Queen of Misrule by Darren Hayman

As best I can recall the only outtake from my recent album The Violence

A Christmas song of sorts it concerns Oliver Cromwell’s supposed banning of Christmas. It was perhaps natural that puritans who perceived any image or effigy of god to be devilish or ungodly would eventually turn their prudent eyes on the Winter festival.

Although no ban as such took place attempts were made to curtail the excessive celebrations in favour of a more religious festival.

Resistance to these idea lead to the so-called Christmas Wars, which were Wars in name only.

The song itself was troublesome to me to complete and and suffered many rewrites. In fact an almost completely different version with alternate words and tune named ‘The Christmas Wars’ exists on my Christmas in Haworth record from last year.

The Violence can be bought on CD or Vinyl or downloaded here.