THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814) - THE HIVE OF LIBERTY

(AFTER THE NAME OF THOMAS SPENCE’S BOOKSHOP AT 8 LITTLE TURNSTILE, HIGH HOLBORN)

I am a small and humble man,

my body frail and broken.

I strive to do the best I can.

I spend my life on tokens.

I traipse through Holborn all alone,

hawking crazy notions.

I am the lonely people’s friend.

I live on schemes and potions.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

I am a teeming worker bee.

My dignity is working.

My restless thoughts swell like the sea.

My fantasies I’m stoking.

There is a rebel inside me,

a sting about to strike.

I hawk my works around the street.

I put the world to rights.

For, in my heart and in my mind,

ideas swarm right through me.

Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,

my words just flow like wine,

my words just flow like wine.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

'In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in.' (George Orwell)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IMy-h2re3g

Thomas Spence was born in Newcastle in 1750. Spence was the leading English revolutionary of his day, with an unbudgeable commitment to individual and press freedom and the common ownership of the land.

His tracts, such as The Rights of Man (Spence was, perhaps, the first to use the phrase) and The Rights of Infants, along with his utopian visions of 'Crusonia' and 'Spensonia', were the most far-reaching radical statements of the period. Spence was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814. 

FOLK SONG FOR THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814)

Down by the old Quayside,
I heard a young man cry,
among the nets and ships he made his way.
As the keelboats buzzed along,
he sang a seagull’s song;
he cried out for the Rights of you and me.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,
he gave up all his life
just to be free.
Up and down the cobbled Side,
struggling on through the Broad Chare,
he shouted out his wares
for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,
he was a man the likes you rarely see.
With a pamphlet in his hand,
and a poem at his command,
he haunts the Quayside still
and his words sing.

His folks they both were Scots,
sold socks and fishing nets,
through the Fog on the Tyne they plied their trade.
In this theatre of life,
the crying and the strife,
they tried to be decent and be strong.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,
he gave up all his life
just to be free.
Up and down the cobbled Side,
struggling on through the Broad Chare,
he shouted out his wares
for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,
he was a man the likes you rarely see.
With a pamphlet in his hand,
and a poem at his command,
he haunts the Quayside still
and his words sing.


KEITH ARMSTRONG




(from the music-theatre piece ‘Pig’s Meat’ written for Bruvvers Theatre Company)

DOMINIC WINDRAM - TWO MORE POEMS

Lost in the wilderness

We are lost in the miasmal darkness

With inadequate tools to help us find

Our way to the unbroken kingdom

We are lost in the labyrinth of words

For we are incapable of naming

The essence of blood or fire or star

We are far from hearing wise voices

Or signs in the wilderness we have to

Resign ourselves to fragments of bone

& obscure purposes that cannot

Be made clear by the light of reason

We pretend that we have made progress with

Liturgies that cannot adequately

Describe the sheer fullness of Being

Yet there’s a reassuring, spectral wind

From Time’s distant, long forgotten shores that

Still stirs intermittingly through the cracks

In the frail and all too human structure

Freedom Tower

Monolithic glass structure

Proudly reflecting the sky

Modern tower of Babel

Nerve centre of capitalism

With cloud bursting antenna

To receive signals from lesser gods

Born of grand hubris

Deliberately detached

From the world’s perpetual pain

With no sense of the tragic

For progress must continue

Despite contemporary hindrances

Monolithic glass structure

Penetrating the sky

Illuminated intermittingly

With the red, white and blue

Of a peculiar conception

Of freedom

SEAMLESS CHANGE

Standing on this hill, this mounded culm chucked
Out from hollowed earth, where darkness sucked
Men down into its precious depths, pressed them
Beneath pages of rock hard to the seam,
The black seam and all its different damps,
To pick out, despite scarred backs and leg cramps
And the wheezing of props, their value in coal.
But then, another blackening, the fall
From favour, the locking of gates, sealing
Of shafts, with a bitter present stealing
The future, leaving only heritage.
So very difficult these days to gauge
From atop this hillock of rough-grassed spoil
Where the headstock once stood. That patch of soil
And clay, fenced and sapling planted, must be
The site of the bathhouse. Not much to see
Now for joggers and dog walkers, strollers
And fly-tippers, those casual callers
Whose fleeting footfalls leave barely a mark
And no echoes deep, deep down in those dark
Galleries settling beneath a country park.

                                                                                                Dave Alton

'THE HOT-HEADED GENIUSES OF SANDGATE'

The hot-headed geniuses of Sandgate are leaping round town tonight
but the place is drunk and the walkways stagger
and there seems no sense in historic streets.
Where old sailors lamented and hand carts rested
and ships grew up on the river,
the times merge in the swaying crowds
and fancy dress keelmen swig in the night.
Here's the 'hot headed geniuses'
gannin doon with the tide
to plant bites on fresh lasses' necks,
and the hours keel over
and the days rock on,
as the love-bitten 'Lass of Byker Hill'
falls in the Keelman's Arms.
So let the pipers play
this Tyneside story
all over again.
It's a Geordie nightmare,
a black and white dream
all for you,
with knobs on.


