Preface

The Southwark Mysteries began on the night of 23^rd November 1996, when I wrote the first of The Vision Books inspired by The Goose, the spirit of a prostitute from Southwark’s ancient Liberty of the Clink, licensed by a Bishop yet buried in the unconsecrated Crossbones Graveyard. In these apocalyptic verses, The Goose initiates my trickster familiar John Crow into a secret history - a vision of the Spirit in the flesh, the Sacred in the profane, Eternity in time.

This vision inspires and informs The Mystery Plays, a contemporary “Southwark Cycle” rooted in the medieval mysteries, retelling sacred stories in the earthy language and context of our own time and place. The third part of the work is a Glossolalia of local history and esoteric lore to be read in conjunction with the poems and plays.

The Southwark Mysteries was first performed in Shakespeare’s Globe and Southwark Cathedral, on Easter Sunday, 23rd April 2000. Local MP Simon Hughes called it “the jewel in the crown” of Southwark’s millennium celebrations and proposed that it be staged every decade. A new production was presented in Southwark Cathedral in 2010.

In the decade between these epic productions, SOUTHWARK MYSTERIES presented workshops, guided walks and site-specific performances inspired by the work. Selected texts from The Vision Books featured in The Anatomy Class at The Old Operating Theatre, The Goose At Liberty in Southwark Playhouse, and The Halloween of Crossbones, a ritual drama conducted annually 1998-2010. The Halloween performance culminated in a candle-lit procession to the gates of Crossbones Graveyard; the red iron gates of the desolate works-site were decorated with ribbons, flowers, feathers, keys, mirrors, jewellery, mementoes and totems, creating a shrine to “the outcast dead”.

The Southwark Mysteries reclaimed the lost history of Crossbones, re-envisioning the forgotten, derelict wasteland as sacred ground, a portal between worlds, a garden of healing and transformation. The gates in Redcross Way have become a place of pilgrimage and Crossbones Graveyard is now recognised as a unique heritage site. Vigils are held at 7pm on the 23^rd of every month - to remember the outcast, to renew the shrine and to work towards the creation of a public garden of remembrance on the site of the old burial ground. A wild “Invisible Garden” already grows there.

***

This new edition is dedicated to the Very Reverend Colin Slee, late Dean of Southwark Cathedral. Colin was a powerful advocate for The Southwark Mysteries and took an active interest in the work, striving to firm-up its theological foundations. No stranger to controversy, he robustly defended the Easter Sunday 2000 performance in the Cathedral, provoking a Sunday Telegraph headline: “Dean rejects critics of Southwark’s ‘swearing Jesus’ Mystery Play”. The Dean and Chapter withstood the storm, invited us back and were generous hosts to the 2010 production.

The entire work, and specifically the productions, could got not have been realised without the help and unwavering support of my partner, Katharine Nicholls. I would like to add my thanks to my literary agent Nicki Stoddart and publisher James Hogan, to SOUTHWARK MYSTERIES patrons Mark Rylance and Simon Hughes MP, and to all who supported the productions or worked to manifest the vision at Crossbones. To name but a few:

Beccy Allen, Irene Anderson-King, Katherine Angel, Anna Arthur, Steve Ash, Jimmy Cauty, Dan Clarke, Jack Cleere, Jennifer Cooper, Sarah Davey-Hull, Jo Dubiel, Robert Elms, Coral Flood, Jilly Forster, Noyumi Furukawa, Rose Harding, Christina Oakley Harrington, Andrew Hulme, Pete King, Andy Lockwood, Michelle Malka, James Mannion, Maria, Barry Mason, Niall McDevitt, Bronwyn Murphy, Kevin Murphy, Lisa Murphy, Mani Navasothy, Paul Newman, Canon Andrew Nunn, Allison Pollard-Barber, Max Reeves, Aileen Richmond, David Risley, Giles Semper, Valerie Shawcross, Nick Stanton, Pauline Stockmans, Vee, Joanna Vignola, Michelle Watson, Sarah Abigail Weightman, Tom Weller, Ion Will, Caroline Wise, Anne Wolfe, Scott Wood, Raga Woods, Jacqui Woodward-Smith.

