About Elderbrook

Duration: 1:30

Instrumental

Two teens escape from a bushfire in Australia, when a vortex sucks them through a portal into another dimension.

Duration: 3:41

How enchanted fountains learned the song of ancient seas, ever singing, murmuring, sighing.

Lyrics

Once upon a time in a land beneath a dream

Fountains learned the Song of a Faery sea

Echoing laughter glimmering in their gleam

Run, run an’ row to the City of Alderbee!

Would you be an imp on the barge of a water-street?

Sail into a shell with the memory of a leaf?

Listen down, listen long, to the Lorelei of the Deep,

Shimmer oh shingle, nymph an’ nixie ‘neath…

From the waterfall to the lake of Antiquity

Songpool flow, awaken Lemurian trees,

Come, come along with the paladin of the free

Can, can you hear the fountains of Alderbee?

Duration: 0:51

A shapeshifting cicada, who sometimes morphs into a toadstool…

Lyrics

Hey, Mr Shawnwort,

Give me your sweet understanding

Let them say we’re just a little crazy

So are the best people I know!

Hey Mr Shawnwort,

Your eyes are like the almonds on a gingerbread man,

Soft like a belly of a mossy saxifrage,

Full of all the joy we make – joy, joy!

Duration: 4:06

A green-goblin Varn leads the humans down through passages of Elderbrook to his Moss Farm

Lyrics

We followed after the stranger in the firelight

He said he’d like to lead any child from the Openland down

How human could we remain in this place? So we changed:

The candle called us through, and we came out in another space

Now, we are the Brain of the Seed:

Borne ‘long Rivers of Gold and Green…

There’s no way out of the Dreaming when you’ve got here –

For once you’re home again you’ll only wanna travel back this way

Like the sand calls to the sea; So, you’ll want to go to your dream!

Woreala! Amar Woreala!

Sometimes you let your soul fly ahead of you!

She dances where you dream, catching tree-claws in the dawn.

They left her tangled, laughing in the river-weed:

The strange thing’s, I don’t care if I never get her back again.

Nobody catches us, so we are free:

Now, we are the Brain of the Seed:

Borne ‘long Rivers of Gold and Green…

No longer can we tell, which is our real home.

Duration: 3:01

A watersprite whose violin is made of black velvet with a needle for a bow. VV is neither female nor male, but lemale. Le cat and hat are black, too. VV lives in caravans, busking in carnivals, street parades, or where magic is afoot.

Lyrics

Violin made of black velvet, strings of brocade:

Tunes are threads, weaving, braiding my tapestry of a parade

Violin Velvet, sew your song

Violin Velvet, won’t be long

Till I find a fountain where you may play on!

Needle for a bow, where your melody will go,

I don’t know, Violin Velvet…

Duration: 6:02

A montage of two earlier recordings, with additional parts:

(i) Escalder’s Spellbinding (from collaborative album Love Sessions Vol 1, recorded in France)

(ii) Escalder’s Tree Ride (from our 5th solo CD Apple Pentacle, recorded in Australia)

Lyrics

(i) Escalder’s Spellbinding

English trans of Farsi:

Don’t ask the world her secrets, she will hide

Hide them from your gaze and turn her face aside

I am the Faerie no-one sees, I am the Witch for cursing,

I am the Story nobody reads, for nobody knows the words!

See her dancing in the Fountainsong, see the Lady in Green

she will lead you to a distant land

and shadow you in your dreams

Oh willow on the water could not be greener than me!

I shall be Queen of Alderbee and powerful as the sea.

I’ve a Harpist in my head, colder than the moonlight,

he will hold me for Eternity

and follow me through the sunlight

Oh willow on the water…

Well I’ve a tale on a cursing loom causing lovers to fall:

There a unicorn will break his heart

for love at Sir Malder’s Castle

Who’ll dare to stop me or am I beyond your reach?

Don’t stand before a Lady, you shall walk beside me!

(ii) Escalder’s Tree Ride

You want me down darling, let me be!

For I am in love with the Lord of a Tree

and I’m riding to the good Sir Malder.

Don’t ask the world her secrets, she will hide

Hide them from your gaze and turn her face aside

Saraway told me he was lithe as the wings of bees

but he got his blood from the Mountain –

Told me I’d find him in the body of Tree

where his blood flows back to the Mountain –

So I stole through his spirit

like a beetle in the shivering seas,

I was lost in here for centuries, for the love of Tree

Of the seven seas inside you, Time is only one:

I stirred them all as I floated through

an’ then my fingers touched the ground.

