Chorus:
Mississipi-sissi-simississipi-ssissi-sss-sss
Narrator 1: The mighty rivers of the world
Chorus: White Nile, Blue Nile, nothing
but Nile
Mile after mile
Narrator 2: Six-thousand six hundred and
ninety miles
Chorus: Amazon and Yangtse
Yellow River, Yenisei
Longer and deeper and wider
than many say.
Narrator 1: Great veins of silver and sludge,
the fast shifting, the sluggish.
The lazy Scheld, the
wandering Po,
From source to delta, from
riverbank to seafront
They slurp and flow.
Chorus Mississippi-Missouri, Zuzzouzou,
Missouri
Mississipi-sissi-simississipi-ssissi-ssss-sss
Narrator 1: Flood-plains, v-shaped valleys
The results of glaciation
Great dams and canals
Cutting nation from nation.
And here in Britain…
Narrator 2: Tyne and Tees and Don
Avon, Derwent, Calder, Cam
Mersey, Ouse and Dove
Severn, Tay and Trent and
Wear and Wye
Shove and shimmer past,
reflecting British sky;
And mighty father Thames
Gliding past traffic jams
Past Parliament and County
Hall
Loading bay and market stall
Greenwich Museum and Royal
Hospital
Chorus Mississippi-Missouri, Zuzzouzou,
Missouri
Mississipi-sissi-simississipi-ssissi-ssss-sss
Narrator 1: Ant and Bure and Burn and Mun
Yare and Wensum
Narrator 2: Glavern, Stiffkey and Spixworth
And then some!
For just as Dublin has its
Liffey
So has Wymondham its own
Tiffey
Chorus: Mississippi-Missouri, Zuzzouzou,
Missouri
Mississipi-sissi-simississipi-ssissi-ssss-sss
Mississippi-Missouri,
Zuzzouzou, Missouri
Mississipi-sissi-simississipi-ssissi-ssss-sss
Mississippi-Missouri,
Zuzzouzou, Missouri
Mississipi-sissi-simississipi-ssissi-ssss-sss
Weilala, lala, weilala
Narrator 1 Tiny Tiffey
Little squiffy
Brook or runnel
Trickling through its narrow
channel
No Officer but Other Ranks
Bursts out of its shallow
banks
Excels itself
In Nineteen-twelve.
Narrator 2 All rivers, however thin,
Bear light-brushed
wind-scars on their skin;
All rivers, however shallow,
Have seen more springs than
any swallow;
All rivers, short or long,
Continually sing their river
song.
Chorus: Weilala, lala, weilala
Lala
weilala, lala
Narrator 1: Through town and city
Narrator 2: Farm and field
Narrator 1: Past bridge and mill
Narrator 2: They’ve swayed and reeled.
Chorus 2: Drifted, shifted, lifted, Tifted
Mississippi!
Weilala!
Narrator 1 Hold yew hard, it be a titty-totty
little river
Narrator 2 Ha'
yer fa'r got a dickey, bor?' 'Yis, an' he want a fule
ter roide 'im, will yew cum? Time for a bit of mardle?
Lend a lug?
Chorus: Weilala-lala-weilala
Narrator 1: When dinosaurs roamed Norfolk
And pterodactyls sat in
trees
Eyeing the broads that were
still to be
When Neanderthals in furs
Were choosing loincloths His
and Hers
And Raquel Welch was fleeing
apes
Of miscellaneous crude
shapes;
Narrator 2: Before we broke from the great
mass of Europe;
Before Europe existed, when
the Scandinavian Ice Sheet
Covered Cromer and
Sheringham;
When you could walk through
the Last Glaciation
From Lowestoft to Le Havre
From Bacton to Bruges
From Cromer to Copenhagen
From Yarmouth to Ypres;
Before names even existed
Water was thinking:
Solo: My limbs are warming, shaking
loose in the cold
I am cutting through Avon,
Thames, hurtling underground
And springing through vents
filling valleys
Channelling myself down
narrow alleys,
Settling in ponds, marking
out great lakes
Everywhere the gurgling,
chortling sound
I make in my throat that now
and then aches
With the sheer joy of being,
Chorus: The water is beneath your feet
forever fleeing,
Running through crevice,
ditch and fleet.
