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Acts of Valour - I know I don't need rescuing - but...
A Harp Strung with Wind - inspired by Patricia McKillip's 'Harpist in the Wind'.
The Alchemist's Landlady - a woman who sets out to get what she wants.
All the Tea in China - A long time stewing, this song. We are not obliged to give others the tools with which to hurt us.
Amazon Ahoy - I always wanted to be Captain Nancy Blackett from Arthur Ransome's 'Swallows and Amazons' books as a child, but I fear that her adult life would have carried its share of grief and confusion. Maybe I'm wrong.
Ancient Sky - There is a place where these arches and towers exist, and the secret door as well...
Any Kind of Light - and you have to have lived in old houses to see the image clearly.
Archetype Café - the cool place to hang out on Wednesdays.
Appleby Fair - A fine picnic we had on the moor, taken there by gypsy pony and painted cart. I sang all my horse-songs there, and found another to join them.
Azusa - wolves, dolls, woods you shouldn't stray into: have I told you this tale elsewhere?
Bacchante - Some things you're just safest not knowing about...
Bag Ladies - My favourite vice, tea, has as many alluring names as any more illicit substance. Golden Brown? A little more milk, please, and one sugar. Ta
Belvedere - Inspired by M C Escher's picture of that name - his lovely impossible towers always intrigued me.
Blackthorn Winter - Hands on the spade. Seeds in the ground. The year turns and if we're lucky, we grow a little wiser.
Bleed / I Cut Myself / Treasons - Two titles too many, at present, and me not dancing in the wardrobe; and that words are dangerous things.
Blood & Chocolate - parodying Urban Tapestry's 'Sex and Chocolate'. It seemed the next logical step, really.
Candledancing - find me in the kindled flame.
Carrion - This is for the bastard who attacked me going home one night.
Cassandra - Now if there had been global media networks at the time of the Trojan War, then it's clear who would have been wearing the flak jacket marked 'Press', isn't it?
Cathedral Heart - Kieran says this one's a 'wave your lighters in the air' kind of song.
Ceinwen's Bow - inspired by Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Fionavar Tapestry' trilogy.
The Centaur - one to celebrate the male...
Chameleon Cloak - Wrapped in a big brown cloak and with the wind before me, would-be changeling and dreamer, me.
Chicago Airport Lounge - where Talis ate a very nice pastrami bagel.
Coffee - A little fable about asking all the wrong questions.
Company - Corvid adventures again, from the child's perspective.
Cotton Tail Girls - based on 'Cotton Mill Girls' as sung by the Poozies, and to whom I apologise, this came out of a genuine freudian slip and went downhill from there. Sorry, girls.
Cream Cake Girl - Don't we all need a hero sometimes? One who arrives with something sinfully yummy when least expected? Course we do...
The Dancing - My mother was a dancer. No fiction, this.
Death Danced at my Party - Senor Muerte vino, yo no lo invite...
Delphi - where you can feel the old gods walking around.
Eleven Candles - You know what they say about absence...
Evil Twin - introducing Skippy!
Epona's Birthday - Y2K and an eighth white horse on the hillside; so I heard, once, and Epona ran off with the rest of it.
The Face Within - Well, what I thought it was about and what other people think it's about are completely different, anyway, so you can make up your own mind.
Farewell To Childhood - To the lovely traditional melody 'Farewell to Tarwathie' - one of my very earliest songs, both in the writing and the singing.
First Hero - written for Jon Pertwee, the third Dr Who, and sadly missed.
Flavus et Luteus - Our new monarch, King Guy of the Far Isles (a medieval recreation society) is known for being a somewhat colourful character. This was written for his coronation, and sung with all due ceremony on that most solemn occasion; it was later performed at the feast with its rather colloquial translation.
Harbouring Hopes - Truth hurts.
Harlequin Skirts - Ever tried making diamond-pane harlequin patchwork? No? I wrote the song, but I never did make the outfit.
He Knows the Way from Here - My pride in my son grows apace as he does.
Head of a Pin - Sacred geometry, treasure hunts, flights of fancy or pure hokum - I love these things, but then I have low tastes. And the benefit of a Classical education.
The Highwayman - written on harp at the turning of the year on the way home from Glastonbury.
I am China - Inspired by Richard Adams' 'The Girl in a Swing'.