***

Aside from minor amendments, The Vision Books and Glossolalia are reprinted as in the first edition. The Mystery Plays include significant textual revisions - creating a more coherent dramatic narrative - whilst retaining the epic structure of the complete cycle.

There was a temptation to update the Glossolalia - to reflect how profoundly Southwark has changed in little more than a decade, to chart the unfolding of the magical work at Crossbones, and to provide fresh insights and interpretations. Yet to embellish this peculiar resource – part glossary, part grimoire, part guide-book to uncharted territories - would be to dilute its potency. It sprang from the same source as the poems and plays: a vision of Eternity revealed in a particular time and place. As William Blake reminds us, the Universal is expressed in its “minute particulars”.

The Southwark Mysteries embodies a poetic vision, a mystical drama, an act of magic, a spiritual praxis, a life-changing work-in-progress. The work was received as a gift; it changed my life and will - Goose willing - outlive me. It lives whenever it is read or performed - and the creative power of The Goose invoked in shining emptiness…

Open pathways.

J.C., Southwark, 2011
www.crossbones.org.uk
www.southwarkmysteries.co.uk

Preface to the First Edition

The Liberty of the Clink dates back to 1107 AD, when the Bishop of Winchester was granted a stretch of the Bankside to the west of London Bridge, which lay outside the law of the City of London. Here, the Bishop controlled the brothels, or “stews”. The Whores of The Liberty were known as “Winchester Geese”…

The Vision Books of The Southwark Mysteries were revealed by The Goose to John Crow at Crossbones and Mary Overie dock, as recorded in my notebook on the night of 23 November 1996. My shamanic double had somehow raised the Spirit of a medieval Whore, licensed by a Bishop, yet allegedly denied Christian burial:

The night I transcribed these lines, I presumed that “Crossbones” was The Goose’s invention, a fittingly piratical name for a Whore’s graveyard. Searching for clues in our local studies library, I discovered that it was an old name for the unconsecrated Magdalene or “single women’s” burial ground in Redcross Way. I traced the site, to find that London Underground was in the process of digging it up. In the summer of 1998, I received confirmation that Museum of London archeologists had removed some 148 skeletons, including a “young woman’s syphilitic skull with multiple erosive lesions, from Red Cross Way, Southwark”. In my own back yard, ripped by drills and mechanical diggers. In the last days of the second millennium. “In London at the Temple of Isis.” Dismembered fragments of a Secret Knowledge.

The work is to piece it together.

Researching the contents of The Vision Books, which in turn informed the writing of The Mystery Plays and Glossolalia, I had frequent recourse to the King James Bible, The Nag Hammadi Library edited by James M. Robinson, English Mystery Plays edited by Peter Happe, An Encyclopaedia of London edited by William Kent (1937 edition) and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church edited by E. A. Livingstone. Among the many other books I found useful and illuminating were Robert A. Armour’s Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt, E. J. Burford’s The Bishop’s Brothels, Martha Carlin’s Medieval Southwark, Susan Haskins’ Mary Magdalen, Stuart Holroyd’s The Elements of Gnosticism, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel’s The Women Around Jesus, Elaine Pagels’ Adam, Eve and the Serpent and Gamini Salgado’s The Elizabethan Underworld.

I am profoundly grateful to my partner Katharine Nicholls, my literary agent Nicki Stoddart, my publisher James Hogan and all at Oberon Books, for their unwavering faith in The Goose and her works. Barry Kyle was advisor to The Mystery Plays. Claudia Boulton, Ken Campbell and Di Sherlock each provided invaluable feedback on the work-in-progress.

