THE GYPSY CHILD.

On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 05:02 PM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

THE GYPSY CHILD.

Long ago as the crow flies, down a rough track to an empty cottage in a boggy hollow below a hill in Wales.

Late in the season of nineteen-seventy, with no direction known and the crisp oak leaves muttering in the chill of late autumn.

In an upstairs bedroom, hidden in the night, by candlelight on dusty floorboards, reclining on a bare mattress and propped against a pillow, doodling with pencil and paper.

Wild memory traces of Hendrix and gypsies, nocturnal trains of association in the Dylan Thomas poetic mode of innocent muse inspiration blended together and distilled evoking random snail trails of images.

“The storm has blown away to the west...” Not stopping to consider if that's where it would have gone. It felt right, westering and slumber, nightfall and dreams, echoes of William Blake.

“Where the golden light still gleams...” A paraphrase of Blake's younger friend and pupil Samuel Palmer, and his 'Valley of Vision', “...e'er the golden light still gleams, lingering as if loth to part”, approximate quote.

“The horses are settling down to rest, ... and your eyes are full of dreams.” A descriptive picture emerging. Ah, the innocence of unpolluted imagined imagery. Songs of Innocence and Experience, all in the name of art.

Within two years and yet another down time lost in London, abruptly boarding a train and went west, as fate dictates, crossing the water, landing with nothing but ten pence, in Ireland, 'Inis Fodhla', Island of Destiny.

The layers and waves of diversity are complex to chart.

So i skip the tips of icebergs, sticking to the song in question, namely, 'Gypsy Child.' Such a concentration of experience being suspended within the icebergs themselves. Not that memory is really set in stone, or ice, what is reflected being subject to your angle of vision.

...”The flames they leap while the ravens sleep.

Your long hair flowing free.

The shivering drops when the rain has stopped,

and the stars above the trees.”

During the two and a half years spent with my twin daughters after they were born, i made a childrens' book based around the song. With colour illustrations on every page. Titled: 'Gypsy Jack in the Tumbledown Shack.' Beginning, “Gypsy Jack lives in the back of a ramshackle tumbledown blackberry shack. Down at the endy of a dusty old track with two gypsy horses 'Snow White' and 'Jet Black.' “

Thinking to get it published, and having made a hand coloured copy for my daughters, i later got stuck in London again where i showed it to various publishers.

It wasn't what anybody was looking for in the world of big business. Being a rather 'too romantic' expression of a healthy lifestyle for kids. No guns, no monsters, and no machines, just simple timeless country life from another age.

Despite the colour, one publisher in a streamlined highrise office reception said,”I think you're really a 'black and white man'.” While there's no lack of colour prejudice everywhere, how do you answer to being called “a black and white man”? Except to insist you're 'a person of colour.'

After preserving the book, text and artwork, in a plastic bag for twenty five years, it was eventually stolen by a Swedish person in Ireland who'd promised to publish it in Gaelic for the schools. I've just found i have eight photocopies of some of the illustrations remaining.

But back to the song.

...”The music played as the campfire blazed,

in a clearing down under the trees.

The horses coughed and the gypsies laughed

and the smoke rose high to the leaves.”

I've lived in Ireland now for over forty years. A year or two ago, i did some minimal shopping in town, which included a packet of lotus incense. Then went for a short walk in the grounds of the local 'stately home', where i realized the incense was missing.

Back in town, about to return to the cafe, about to close, where i thought i must have left it. When a man i didn't recognise crossed the road to ask if i was 'Martin.'

A brief chat as i mentioned the incense and the cafe about to close.

“Here it is,” as he handed me the lotus incense, “I found it in the road.” More to the point, how did he recognise me?

He went on to explain. He'd heard me regularly singing 'Gypsy Child', my first written song, in 'The Good Karma' restaurant in Dublin back in the early seventies, when he was a teenager. Not only that, but he's been singing it continuously around the folk clubs in Dublin ever since!

'The Good Karma' was the Republic's first ever vegetarian restaurant, situated at 4 Great Strand street, off Caple St. Dublin.

Founded by a brilliant friend and artist no longer with us, Bob Bartlett, bless you Bob, your friends and both your families since dispersed. The Good Karma burned down to the ground some years after, with the loss of life of Eamon, poet and sponsor who went back in to rescue a kitten. Bob later drowned in a sudden storm one night crossing from Schull harbour to Long Island, West Cork where he lived with his two families. I was on the island at the time it happened.

Well, with the incense, and the song and much experience in common, Tarlach and i had to go and discuss this over a coffee and, as he had his guitar with him, to compare notes so to speak.

Amazing how a simple song can travel through time and space.

“So now the fire is settling down

and the caravan windows shine bright.

The winds just sigh and the nightbirds fly,

Go softly and blow out the light.”

“You're a lonesome child of a gypsy wild

and the night is calling you home.

Your sleepy eyes by the campfire light,

where the pines and the wild winds moan.”

So perhaps a story is never lost but simply morphs into yet another fractal, this being the latest one.

Now, thousands of people must have heard it on the blog. I know gypsies are known to get around.

This one obviously has a life of its own.~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rainbowmaker

Art: Gypsy Child Illustrations, martin law