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Unconsecrated Ground

from The Wanderlings Volume Two by Leslie Hudson

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about

Notes on Track 4:

As a person who has always seen and felt the metaphysical world as keenly as the physical, I am drawn to cemeteries and ruins and fascinated by how people view death and the dead. In a churchyard the dead have been laid to rest so by and large they are resting. In a burial ground that has not been blessed by the church or state that lies outside the common understanding of inclusion, wherein are interred the perceived dregs and misfits of society, there is great unrest.

I am drawn to these places like a magnet. To the unfinished stories, unheard pleas, to the unwanted and unwashed and unloved, abandoned by their families. All because they transgressed the norm, or the contemporary interpretation of Biblical truth, or simply had no name.

I’m careful to use the term Tribe very sparingly since it implies a sacred connection between kindred spirits. It carries weight when I say this is my Tribe. When I go, if it matters to those I’ve left behind, leave me with my people where I belong.

Inspiration:

The Potters Field in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. (Harper Collins Publishers: New York, 2008).

Various cemeteries in Ireland, esp. on An mBlascaod Mór, Blasket Islands, Co Clare, Ireland

The Christian practice of burying “criminals” (including witches, prostitutes, suicides & the poor), outcasts, the unidentifiable & the unnamed separate from the rest

lyrics

They can burn and scatter me
Wrap me up and bury me
I won’t make a sound
As long as I am bound
To unconsecrated ground

Come to me, o children
Whose mothers bore the shame
Nameless and abandoned
Gone before you came

Take the long road round the hill
Skip among the nettles
Follow now the moonlit path
Strewn with fallen petals

Come to me, o sorrowful
From the razor’s edge
Anguished and afflicted
Leapers from the ledge

Oh, take the long road round the hill
Tread upon the nettles
Follow now the moonlit path
Blanketed with petals

Come to me, o drowned ones
Taken by the sea
Leeched of all your traces
Anchorless and free

Take the long road round the hill
Past the stinging nettles
Follow now the moonlit path
Marked by scattered petals

Come to me, o sisters
Lovers for a price
Healers and diviners
Burned by your advice

Take the long road round the hill
Gather up the nettles
Follow now the moonlit path
Smoothed with whitened petals

Come to me, o fringes
Shadowy and pale
Do not be forgotten
Step beyond the veil

Oh, take the long road round the hill
Shiver through the nettles
Ours will be the moonlit path
We will be the petals

They can burn and scatter me
Wrap me up and bury me
I won’t make a sound
As long as I am bound
To unconsecrated ground

credits

from The Wanderlings Volume Two, released January 27, 2016

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Leslie Hudson Stratford, Ontario

Leslie Hudson is a Canadian singer songwriter and pianist. Their albums range from storytelling styles to bluesy bar rock to dialed-up, full-band homages to pop culture. With lyrical piano skills and a voice that cuts through the crowd, their songs dive deep into archetype and folklore, modernizing ancient voices & shining a spotlight on the shadowy paths we walk through life, myth and media. ... more

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