I am Your Demon - not one of Talis's gentler songs.
I Should Cocoa - Chocolate. It's wonderful. I like eating it... but I wouldn't want to be it.
Icarus' Sister - well, we don't know that Icarus was necessarily an only child, do we now?
Inside her Skin - Not an autobiographical one, thankfully; but it was a near miss, once.
In Summer Lightning - And it did rain, too. But that was later.
Jack Hare - inspired by Kit Williams' enchanting book 'Masquerade'.
Jam Tomorrow - I had a serious conversation with the Red Queen at Lincoln Museum once, all three of her, and she's Not Happy with things at all. Well fine, neither am I.
Jonathan's Coffeehouse - My friend Judith suggested I would make even the stock exchange interesting if I put it into a song. Now, I always do what Judith tells me, so I did a little research.
Katherine Lane - Dark and twisted little tale. With mermaids in.
The Kelpie Woman and Me - You can trust the fact that she won't play fair.
The King and Queen of Boston - written for Spencer and Persis' wedding.
The King's Own Kitchen Boy - The liner notes on a CD by the band Blowzabella tell more about Lambert Simnel than I knew before: boy pretender to King's falconer via kitchen boy is an unlikely but heartwarming progression, don't you think?
Kitchen Heroes - Not riding off to the wars with a pan lid and a carving knife, but quietly getting on with the essential jobs which are less and less practiced these days. Their time will come.
Lady of the Underpass - There was a stain on the underpass wall somewhere in Chicago. Some folk looked at it and saw a stain on the wall. Some saw an image of Mary. Did their prayers and candles, then, make the place holy?
Lady Susanna - A wedding-song for my kinswoman, this.
Looking for Jack - If you were a dryad and your tree was located on a traffic island, you'd be a bit desperate too. The song pre-dates the comic strip, by the way.
Lucet the Braid - when the contents of all my many handicraft baskets converse at night, I dare say Lucet rouses the various peg looms and dolly bobbins to sing with her. Don't you think so?
Marchwood - Not the cuckoo, not the magpie, but the white owl's way... the sorceror's way.
Madrigal for Vaurien - Written in love - deeply.
Midwinter Hymn - My midwinter card - a non-specific celebratory little song for all faiths or none.
Mon Seul Desir - the tapestry hangs in Cluny, France, but this story is not the allegory its makers had in mind.
Mont Saint Michel - We arrived with the dawn, before even the abbey was open: so we got to see the bones of the place. The high cloister overlooks the sea; in such a place one can feel very small.
My Gold and Silver - We're in fairy-tale-as-metaphor-for-my-life country again, with the Twelve Dancing Princesses my unlikely accomplices.
Near Earth - So I was reading a book about asteroids, and it scared me silly, actually. We have the means to safeguard against this very real threat, if only the international will were there. Our existence here is truly very fragile.
Never Trust a Man in Shades - Some men are just trouble. Trouble is, that's just what some women like in them...
One Big Sea - oooh, that was an unhappy time.
Out Of Season - Three of my favourite women, and The African Riff...
Pagan Angel - Read the song. Then go to Brighton and drink the cocktail.
Pale Shamen - Oh, those White Horse women...
Paper Worlds - Marvellous little things, books. you can go anywhere and anywhen with the right set of pages to take you there. I'm a bibliophile. Can you tell? This was written for and premiered on the TV programme 'Highly Illogical', broadcast on HTV on 28th February 2003.
Pizza Delivery Wing - Your fault, Smitty. Of course that's what dragons do best.
Poison Candy - Such a sweet little vampire, you know...
Postcards from the Muse - Once again, I come out of a non-writing too-long time with a song about not writing songs. You bet this is how it feels.
Prayer for Santa Lucia - and it doesn't even mention the contact lenses.
Pretty Damn Proud - well, the roses deserved it!
Pulling the Nails - It all started with the stair carpet actually, and a hundred and sixty five nails, and then my allegorical side kicked in and started making allusions.
Rapunzel - I do actually know what this one means. Honest. Mostly. Especially the balloon.
Red Riding - As in the post-modern, post-feminist Big Book of Bedtime Urban Myths. No, not really.
The Red Stuff - My lovely cousin Jay and some of the weird stuff in the back of my head.
Relativity Mall - 25th century shopping environment designed by MC Escher.