The water thunders in the
air,
Falls from the sky, spreads
everywhere.
The water laps and nibbles
at the shore,
At the deep core of wells,
in the eyes of rocks,
And all the time tide ticks
and tocks
Under the frozen face of the
moon.
Long rivers start and very
soon
Arrive at the sea,
Cutting their desperate way
Between grass and hay.
Narrator 1: And the Tiffey was singing:
Solo: I have made myself small.
I scurry towards the Yare
Which is yet nameless.
I am young and feeble
When the sun shines for a
few months
I disappear beneath the
ground.
Small voices in the earth
Soaked into mud
Small hands against reeds
Small veins of clear blood
Small lives of birds and
worms,
Small sounds and simple
terms
I watch as I sing.
Take note of everything.
Narrator 2: Grimes Graves, Neolithic pots,
Hafted axes, early thatch,
Bronze, jade, amber
Narrator 1: We watch our ancestors clamber
Across fens, creep through
forests,
Erecting settlements,
working land,
Bringing down prey, fighting
and mating.
Narrator 2 Mating, swelling, sickening, dying
Narrator 1 Whispering, roaring, laughing,
crying.
Solo: Weilala.
Narrator 1 They clamber, they build, they
employ:
Narrator 2 Domestic creature
Sheep, cattle and poultry
Narrator 1 Cat and dog and horse
Narrator 2 Plough and scythe and fork
Narrator 1 Boat and line and hook
Narrator 2 Bridge, jetty and ford
Narrator 1 Manacle, pike and sword
Narrator 2 Bale and stook
Narrator 1 Money and medal
Narrator 2 Coins with holes in the middle
Narrator 2 Language and custom
Narrator 1 Ritual, dance and council
Chorus: Weilala,
Solo: And hands washing clothes,
And hands bathing feet
And the drowned drunk
And the drowned child
And the fall of leaves in
autumn
Red, brown, amber, black
The mottled track
Chorus: Weilala
Narrator 1 Man and woman
Briton, Roman
Narrator 2: Constantine, Vortigern
Angles, Saxons, Frisians,
Jutes
Burning and pillaging,
putting down roots.
Solo: There is blood in my veins.
In the clear light of day
You can see the red mist of
it
Flushing away.
Chorus Weilala
Narrator 1 Blank estates, blank unwritten
pages
Dark nights, dark deeds,
dark ages
Blind histories, blind rages
Narrator 2 Gone to gravities
Gone to grass
Gone to graves and
gravegoods.
Narrator 1 Brooch and comb
Oxgoad, spindlewhorl
Bowl
Fragments of the travelling
soul
Narrator 2 Slave labour, bondman, churl
Freeman, lord and master
Shielding or visiting
disaster.
Chorus Weilala
Sing the ripple and the wave
Sing the skirting of the
grave
Sing master, sing slave
Sing what is passing
Narrator 1 Then Raedwald, Bertha:
The Cross.
Felix, first Bishop of the
East Angles
Narrator 2 Now washed away in Dunwich
Narrator 1 Ely, Blythburgh, King Anna
Narrator 2 Peace for two centuries
Chorus Nothing disturbs the long run
The long run of the current
The current that drives to
the sea
The sea that absorbs the
fresh water
Fresh water settled with
salt
The river bed settled with
stones
The settlements, the set
course of things
An entire settled state of
affairs
Solo Look over the land, fields and
woods in the rain
The rain that drifts from
the north speckling the stream
As it runs by the village in
the flat gleam
Of Norfolk, in the thin
light of mid-morning
Gradually warming
Wymondham and surrounding
parishes
Chorus Wreningham, Hethel, Wicklewood,
Morley,
Ashwell and Fundenhall
Crownthorpe, Hethersett,
Carleton, Melton
Ketteringham, Wramplingham
Solo I am running through Wymondham
I swing north at Kimberley
North east to Wramplingham
Switch back to Barford
To end at Swan’s Harbour
My course may be brief
But I’ve never stopped
moving
Chorus Move forward, move forward.
