The Dean of Southwark and clergy on procession from the Cathedral down Red Cross Way to the Cross Bones Graveyard for the annual Blessing and Bards on Sunday 27th July 2025. ‘The Act’ was initiated in 2016 by the then Dean, the Very Revd. Andrw Nunn, and has grown and deepened over the 10 years that it has been performed since (always on the nearest Sunday to the Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene).
Below: John Constable welcomes The Dean of Southwark and Cathedral clergy, setting the scene with a brief recap of the history of Cross Bones, The Winchester Geese and ‘The Southwark Mysteries’.
The current Dean of Southwark, The Very Reverend Dr Mark Oakley, has conducted the service on the graveyard for the past three years. He delivered it with a sensitivity and compassion that touched everyone present, irrespective of our personal beliefs. Here, The Dean scatters holy water.
The Dean censes the unconsecrated burial ground, the final resting place of more than 15,000 outcasts
On behalf of the Friends of Crossbones and our supporters of all faiths and nne, John Constable expresses thanks to The Dean and to Southwark Cathedral: “This means a lot to us.”
Dangerous Dinky invites us all to ‘Be An Outcast’.
Philippa Snell gets the crowd singing along to her Silkie song.
Jennifer Coper performs ‘As Vixens’ Jacqueline Durban’s extraordinary poem of resistence.
Folklorist Ben Edge’s cousin Gab testifies for his Native American Coast Salish ancestors, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (speaking in their language which only he and a few others remember). He then speaks (in English) of the abuse they endured, expressing solidarity with our work to honour our own outcast ancestors, how “it resonates with me, in my heart”. Gab shares a prayer song by his late grandfather (who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1967 for his role in ‘Little Big Man’ with Dustin Hoffman. His English name was Chief Dan George).
John Crow thanks Gab for his song and powerful testimony about the suffering inflicted on his nation by colonialism, and speaks of the abuse endured by our own outcast dead and of our work of healing.
from the penultimate verse of ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ by John Constable, as revealed by The Goose to John Crow…
Mark Juhan performs texts from ‘The Egyptian Book of Going Forth By Day’.
Nev Hawkins performs his song – to lyrics by Naomi Foyle, “birthday-twin” of the late Niall McDevitt. Niall was an active member of Crow’s ‘Liberty Crew’, performing in nine of ‘The Halloween of Cross Bones’ (1999-2007), ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ in Shakespeare’s Globe and Southwark Cathedral (2000) and many other ritual dramas at Cross Bones. He was remembered during The Bards, along with art activist Gabriella.
John Crow performs ‘The Book of The Crow’.
Life! The shrine at the gates.
At the Cross Bones gates. Remembering Sarah Wheeler aka Thomas Tobias.
A lost loved one remembered at the shrine on the gates in in Redcross Way.
Cross Bones shrine “for the suicides”.
Larry Rush reads from Kahlil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’.
Beth performs a moving poem, drawing on her own experience of being an outcast.
Aisha similarly spoke of her own journey before singing a song from her native Poland. Richard gave us a powerful Ted Hughes poem and told how Cross Bones had convinced him that “magic works”. Tom and then Kit (a Cambridge student researching our work at Cross Bones) gave accomplished performances of their own poems.
The participants come together for the Unconditional Blessing: ‘Life, Health, Happiness, Open Pathways” (Baixinha)
and ‘Goose may you never be hungry. Goose may you never be thirsty. Goose may your Spirit fly free!’
‘La Catrina’, a popular character in ‘The Day of The Dead’ festival, presented to Cross Bones by the Mexican Ambassador.
After the Blessing and Bards… Evening primrose lights up The Map of The Liberty…
complete ‘Blessings and Bards’ albym by Max Reeves:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=MaxCrowReeves&set=a.10163678731051873
