The hawthorn has both religious and pagan meanings. It has medicinal properties and it obviously represents the natural world. Bob and I used a lot of imagery in order to convey something of the mystery and wonder that can exist in the natural world and manage to mix in a typical English folk song theme about a man and a maiden.
Vocal: Karen Dietz
Second Vocal: Inge McIlroy
Guitar: Bernard Brogue
Lyrics
Hawthorn
I gave my love a fool’s ring of green gold
‘round a May morn and the haw
There in the wood where she cast her white charms
All her fine fruit to be borne
Bound by the rows there’s a tree grows and bears
The blood of the world in its name…
Hawthorn… that enfolds
All the world’s wounded souls in
Rings of green gold
The gifts of the hawthorn
Fell from the first sweetest kiss of the rain
The red bitter fruit of the haw
Bound by her spell into briar, branch and leaf
The finch, nesting, knows every thorn
All I can hear is the cry of my heart
Sacrificed on the cross of your name…
Hawthorn… that enfolds
All the world’s wounded souls in
Rings of green gold
The gifts of the hawthorn
While winter’s hands hold the stain of the seed
In the snow as it falls ‘neath the haw
I dark as night lie in her sleeping fire
Cold as the land’s broken word
She was my thorn, my mayflower, my wound
She was my need and my name…
Hawthorn… that enfolds
All the world’s wounded souls in
Rings of green gold
The gifts of the hawthorn
© Hawthorn; music by Tom Fairnie & Bernard Brogue, words by Tom Fairnie, Bob Shields, Bernard Brogue & Jane Fairnie 30/12/07
My name
Is all you will remember
And many others have my name
My name
Will soon be only letters
And most of these are much the same
I am my father’s only son
And may be my mother’s daughter
The creation of the wand
Within the laughter of the water
Then, at last, all has been answered
By the scratches in the dust:
The footprints of a dancer
It was all so obvious.
Pandora’s Side Of It © Bob Shields 2010