Carolyn Hillyer

A trail of hag tales and old mother chants. Original stories interwoven with new songs created from the Bronze Age mother tongue. This is a double CD package and is also available as a download. We are offering both this album Winter Folded Everything Inside A Shawl of Feathers and the Book of Hag  for a postage discount of £2 within the UK, with postage charged as a single item only for orders outside the UK. To order both items please follow this link.

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For the first time we have made a recorded collection of Carolyn’s original stories, interwoven with new songs created by her from the Proto-Celtic Bronze Age mother tongue. The result is over two hours of tales and chants that are mystical and magical, powerful and surprising, often entrancing and sometimes very funny. These recordings invite you, entice you, summon you, to travel through a rich landscape of words where old women, crones and grandmothers navigate remembered forests, forgotten cottages, rebellious rivers, revealing ice, transforming seas, a patient bear, a primordial wolf… and a glaring hag with a trolley basket.

For this collection of stories Carolyn has drawn from her 2016 publication The Weavers’ Oracle and her Book of Hag (First Season) published in 2018. The songs are all recorded here for the first time, crafted by her from Proto-Celtic, the Bronze Age language which spread throughout western Europe and into the British islands, feeding into the later Celtic languages. Carolyn’s gently hypnotic spoken voice blends beautifully with additional instrumentation and subtle production work by Nigel Shaw.

For more information about Carolyn’s Book of Hag and details on ordering both items together, please visit here.

First Album
1. KADJO NANI | grandmother prayer for opening
2. THE BERRY POUCH
3. THE CHALK COTTAGE
4. SAGO AN SNIJO | the blanket and the braid
5. THE WEAVER’S DAUGHTER
6. A KETTLE OF BILBERRY SOUP
7. ENIGENA WERITO | daughters of this earth
8. DIAMONDS AND BONES
9. REBELLION AT THE HOUSE OF RIVERS
10. SONDO ABONYA | this is the river
11. BRINY TALE
12. WITCH TREE
13. KAMAWO AN OKKNU | yearning and returning

Second Album
14. KAMAWO AN OKKNU | yearning and returning
15. THE FIRST DRUM
16. ONE EVENING AT THE COSMIC LOST AND FOUND
17. GALWEYO | we call you
18. THE FEARSOME BERRIDRAUN
19. MOONING THE BEAR
20. NOIBO NOUSLO NOKWE | we dream of fire
21. GRANNY YULE
22. GY NESKI’YN | chant of the ancients
23. A SONG WE ALL KNEW HOW TO SING
24. KADJO NANI | grandmother prayer for ending

SAGO AN SNIJO | the blanket and the braid

Kommano nis wertito
nis andeweg snateja bretto
sago an snijo
we remember all that we have spun
all that we have woven, path of needle to the thread
the blanket and the braid

kommano sago an snijo
kommano kwakwo witsu
we remember the blanket and the braid
we remember all our wisdom

kommano grendjo soito
saman soito nata soito
kwakwo witsu
we remember the magic of our bundles
the magic of our circles, the magic of our songs
all our wisdom

MOONING THE BEAR

There was a hag who walked a very long distance in order to find a place in which she might hibernate. The spring of her life had been thrilling and fast; it had sent her dashing this way and that in search of adventures, new flavours and love. Her summer had been rich, garlanded with joys and challenges; she had woven such a feast of colours and songs and wild experiences into its meadowsweet days and its passionflower nights. When autumn had reached her, she was ready and willing to step into the mellow, to slow down the pace enough to harvest the fruits of all she had learned. Now her life had reached winter and she needed somewhere she could be quiet and dream… (excerpt)

SONDO ABONYA | this is the river

Sondo abonya
abonya kara siro
abonya gunya ni
woluko ni galaro kerda
abonya ni swer si meldu…

this is the river
the river I have yearned for
the river that has known me
that has dreamed my lonely journey
this river sings me to her arms…

REBELLION AT THE HOUSE OF RIVERS

Women had been arriving for many days to the House of Rivers. They all felt the growing agitation in the air, and a general restlessness in the earth. As for what was happening to the streams and pools and springs, it was far beyond their experience. At the House of Rivers the women congregated and discussed the situation. They sat in clusters by the hearth pits, becoming in turn curious, anxious, furious, frightened. They wondered if other women higher up between the mountains or lower down across the plains were meeting in their river houses. They understood that something was coming but they could not pin those feelings into a solid fact… (excerpt)