Not forgetting Adam @ the Drome, Susan Aderin, John Adrian, Jane Arrowsmith, Roy Bendry, William Blake, William Burroughs, Stuart Caine, Canon Peter Challen, Chris and Emily, Fraser Clark, Nick Constable, Suzy Crowley, Libba Davies, Russ Denton, Tom Deveson, Nell Dunn, Peter Fitzgerald, Michaela and Bob Frost, Dave Gibbs, Robert Godley, Al Green, Green Angels, Paul Herbert, Dr Albert Hoffman, Evelyn Honig, Simon Hughes MP, George Isherwood, Canon Jeffrey John, Jane Jones, John Joyce, Juliet and Tom, Richard Kilgour, Duncan Law, Jahnet de Light, Liz and Con, Francine Luce, Hettie Malcomson, Tony Maples, Michele McLusky, Jeff Merrifield, Clodagh O’Reilly, Dr Tuppy Owens, Conor Paterson, Irving Rappaport, James Richmond, Len Riley, Guy Rowsten, Mark Rylance, Iain Sinclair, Caroline Shepherdson, the Rev Richard Truss, the Very Rev Colin Slee, Stefan Szczelkun, Wilfred van Dorp, Anne Wolfe, Zanna…

And Kwan Yin, Goddess of Mercy.

“May all beings be free from suffering.”

J.C. Southwark, 1999

The Book of The Goose

I was born a Goose of Southwark
by the Grace of Mary Overie,
whose Bishop gives me licence
to sin within The Liberty.
In Bankside stews and taverns
you can hear me honk right daintily,
as I unlock the hidden door,
unveil the Secret History.

I will dunk you in the river
and then reveal my Mystery.

And when our Lords in Westminster

denounce my “Impious Blasphemy”,

my gob in the face of all God-fearing

servants of His Majesty.

What though they throw me in The Clink,

or King’s Bench or Marshalsea,

and leave me there to rot, they think,

for brazen acts of harlotry?

I call upon my Bishop

as Defender of my Liberty.

When all-mighty City Fathers,

those dread Guardians of Morality,

do ban “all gaming, drunkenness

and acts of gross effrontery”.

What though they thunder Over There?

It matters not a fig to me.

Over ’ere’s The Ward Without

The Law of London City,

where Whores are subject only to

fair Southwark and Her Liberty.

O, Over There, you’d swear

they were the image of propriety,

but row ’em Over ’ere, dear,

and it’s all rape and pillage

and bondage and buggerage

with molly boys – “What jolly boys!” –

and Goose girls underage,

taking Liberties, and licence, dear.

We all have to deal with ’em.

We pump them and paddle them

and into bed we squeal with ’em.

“Let’s all go bait the bear!”

What madcap tomfoolery –

if it wasn’t in the service of such a

pox-ridden Majesty.

Believe me, dear, been ’ere before

in all me pomp and finery,

with Johnny Wilkes and Dashwood

and the Lords of Hell-Fire Devilry,

when Southwark’s Whores disported

in the habit of a nunnery

at Wycombe, in the Hell-Fire Caves,

that Chapter House of Liberty,

when Southwark’s Mob took up the cry,

and the cry was “Wilkes and Liberty”.

And when I hear those Hypocrites

decrying and denying me,

who make of me the vessel

of all known Vice and Depravity –

the way they talk, I swear you’d think

I was the Whore of Babylon,

as they make of me an altar

they see fit to rape my children on.

And a Minister of Morals –

O dear me, O what a carry-on.

Over There it’s all The Family

and go on and marry on,

but when they’re Over ’ere, dear,

then every Dick and Harry on

the front bench has some wench

or rough trade from Borough laid,

and every Mag Witch

in Shoreditch

has been poor St Mary Overied.

And did they think my ghosts

would not start kicking

against the poxy pricks

what a-done all the pricking?

How could they ever think

they could sanitise me,

dress up my Clink

to decriminalise me?

Turn me into their Heritage Theme Park?

“Over ’ere, dear, want to take

a walk down me dark

alleyways and doorways down me

blood fanny streamin’?”

Then it’s – ooops!

Jack Sheppard

with his silver blade gleaming,

and it’s one more body ditched

in Thames water

dreaming.

