Wylding Hall

Chapter 4

Ashton

The village pub was called The Wren. It’s still there; I think Windhollow’s fans have given it a good business over the years. Tom gave us a group allowance for food, most of which went for booze. Jon was always trying out some special way of eating: horrible miso soup and brown rice. Just about made me puke every time I saw him digging into it. The rest of us survived on bacon and eggs, the occasional lamb stew. It was all very Withnail and I, only without Uncle Monty. Only I wasn’t up to drinking the paint thinner. Not yet, anyway.

There was a local farmer who we bought from: Silas Thomas, a wretched old man like a character from a Hardy novel. He was always warning us off wandering the Downs after dark or getting lost in the woods. Warning Julian, mostly; he was the only one who did things like that. Tom must’ve paid him off, Silas, as he brought food round a couple days a week. Milk and eggs and rashers, brown bread he must have made himself. I don’t think he had a wife. If he did, I never saw her.

But sometimes, you know, the body needs something more. Different food, different faces. Les and I were the ones first ventured down to the Wren. She was a good girl for holding her drink, and I quite fancied her. Not as thin as she’s gotten since the cancer.

In those days, she cut a striking figure. Crazy blond hair and those big blue eyes. She dressed sharp, too — long skirts and dresses, lace-up boots and flowy scarves, all kinds of shiny bits and bobs. Hippie royalty, we were. Not like you wankers with your black hoodies and earbuds.

Probably Tom should have thought it out better. Four blokes and Les the only girl — you could see how that might become a troublesome equation. I was furious when I realized Les and Julian were doing more than practice up in their bedrooms — murderously jealous, but only for a few weeks. Once the girl came on the scene, that put an end to Les and Julian’s great romance.

It was a Friday night when we first went down there, Les and me. We decided we were going to busk at the pub and make a bit of dosh. We were skint, all of us, we’d run through whatever money Tom had left us. If Old Man Silas hadn’t been coming by, we would’ve starved. Tom was supposed to drive down for a weekend to fill our coffers, but that hadn’t happened yet. The whole point of us being at Wylding Hall was not to have visitors, even our manager.

And we didn’t really want any. Odd as that sounds to you — really, can you imagine being totally cut off, no mobiles, no interwebs? We couldn’t even use the phone except in emergencies — it cost the earth.

So did petrol. We’d filled the van’s tank before we first arrived, but it was half-empty by now, and we were very cautious about taking it anyplace. It was held together with bits of string and old tin cans, and I was always terrified it would die and that would be it: we’d be stranded in darkest fucking Hampshire. As far as I know, Julian’s car never moved the whole time we were there.

I know: to you lot it sounds like hell, but to us it was heavenly.

Still, even in heaven, you want a change from boiled eggs and plonk. So one day, I fired up the van and drove me and Les into town. Understand that I mean “town” only in the sense that there was a road running through it. A pub and half-a-dozen houses, chickens in the street.

But the Wren was a proper pub with a regular clientele. Les charmed the barman into giving us something to eat: ploughman’s lunch. Big slabs of white bread and ham and good cheddar and pickles. And great ale — it was a free house, so the ale was brewed only a few miles off. We drank a few rounds, then stood the barman for a few, by which time he was ready to take Lesley straight to bed. His name was Reg, good old Reg. Died some years back. He was feeling quite jolly when Les asked if we could sing later in the evening.

“What, are you a nightingale? I thought you were a peacock!” He leaned across the bar to tug at her scarf: it was printed with peacock feathers, and she had on earrings made from peacock feathers.

“Peacocks scream. This bird sings like an angel.” I put my arm around her, but Les pushed me away and turned back to Reg.

“I do,” she said. “I sing like an angel. In London people pay a lot of money to hear me sing. But for you, Reg—just you—I will make an exception.”

Then she grabbed him and kissed him on the cheek, and that was all it took. Neither of us had a guitar with us, and I certainly wasn’t lugging around my bass, so we just … sang. That’s how we used to do it at the basement of Trois Freres at those all-night gigs, when anyone could stand up in the room and sing three songs. That’s if they could still stand. But Lesley had a hollow leg in those days and so did I. Drink is what kept us standing.

We sang “Cloud Prince” and “Unquiet Grave.” I remember because Will had just taught us “Unquiet Grave” our first day at Wylding Hall. You know that one?