Though you dam it, divert
it,
Force it through channels,
past mills
Like time it keeps moving
Its little waves ticking and
tickling
Marking the hours and the
centuries
Weilala
Narrator 1 But no peace is permanent
Narrator 2 Here come the west Saxons
Here come blood-feuds,
vendettas
Barrows, executions
Narrator 1 Here come the Danes
Narrator 2 Here come the Normans
Chorus Weilala
Narrator 1 Here comes d”Albini
Fresh out of Hastings
Where Harold has suffered
The mother of pastings.
Narrator 2 Here comes the Abbey
Here comes the Priory
Here Becket’s killers
Foaming and fiery.
Narrator 1 St Mary, St Alban,
D’Albinis in sequence
Bishops and friars
Novices, deacons
Solo Here’s the dead mother with her
baby
The auburn haired mother
scented
With cumin, coriander
Wrapped in mummy cloth
Untouched by worm or moth
Beyond sorrow or wrath
Narrator 1 The body of Maude d’Albini
Discovered in the presbytery
A daughter unborn
Sharing the lot
Of farmer and commoner
Of reeve, serf and summoner
Chorus For those laid to rest
Beside the small waters
For fathers and sons
For mothers and daughters
For all humankind
Quick souls of the parish
Fated to laughter, to
sorrow,
To vanish
Solo Untouched by worm or moth
Beyond sorrow or wrath
Chorus Weilala
Narrator 2 Battles between authorities
Between bishop and pope
Between kings and their
nobles
Between halberd and rope
Narrator 1 Kings come and go
Like nations and borders
Dissolve the monasteries
Break up the orders.
Narrator 2 For drunkenness, for fornication
For laxness in worship
For theft, for corruption
For oath breaking and
deception
Narrator 1 For greed, for enclosure.
For the thief with the cloak
Narrator 2 For all those who gather
To march from the oak
Fifteen forty-nine!
Narrator 1 Robert and William
Respectable farmer
Respectable tanner
Who would imagine them
Raising a banner
Narrator 2 That which I have enclosed I
return.
I tear down my fences
I argue, I summon
The land held in common
We share common fates
We’ll all lie beneath
Let us march onward
And camp on the heath
Narrator 1 But down came the army
They cut the men down
Hanged Robert from the
Castle
In full sight of town
Narrator 2 And William returned
At his fatal hour
To dangle and twist
On Wymondham West Tower..
Solo Rivulet, rivulet
Winding downstream
Below the blind eyes
Shut as to dream
Shut as to dream
As the body hangs high
And the late moon looks down
With its one silver eye
Rivulet, rivulet
Little Tiffey
Chorus The Tiffey at night
The silver dark holds
Its welter of life
Its chills and its colds
Small fish in the mud
The floatings of foam
The drift and the distance
Not too far from home.
Narrator 1 Up to Crownthorpe
The ancient temple
Where Britons once
worshipped
That Romans once tended
A great square of stone
Neglected, alone
Where history ended.
Narrator 2 Past Crownthorpe
Proceeding slenderly
Onward to Kimberley
Where find the laid stone
Of composer John Jenkins
Latterly of Maidstone
Retiring to Kimberley
Sleeping eternally.
Chorus
Under this Stone Rare Jenkins lie
The Master of the Musick Art
Whom from the Earth the God on High
Called up to Him to bear his part.
Aged eighty six October twenty seven
In anno seventy eight he
went to Heaven.
Solo There is music in all things.
