I am so pleased to announce my latest single. A cover of Sandy Denny’s Classic tale of the captivity and eventual execution of Mary Queen Of Scots at Fotheringhay castle.
I’ve been singing this song for years, it’s one of my very favourite Sandy Denny songs. At just 3.30 long it contains within it an entire world, it could be a historical novel, play or painting, such is the vivid nature of its imagery. The melancholia in “Fotheringay” isn’t just passive sadness. It is the heavy, quiet dignity of a woman who has accepted her fate but refuses to let anyone else dictate how she meets it.
Sandy Denny wrote it as a young woman on the cusp of the rest of her life, and it carries a heavy, prophetic weight.
Despite being surrounded by guards, courtiers, and a literal kingdom, Mary was utterly alone. Even when Sandy was at the absolute peak of her fame, worshipped by audiences, those closest to her noted she carried a profound, unshakeable internal loneliness. She was constantly looking out of her own castle windows feeling entirely misunderstood. The song captures that specific feminine isolation, the feeling of a room full of people listening but “with no-one to heed her call”
When you have a voice like Sandy’s the world immediately feels a sense of ownership over you. The industry, the audience, and those nearest you, build a figurative castle around your talent. They want to keep you in a specific room, singing a specific way, serving a specific purpose.That guarded door Sandy sings about is the claustrophobia of being deeply perceived but never truly seen. It is the exhausting realisation that your unique gift has become the very thing that isolates you from a normal, free life.
“In my end is my Beginning” – Mary Queen Of Scots
Musically I have leant into its plaintive early music flavour, setting it on harp, recorder ensemble, organ and drum. To me it has always had the ancient quality of a long lost Dowland song. Sandy’s songwriting is at once timeless and yet contains a thrilling relevance and modernity even today.
The Fat Angel Sings 