My lips they are as cold as clay my breath smells earthy strong

And if you kiss my cold lips your days won’t be long

Go fetch me water from the desert and blood from a stone

Go fetch me milk from a maid’s breast that man’s never known.

The punters loved it. Reg shouted out to everyone that we were very special singers down from London, and Lesley was the next Dusty Springfield. Some shite like that.

They loved it — loved her. She was the first American they’d ever seen, some of them, and that might have been the first time they’d seen anyone looked like her, those leather boots and wild blond hair and peacock glory. What a sight she was! Pissed as a bloody newt, of course — she was purely slap happy when we finally finished singing. The lads shouted for another song, but she just laughed and said she’d be back with more of her friends.

“We don’t want your friends!” some bloke yelled. “You’re woman enough for all of us!”

We got seven quid that night. Hundred pounds that’d be worth now, almost a hundred and fifty dollars. Enough for a few bottles of wine and some chocolate cake and sweets and bananas, whiskey and fags. Not bad for three songs.

Will

One of the songs they sang that night was “Unquiet Grave.” I wasn’t there, but Ashton told me when they got home. I’d found it amongst the Child Ballads at Cecil Sharp House back in London. A very old ballad, very grim.

“Why’d you choose that one?” I asked him. I thought it was strange. Usually Ashton went for the jigs and dance songs, the old knees-up. He said he wanted to hear Lesley sing it in front of an audience.

I wouldn’t have chosen that song. Not for a first time out, there in the country. It’s a warning, that song. The way some old songs or nursery rhymes are ways of memorizing recipes, or history, or directions to a place? “Unquiet Grave” is like that. It’s a warning.

No, I don’t blame Ashton for what happened. But I do think it was a bit of bad fortune, to choose that particular song.

I wish I’d gone with them to the Wren that first night. I was the only one in the band actually knew something about folk music. Ashton and Jon, they had more of a rock and roll background. They had no trouble picking up the songs and the instrumentation, but until we went to Wylding Hall, they’d never done anything in the way of research into old music. They’d just pick up whatever song was making the rounds and try to put a stamp on it.

Julian was different. He had a better idea than anyone, even me, as to exactly what those songs were about and what they meant. But I wasn’t aware of that at the time.

And Les is American. Today, she knows just as much about folk songs as I do, but back then she picked it up because that’s what you did — if you weren’t going to be in a rock and roll band, you’d sing folk songs. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, they all did riffs on English folk. Lesley had the voice for it. More soulful than someone like Grace Slick, and Les didn’t sound like she was giving you a lecture, the way Joan Baez did.

Les had a magical voice. She was just starting to write her own songs, so she’d pretty much sing whatever you handed to her. I would never have expected her to recognize the photos in the Wren, but I might have thought that Ashton would mention them. He knew how caught up I was with folklore and ritual. Then again, maybe that’s why he didn’t mention them. Or maybe he was just too pissed to notice them.

I went up to the pub by myself a few days later. I was in the mood for a walk, and sometimes it felt like such a pressure cooker at Wylding Hall. I could hear Julian and Lesley going at it in Julian’s room. Les, mostly: I never heard much out of Julian. He wasn’t what you called hot-blooded, not until the girl showed up.

Still, him and Les were in the throes of an affair, even if it was mostly one-sided. Made me miss my girlfriend, Nancy. Jonno — well, I wasn’t sure what Jonno got up to. He didn’t tell the rest of us he was gay till that autumn. I’m pretty sure he told me some story about a girl back in Chelsea.

But I missed Nancy terribly. Spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself in my room, playing mournful songs.

That particular day, I decided to really feel sorry for myself and tromped off to the pub. Took the better part of an hour to get there on foot, and I was thirsty when I arrived. Had a pint of good ale, sat off by myself. There were only a few geezers there, and they left me alone. Fine by me.

After a while, I got a second pint and was starting on a third when I decided to take a slash. Heading back from the bog, I noticed several photos on the wall. Old photographs, black and white, cheap frames. The kind of thing you see in every pub in England — the local rugby team, or someone’s brother with the goalie from Manchester United, or the great granddad of the proprietor.

But these were different. At first I thought they were very old, early nineteen hundreds, maybe even older. Because of the subject matter. All that time I spent at Cecil Sharp House, poring through their archives and old books — well, I recognized these photos. Not the exact photos, but the subject matter.

