The Creel & the Crock & the Cauldron

Song Weavings and Spell Bindings

We are delighted to announce the imminent release of Carolyn’s new song album, the first she has recorded in nine years!

This wonderfully diverse and unique blend of songs ranges from energetic drum chants to sacred soul ballads to comic ditties to ancestral proto-celtic prayers. These have been gathered into the cauldron of this album over recent years from her workshop journeys, travels in the far north and song adventures with groups of wild women. However, they mostly have been shaped by Carolyn’s personal steps along the hag road, that knotty, gnarly, nebulous route towards being old, older and very old. Crones, it seems, have a lot to sing about!

Sisters of the Braid emerged from our sanctuary land on Dartmoor, a prayer song that evolved during night vigils at the deer camp, near to the early summer birthing ground of red deer. Antlered Woman was found in the far northwest Scottish mountains, where we make many return journeys to solitary autumnal wilderness. The Hagetty Drum and Old Woman Tree were created for Carolyn’s first Book of Hag (Bark) but have not been recorded before. We Drum our Path Through the Heron’s Marsh is central to the story that unfurls in her second Book of Hag (Peat). Song of the Braided River is a beautiful compilation of watery songs, a cord of fluid vocal harmonies. A tribe of enthusiastic singers joined Carolyn in the studio to record the chorus lines of Thank You Women and the entirety of the Hag’s Marching Song – complete with robust cymbals and a suffragette disposition! Far Side of the Fire evolved during a single night as a small group of women held vigil for a departing sister – it is already being absorbed into the collection of songs that we lean into during farewells and transitional moments. And Björnmor Trumma was written in the Arctic, a honouring of the drum maker, the ancient ice and the bear mother who prowls through our primordial dreamscapes.

SPECIAL PRE-RELEASE OFFER

This album is available on CD format on May 13. Advance orders are now being taken – these will include the gift of a limited edition collection of 8 postcards (4 x 2 black & white designs) taken with Carolyn by award winning Slovakian photographer Gabriela Teplicka that celebrate the hag journey. We will release the download version on May 9. We will add more information and song clips here as the release date approaches but meanwhile here are the song titles and a scattering of lyrics to offer you a flavour of what will be arriving here soon…

The creel and the crock and the cauldron three
we will dance o sisters with the moon’s magnificence
the wise and the wild and the witchery
we will spin o sisters while the moon unravels us
moon unshackles us, moon she sets us free

Slowly we dance the heavens 
and the world turns gently round
softly we touch the heavens
and the world moves magically
world lives lovingly, world turns tenderly round…

THE CREEL & THE CROCK & THE CAULDRON
BJÖRNMOR TRUMMA (bear mother drum)
SISTERS OF THE BRAID (evening prayer & morning song)
ANTLERED WOMAN (bennâ-benâ)
THE HAGETTY DRUM
WE DRUM OUR PATH THROUGH THE HERON’S MARSH
HYMN OF THE BRAIDED RIVER
WHERE WE ARE BORN (high hills version)
ANCHORING POWER (wala nîs an wîrjânjâ)
OLD WOMAN TREE
HAG MEDLEY (featuring Crone’s Foot Song & March Of The Hags)
THANK YOU WOMEN
FAR SIDE OF THE FIRE