You want me down darling, let me be!

For I am in love with the Lord of a Tree

and I’m riding to the good Sir Malder.

Duration: 5:42

Another song about The Green Lady Escalder, enchantress of Fountains

Lyrics

Well The Green Lady they call her in this life,

‘Escalder’ she likes to call herself;

There’s a bitter minstrel calls her ‘The Cold Heart’

So The Green Lady spins ribbons out of the rainfall

as she sings in the fountains of her mind.

She dreams of some lost love whom she cries to…

When you stumble through the forest,

When Circe’s raiment touches your eyes

And you realise

You’re a fragment of sand, lost in the void

Searching for incarnation

She’s a dreadful temper, she is your nightmare,

She keeps an angry demon in her soul;

She is mild and gentle when you please her –

But to love is to see what goes beyond eyes

And to hear is to peel away her words;

And to free her you must become her prisoner.

Now The Green Lady rode on down rain through an old tree

That’s where her sister stole her seed

He laughed in her eyes the words she hates to hear:

“Don’t you bind me!”

Don’t bind me into categories!

Nixie renegade, winsome conjurer,

You’re mad, mad, a contradiction honey!

Spin your ribbons of rainfall…

Savage Lady, I want to be held so tightly against you

Wish I were sleeping…

Yeah, but then I might not dream of you again.

Duration: 1:26

An ancestral elf of Elderbrook’s history, conjures Old Magic

Lyrics

I lit incense of cedar and sandalwood

(Hear us Yerandle – write it all down!)

It blows a genie trail over my light

(Read us Yerandle – match it with sound!)

For we are turning and coiling away

And the smoke ‘n’ scent won’t last a half of this night

Ooway-owio and I am smoke in a storm:

Unsheath your long sword,

Tonight I’m hunting!

Fetch me my quiver and bring me my bow –

Meet me in the Wolf Grove,

Tonight I’m hunting!

Naked and Sacred and White as a Bone.

I took an acorn and cut it three and two

(Hear us Yerandle – write it all down!)

I drew a genie with briars for shoes

(Read us Yerandle – match it with sound!)

Folded his feet in the scar of the seed

And buried my love where no mortal could see.

Duration: 2:43

A procession in Elderbrook, full of vibrant cosmopolitan bonhomie

Lyrics

Hey down Here, Way down Where,

Trust in me, Destiny!

Hey down Here you’ll find a beginning;

Way down Where there isn’t an end

Still Somewhere there is a believing,

Trust in me, I’ll tell you again…

When King Tobiar Snork

Calls you to come to Court

Then people start to talk

And ghosts begin to walk

Usher in the Rogue Astrologer

Who has a Wandering Eye

Sending it round the Universe

Such a formidable Spy!

Hail to Anstarberous

Destiny comes to pass

Roll out your Eye of Mind

Unfurl the Sail of Time

Hey down Here, Way down Where,

Trust in me, Destiny!

Duration: 3:32

Alternative title: ‘The Singing Fountains’

Lyrics

English trans of Spanish:

You can hear the magical fountain singing

it springs its voice so vivid yet so delicate

and its melodies will be the seed

of sweet legends that drink out of clear waters

and pure glass

Duration: 4:54

Alternative title: ‘Elderbrook’; title-track

Lyrics

River in our blood, river all our people

River through our dance into dreams

rolling down from the sky, how do I know you?

River in your eyes, river of your memory

River over the wall between your fate and mine

across time, how do I know you?

River in my hair, river in your longing,

river into our arms, Elderbrook, Elderbrook!

River of our knowing,

River over our feet, river onto your future

River of our minds, river ever searching,

River out of the dark in the Dreaming

where we become One

How do I know you?

River to my heart, river from our ancestors,

River to our souls, river always whispering,

River under our hands

in the bark of the eucalypt now, how do I know you?

Elderbrook, Elderbrook!

Land under the River under the River…

Duration: 2:59

Together with three henchmen – Quilp, Paxsniff and Slime – this pirate thrives on mischief.

[NB: to emphasise the distinction between human dwarfism and the mythological being, I have amended my chronicles, changing the ‘D’ to ‘Q’, and ‘d’ to ‘q’ for the Qwarves, so there can be no confusion or offence, which naturally was never my intention. It is too late to amend the printed text or recorded lyrics in the CD, nor any other updates I’ve made to characters, such as adding a third sex, lemale. Elderbrook has always been an evolving dimension, where memory and invention overlap. I believe it behooves a civilisation to include vulnerable minorities. This means fronting up to our omissions or oversights, and learning as we live. Special thanks to those of you who’ve helped me learn.]