They showed a group of boys in ragamuffin finery — old frockcoats too big for them, knee-high boots or soft leather shoes, top hats or workmen’s caps stuck with sprigs of ivy and evergreen. It was wintertime, a few inches of snow on the ground. One of the photos showed the boys knocking at the door of a cottage. In another, they stood all in a row, each of them holding what looked like a walking stick, and staring at the camera with that strange grim look you see in old photos. Like they’d been told, “Whatever you do, don’t smile.” The last photograph, they stood atop a little hill in a half-circle.

You’re thinking, So what?

Well, here’s the thing: in every photo, one boy held what looked like a cage covered with more greenery. It wasn’t a proper cage, though, but two hoops made of stripped willow branches, placed one inside the other, then strung with ivy and holly. Something was suspended from the spot where the two branches crossed at the top. I could barely make it out in the picture that showed them at the cottage door, but it showed more clearly in the other two.

In the first photo — the one taken on the hill — the cage was empty, and it sat at the feet of the smallest boy. In the second photo, where they stood all together with the trees behind them, the same boy had the willow cage, held out in front of him as though it were a lantern. This was more of a close-up, so I could see what was hung inside the willow round: a dead bird, strung up by one foot. Not a grouse or partridge or pheasant, something you might hunt to eat, but a tiny bird, so small that it wouldn’t make more than a mouthful.

But they weren’t going to eat it. I knew because I’d seen pictures of the same sort of thing at Cecil Sharp House. All the sport was in the hunting, and then the door-to-door in the village, displaying the dead bird and singing.

Away to the wood, says Dick to John,

Away to the woods, says every one!

And what do ye there, ye merry men?

We hunt to the death the wicked witch-wren.

It’s an ancient carol, sung on the day after Christmas — Boxing Day, St. Stephen’s Day. You don’t celebrate it here in the United States.

But way back when those photos were taken, all the boys and men of a village would walk out armed with cudgels and harry the wrens out of the underbrush, then club them out of the air. Wrens don’t fly very high.

Yes, I know, it sounds barbaric. It is barbaric. But this was the only time you were allowed to kill a wren — all sorts of terrible things happen if you kill it out of season. I think in some places it might even have been illegal.

Once upon a time, they did this all across the British Isles, England and Ireland, and Scotland and Wales. There are all kinds of songs about it—“The Cutty Wren,” that’s the one I just sang, and “Please to see the King.” Christmas carols, but they’re really quite ancient songs. You’d kill your wren, then parade it around the village. It represented the old year sacrificed so that the new year could rise from its ashes.

That’s how some of the songs go. Others say that the wren’s a wicked creature, a fairy woman. You still see the wren on Christmas cards here in England, though everyone’s forgotten what it represents. It’s all a bit Wicker Man. And the name of the pub — that should have been a clue, right?

Well, I was terribly excited by this discovery. From what I’d read, the wren hunt had died out everywhere except the Isle of Man, and even there it’s been turned into a tourist holiday, like the Padstow Hobby Horse.

Yet the photos in the pub were all dated 1947. Even if the ritual hadn’t been performed a single time since then, it was the most recent survival of the wren hunt in England that I’d ever heard of.

I walked over to ask the barman what he knew about it. Not a thing, he said; he was from Canterbury and had only moved to the village after he married a local girl. He told me to ask some of the old timers.

You can imagine how that went down. They just took one look at me and turned away laughing or scowling. I knew better than to keep on at them, so I finished my pint and walked home. I mentioned the photos to Ashton and Les, but they hadn’t noticed them. Next time I was at the pub, they were gone. Barman said the geezer who’d hung them there wanted them back.

Like I said, that should have made me think twice. But it didn’t.

Tom

Ashton was worried I’d be ticked off about them singing down at the pub. To be honest, I was a bit annoyed. Windhollow wasn’t so well-known then, nothing like now — can you imagine the scene today, if they’d suddenly show up at your local and just started playing?

But people did know them, certainly in London they did, and there was probably the odd hippie living in a caravan somewhere in Hampshire who might have heard about it and invited his friends down.

I just didn’t want them to be distracted. The songs that ended up on the Wylding Hall album — those songs were already starting to come together. I was afraid word would get out and there’d be a bunch of hippies that would crash at Wylding Hall and that would be the end of it.

