Category Archives: Music

Music, Uncategorized

‘Sir Patrick Spens’

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Busy. I am busy. Busy like the bees, and the beavers, and any number of industrious, alliterative animal life forms.

I posted the video above (recorded in Denmark) because I was on a long road trip over Thanksgiving, and I told the story thought to be behind this ballad. I’ve mentioned it here before. “Sir Patrick Spens” is thought to be (loosely) based (with a shipwreck thrown in) on historical events surrounding the death of Queen Margaret of Scotland. Known in Scotland as Margaret, Maid of Norway. And in Norway as Margaret, Maid of Scotland.

She was the last royal heir of the Scottish Canmore dynasty. Her mother, who had already died, was a Scottish princess married to King Erik II of Norway. When all the rest of the Canmores were gone, Margaret became presumptive heir. At 7 years old, she was betrothed to Prince Edward of England (later Edward II) and sent home to assume the throne. But she took sick on the voyage and died in the Orkneys.

The struggle for the throne that followed is the actual background for the “Braveheart” story, but it wasn’t cinematic enough for the screenwriters. So they invented that scene where Edward I hangs the Scottish chieftains, an event that never happened.

Poor Margaret lived on in song and story, the Maid of Norway (or Scotland). Elevated by that “Camelot” instinct we all bear within us, the sense that if some hero (or heroine) of the past had only lived, everything would have been all right. A shadow of Eden, perhaps.

Anyway, I took a long ride over Thanksgiving, and we had a very nice family celebration. Especially nice after last year’s isolation. I came home with leftovers, which is nothing to sneeze at, at today’s prices.

And I came back to work a-waiting. For the moment it seems to be pouring in, and I can translate as much as I can handle.

And that was a little frustrating too, because I had a pile of jobs to do that I’d put off over the holiday. Doing my laundry. Talking to Customer Service at the grocery store about why my gas rewards card isn’t working. Calling my health insurance company to find out why a medication they’d always paid for was suddenly refused (this got straightened out, and required a visit to the store for a refund). Something more that has to be done on my mortgage refinance, for some reason. And now I learn that my internet provider is withdrawing service, so I’ll have to find a new one of those.

Not to mention the Sverdrup Society work I haven’t had a chance to look at for weeks.

Thank you for your time. I must return to my workbench now.

Music

Advent Singing: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

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Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence · OCP Session Choir

Advent season begins today, so I’ll share my favorite advent hymn first. If you know this hymn, it may be the oldest song you know. The words come from the Liturgy of St. James, which is a Syrian rite linked to St. James the Less. Remember our brothers and sisters in the Syrian church, who have persevered in the faith for centuries, as you sing this hymn today.

The recording above has only three of these verses.

1 Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly-minded,
for with blessing in his hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

2 King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood;
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
in the body and the blood,
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heav’nly food.

Continue reading Advent Singing: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence →
Music

Sunday Singing: We Gather Together

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“We Gather Together,” 1625, author unknown, translated from Dutch “Wilt heden nu treden” by Theodore Baker.

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens his will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to his name; he forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

Music

Sunday Singing: Make Me a Captive, Lord

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“Make Me a Captive, Lord” is an 1890 hymn by Rev. George Matheson of Glasgow, Scotland. The tune was written in 1862 by George William Martin of London.

I’ve copied the words here. This performance skips the third verse.

Continue reading Sunday Singing: Make Me a Captive, Lord →
Music

‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’

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For Veterans’ Day (as it closes; late to the party is how I roll), I looked for an arrangement of the American song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” I wanted a live performance, but settled for the video above, a popular World War II version by the famous Andrews Sisters (Greek-Norwegian in ancestry, Lutheran in religion, all born in Minneapolis).

The song has an Irish tune, as so many great Civil War songs did. It was written by an Irish-American bandleader named Patrick Gilmore, who copyrighted it under the pseudonym “Louis Lambert” in 1863.

There’s a song called “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye,” with the same tune, that’s far darker, about a soldier coming home from war maimed – “Ye haven’t an arm, and ye haven’t a leg. All ye can do is sit and beg….” I always assumed it was the original and that Americans altered it to make it suitable for recruiting rallies. However, according to Wikipedia, Gilmore’s song actually was published first, and “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye” had a different tune at first.

Most of the videos of this song I found on YouTube featured visuals that seemed to me somewhat ironic, as if to fulfill a moral obligation to remind everyone that war is terrible. Because, I suppose, we’re likely to forget about that.

I wanted to find an upbeat version. What this holiday is for, I think, is to affirm the soldier and the value of his sacrifices. We have another day for those who fell in war. Veteran’s Day is meant to be a day when the warriors in the hall can hear the skalds singing their courage and great deeds. That’s a necessary exercise, I think, and possibly more therapeutic than treating veterans like fragile, broken flowers.

Music

‘Threescore and Ten’

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Still working on translation. This job is a bigger one, in a single chunk, than I’m used to. I’m not complaining at all – that’s money in the poke. But I can’t dawdle with blogging (or reading books to review), so it’s music for you tonight. You’ll take it and you’ll like it.

The song, “Threescore and Ten,” continues the theme of nautical music I started last night. This one is closer to home (for me) though. It’s about fishermen, of whom I come from a long line. It’s a broadside ballad (words by fisherman William Delf, who wrote it for the benefit of the widows and orphans, music traditional) about a devastating storm that struck the northeast coast of England in February 1889. It’s still remembered as one of the greatest disasters to strike the coast around Grimsby and Kingston Upon Hull.