In men, women, children and
creatures
In rivers and rain
In broken house and new plot
In the living and the dead
Between Kimberley and
Maidenhead
Chorus Music in all things
In breath and in walking
In bonding and breaking
In pleasure and aching
Solo I run past houses at night and
can hear
The dream-song of field
mouse and weasel
The music of the worm in its
cast
Tunnelling with the mole,
The scurrying drumbeat of
insect feet
Echoing on dry leaf
I am John Jenkins
Listening out for chords
Sounded by neighbouring
trees
The music I have been
listening to
Since fifteen ninety-two.
It is late.
Chorus Music late and early
Dawn, day, twilight, night
music
Just a little
By a little river.
Narrator 1 Kimberley,
Carleton Forehoe
Wramplingham
Narrator 2 At Carleton Forehoe
Lord Wodehouse
The Reverend Algernon
Wodehouse
The Reverend James Champion
Narrator 1 Samuel Laskey
Narrator 2 Shopkeeper
Narrator 1 Peter Thurling
Narrator 2 Carpenter
Narrator 1 William Thwaites
Narrator 2 Farmer
Narrator 1 John S Turner
Narrator 2 Farmer
Narrator 1 And the Bidewells of the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries
Narrator 2 Sullivans and Westbrooks and
Culmers
Narrator 1 Gooches and D’Urbans
Chorus Names in which we live
Names of the parish
Names running through
fingers
The sound that lingers
Of family, intimacy
Safety, legitimacy
Solo I ring with their names, when
you lean
To the edge of the stream
You can hear them, half
nonsense-half dream
Chorus Gooches and D’Urbans
Hymns, prayers and sermons
Oranges and lemons
Say the bells, say the bells
And the Tiffey says:
Solo Tiny bells in ringlets of water
The tinkling of cups and
spoons in the saucer
Frogcroak and batsqueak and
dovepurr
Birdsquabble, beakwhistle,
trill and churr
I run on light feet in the
darkness.
Chorus Mississippi-Missouri
Amazon
Weilala
Solo Light feet, light thoughts
Taken at a run
Billowing on
Narrator 1 To Wramplingham and the mill
Narrator 2 Three storeys, no chimney, the
Yorkshire rose on the gable…
Narrator 1 Archways under weed
Narrator 2 And the little miller girl…
Chorus
Eine Mühle seh’ ich blinken
Aus den Erlen heraus,
Durch Rauschen und Singen
Bricht Rädergebraus…
Solo Mill gleaming, rain teeming
Waters twist and purl
Around the miller girl…
Narrator 1 Four stones, the overshot
waterwheel,
The chimney pouring steam
The chimney falls, mill
vanishes
A story finishes…
Narrator 2 Hurry over little river
Past the fishing lake at
Barford
Chorus
Et wilkommen, et wilkommen,
Süßer Mühlengesang
Und das Haus, wie so
traulich!
Und die Fenster, wie blank!
Solo River, millstream, pond
Water calls to water
Murmurs under leaves
Like mother to daughter
Narrator 1 Down to Swan’s Harbour
Where our story is ended
Where the Tiffey joins the
Yare
Solo Water swallowed up in water
Water everywhere
Who knows how the streams
are mingled
Language mangled
Roots tangled
Chorus Weilala
Solo The mute swan sings
At the base of its throat
Its long white body a grace
note
Set afloat
Chorus Weilala
Little Tiffey
Mississippi
Solo So the mute river
Floats within the stream
Flecked with light,
Brilliant white,
Pale cream…
Chorus Weilala
Mekong
Euphrates
Orinoco
Mississippi
Missouri
Solo Silver lines at dusk
Exe, Wye and Usk
Golden lines at noon
Mimram, Efra, Churn
Glitter and burn
Chorus Weilala
Ganges, Thames, Rio Grande,
Solo Tiffey…
Narrator 1 Wymondham, Crownthorpe,
Solo Kimberley, Carleton Forehoe
Wramplingham Mill
Barford, Swan Arbour
Chorus Safe harbour
Weilala
Now the song is done
And the river dumb
As a mute swan.
Solo Tiffey
Chorus Weilala
|