Advent 4: Fareweel Regality

The fourth song in my advent calendar is 'Fareweel Regality' by Rachel Unthanks and The Winterset (now re-named The Unthanks).

It's not so much a Christmas song as a winter song, conjuring up images of frost and log fires as you leave home for an uncertain future away from all you know. It was written by Terry Conway but I love this version by Rachel, Becky and friends. The chorus goes:

"We'll cry fareweel Regality
And cry fareweel the Liberty
To honest friends' civility
To winter's frost and fire
And there's nowt that I can bid ye
But that peace and love gan with ye
Never mind wherever call the fates
Away from Hexhamshire"

The setting for the song is Hexham, a county town of Northumberland which in olden days was a shire in its own right with areas called the Regality and the Liberty, and with a lovely old abbey. I grew up about 15 miles from Hexham and used to visit it every so often. My mother was in and out of Hexham hospital for many years and my older brother lived in Hexham for a few years. It's just up the road from Corbridge, with it's old Roman fort of Corstopidum, built on the banks of the Tyne, a mere juvenile river that far up from the sea. It's a lovely area - or at least is in memory since it's years since I was last there. And that's part of the power of this song, evoking old memories and bringing them to life again, along with images of loss and leaving, but also with hope, on a freezing winters day.

I had the pleasure of meeting both Rachel and Becky Unthank last December after their gig at Shepherd's Bush and they're a nice pair of lasses, lovely pure voices and an aptitude for story telling. And clog dancing.