Dear Mudcat, Les B told me that there was a thread on a song which I wrote, so I am replying to "Dylan O'Thomas" et al. I wrote the song a good while back -- maybe over twenty years now -- when I was living in Cardiff, and active in the peace movement. I recorded it for SAIN records on an album of my own songs which was actually titled 'Rainbow Warriors'; just after it was released Greenpeace came out with a compilation of big names which was also called 'Rainbow Warriors'. There's plenty of scope for confusion here, as there are numerous songs with the same title, tho' I think mine was among the early ones. (There are also several Kevin Littlewoods, one of whom is, I believe, a folk singer in an Irish band called Dry Country; another works in academia, I think as a physicist; another KL was imprisoned for life for killing a member of his family, in Doncaster I believe! Well, none of those are me; but I am also the KL who co-wrote a book called 'Of Ships and Stars; Maritime heritage and the founding of the National Maritime Museum', which you can get on Amazon, and which is still available through the NMM). I wrote the song after reading a poem from the Native American tradition, called 'In beauty may I walk', the words of which were reproduced in the Rattle Bag anthology by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. In the end the song came out nothing like as lovely as the poem, but I kept the idea of walking, and I gave it a sort of muted war drum beat. The end of the chorus came from an epigram in a book by James Baldwin, which stuck in my mind, 'God sent Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time'. Not being a religious type, I can't give you chapter and verse for the story of Noah, but you'll get the idea as you read the words, printed below. It may seem a little 'wordy';it needs to be sung fairly forcefully, and that sort of copes with the internal rhymes, etc.. Sorry I can't supply a music file; you may be able to download it somewhere on the net. You can hear one of my new songs 'On Morecambe Bay' on a forthcoming album from the Bothy Folk Club; more on that from Les, I guess, in due course. Thanks very much for all the interest, I hope you enjoy the song. I think it still stands up, the world's problems haven't gone away.
Best wishes,
Kevin Littlewood

Rainbow Warriors,

1. When the earth is sick and ailing,
And the grass sings a sorrowful song,
When the sand slips the glass
Of the hours as they pass
And your time does't seem very long.
When the rivers dry in the mountains,
And the sun sears the soil to its core
Rise up from your knees like the waves rise up on the shore

chorus
Will you walk with the Rainbow Warriors
At one with the earth and the sky?
Will you learn how to bend
Like the trees in the wind
As a hurricane passes you by?
Come and walk with the Rainbow Warriors,
And watch for the peaceful sign?
Hold fast to the rainbow
Or it will be the fire next time.

2. There where the white fire flickers,
Out in the midnight's glow
Where the icebergs wheel
And the blood of the seal
Runs crimson across the snow.
And where the Northern Lights lie lonely
On the blubber of a big blue whale
You will see them arrive
With a flash of their rainbow sail.

chorus
Will you walk etc.,.

3. Out where the good grain glistens
Where the white wheat waves in the wild
They are planting guns
Far away from the sun
Down in the depths they are piled.
And a harvest of hell will be harrowed,
As up from the dark they ascend,
Take a spade in your hands
Go and dig where the rainbow ends

chorus
Will you walk etc

Repeat last line and fade/ end

PS You can vary the 'Will you walk'/ 'Come and walk' as you feel.