 
KEITH ARMSTRONG/TREVOR TEASDEL

JAMIE ALLAN (1734-1810)

JUMPING JAMIE!

The poems below were written by Keith Armstrong for a touring show ‘O’er the Hills’ by Northumberland Theatre Company in 1988, recounting the life of Northumbrian Piper, Jamie Allan (1734-1810), and based on an original idea by Armstrong.

The show featured Armstrong in performance with associate writer Graeme Rigby together with  musicians Kathryn Tickell, on Northumbrian Pipes, Rick Taylor, on trombone, Paul Flush on keyboards, Keith Morris on vocals and saxophone and Joan McKay on vocals, with original music by Taylor, Flush and Tickell.

JUMPING JAMIE!

A mischievous man you might say

but with beauty did he play,

with his wee fingers

tripping

over songs.

When he piped,

the rivers and girls came

running.

The world danced

when Jamie drooled

on his lance.

Yes, when Jamie smoked,

the salmon

leapt in his pipes.

A bit of a lad and bad

but oh what a way he had;

with the fish

and his hands leaping,

he set the salmon and some women 

jumping:

Jumping Jamie!

Home your heart

in your hymns,

your wild Northumbrian hymns -

Jumping Jamie!

Home your heart.

JAMIE LIVES!

I see him.

Everytime I see

the Coquet,

I see him.

Everytime

I walk

the Cheviots,

I sense his voice.

I hear him

in the Curlew;

I hear Jamie

in the wind.

His tunes

haunt me still;

his wandering fingers

ripple through

the grass.

His tunes splash

across the river,

skim

in me.

IN THE YOUNG DAYS

In the young days,

I swam,

dipped in the River Coquet.

Along the banks I ran,

shouting for the sun.

In all wild flowers,

I’d lie,

picking out such scent,

jinking jaunty amongst sheep,

dancing for my keep.

Now by the Ganges I walk,

the evening streaming blood;

such wanders through a different land,

such songs of our dead brothers.

In the scale of things I am

but a small fish abroad;

all rivers flow together,

all wonders outlive man.

Jamie Allen I,

piper by the sea;

notes flow inside me,

streams flow by.

OUTCLASSED*

I never really knew my station,

my destination.

I was restless,

yearning.

Could never settle

for second best.

Yet I was

consistently

outclassed.

Ending my days

dingily alone,

stripped of illusions

and riddled

with humility.

My ego starved,

my regal palate fed

on bread

and Coquet water.

*performed by Mike Tickell on the Kathryn Tickell album ‘Common Ground’ (1988)

FOOTNOTE:

Jamie Allan, the most renowned inhabitant of the House of Correction, Elvet Bridge, was born of gypsy parentage near Rothbury in the 1730s and his accomplishment on the Northumbrian pipes earned him recognition from the Duchess of Northumberland. 

He became resident at Alnwick but misbehaved and lost her favour. Subsequently he led a remarkable and irresponsible itinerant life throughout Europe, Asia and Africa but on his return was convicted in 1803 at Durham Assizes of horse stealing, and condemned to death. This sentence was later commuted to transportation but, probably due to his advanced age and poor health, this last journey was not enforced and he spent the remaining seven years of his life in the House of Correction. This is the building where Hollathan's is now housed. 

He died in 1810 on the day before the Prince Regent granted him a free pardon. It is said that his ghost wanders the dank, dark cells and that the plaintive sound of his pipes can sometimes be heard. 

No Wonder! What greater punishment to a wandering gypsy than this? Even his request to be buried in his native Rothbury went unheeded and he was interred in St. Nicholas' Churchyard, now part of Durham's busy Market Place. 

BOOKINGS: Contact Northern Voices Community Projects tel 0191 2529531 if you are interested in  booking the ‘Jumping Jamie!’ show featuring Keith Armstrong and Ann Sessoms (Northumbrian Pipes).

I WILL SING OF MY OWN NEWCASTLE

sing of my home city

sing of a true geordie heart

sing of a river swell in me

sing of a sea of the canny

sing of the newcastle day

sing of a history of poetry

sing of the pudding chare rain 

sing of the puddles and clarts

sing of the bodies of sailors

sing of the golden sea

sing of our childrens’ laughter

sing of the boats in our eyes

sing of the bridges in sunshine

sing of the fish in the tyne

sing of the lost yards and the pits 

sing of the high level railway

sing of the love in my face

sing of the garths and the castle

sing of the screaming lasses

sing of the sad on the side

sing of the battles’ remains

sing of the walls round our dreams

sing of the scribblers and dribblers

sing of the scratchers of livings

sing of the quayside night

sing of the kicks and the kisses

sing of the strays and the chancers

sing of the swiggers of ale

sing of the hammer of memory

sing of the welders’ revenge

sing of a battered townscape

sing of a song underground

sing of a powerless wasteland

sing of a buried bard

sing of the bones of tom spence

sing of the cocky bastards

sing of a black and white tide

sing of the ferry boat leaving

sing of cathedral bells crying

sing of the tyneside skies

sing of my mother and father

sing of my sister’s kindness

sing of the hope in my stride

sing of a people’s passion

sing of the strength of the wind 

KEITH ARMSTRONG

(as featured on BBC Radio 4)