Folk singer and legendary walked-away-from-famer Anne Briggs, here mysteriously called Annie Briggs, in her own words.
You may know her from such songs as Led Zeppelin's Black Mountainside. (It's a long story.)
Like some other folk singers - Donovan and Vashti Bunyan spring to mind - she moved away to live on the land, as if her tie to the rocks and streams of the British Isles was stronger than her tie to people and society. This has always intrigued me, this nationalism, not the Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land chanting football hooliganism nationalism, but this sense of springing from the soil rather than descending from the family.
Not that I've ever spoken to any of them, and they probably spend their time on Facebook or filling in hire-purchase forms or dealing with flat tires like normal human beings. But they *sound* otherworldly, and Anne Briggs certainly talks a lot about streams and plants and birds in this little piece.
It's on iPlayer but seems to play ok in the US. It'll be rebroadcast on October 6th, but I don't know how long after that it will be archived.
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