The late Sandy Denny is to have a 19-CD box set released by Universal Music Catalogue in October – and in the process of putting this together, a never-before-heard home recording has been found.

The set features songs the great folk vocalist, who died in 1978, performed with Alex Campbell, Johnny Silvo, Fotheringay, Strawbs, Fairport Convention and solo. There are also outtakes and previously unreleased tracks, alternate takes, BBC recordings and interviews.

But the really interesting news is the unearthing of Denny doing an unidentified folk song has been found among her home recordings.  Here are the lyrics for this, as far as they can be made out:

“I saw a dark star against the black sky

Of a night thirteen hundred years long

It cast shrouding shadows upon the desert

of the dark moons that formed in her eyes

“On the vowel of her rack the sun never smiled

And the noon of the day was in shadow

And the sky left its beard on the black barren earth

And the … was … in …

“On a shrine of black flowers Ethusel lay dead

as he had for thirteen centuries

At his feet five crows stood and watched to his keep

And the whisper of time sighed around the hills

“Pannasowna has tried fair winged [weird] for it stead

though the sky’s in search of the star

and the serpent entwined about the stag’s head

tried to reach out and poison her hair.

“O no, Pannasowna, you will not go far

Ethusel [Methusa] has only one hour

and if you do not reach him before it is over

then rada falls into the ocean. [then the world falls into the sea].

“Pannasowna took her form and she stabbed [pierced] the serpent’s eye

and he fell through the clouds to the land. [sea]

As she rode on and on full of laden stones

With horizons of life in her unsung [till she came to …]

“It was then that the daylight became the dark night

[and] she recalled [remembered] what the farmer [sermon] had said:

When the night becomes black and no sound can be heard,

You have come to the land of … [Fardinarel]

“And she found the dark star hanging low in the sky

and she gathered it up in her arms

and she rode to the shrine where Ethusel lay dead [and she rode to the place that was so …]

and she placed the dark star on her …

“And the star became bright and it shone on the land

and the shrouds of darkness were gone

and Ethusa was standing before Pannazorna

and the light came to bear in her hair.”

If you  know what the song is, then Sandy Denny’s estate would love you to contact them. Here’s the email address: infoumc@umusic.com