Peter Bellamy's fourth solo album after the breakup of
the Young Tradition, 1970's
Oak, Ash and Thorn is the first collection of his musical settings of the
poetry of
Rudyard Kipling, a project with which the British singer and historian would be consumed for much of the rest of his life. Although
Kipling was resolutely unfashionable in 1970, seen as little more than an apologist for British colonialism's worst tendencies,
Bellamy saw through that into the heart of
Kipling's verse, which betrayed the poet's deeply held love for British tradition and folklore.
Bellamy set these
poems to adaptations of
traditional folk tunes, a marriage that works primarily because
Kipling's verse was so rooted in the British
ballad tradition.
Bellamy's former cohorts in
the Young Tradition,
Royston Wood and
Heather Wood, appear on several tracks here, and the title track became one of
Bellamy's most beloved songs, its refrain line "Wake the vaulted echo" later serving as the title of
Bellamy's three-disc career retrospective. ~ Stewart Mason
