman King, and with his father's lands and possessions lived afterwards for many years, faithfully serving his many friends. But his story does not really end there. Some believe that, under one variant of his name, Howard, his descendants became dukes of Norfolk and perpetual Earl Marshalls of England and that under another variant - Harvard - they founded a college in a land called The Home of the Brave. It would have amused Hereward how keen the later Harvard - and Wake - families were to claim him, unlike his own father. Some believe he himself returned in person at the time of the English Civil war by God's will to restore ancient Saxon rights. In the words of John Milton 'the most heroic and exemplary victory for civil freedom in the history of the world' ...and in mine:
Some say that he came back to Ely
To be painted by Sir Peter Lely
First as Lord of the Fens
Then of all Englishmens
As ‘warts and all’ Cromwell, so steely.
(And you can see that very painting at Oliver Cromwell's House, in Ely)
But however historical or mythical all these stories may be, what is as true as oak is this: conquest stayed a foreign word and his under-doggéd spirit of English resistance lives on in the greenwood and the Saxon heart of the English language forever.
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