Lyrics

Well there’s Seelie and the Unseelie and the Qwarf of Barberry,

his beard is a bush as big as a hedge and I’m in his coterie.

With a twiddly-dum and a dulcie-dee you’d better come with me

for the King of the Wood had signed a pledge

with the Qwarf of Barberry.

He said: “Tuppence to you!”

I’m Candlewick, I love to jig with the Jinn, cocksparrow and bee,

and they tell me he’s up to no good, that Qwarf of Barberry Wood

So press the apple with your toe as you dance the Dainty Four,

press the bosom to your book and hear the Woodland roar –

He said: “Tuppence to you!”

Well Dulcinea is on my arm and Djinn is on my nose,

and Featherbell is in your ear – this is how she goes:

Weeeeeeeee!

Duration: 4:38

A suite of six tunes about creatures who live in or around the Singing Fountains, which are enchanted

(i) The Elf and the Waterimp

(ii) Flume

(iii) A Cascade of Goblins

(iv) Chimera

(v) Sundial

(vi) Hurdy Gurdy Goblin

Lyrics

The Elf and the Water Imp: kora & dulcimer converse.

Flume, the smallest fountain:

Underground, birds are landing two-by-two

Water spout, little font, thy name is Flume.

A Cascade of Gargoyles: frogs are the singers.

Chimera: Kloh’s mascot, Chimmy, shakes his three heads:

Shimmer on Chimmy!

Three heads a chimera

Three shakes, three riders,

Shimmer on, Chimera

Sundial: an ancient clock, showing time by shadow cast

upon stone, being under Escalder’s spell, has a time-warp.

Hurdy Gurdy Goblin plays in Elderbrook parades.

Duration: 5:16

Eoarvah is a frog spirit by a song pool, where elementals bathe with the Moon.

Amar Woreala is my incantation to conjure them.

Lyrics

Did you say we’ve been out here in the right place?

Could you tell I’ve been afraid lately?

All my life, seems to wind (weave) way out of history

Like a long vine on a stream

I heard Eoarvah cry: ‘Amar Woreala!’

Amar woreala, does the sun cry in the ocean?

Amar woreala, does the sun die in the ocean?

(instrumental interlude, string quartet)

I heard Eoarvah cry: Amar Woreala

Oooh… Amar Woreala!

Oh, who said the sun died?

Slow moon, don’t say the sun died in the ocean

He sleeps in the twilight

Another year gone – all for the Silence.

Dark water, turn my soul, into the whisper of a sleeping faun

Blind water, take my fears to the river of fallen leaves

Quiet water, leave my pain to slumber again, again

All my fallen dreams… All the fallen leaves

Does the sun cry/ die in the ocean? Dark water, fallen leaves

Duration: 3:51

Kloh of the Kora, a blue-black elf, is the greatest court bard in Elderbrook.

Lyrics

Balladeer sing high, Balladeer sing low,

Troubadour a harpist on the roam;

Strumming in the sky, whirling in the snow

Thrumming every tendril in the loam…

Green goblins making brave companions

Loyal myrtle to a throne

Kloh spins a name of silk and amber

You’ll never be alone.

Never letting them know, never letting it show

Never say you saw me on the road –

Better say it was no bone of a minstrel

Never tell the Lady I am Kloh!

Say, what you saw was just a shadow,

Only a dreamer coming home.

Duration: 5:53

Possibly the oldest of my songs ever to appear on any CD, this dates back to my early teens. I wrote it under the stars, nursing a guitar with a cat beside me on a fence in bushland of Junortoun.

Lyrics

I walked down to the lake in Malnerholm;

Saw a man with weary eyes an’ a heavy load; he said,

“I am troubled because I have answers that don’t satisfy me”

I told him: If you want to know…

Go, ask the stars that no-one has seen,

Where they shine between those galaxies far from home!

Go question the sunless night – through an eagle’s eye –

While the songs and seas… are calling to Antiquity.

So we talked and turned each others’ thoughts around;

Well he told me, “Life is a shadow of the mind…”

Search inside and lay your questions down:

How many people are to be born?

How long the tide will rise an’ fall,

Maybe time means nothing at all?

Ask the moon when she’ll refuse to shine,

borrow the prophet’s eyes

But the songs and seas are calling to Antiquity.

