Last Halloween, in a virtual gig before COVID-19 made it cool, The Indelicates and I teamed with a range of pro-EU artists for our third pass at cursing Brexit.
We couldn’t stop it. But we cursed the SHIT out of it.
Today, in the face of Johnson’s cowardice and idiocy in the face of these awful times, for reasons we can only guess… it’s time to re-up the Working.
Here’s my original script. Sing along with the tune at the bottom.
let’s get him gone by the 31st: Seven months to the day after I told him “you will wish you had died in a ditch”.
I speak here tonight as a cunning-man of Albion; bound by oath and mark to walk the borderlands and protect my tribe from the dark. And we of the cunning have ever known that borders are not walls.That crossing them is the point. That without people from everywhere else crossing the shores of Albion, there would be no Albion.
That crossing a border changes you. And that some people fear change, and hate difference, so much that they would wall up every border there is, no matter who that harms… even themselves.
Those borders which the cunning protect are porous and open to all but that which means harm… but harm comes all too often from within.
The cunning is about relationships.
Only a fool burns their relationships for no good reason.
Only a dangerous and selfish fool burns other people’s relationships for profit or ideology.
I took my Oath and Mark on Referendum Day, 23rd of June in the year of Their Lord 2016: the Mark of the White Horse, to have Albion in my flesh and blood because I could see the dark was rising. Twice now, my kith and I have stood to oppose the vicious poison of Brexit Hate, and twice have I cursed that enterprise of blaming Europe and using that to wrap fascism in the Union Flag. And now, twice I can say, despite the lies, the bribes, the corruption and the death… We’re Still Fucking Here.
We stand again on the threshold. We have cursed them, we have opposed them, but still they push on. Still they claim The Will of the People they deceived, the authority of a Democracy they undermined.
We stand for all peoples of Albion: a Mongrel Nation, because all the first natives of these islands drowned ages past in Doggerland. The ghost soil of Albion grows richer for every new person who walks it, and we reject none who call it home. And the ghost soil knows that all who have walked here, sweated and bled here, are part of its story. Nobody gets to rewrite that; to lie about our shared past and make it whiter than white, spin a false tale of purity and sovereignty. Nobody gets to use the myths and legends of Albion to destroy its people, to banish them from walking the ghost soil.
Not without cost.
It is time to pay up.
So once again, by the power of the cunning and in Albion’s name, I call the forces we have raised against the predators, thieves and crushers of hope.
I first call Elen of the Ways, she who makes the paths free and clear.
I call all the ancestors, gods and Fair Folk, wherever they first came from, who are part of Albion’s mixed and complex soul.
I call Brigantia, warrior goddess of Boudicca.
I call Arthur and Merlin and Robin Hood.
I call The Wild Hunt and Black Shuck.
I call the warriors of these isles from the lost past and history known; from Wat Tyler and Jack Cade – he who first called Black Shuck to aid the poor, women and children – to the Suffragettes and those who fought at Cable Street and the Battle of Britain and the Poll Tax riots.
I call Saint George, Turkish mercenary, and I call the Dragon entwined with him.
I call William Blake and Austin Osman Spare and all the artists and poets who saw Albion most clear and told its rudest and most honest truths.
I call John Constantine, The Laughing Magician, patron saint of back alley magic and master of synchronicity.
I call all the nameless ones, the forgotten dead who ever stood between hope and fear, compassion and rejection.
I call upon all these powers and principalities once again to defend the oppressed and to oppress the indefensible.
And I call upon all listening at this time to reject the dark heart of Brexit hate, the wicked song of Mister Punch, and to stand with those who refuse fascism and bigotry.
May the cunning aid and keep you all.
And now I call on other forces to aid us at this threshold point.
The politicians who lied about Brexit, who misled the folk of these lands, have broken their oaths. They swore to “do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”, and they broke this oath.
The ones who chose to treat leaving Europe as a war have broken their essential oaths by treaty to the people of those nations also.
The Queen, to whom they swore fealty, likewise swore on her coronation to “cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all her judgements”. By supporting her Prime Minister, in full knowledge of his malfeasance, she also broke her oath. The Monarch and her government are out of balance with the Land: the Land stands above and beyond them all.
And so, I call forth Horkos, son of Eris, he who brings full consequence to oathbreakers, to have his way with them. They refuse us justice? Then we will take our own.
I call all the spirits of the wronged dead of austerity, racism, homophobia, transphobia and violence against those of us who do not fit their pale and narrow ideals of Normal, to claim the vengeance which they are owed.
I call all the powers of Albion and beyond, from fact and fiction, myth and legend, named and unnameable, on behalf of all the good folk of these isles and lands to three tasks:
To heal and protect all in these isles from the worst deprivations of this unnecessary strife: may those who saw the dark rise be given the light they need, and may those fooled by the liars and thieves have the scales fall from their eyes… but knowing that before forgiveness, they must make restoration to gain our protection.
To unite all the peoples of these tiny islands, no matter their origin, against the darkness and hate of these times, to stand against fascism.
To render those who willingly supported these cruel actions against the land and its people as Thrice Without: May they all be left without money, friends or luck.
They are scented as prey to every beast and demon that ever walked these isles: may their souls be torn open and left to be fed upon.
Thrice now we have stood to bind and banish the darkness we have named as Mister Punch.
To the current host of that dark spirit, Alexander Boris De Pfeiffel Bloody Stupid Johnson, I also gift this…
You think yourself cut from the same cloth as Winston Churchill?
Very Well: May the Black Dog haunt your steps evermore.
You will wish you died in a ditch.
We see you all. We see you very well.
We know who has been doing it, and We Will Send Them Back.