Yes I been ’ere before, dear,

oft’times in chastened circumstance.

I lay with Master Geffrey

at the Tabard, making dalliance

afore wending on his Pilgrimage

to tell a Tale of Canterbury,

and I rode out beside him

as the Childe of Mary Overie,

went riding for a Vision,

a Vision of Humanity,

Man, God and Beast communing

for one moment in Eternity.

And the healing of the sick,

and the Questioning Divinity

who asks Herself “What am I

to permit such wanton misery?”

And Compassion for all Souls that dwell

in shadows of mortality

compelling Her to take on very

flesh of that infirmity,

until She’s born a crafty whore,

stewed in a Southwark hostelry,

and using all Her wherewithal

to take a Pilgrim’s fancy,

and lay with him and play with him,

and open eyes to see

the Goddess that on Judgement Day

shall stand by Man and make his Plea.

And I was in that Miller’s Wife,

who pushed her tush at Absalon,

who’d kissed he many a wench’s lip,

but ne’er he such a hairy one.

You don’t know me yet, dear.

You will, dear, I promise you.

I am a tricksy tart, dear.

My aim is to astonish you.

John Crow’s Riddle

John Crow with a riddle in a madcap rhyme

here to reveal my Mystery

in London Town at the End of Time

John he go down on History.

John Crow in Cathedral Yard

cursed with my gift of Prophecy

here to play one last wild card

for Southwark and Her Liberty.

With a hey ho, jolly Jack Crow

and his merry merry band of outlaws O

never stumble when he trips

mad clown of the Apocalypse.

And some go “O ho! Who be this John Crow? This no

body rootless shaman O

kicking loose heels as the rank weeds grow

wild in our Southwark haven.”

Then the crow on the gargoyle caw caw caw

and he draw John a map of infinity

where God rejoices more in the brazen Whore

than in the Wife in her pinch-faced Chastity.

With a knick knack paddywhack

give the dog a bible-black

John Crow whores a-hollerin’,

in the sack on yer back

give the skull a good crack

see if it’s a hollow ’un,

click-clack click-clack

don’t look back

to see if Death’s a-followin’.

For tonight in Hell

they are tolling the bell

for the Whore that lay at the Tabard,

and well we know

how the carrion crow

doth feast in our Crossbones Graveyard.

With a hey ho, jolly Jack Crow

and his merry merry band of outlaws O

never stumble when he trips

mad clown of the Apocalypse.

By the Grace of Our Lady Mary Overie

let them see

them that sell their time

to earn a daily crust to feed a family

them that trade the Future

in stocks and bonds, or speculate in property

them that crunch the numbers

on the number crunching north bank in the old City

then flood back ’cross London Bridge

to take their trains to Gravesend and the Estuary

let them see

in the hungry eyes of debtors

doing time with Dickens’ father in Marshalsea

the denizens of Bedlam

now entrusted to the Care of our Community

the homeless in the subway

and the dead-end kids from Old Kent Road to Bermondsey

in the skull-faced Queers and Junkies

and the Tart who tested positive for HIV

the shining eyes of Our Goddess of Mercy

in the haggard face of John Crow

who watches from his high tower in Trinity

as in the single mother

who lives across the road at Number 23

the check-out girl in Superdrug

whose name-tag says her name is Charity

and in every human face that is

pocked and scarred by what we call Reality

by the Grace of Our Lady Mary Overie

let them see

the shining eyes of Our Goddess of Mercy

Three Four

let war

be waged Without

break down the door and out the prison wall

let it all fall down to be born again at Liberty

and let Within

the Dream of Skin

S/he that is without Sin cast the stone for we all

have our stake in the sum of human misery

our messes and scraps

and clap traps

those niggling

naggling fibbety-gibbety

novelty grovelty mincey queeney

artsy fartsy – ooh! how nasty!