There’s a kind of reason that we’ve both denied;

don’t ask me why

Just go, ask the stars…

We’re calling… Calling to Antiquity…

And the songs an’ the seas, they’re calling back

Calling right back now, calling… to Antiquity.

Duration: 5:35

From Kalinothorn, home of unicorns, comes Evander.

Like many unicorns he visits Malnerholm, home of dryads, to drink from Lake Antiquity.

Both Kalinothorn and Malnerholm are sisterlands of Elderbrook.

Lyrics

There are seas alive, moving in Evander’s eyes:

They tell of ageless nights, centuries of souls on fire…

Love me in the moonlight! Press me to your silken hide;

Set me down, by the River where Evander rides.

And I think you know what it takes to give:

You’ve got love as deep as the earth!

I would fling my soul to Kalinothorn

Just to ride with you, Evander.

In the morning – you surrender

In the evening – you remember

Just a call from the Unicorn sends me into haunted sleep;

Now you’re here an’ we’re talking, feel my soul keeping time with you

Fold me in the shadows! Wrap me in your silken mane;

Now the whole dark country is whispering Evander’s name…

And I think you know… etc (as above, chorus)

Won’t you love me – in the moonlight?

Won’t you roll me – in the shadows?

Won’t you love me – in the moonlight…

Duration: 4:35

Perhaps the sweetest, kindest, gentlest, most innocent protagonist of the Elderbrook Chronicles is a moss farmer: a gnome by the name of Navington.

Lyrics

Gnome Song be my guide, shed light on our dreams tonight

You’re lonely and cold, well I’m frightened and lonely too.

Sing Amar Woreala, weave the Spirit of Changing here…

Hide, emerald Eoarvah; drink hearts of a thousand years.

Why is there no love for me?

When I have so much love inside!

Gnomic faith gives me hope to hear,

Voices that I can believe.

So we’ll sing Amar Woreala…

Hide, emerald Eoarvah

If I had a baby gnome, with two fine little wrinkly feet;

I’d build him a tiny home, oh: my, what a pair we’d be!

I’ll believe I’ll find, oh I believe I’ll find –

One of those voices is mine.

Gnome Song be my guide, shed light on our dreams tonight.

Duration: 6:32

Originally on our 2nd CD Alexandria, now with additional parts including two recitals: first in Japanese, then in Mandarin.

Lyrics

Out on the colder mornings, through a city of red snow;

Over the arc of reason, you can’t tell it whole, no, no

Contradiction is the Dragon –

fly off with the crow!

Blackbirds scurry through the snow

windows crack ‘n’ groan.

Fly over the fortress, gleam under the rook…

Your eyes are the roaming soul of air

Climb the stair, climb the stair of you!

Sure as cities crumble over seven seas, fall over my life

As I gaze into your face – there I see the Dragon!

Contradiction is the Dragon…

Duration: 0:15

Instrumental

One of three dragons: Old Rig, Starkey and Wisp.

Duration: 2:18

Lullaby for the elderdragons, whom Escalder The Green Lady had cast into slumber beneath rocks, or transformed into statues of fountains.

Lyrics

Away, away, away, oh why don’t you fly Wisp a’ high away

Make haste, don’t wait, we say,

oh why don’t you fly Wisp o’ high away?

So fly, into the Hall, nigh Saraway!

Fly, into the Fall, never stay.

Away, away, away, oh why don’t you fly Wisp a’ high away

Dear fey, don’t you be late,

oh why don’t you fly Wisp o’ high away?

So fly, into the Hall, nigh Saraway!

Fly, into the Fall, there you’ll stay.

Away, away, away, oh why don’t you fly Wisp a’ high away

Be brave, defy the grave,

oh why don’t you fly Wisp a’ high away?

(hi thee away!)

Overlapping lines:

Old Rig wake, Starkey’s under the fountain,

Jack, make haste, hope is on her way!

Elderdragon, soon awaken, prophecy to make,

paint your wagon,

hoist your flagon, any spell can break.

Semi-hidden lines:

Wizardry, Witchery, Sorcery!

come to the woodland where dryads sleep

and trees are invisible till you see

with vision not physical; it’s eternal!

Wandering Eye of Anstarberous, sigh for your golden days

Into the light of the dancing Djinn … fly high away!

would sweet mother sister nephew

nigh one another, know it the song our rainbow

shining here hush one dear

always dreaming wild fly ever thee are

Duration: 2:09

Instrumental

Dulcinea, Empress of Sardathrion, is a giant snow lion, enthroned between sphinxes and lynxes, with a canopy of dreaming pearls and spires that reach so high, they pierce the rooves of other galaxies. Her friends include Tilly the Bumblebee, unicorns of Kalinothorn and inhabitants of the High Stables of the Pegasi.

