Neil Luck: Five English Folk Songs

»Five English Folk Songa« is a collection of marginal traditional singing techniques and songs dug out by Neil Luck and Mimi Doulton. These five songs all explore magical forms of communication with non-human energies; Flora, Fauna, Deities, The Dead, and the Quasi-Dead. The idea that song, and the performance of song have some kind of efficacy or sympathy beyond the realm of living humans is an idea that lives and thrives in places far flung from this cluster of mild islands, but has gotten lost and buried in 21st century Western empiricalness. We hope this opens some windows for you.

 

Some liberties have been taken with interpretation; melodies swapped out, lyrics changed, structures altered, sounds invented, stories retold, truths averted.

 

PHALAY

Secret Reformation-era Votive Antiphon from Stoke Minster (anon).

 

LICHENS

Early Renaissance Invisibility Spell from England & Denmark. Adapted from The Grand Grimoire (misc., anon.)

 

EVERGREEN

Setting of HeartKickUK™ defibrillator manual text, accompanied by vaguely traditional leaf-blowing techniques.

 

OH GREAT GOAT

Animal Husbandry Song, (anon. Yak Herders), circa Ambleside.

 

JANET HAS A FRIEND

Folk song from the 1980s about The Enfield Poltergeist, sung to the tune of »The Bow Gallows«. The story concerns a case of a notorious poltergeist haunting in a small residential house in Enfield between 1977–1979. A family including two young daughters (Janet was one of them) were tormented by flying objects, toppled furniture, levitations, loud banging. The ghost, who introduced himself as »Bill« spoke through Janet’s own vocal cords in a gruff, low register.