I used to stare up at the minstrel gallery, but no matter how hard I looked, I could never find the way in. No stairs, no ladder. There must’ve been a secret passage somewhere, but I never found it.
Jon
There were maybe forty people at the pub that night. Will said he counted thirty-seven, but I think he left out the barman. Call it forty. That pub was tiny, so it felt more crowded, but it wasn’t what you’d call standing room only. It was Saturday night and all the regulars were there — I guess they were regulars; I didn’t know them from Adam. The barman was a good bloke; he said we could set up and play in a corner.
We went acoustic — none of us wanted to lug amps and electric guitars and a PA. I just had my tambour and some shakers and an African drum a friend brought back from Tangiers. Very low-tech.
What did they think? Folks at the pub seemed more bemused than anything else when we walked in. They certainly weren’t hostile. The barman had a thing for Les, which made it easier — we knew we wouldn’t get tossed out. So, we set up, tuned up, and away we went. They loved it.
Ashton
To be honest, I was quite nervous for the first few songs. It wasn’t like when me and Les played on our own that time — there were a lot more people, for one. And it felt somehow like we were there to make a statement. Territorial, almost. We were interlopers, remember: long-haired hippie outsiders at a time when there was a lot of hostility toward that kind of person.
I could hear some muttering while we were tuning up — who the feck were we, gypsies squatting in the old manor and prancing about the forests, etcetera. Someone must have seen Julian stargazing in the woods. For some reason that got them especially worked up.
Still, once we started playing, everyone got quieter. We started with “John Barleycorn,” a traditional folk song; we thought that might lull them into a false sense of security. But after that, we did our own stuff. Lesley’s new songs — we kicked off with “Cloud Prince,” thought it would be good to put the girl singer out front.
Lesley — they loved her. A few of them tried taking the piss because of her accent. She might have been the first American some of them had seen since the war. But she only flung her long hair about and laughed and bantered with them. No mike, but she didn’t need one — her voice filled that place like nothing you ever heard. They just ate it up. Kept passing her pints while she was singing.
We did four or five songs, then took a break. Les passed the hat, the barman bought us a round, then we bought his. When we came back, it was Julian’s turn.
Jon
Second set, there were a few more people. No one had mobile phones back then, so you couldn’t text your friends and say, Rush down to the Wren to hear history in the making. But a few of the younger blokes left and came back with their wives or girlfriends.
We pulled up a chair for Julian. Lesley had stood, she always liked moving around. But Julian liked to sit, so I grabbed him a chair.
He cut quite a figure, he was so tall, and a bit of a dandy. Always the same old brown corduroy jacket, but it looked very sharp. The sleeves were a bit short, but I think he might have kept it on purpose, so people would focus on his hands when he played.
He had such big hands — big bony wrists, extraordinarily long fingers. That’s why he was such an incredible guitarist — his reach was terrific. He had very eccentric tunings, which meant you could never duplicate how he played — and believe me, people tried. Jimmy Page told me once that he listened to Wylding Hall a hundred times, trying to figure out Julian’s fingering on “Windhover Morn.” He couldn’t.
Still, the Wren wasn’t exactly the venue to impress people with your eccentric tunings. Only, of course, Julian did.
Tom Haring
Over the years, I can’t tell you how many people have told me they saw that gig. All total bullshit, of course. No one saw it, except for a few dozen people who lived in that village. I suspect a lot of them are dead now. Maybe the younger ones are telling their kids and grandkids, yeah, I was there when Windhollow Faire first played the songs from Wylding Hall. I guess that’s possible.
But if I had a pound for every person told me they were at the Wren that night, I wouldn’t be living here in Sheffield, I’ll tell you that.
Will
Now, you have to picture Julian, this tall figure sitting in a battered pub chair, hunched over his guitar, long brown hair falling over his face.
“That a girl?” some geezer called out, and the punters all laughed.
But Julian just kept tuning his guitar. A string broke, and for a moment I thought he’d lost it — that he’d just slink off somewhere and give it up.
He didn’t. I tell you, I can see it in my mind’s eye like it happened last night, those big hands and that wristwatch he loved so much. He looked at his watch, then glanced around the pub, like he was searching for someone. I remember thinking, Who the hell’s he looking for? He didn’t know anyone around there, as far as I knew.
People were getting impatient. We were getting impatient. Me and Les exchanged a look; she was wondering if maybe she should just take charge and start singing.
Then Julian began to play. “Windhover Morn.” “Cloud Prince.” For the third or fourth song, he did “Thrice Tosse These Oaken Ashes.” People know the song now because of Wylding Hall, but no one knew it then. It’s based on a seventeenth century air by Thomas Campion. I’d come across it at Cecil Sharp House earlier that year, but decided not to use it. Les called me on that much later, said I’d been superstitious. Perhaps I was.
The peculiar thing is that Julian had come across it as well, only he found it in the library at Wylding Hall. I didn’t even know there was a library there until he told me. He discovered it in some old book, and he said his version was far older than Campion’s, and with slightly different words. When we’d recorded it in the garden, Julian went with the original.
But that night at the Wren, he sang the older version. He’d composed new music for it, a very eerie melody. Unfortunately, we never recorded that version of the song. We all remember him singing it, but none of us has ever been able to recreate Julian’s music. Believe me, we tried.
As soon as he opened his mouth and began to sing, the room fell quiet. Not just quiet: dead silent. I’ve never seen anything like it. Like a freeze-frame in a movie. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. I know I didn’t, not for half a minute. It sounded as though he were whispering the song into your ear.
That night at the Wren, you could see that’s how every single person felt. Like he was singing to each one of them, alone, just his voice and those few chords over and over again. Once he finished his version, he went into the more familiar one.
Thrice toss these Oaken ashes in the air,
Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair;
Then thrice three times tie up this true loves knot,
And murmur soft, she will, or she will not.
Lesley
It was the first time he performed the Campion song. I’d heard him practicing bits of it in his room, but he never sang it for us when we were rehearsing. I recognized the tune immediately. It was the same one I’d heard the night that Nancy was there. The song we’d all heard, only none of us could replicate it afterward, or even remember it.