Listen to the track:
The Black Stone
This song was inspired by my discovery of a worked flint in a recently ploughed field at Knighton in Wembury. At first glance it looked like an ordinary black stone, but closer inspection revealed clues that it had probably been struck by human hands thousands of years ago. The ripple marks in the flint, the rough outer cortex and the sharp fractured edge all suggest that it was once part of a larger flint nodule that had been deliberately worked.
The song is not really about the object itself, but about the unknown person behind it. Who stood on that hillside and struck the blow that created it? What did they see when they looked across the same landscape? What was Wembury like before there were roads, farms and villages?
Standing in the field today, with rooks calling overhead and the wind crossing the land, it is impossible not to wonder about the generations who came before us. The black stone is a small reminder that even the quietest fields can hold traces of forgotten lives and stories stretching back thousands of years.
[Verse 1]
I found it in the furrows
Where the earth was freshly turned
The crows rose from the stubble
As the morning sun returned
Sharp against my fingertips
Cold as winter rain
A little piece of mystery
Risen from the ground again
[Chorus]
Who struck the black stone?
Who chipped this edge so fine?
Who stood here on this hillside
In another place and time?
The fields around old Knighton
Still keep what they have known
And somebody left their mark behind
In this little black stone
[Verse 2]
The smooth side shines beneath my thumb
The rough white skin still clings
The ripples running through the flint
Tell tales of older things
A single blow released it
So many years ago
A message from another time
Still waiting here to show
[Chorus]
Who struck the black stone?
Who chipped this edge so fine?
Who stood here on this hillside
In another place and time?
The fields around old Knighton
Still keep what they have known
And somebody left their mark behind
In this little black stone
[Bridge]
No monument, no written name
No tale that's handed down
Just a black stone in a ploughed field
Turned up from beneath the ground
[Final Chorus]
Who struck the black stone?
Who chipped this edge so fine?
Who stood here on this hillside
In another place and time?
The fields around old Knighton
Still keep what they have known
And somebody left their mark behind
In this little black stone
[Outro]
In this little black stone
In this little black stone
In this little black stone