Minister watch your private partsy

party political

put piggy in the middle

jump and hump and dump on him

pump him full of oestrogen

put a time bomb under him

Roast Pork and Bacon Fat

how’d you like to chew on that?

down my Ministry of Sound

where we do we tribal dances dear

what comes from underground

isn’t subject to the Rule of Fear

it must’ve given you a start

to find me so lysergic dear

when it comes to stealing hearts

and healing rifts between our hemispheres

there’s no trick I wouldn’t pull

to entice you

Over ’ere

The Goose’s Prophecy

I tricked mad John Crow

when he was in his ecstasy

to lend Me his voice

to make known My Prophecy

That in the month July
and the day shall be twenty-three
in the Year of Our Lady
Mary Overie
Southwark shall arise
naked in Her Liberty
on the South Bank of the Thames
arrayed in all Her finery
with all Her Children
endowed with grace and dignity
the deformed and the deviant
embraced into Her Unity

with Lambeth below Her
Blake’s garden in Eternity
She shall open Her loins
to make hole the concavity
She’ll shuffle two right click
then shuffle left another three
She’ll strip the decks for one last
Sacred Profanity

And the Hypocrite shall blanch:

“Does She sanction such depravity?

The Great Whore of Revelation

is not that surely She?”

Relax, dear, you’re Over ’ere,

don’t go bustin’ an artery

or poisoning me rivers with yer

self-loathing fartery.

The Body we all know, dear,

is privy to mortality.

This Flesh shall rot and wither,

as you’re so fond of reminding me.

And when Your Kind’s done,

when you’re done despoiling me,

when you’ve had yer fun, son, you’ve

no further use for me.

So pipe down, shut yer mouf,

show some respect, humility,

and harken to that silence what is

brimming with immensity

Unspeakable

shall speak and in One Word
unfold Her Mystery

pronounce the End of Time
and beginning of Eternity

and all Her Children gathered there
in all their multiplicity

with One Voice
shall speak Her Name

And Her Name is Liberty

The Book of The Crow

There’s a bridge of stone

And a bridge of iron

Gird the dock of St Mary Overie.

There’s a Southwark Goose

With a Crow let loose

In the Heart of the ancient Liberty.

Led him down by the Clink

Through the sweat and the stink

Of the Stews to a Bankside Oratory,

And they saw the tide turn,

And they saw London burn,

Saw it rise from the ashes of History.

Then she led John Crow

To the river below

And her look was wanton and wild, and he

Saw through the grime

And the ruin of Time

The face of the Child, Eternity.

Then she gave him a look

That by hook or by crook

She would make him her Man: Brother Man, quoth she,

Come heal thy sickness,

Cleanse thy voice

And I’ll have you to sing of my Mystery.

Come drain me Marsh

And tan me hide,

Come Immigrant and Refugee,

Come brew me beer

And wool be dyed

In the making of The Liberty.

Come lock and stock

To Overie Dock

From Flanders, France and Italy,

Come Molls and Dolls

And fol-de-rols

A-taking of The Liberty.

Come Heretic, Outlaw,

Jack Crow and Jack Daw,

Here shall ye all find Sanctuary,

Where the Actors and Whores

Are the Keepers of Doors

That open into The Liberty.

Come Black, come White,

We Open All Night.

In the Dance of Delight, all’s One to me.

Take each as I find,

And I’ll have them Mind

The Stewardship of My Liberty.

For true, this place

Has its brute ugly face

Of tribal bile and bigotry.

A Mob is turned,

A church is burned,

All in the name of Liberty.

We torched the Clink.

We wanted a drink.

We looted a gin distillery.

We ranted and reeled

In St George’s Fields

And bloodied the face of Liberty.

And the Truth is hoary.

And the Truth is hard.

And the walls that are daubed with excrement

Say “True, if you shit

In your own back yard,

Then It shall be thy Testament.”

Then she turns her Crow’s eye

To a Bankside sty

With the spit of the fat of the Goose in the Stew,

And the Bear in the Pit

And the Dogs at it

And the Evil they know not that they do.

Sez: ’ere by the sluice

Of a Goose’s juice

Let all enjoy my hospitality,

But a pox and a curse

On the ignorant Nurse

Who suckles such lock-jawed brutality.

Our heads were shorn,

In carts were drawn

Through howling Mob’s humbuggery,

Through sticks and stones –

God rest these bones

Now safe within The Liberty.

And the whipping boy,

The Jew and the Goy,

And the Printer put in the pillory,

We shall wipe clean his face,

For it is no disgrace

To be whipped in the service of Liberty.

The punk and the ponce

And the John Crow dunce

And the broken-wing John Crow deformity,

Them that stumble and trip

Shall have Citizenship

And Equal Rights under The Liberty.

Them that hop, flit and flap

Like birds in a trap,

Them that crouch in a house of rats fearfully,

In the feeble and frail

And the Nightingale

Who sang in the House of Liberty.

In the letting of blood

In the Bermondsey mud,

In the leech in St Thomas’ infirmary,

In the dumb that talk

And the Dead that walk

And keep the Night Watch in the Liberty.

In the church-pews and stews

They whisper the news,

The ghost of an old Goose’s Heresy –

That the Magdalene Whore

A love child bore

To the dancing Lord of The Liberty.

And I was in that

Magdalene Whore

Who walked the streets of Bermondsey,

I traded hard

In every yard

To keep the Child at Liberty.

To Margaret’s Fair

With Bull and Bear,

With Mummers’ Masque and Mystery,

Poor Actors fret

And strut and sweat

The takings of The Liberty.

Then a Theatre torn down

In Shoreditch Town

And over the river the timbers row,

And ’ere in the Pit

And the reek of it

They are building for me my Wooden O.

Then the World’s a Stage

And in these Holy Days,

If you will come with me, John Crow,

I will show you my face

And a secret place,

The same I once showed Master Willie O.

Now all the World knows

And the World may abhor

But the World cannot unmake Poetry:

God’s Actor is bedfellow

Here with God’s Whore

In the Sacred Heart of God’s Liberty.

Come Trickster, Shaman,

Prophet and Fool,

Speaking in tongues of The Mystery.

Let all men contend,

But God defend

The lineaments of My Liberty.

Come snake and whistle

And rattle and drum,

Come open me Cavern in Jubilee,

Come open me Tomb

To crackle and boom,

And let the Bells ring in The Liberty.

Come Christian and Jew,

Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu,

Let each to His own True Divinity.

Let even the blind

Material Mind

Walk His own hallowed path in Liberty.

And seek not to bind

The Visions you find

In naming the parts of The Mystery.

In naming the part

Don’t miss the Heart,

The Heart of My Holy Liberty.

Though you trick me up

As Virgin or Whore

And make me debase right bestially,

I am the Dancing

Child, the Door

That opens into Eternity.

And by Blackfriars Ditch,

Old John he twitch:

What I want to know, sez John: Is why me?

And The Goose she smiles,

She sez: Woman’s wiles.

You and me, dear, we been ’ere before, sez she.

And it’s the old shabby score,

The John and the Whore,

The Six Steps to Heaven and the Easy Ride,

But now it’s just you and me

And the salt of the sea

And Today you do pay me to be your Guide.

So unto this place

On a wild Goose chase

I’ve led you a merry dance, sez she,

And you followed the trail

And may live to tell the tale

Of a friend of a friend

Of The Liberty.

I am John Crow

and The Goose is my Muse

She maketh me to waketh

in my walking talking shoes

Cross Bones to Clink

by Mary Overie dock

by the third cock’s crow

by the third crow’s cock

may the Spirit be with Crow

and all them that walk beside him

when he walk about the Liberty

with but his Goose to guide him.

John Crow Trickster

No Preacher

and if he ever done so

John Crow done defrock

Man done reap as he sow

when Preacher Man make war

on the Witch and the Whore

Puritan done for Crow

Oliver Cromwell done for Crow

when he shut down The Goose and her Wooden O

stripped and whipped him at the cart’s arse

from Bedlam to Cross Bo’

stuck he head on a spike

to feed the carrion crow

panic attack

now John Crow back

a-wheelin’ and a-dealin’ wid he

hungry Ho

now Crow break cover

wid he Harlots and he Witches

he say: dub me Dog of God

I bin ’ere with me Bitches,

O so purty playin’ dirty

in them bridle and split britches

them the Daughters of Arachne

puttin’ in the scarlet stitches.

DING-

DONG

they come

Moll Cut Purse and Merry Mad Maud

and Sha Manic Tom

o’ Bedlam

with John Crow and he Whore

bangin’ on Cathedral Door

they back for more than just a pious

sermon.

So…

Goose sez to Crow

John,

riddle me low

riddle me your quick-quick

slow thing

your Waterman row

Thames river flow

riddle me A Do about

an O Thing.

by the third cock’s crow
by the wooden

O

i do not deny her diVinity

and in the dEad of night

feaR not for i know

i walk In the hallowed

light of hEr liberty

The Ballad of Mary Overie

Mary Overie
her Old Man ran a ferry O
man so miserly
he thought he’d save a penny O
if he could fool his family
that he was dead
alas poor
Mary
O
Lady of The Liberty
Goose and Crow

so Old Man Overie
he put the word a-round O
Bankside down to Bermondsey
that he had gone and drowned O
a-tumbled from his Thames ferry
and so is dead
alas poor
Mary
O
Lady of The Liberty
Goose and Crow

then Old Man Overie
crept home by dead of night O
sees not what he expects to see
his house is full of light O
sees merriment and revelry
not one tear shed
alas poor
Mary
O
Lady of The Liberty
Goose and Crow

when Old Man Overie
returning from the dead O
burst in on his family
they bashed him on the head O
they thought he was a ghost now he
is well and truly
dead, poor
Mary
O
Lady of The Liberty
Goose and Crow

Mary Overie
she come into the money O
True Love eagerly
come riding for to marry O
was thrown and fell most grievously
another dead
alas poor
Mary
O
Lady of The Liberty
Goose and Crow

Then Mary Overie
she took it for a sign O
to found a Bankside Priory
to heal the Wound Divine O
reveal God’s Ways of Mystery
and raise the Dead
O blessed
Mary
O
Lady of The Liberty
Goose and Crow

and she led him down to the mudflats

by the red bridge at Blackfriars

over from St Bride’s, Brid

who turned water to beer in all Ireland,

and remembered her own bog-

Irish come to drain the marsh,

to dyke and dam, shore up

Roman ditch and causeway,

reclaiming land as yet unfit

for human habitation,

Dirty Lane and Bandyleg

Walk, hovels and

churches torched by King Mob

rampant, and the secret Mass

House in Kent Street where the rats

rustled their prayers like parchment,

fistful of Thames mud

let slip

and wash away.

she was the girl

in Jacob’s

cholera in-

fested slum

the one who saw

there could be more

to life than this

as when her Lord

returning from the Dead

she touched and healed his wounds

retrieved him with a kiss.

LONDINI AD FANUM ISIDIS

Here Isis wept

in Thames river mud

for her children sold into bondage

in slave-mart by River of Babylon,

Queenhithe to Gropecunte Lane.

Here Rome converts

to cannibalise in Bull and Creed,

Body of Christ spitting and touretting

where Tooley the torturer

slews down Crucifix Lane.

Here Magdala

returned in Overie,

Body of the Whore washed clean

in St Thomas culvert, dunked in the River

and rose again.

The Book of the Egyptian

As in Israel come out of Egypt

so in Egypt come out of Rome

the ferryman’s daughter

fetched up Over ’ere

two thousand light year from home.

With her Tarot pack and the shirt off her back

and her one-string fiddle and squeeze-

box, her shuffles and clicks

and her fiddlesticks

and her map of the Mysteries.

And she has been ’ere this two thousand year

on the Banks of Thame-Isis in Overie

in her asses milk bath

with her cackling laugh

in the Clink with her skeleton key.

With a widdishins jig

she go rip the rig.

The Goose is loose in The Liberty.

here John Crow and i read

the sign at the pilgrim’s inn

don’t have to be

broken to be blessed

by Overie.

here John Crow and i found

larking in Thames

mud the broken

mask of god

SIVA SAKTI.

here John Crow and i pray

Goddess of Mercy

heal

these broken wings

within me.

The Mystery of George and Martha

Mary O’Reilly

tell me Mary Martha Mystery

in the Yard of George’s hostelry

George

of Dragon notoriety

patron saint of nationality

did pierce the Dragon bodily

with his fearsome Lance of Destiny

and Martha

tamed it tenderly

stroked the head and cunningly

with her girdle bound the beastie

and so did harness Dragon energy

According to O’Reilly

in the Yard of George’s hostelry

and I the Child at Liberty

to reveal My Southwark Mystery

how George

returned to Liberty

to tend the very Dragon he

had slain, did labour patiently

to heal the wound of History

once

and for all eternity

by the Grace of Mary Overie.

George and the Dragon Rap

O George he was a soldier

who refused to follow orders

and he had the Roman Empire in a flap,

so God knows how Georgie

got done in that Roman orgy

and then stitched up with this Dragon-killing rap.

For when Rome at last converted

our George’s hands got dirtied

as Defender of an Empire that was rotten to the core,

George the Emperor’s appeaser

rendered Christ unto his Caesar

took the High Priestess of Egypt and he made of her the Whore.

Then George he went crusading

a-reaping and a-raiding

and he slaked his trusty blade in Dragon gore,

in the Temple of Jerusalem

the Children of the Saracen

got carved up on the altars of his god-damned Holy War.

Then as George came down in History

he fell in with bad company

they dressed him up in Gordon’s bigots’ clothes,

with their Roast Beefs and Bully Boys

a-marching making mighty noise

to George’s Fields to bloody Patrick’s nose.

And George was all too willing

to take their thirty shilling

for to go a Dragon-killing for their sluttish English Rose,

and the Mob made him the stronger

dinged the Dragons with his donger

then he chopped ’em up and fed ’em to the crows.

Now George, seeing the error

of his ways did flee in terror he

took refuge in the hospice of St Mary Overie,

where Sister Martha did receive him

nursed him through his gruesome grieving

then they set about the healing

of the Dragon

slain in the name of England

St George and Liberty.

Southwark Crown Court
3rd April 1998

True M’lud

we know all about the Borough Boys

but this is no ordinary case of Missing

Body Parts

these heretics harbour no relics

there are no crosses in their boneyard no

fingers in the deep freeze no tell-tale

Bleeding Hearts

the evidence is purely circumstantial

unconfirmed reports

a Cross fell out of the blue

on Bermondsey

some monk from the Abbey

sounds more like a case

of Care

in the Community

be that as it may

we have reason to believe

there may be grounds for charges

of conspiracy

in the literal sense M’lud

a “breathing together”

Communion of Whores the Outlaw

Rites of Mary Overie

in repetition of a well-

turned Spell

by bell

book and guttering candle

in tongues by secret

pathways walked and spoken aloud

blood-

bandaged echo

Magdalene whisper

in the empty shroud.

Here

2000 Years

mouth stopped with a stone

in the belly of a well

in Mary Overie.

2000 Years of Empire

2000 Years of X-rated

Flesh did not defile

The Daughter of Eternity.

Here Magdala in Overie

reveals Her Goose’s Heresy

in Thames mud larking

with the Child born at Liberty.

Here Jesus walks

on the Sea of Galilee

laughter echoes

in the Garden of Gethsemene.

The Book of The Constable

In the Year Ninety Six

God was up to His tricks

in Southwark at work

in a Crow and a Goose

to fetch Rylance and Slee

an old rusty key

to open a door

let the Spirit loose.

Thus as Provost did pray

for a Mystery Play –

Cathedral and Globe –

so The Goose and The Crow