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about
Brusher Mills
Brusher Mills is a New Forest legend...Living in relative isolation in an abandoned charcoal-burner’s hut, he made a living catching snakes. Some he turned into ointment, some he sold to London Zoo as food for their birds of prey and snake-eating snakes — or for the lions, as some claim.
There seems to be no evidence that snake-catching was a common livelihood in England, which perhaps helps explain Henry “Brusher” Mills’s notoriety. His living as an adder and grass-snake catcher was augmented by the sale of walking sticks at country fairs and he seems to have been a popular local figure, ever ready to share black, sweetened tea to visitors to his hut, from his one and only tin can. Despite this popularity, his hut was burnt down — perhaps by one of his few enemies, or, it has been suggested, to avoid him being able to claim squatters rights on that land. He moved into the back room of The Railway Inn, Brockenhurst, and died not long afterwards. Adam has a hazy recollection that it was in this pub that he was bought his first beer (aged about seven or eight) by his grandfather: a quarter pint of shandy, made with Badger Bitter. The pub has since been renamed The Snakecatcher, in Brusher Mills’s honour.
lyrics
Brusher Mills, lyrics Kirsty Merryn
She draws me forth, I draw her off,
With sigh of slate grey sky and earth,
I bid her meet me in the heath,
Hot sun above, black soil beneath.
I wish her here, I want her not
To trap and tame, for life and rot,
Diamond-coat, on forest floor,
Myth-corrupted, ancient lore.
Entangled is her hide with mine,
I leach her life to make my wine,
Her bones I bleach, her venom tap,
And set her loose in lion’s lap.
She draws me forth, I draw her off,
With sigh of slate grey sky and earth,
I bid her meet me in the heath,
Hot sun above, black soil beneath.
credits
from The Devil's On The Mast,
released June 2, 2023
Music by Adam Summerhayes, Murray Grainger and Kirsty Merryn
Produced and mixed by Murray Grainger. Lyrics by Adam Summerhayes and Kirsty Merryn
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