~Heritage~
1996

By Catt Kingsgrave

My bones are carved out of the high Cymric mountains,
My blood is boiled up from the wild western sea.
The curve of the land's in the length and the lie of me,
Oceans away in another country.

The past is a Trickster that knows where it's going,
The future a Bungler, no clue where it's been,
And we live our lives in a handful of hours,
A Rogue being more or less same as a Queen.
And like threads in a tapestry each one is woven
Spun, measured and severed: to each his own span.
But each thread is spun from the threads cut before him;
A thousand caught up in the weft of a man.

There is a place where my feet have not trodden,
There is a language not known to my ears;
A passage of history my mind cannot fathom
And I never knew, but lives still with me here
In the pulse of a heart that in some way remembers
The touch of that earth, and the song of that sea.
In the loving passed down from the souls that have loved her
Till borne in my blood, it sings up out of me.

Her stories, they know me, her legends ring true
And I do not speak them, but let them speak through
To honour my heartland, across that wild sea
That I was formed of, and is rooted in me.

Someday I'll go, if the Fates will prove kindly;
Set foot on Her earth, and my hand to Her stones,
And She that was maker to all of my people
Shall open Her arms, and shall welcome me home
And my bones will remember those high Cymric mountains,
My blood, it will pound with the crash of that sea.
The love of a people shall sing through the ages,
And all of those ages will sing out of me
Oceans away in my Mother Country.

*****

I am of Welsh decent. No, really. Three generations back in my family tree, you'll find black-faced miners fresh off the boat from the South of Wales. My name is littered with Ridleys, Browns, Riches and Hughes's, and suchlike families. And though I've never actually been to Wales, I can sometimes feel that country inside me anyway. When I hear the songs, when I hear the folktales and the myths of those mountainous lands, there's a resonance inside me that I just cannot explain. 

Of all the actual songs I've written, this is probably the best. The combination of the tune, the arrangement, and the lyrics is more complete and solid than many of the ones which the band actually played onstage. The sad irony is that we were working this one up to debut on the stage when we blew up, so we never once played it publicly. This is one which I can PROMISE you will be recorded one day, however, even if I have to play every damned instrument myself!