“Dancing, double-talking…” It’s a line from one of the most powerful songs I’ve ever heard: Innocents’ Song, by Show of Hands, a west-country folk duo who we have followed for years.

Click the link above to listen on YouTube. (There may be an advert to click through, first).

But this post is not about music or that album. It’s about the dramatic words used in the song…

Who’s that knocking at the window?

Innocents’ Song

We first saw them at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2009. Since then, we’ve joined their devoted followers to attend live gigs whenever possible.

Who’s that knocking at the door?

The words were not written by Show of Hands; they were penned by Charles Causley, a much-loved English poet, in 1961.

What are all those presents, lying on the kitchen floor?

Charles Causley (1917-2003) was born in Cornwall, in the market town of Launceston, where he lived for most of his life.

His father fought in the First World War and died when he was young.. This early loss and his own experience of service in the Second World War affected him, deeply.

Who is the smiling stranger
With hair as white as gin,
What is he doing with the children
And who could have let him in?

He was drawn to poetry, studying the traditional forms, but preferring to take his inspiration from folk songs, hymns and ballads. There was something of the romantic about the young man.

Throighout his active and successful life (he was honoured with the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967 and a Cholmondeley Award in 1971) he stayed a ‘people’s poet’ and observers often remarked that ‘he wrote the kind of stuff that you would listen to sitting around the campfire’.

But this gentle picture belies the daring of the imagery he used in his work. He loved children and wrote some of his best works dedicated to them – and in defence of them. Causley never lost his vision of a world where “Houses put on leaves, water rang.”

I think it’s fair to say he would have been appalled that the ‘collateral slaughter’ of children is now commonplace in our fractured world. The final lines of his Innocents’ Song, (a poem), is below, and is the source of the quotes here.

Watch where he comes walking
Out of the Christmas flame,
Dancing, double-talking:


Herod is his name.

It’s also deeply shocking – perhaps appropriate in these days of vaporising housing blocks.

Ted Hughes described Causley as one of the “best loved and most needed” poets of the last fifty years.

His Cornish burr imparted a story-teller’s magic to the ballads around that campfire. We can also imagine the tears in his eyes at the current tragedies.

Causley’s full poem, Innocents’ Song, is below:

Innocents’ Song, by Charles Causley (1961)

Who’s that knocking on the window,
Who’s that standing at the door,
What are all those presents
Laying on the kitchen floor?

Who is the smiling stranger
With hair as white as gin,
What is he doing with the children
And who could have let him in?

Why has he rubies on his fingers,
A cold, cold crown on his head,
Why, when he caws his carol,
Does the salty snow run red?

Why does he ferry my fireside
As a spider on a thread,
His fingers made of fuses
And his tongue of gingerbread?

Why does the world before him
Melt in a million suns,
Why do his yellow, yearning eyes
Burn like saffron buns?

Watch where he comes walking
Out of the Christmas flame,
Dancing, double-talking:


Herod is his name.

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Exeter University holds Charles Causley’s archive of literary manuscripts, notebooks, diaries and photographs – you can explore these here and the Charles Causley Trust also has a wealth of resources available.

———-

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers a mentored, journal-based journey from personality to the awakening of realised Self and its world of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog