The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113179   Message #2406343
Posted By: Andy Jackson
06-Aug-08 - 05:15 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Fiddlers Hill (Peter Bellamy) 'A dark way
Subject: Lyr Add: FIDDLERS HILL (Peter Bellamy)
As promised, here are the words.
I transcribed them years ago from the above mentioned classic L.P. Sweet Williams Ghost. George Deacon and Marion Ross.
Apologies if anything has been changed to suit my way of singing it!

Andy

FIDDLERS HILL

From Binham down to Walsingham is not so far to walk,
The lanes wind through the gentle land trod smooth with Norfolk chalk.
But once there was another way, a dark road 'neath the ground.
And down that way there went one day a fiddler and his hound.

CHORUS: On the dark way, the deep way, a way beneath the ground,
And down that way there went one day a fiddler and his hound.

In Binham stood a Priory tall, built in a far off age,
It prospered long before it stood to bluff King Harry's rage.
The Abbey up in Walsingham was likewise tumbled down.
But Henry's men could not find out the way beneath the ground. CHORUS

No man knew why those monks of old had tunnelled 'neath the sand,
Perhaps to hide their shining gold, 'neath Mother Churches land.
Men dug, men delved, men knocked and tapped, they listened for the sound,
Of echoes booming from that crypt that lay beneath the ground. CHORUS

So years passed by and men forgot except in fancy's train,
Until one day upon that spot there fell a shower of rain.
It loosened sand and flint and chalk revealing by a mound,
The proof and truth of old wives talk, the way beneath the ground. CHORUS

But no man would enter into that dark maw, as black as any well.
They stood and they trembled at the door as at the gates of hell.
Until up spoke a blind fiddler who roamed from town to town,
Saying "I am blind, dark holds no fear", he swore he would go down. CHORUS

So he put his fiddle up to his chin, his dog led on before,
And at that dark gate they entered in to be never seen no more.
Into black night he bravely strayed and still they could hear the sound,
Of the merry fiddle tune he played, beneath the cold, cold ground. CHORUS

They followed where his tune would go, across the meadows gay.
And they above heard him below, for as long as he did play.
But when they reached a certain hill, there could be heard no sound.
Beneath that hill his bow fell still, on the road beneath the ground. CHORUS

Three hundred years have rolled away since the fiddle it fell still,
And yet this place until this day is known as Fiddlers Hill.
And when they widened of the way, to their surprise they found,
White bones revealed to the light of day, white bones of a man and hound. CHORUS