Performance by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (I actually have this album on vinyl).

Have a good weekend, and may the winds be favorable.

Music, Reading

The Wellerman comes

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Work has descended on me today, like a squall off Cape Horn. It had been a long-ish calm, and I was getting nervous about it. But today, first of all, I got a referral from a satisfied customer, recommending me to another possible client. That’s gratifying in the extreme. Don’t know if it’ll come to anything, but approval is approval, and I suffer from a constitutional deficiency. Then a substantial script came in for translation, which means a decent pay day coming up over the horizon. Which, as it happens, I can use.

I’ve been reading a book (I’ll review it whenever I get it finished) about the last days of the great sailing ships. I read this stuff with a special fascination, knowing that some of my ancestors were involved in merchant sailing (one of them is supposed to have sailed to China). The author is doing an excellent job describing the hellish conditions under which those old sailors worked, even late in the 19th Century – insanely dangerous duties up in the rigging, miserable food, brutal discipline, dreary drudgery and heart-in-your-throat peril from the elements. For little pay. (That explains the shanty performance I embedded at the top of this post.)

When I think about the fact that I can eke out a living working at a keyboard under my own supervision, in a warm, dry house with enough food to keep me fat, I realize that I certainly belong to the 1% of humanity, from a historical perspective. And so, probably, do you, unless you’re a Chinese or Muslim slave, just because you were born into a lucky century.

Music

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

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The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

Seraphic Fire performs “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” by Elizabeth Poston

This traditional Christmas carol would fit well during apple season, in September or October when many of us look for cider at a farmers market or visit orchards to pick or buy Jonagolds, Mitzus, and Arkansas Blacks off the trees around us.

Eric Hollas has a beautiful story of the apple trees his father tended in the inhospitable climate of Oklahoma City.

So it was that each autumn we ate apples until we grew tired of them.  And when it was clear that we’d eat no more, he turned to pies.  Late into the night, night after night, he peeled apples relentlessly, while my bemused mother baked on and on.  Our kitchen became a pie factory, and by the end of the season there could be eighty or a hundred pies in the freezer.

“Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” has been found in print from 1761 and possibly a bit earlier, attributed to Rev. Richard Hutchins, a clergyman of Northamptonshire, England.

Music

Sissel sings Grieg

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I’m up against it tonight. A meeting to attend tonight, a meeting to attend tomorrow, and a fairly large translation job to do whenever I can squeeze it in.

Above, the divine Sissel, doing “Solveig’s Song” by Edvard Grieg, from his music for Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt.”

She’s wearing the Bergen folk costume.

Music, Uncategorized

Victorious in Victoria

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I thought about taking a picture at the Nordic Music Festival in Victoria, Minn. this past Saturday. But it would have been pretty much like other pictures I’ve posted of the event in the past, made less interesting by the lack of my Viking tent. I’m still driving the loaner car, which isn’t big enough to carry the thing, and the guy who’s hauled my stuff for me to the last couple events wasn’t able to be there. So I showed up with my Viking clothes, my books for sale, a couple weapons, and my magnetic personality only.

And actually it worked out pretty well. There’s something to be said for minimalism, it seems.

The festival wasn’t held last summer, needless to say. Crowds were down this year compared to the past, but those who came had a good time. The weather was beautiful, a little warm but with a pleasant breeze. Everybody who made the trek seemed happy to be there, relieved to get a furlough from lockdown.

And I sold books. Very substantial sales. I’ve always marked this festival as one of those events where books didn’t move, but they moved this year. The main difference was that I was at the table under the canopy with all the other Vikings, rather than enthroned in solitary splendor with my tent, sunshade, and Viking chest.

Maybe I need to find ways to make myself more accessible.

The very thought gives me the willies.

Anyway, it was all a success, for me at least. Packing up was easy, and then I drove the half hour back home. And had a nasty shock.

I couldn’t find my house keys. I’ve never hooked them to the loaner car’s keys, because I’ve always told myself this arrangement wouldn’t last much longer (three months now and counting).

That didn’t mean I couldn’t get into my house. I have a spare key. You don’t get as old as I am, with the short-term memory I’ve got, without learning the uses of redundancy. But there’s an assortment of keys on that ring, and I wasn’t sure exactly what else I’d be losing access to.

It was getting dark by then, so I figured I’d put off searching the car until morning. Maybe the keys were in the car. Maybe they’d fallen into one of my boxes.

But what haunted me through the night was the growing conviction that the most likely scenario was that I’d dropped the keys, either into the grass on our camp site, or in the parking lot while packing my car.

Which would mean driving a half hour either way back to Victoria to hunt for them. Almost assuredly without success. Either they’d be lost in the grass, or somebody would have carried them off.

But in the morning, I checked the car again. And behold, they’d fallen into the crack between the driver’s seat and the console. (One of the disadvantages of wearing a pouch, as the Vikings did – the console forces the pouch to turn 90 degrees, making it easy for stuff to spill out.)

Great relief on my part. But oddly, throughout the day, I had attacks of the sudden conviction that there was something I was supposed to be worrying about. I’d turned on my WORRY switch, and it has no OFF position. You just have to wait for the fuse to burn out.