And yes, I was concerned about Julian, that he’d meet up with bad companions and smoke himself into oblivion. He was whip-smart, but somewhat of a social and emotional innocent. You could see it pained him to talk to people he didn’t know — he was a publicist’s nightmare — and that acute shyness could come off as arrogance, especially in someone so good-looking.

Have you ever noticed how we accord special privileges, almost magical powers, to people who are beautiful? Particularly if they’re beautiful and talented, like Julian. I have no idea what happened, him and that girl. I never met her, but that’s what I mean by bad companions. Not to blame someone I never met — for all I know, she might have been as much of an innocent a Julian. Probably she was. I’m very curious as to what they’ll find when they dig up that long barrow.

Jon

We only played the pub a few times that summer. When Tom found out, he made a point of sending us more dosh, so we wouldn’t be tempted to do it too often. I enjoyed it, but he was right — people were picking up on it, that we’d played at the Wren. God knows how they found out — there were no mobiles or Internet. The village barely had telephone service. I think you’d have been better off sending messages by carrier pigeon. Perhaps that’s what they did.

Anyway, I’m sure that’s why Tom decided to come down with the mobile unit — he didn’t want to chance someone else showing up with a tape recorder during one of our gigs.

Of course, I wasn’t dragging my drum kit down to the local, so whenever we played there, I’d have nothing but a little tambour and bells. It felt almost medieval, which was lovely, really — it felt like we truly were wandering bards. Troubadours.

Well, maybe not me so much. I was always a bit of the outlier. I never set out to play any kind of folk or trad — I was a rocker who went astray. Up there on Muswell Hill with the Davies brothers, that’s who I wanted to be, not a bloody little folkie. I saw myself more like John Bonham. Or Long John Baldry.

But me and Ashton were mates from school, and he’d been picking up work for a few years before we started the band. A good bass player is worth his weight in gold, and Ashton was brilliant. You know how they called John Entwistle the Ox? Ashton was the Oak, because of his name — the mighty Ash, the mighty Oak.

He was a tough nut, Ashton: always difficult to get along with. But the birds loved him — the young girls — and that meant he always had an audience. He’d played with Will at a few pickup gigs in London. They decided to put a band together and they were looking for a drummer, so that was me. Ashton met Arianna at some pub where he’d been playing. Will brought Julian. Arianna was gorgeous, and so was Julian. Both very photogenic — looked great onstage and when we did Old Grey Whistle Test.

But Arianna was out of her depth. Everyone saw that. We cut our first album, Windhollow Faire; Jack Bruce produced it, and he did a fine job of covering up her weaknesses in the studio. But in order to survive, the band needed to play almost constantly, and Arianna simply wasn’t up to it. She had a pretty voice, she could carry a tune — that was never a problem. But she had no depth. She couldn’t interpret a song, place her stamp on it. Unlike Lesley, who fairly stomped on it!

And that’s what you need in folk music. These are songs that have been around for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They existed for centuries before any kind of recording was possible, even before people could write, for god’s sake! So the only way those songs lived and got passed on was by singers. The better singer you were, the more likely it was people were going to turn out to hear you and remember you — and remember the song — whether it was at a pub or wedding or ceilidh or just a knot of people seeking shelter under a tree during a storm.

It’s a kind of time machine, really, the way you can trace a song from whoever’s singing it now back through the years — Dylan or Johnny Cash, Joanna Newsom or Vashti Bunyan — on through all those nameless folk who kept it alive a thousand years ago. People talk about carrying the torch, but I always think of that man they found in the ice up in the Alps. He’d been under the snow for 1,200 years, and when they discovered him, he was still wearing his clothes, a cloak of woven grass and a bearskin cap, and in his pocket they found a little bag of grass and tinder and a bit of dead coal. That was the live spark he’d been carrying, the bright ember he kept in his pocket to start a fire whenever he stopped.

You’d have to be so careful, more careful than we can even imagine, to keep that one spark alive. Because that’s what kept you alive, in the cold and the dark.

Folk music is like that. And by folk I mean whatever music it is that you love, whatever music it is that sustains you. It’s the spark that keeps us alive in the cold and night, the fire we all gather in front of so we know we’re not alone in the dark. And the longer I live, the colder and darker it gets. A song like “Windhover Morn” can keep your heart beating when the doctors can’t. You might laugh at that, but it’s true.