Duration: 4:08

A revelry for sylphs, and a tribute to Hermes’ Sandals of Talaria in Greek mythology.

Lyrics

Talaria! May the winged sandals bear you far

From the bow of the Messenger

Golden in possession of your star

Rose can be gold, too bright n’ hot to hold

All your vision wrapped around a soul

Words they can sing, quicksilver on the wing

All your sylphs are dancing in a ring

Second lyric layer (half hidden):

Green Man, Fiddler dive into the Rowan tree

Wine brown, leaping and lithe

over the Olive, over the Olive

Trickster, tickle your knee, twirling on your sandals

Fleet as Mercury, leapin’ tree to tree

Jack Green, squiggly bee, in a Corroborree,

Sun gold over the Lee, Didgeridoodle Dee

Red Gum, twiddly dum, twiddly dee to freedom,

Shed some Wattle and Rum

into the Apple, into the Elder Tree.

Gentle faery, shine sweet berry,

make you merry, wine, rosemary,

Bring your fey glory, sing your bird stories,

oh we’re green crazy, so let’s fly, sylvan high

Third lyric layer (hidden):

Come fly with me wild love, cascade the clouds above

Bold in your staff and cloak, stealthy with every stroke

Embrace the dreamer’s dare, glissade the gleaming air

Then soar with me my dove, enjoin the trees of love

Talaria – Tala – la – la – la!

Duration: 2:52

A hearth song for moss farmers, travellers and minstrels.

Featuring Jenni Heinrich on viola.

Lyrics

Green light, frost on the seedling;

Kloh weaves his legend again,

Slip away, listen, the sand-grains are shifting,

None of you ever the same:

Rise up, wee goblins and sing, come dancing,

Soon we’re all going to fly!

Catch my eye and hold it there,

You’ll see a heart laid bare,

Come into an elfin dream buried in your soul;

Touch, my hand, no hold it firmly and never let go

And you’ll see a peace in me, even when you go.

And the sand holds fast where the elves are,

Down where the old waves roar!

Frost rides, high on the firefly,

Over the bright star-lore;

Rise up, ye faerie and dance, we’re waiting,

Up on the stealing shore!

Duration: 0:16

Reach for the vortex: alchemy of time, playground of the mighty djinn who whirl around our planets, slipping in and out of universes. When, or why, do our dimensions overlap?

Duration: 3:50

Alternative title: ‘Game of the Elements’.

Water, Earth, Fire, Air.

There are four volumes in the Elderbrook Chronicles, each concerning a quest to re-balance the elements not only of Elderbrook but also its sister lands – Malnerholm, Sardathrion, Kalinothorn, Artoon and our own world, Earth (the Openland)

Lyrics

Water, Earth, Fire, Air…

Flame of the bow and arrow

Athame of the stone that turned

Taming a sundial shadow is like

Naming a dragon spurned

Water, Earth, Fire, Air…

Duration: 2:30

A sweet, loyal fountain fairy

Lyrics

And I will disappear, and see your smile

And I will tell the fear – to say goodnight;

Whenever you’re in trouble, I will always carry you

There inside the bubble, I will always be with you

And I will disappear, and see you smile

And I will tell the fear – to say goodnight!

Whenever you’re in trouble, I will always carry you

There inside the bubble, I will always be with you,

I will always be with you, I will always…

Duration: 7:18

A powerful dryad, also known as The Lord of the Tree, or King of the Wood.

These are the memories of an ancient tree, perhaps through many incarnations.

Lyrics

Hum, Thelderbrin, come down again

into the Lovely Loam, your roots had made a home

where dryads roam …

Dryad of the bay tree, Time winds about your feet

Apple Tree Man, Apple Tree Man, Apple Apple Apple Tree Man

Mulberry, mulberry, shelter thee … in the sands, dryad …

Nereus, Galatea, Panope, Leucothea, Oceanus, Proteus, Poseidon,

Nereus, Nereus, Nereus! Now, in the sands!

Duration: 4:05

Our theme song returns again, this time with a haunting farewell, as ghosts churn, tumble, rise and fall through enchanted dreaming.

Duration: 5:25

How it sounded when I wrote it in my teens, on a sun-cracked wooden fence under the stars at the family homestead in Junortoun, in bushland around Bendigo.