The Wychwood Badgers Run

Last week my friend, Peter, suggested it was time I wrote another song. An hour later The Wychwood Baders Run had poured from my pen. More of a poem, it makes me tell it in a west country accent. I'm now reciting it a the local Midsummer Woodland Music and Readings festival, as well as singing a few songs ... and wondering how it all happened so quickly.It will be the first time I've recited anything and the first time I've sung, alone, with my guitar! Eek! Us artists love to be noticed but when we are, it's scary!!

It's come out as a celebration of the chewy, crunchy, yummy words they use to call places round here in England's Cotswalds - just such a fascinating language to a foriegner from New Zealand. So, here it is ... 



The Wychwood Badgers Run
It’s a Hailey day with a paley sun
Sending softly beams from the greyly sky
On the moundy green and grassy dew
It’s a crispy morn for the waking cows
For a Cotswold land and shivering crow
And this is the time, my smiley friends
To breathe again in Witney town
For the badgers creep to their sets to sleep
 
 (You see) creeping down to Poffley End
On a night so still, you can hear the sun
As it sets itself, behind dark hill
It’s the time the Wychwood Badgers run
Stay awake, stay alert
Lest they smile through your pane
And scratch your dirt
It’s the time for the Wychwood badgers run

In Delly End and North Leigh town
They’re gentle folks who softly spokes
They rub their hands and breathe soft plumes
As the mist does rise and robins chirp
At Chilbrook Farm and Burford streets
The moss does sleep on slatey roofs
And cats do stretch with relief at dawn
For the badgers leave and prey no more

They say at night in whispering tones
Near Charlbury Road and Finstock Lane
The badgers come with eyes aflame
To wake the dead and shake their bones
From the Windrush Inn to the Ramsden Arms
Sneak dark stories with a twilight drink
Into brains that quake as thirsts are quenched
They may be true or may be not; just badgers know

So smile in your gentle fields and kitchen hearths
As the skylark sings the sun to shining
The day in Charlbury town and Rollright Stones
Is soft and cool and safe as pigeon’s coo
But don’t forget when the day is done
For Kidlington babes and Banbury youths
The shadows lengthen over badger deeds
Chipping Norton, Stow-on-Wold, you could be next
 
We know not how or when or why
Such stories are sent to steal our smile
Over woodland rise, through trickling stream
Make no mistake, gentle folks who do deny
The badgers truly doly do
Creep upon stone houses, over dry stone walls
Into children’s dreams and old folks recalls
You’re never safe from the Wychwood Badgers run