Here you are then - I’ve bodged the cover art together, will probably fix that later.
So, there are two stories here. The first is the story of Louisa Maud Evans, a balloonist and acrobat who died in 1896. She took off from Cardiff in a balloon to perform a parachuting display in front of a packed crowd, but landed in the waters off the East Moors and drowned. Her body wasn’t recovered until three days later, when it washed up at Nash Point. She lies in Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff. She was 14.
I used to walk in Cathays Cemetery when I was a student and after. It is very peaceful, and beautiful. I came across her headstone there in 2009, which is when I wrote and recorded this song. I thought that I had lost the recording, but found it and some of my other recordings from around that time on a SoundCloud I thought I had deactivated. So, what you have now is me from 10 years ago singing and playing guitar, me now doing an arrangement and general production, inspired by a brave adventurer from over 100 years ago.
Here are the lyrics:
Louisa, Louisa.
Take your silk
and your safety.
Take your silk.
Louisa,
take another’s fire.
Take it to the sun.
Take it back where it came from.
And your head’s so clear,
and the air’s so thin
on a day so clear
you can see the mountains,
Louisa.
Louisa,
feel the channel breeze
caress your neck
twist your curls into shipwrecks.
And every strand that’s yet to know your lovers
covers your face like the waves,
and that hand that lastly clasped your mother’s
opens to signal it’s too late to save you,
Louisa.
Do you feel no fear?
Do you fear no sin?
On a worm-woven bier
we’ll carry you in,
Louisa.
Three days beneath the waves.
Three days of search,
Until we found you there in your hiding place
in a coverlet of surf.
Louisa.