The Rose - The books will say that in the Middle Ages St. Anne's Well was a place of pilgrimage even for queens of England. The books do not speak of the Rose-Wolf. This song does.
Rose of the World - Well, there was this king, and he had a Queen, a mistress, and a garden, and it went downhill from there, really.
Rutpiae Light - Rosemary Sutcliff's Roman Britain sequence, beginning with 'The Eagle of the Ninth', is a captivating and far-seeing set of novels. Written for young adults, it bears repeated reading at any age. 'The Silver Branch', 'The Lantern Bearers' and 'Dawn Wind' complete the set, and foreshadow every age in which people have looke bravely ahead into dark times. Together they inspired this song.
Scarecrows Dancing - because it's really not quite safe out there...
Scarred - Ever been bullied at school? Ever been given some really useless advice by adults who should have known better?
Secret Garden - Moon magic, tarot cards and change - oh, and the fact that the right gender didn't actually rhyme.
Siren Song - She's beautiful and deadly, and you'll drown if you let her love you.
Small Mended Corners - there are women I've been.
Small Stowaway - written when my son was very, very young.
Smoke gets in... - the obvious parody: or, One Helluva Way to Choose a Bedfellow.
Sometimes she Dances / Ravens - Only one too many titles here. My usual mixed set of images, but I must say the ravens were a surprise here - at first.
Spanish Gold - for English silver.
Still Catch the Tide - The selkie returns to the sea - and what of her lover?
Still Falling - Falling's the sweet part; you don't want to land.
The Sun Drives Twelve Gold Horses - but the Moon drives a red Chevette.
Sweet Delirium - Inspired by Neil Gaiman's character with the odd coloured eyes. Kamikaze ice-cream, Neil.
Taken by Storm - thunderelectricityfireworkswhiteorses -
Tattercoats - inspired by Mydori Snyder's lovely and heartwarming telling of the tale, in the book 'Black Thorn, White Rose'.
Tea & Kisses - from one of those middle-of-the-night conversations where only one of the parties is actually awake...
Templar Gold - well, it all made sense in the documentary.
Ten Years - I always wondered about Penelope. Really. I mean, standing by your man and all that. for twenty years? Hmm.
Thin Blue Mean Streak - Love, hate and second-hand bookshops. And what I said after the gig, OK.
Those Crows - this was my unlikely explanation why Corwin slept so long as a baby.
Time on a string - sundials, pocketwatches and the cycle of the Moon, loving, hurting and changing.
Tokyo Foxes - urban Japanese mythical shapechangers on the loose!
Tom's Cross - All true, this one: Tom Jeffers now has his cross back, and knows the full story.
Tom's Picture - take care what you leave on your easel at night. A cautionary tale.
Tribes of the Moon - inspired by Clive Barker's film 'Nightbreed'.
Triptych - a rather Kit Williams-esque fable, I always thought; and I really do have a pocket sundial.
Uffington Hill - there are white horses running wild through umpteen of my songs, but they all started out here.
Ursa Major - The old tale 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon mixed in with memories and assorted bears.
Valhalla Drive - written for Mary Ellen Wessels, who lives there.
Vampires' Courtin' - What happens when you watch too much CMT.
Velvet - dangerous woman, this.
Vitruvian Man - Leonardo da Vinci was, they say, the last man living who knew everything. He might not find this song's sentiment as reassuring as it would clearly like to be...
When I was a Mermaid - "That's you", said my daughter, pointing to the Waterhouse Mermaid picture we'd found, "That's you when you were a mermaid".
The Wolf at your Door - Inspired by the website www.wolfatthedoor.com, one of many which informed my views on global resource depletion, particularly peak oil. And because Red Riding Hood was busy on a climate change march.
Wolves & Changelings - Listen in safety. These creatures are my own.
Worlds End - There are many small villages throughout England that carry this curious name. I suppose such places could be considered the ideal refuge when the time comes.
I Want to be an X-Cat - Write a song about comics, they told me. Oh, and cats. What, the same song?
Lissa, Now Look What You Made Me Do - Entirely the fault of Lissa Allcock, not to mention those foolish listeners who said they liked the last cat song.
X-Libris - the song I swore I'd never sing.
Your Crimson Bride - OK, so a month later I was writing Madrigal... things change.
Zed Alley - I'll let you know what this song is about when I've figured it out myself.