A Folk Song A Day:
thiswaitingheart:
Speaking of resources for learning about folk songs’ historical context: May I introduce you to Jon Boden’s 2010-11 ‘A Folk Song A Day’ project?
As the title suggests, the blog has 365 folk songs recorded by Jon Boden & supplied with introductions by Simon Holland. The comments are also excellent.
And if you’re wondering what ‘Mudcat’ and ‘Mainly Norfolk’ are - they’re two more excellent resources to start researching (British/English-language) folk music. Both record variations, artists who recorded the song in question, print editions of songs, and whether the song in question appears in one of the major song indexes (Roud, Child Ballads, etc.). Then there’s Oxford Broadside Ballads Online, and Wikipedia isn’t the worst place to start to look up individual songs, either.
“I am in, therefore, a time of mass apprehensions.”
- Simone White, from [“Hour in which I consider hydrangea”].
In the category of ‘people who should be better known’ I’d really like to nominate Dorothy Bonarjee, an Indian student at Aberystwyth University who won the poetry prize at the college’s annual Eisteddfod in 1914. She sounds like such a remarkable woman, and I’m fascinated that she continued to contribute to Welsh culture through magazines like Welsh
Outlook even after she left Wales. Read the article - if anyone deserves a biopic, she does!
“So I must give thee up - not with the glow
Of those who losing much yet rather gain.
But losing all. Did never martyr go
Along the bleeding road of useless pain?
Did never one held prisoner by a creed,
Obsessed by stern heroic ghosts, made dumb
By those who answered duty to his need,
With faithless loathing feet to his fate come?”
- Dorothy Bonarjee, from Renunciation.
So, I just made a little sideblog where I’m going to be posting book reviews and just generally keeping track of my reading, so if you’re interested in that kind of thing then the link is here! I’m always happy to chat about books, either there or here. :)
laurasimonsdaughter:
I am always on the lookout for unusual changeling stories and I found a very delightful one from Cornwall!
It explains how the fae of the area, the piskies, had a habit of seeking protection from humans at times. When this happened one had to help them, because kindness to them would be greatly rewarded, but to anger them would bring terrible bad luck. So when the inhabitant of a farm finds a weak little piskie baby near their home, they immediately adopt the changeling into the family as one of their own.
The changeling soon grew stronger and when they were healthy again they turned out so lively, clever and good-humoured that they became a true favourite of the family. They did have some very strange habits, but nobody paid any mind to that, because they all knew they had piskie blood.
The family was happy and prosperous and nobody ever thought of having to lose their little foundling. But one day the changeling was leaning out the open half-door, looking wistfully out over the fields, when a clear voice suddenly came calling from a distance: “Coleman Gray, Coleman Gray!”
The piskie jumped to attention, laughing and clapping their hands, and exclaimed: “Aha! My daddy is come!”
A moment later they were gone and they were never seen again.
It’s rather sad that the changeling did not say goodbye, but it is delightful to me to see a story where a child is left in a human’s care without taking another in return and the fae come back for their child in the end. So I’ll just choose to believe that the human family will have found little tokens of thanks and affection from their adopted child and their family around the farm often enough to comfort them a bit for their loss.
evergreensoulthings:
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice.”
~T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Art: All the Year Round - Woodcut by Kent Ambler
jawnkeets:
sometimes you just have to *night on bald mountain* *danse macabre* *the sorcerer’s apprentice* *in the hall of the mountain king*
