Oh the English and the Irish and their songs

I have written before about my love of music, and how I connect it with many different texts that I am exposed to. In James Joyce’s “The Dead” I made a few connections specifically to music that was included there. I was very interested in becoming familiar with the included songs because music says so much about a scene, just like the soundtracks of a movie. Becoming familiar with the music allowed me to feel the mood a little more, or at least what I thought was the mood.

 

I became very interested in the song “The Lass of Aughrim” whose lyrics are as follows:

Well if you be the Lass of Aughrim

As I suppose you to be

Come give me the last token

Between you and me

 

Ah Gregory don't you remember

That night on the hill

When we swapped rings off each other's hands

Surely against my will

 

Mine was of the beaten gold

Yours but black tin

Yes mine was of the beaten gold

Yours but black tin

 

Once I had listened to the song, I was reminded of an English Folk Song called “Early One Morning.” This wasn’t because the words were the same or were sung in similar meaning, but more because of my reaction to the words.  It reminded me of Gretta. The lyrics to this song go:

 

Early one morning just as the sun was rising, I heard a maid sing in the valley below: “Oh, don’t deceive me! Oh, never leave me! How could you use a poor maiden so?”

“Remember the vows that you made to marry, Remember the bow’r where you vow’d to be true; Oh, don’t deceive me! Oh, never leave me! How could you use a poor maiden so?”

“Gay is the garland and fresh are the roses I’ve cull’d from the garden to bind on thy brow; Oh, don’t deceive me! Oh, never leave me! How could you use a poor maiden so?”

Thus sang the poor maiden her sorrows bewailing, Thus sang the poor maid in the valley below: “Oh, don’t deceive me! Oh, never leave me! How could you use a poor maiden so?”

The first time that I sang this song, I was a sophomore in high school, and it was one of the pieces that I prepared for state’s Music Festival. It was something from years ago that made me happy when I sang it then because while I had striven to insert as much emotion into the piece as possible, I could not feel what the music was truly saying. A couple of days ago, I heard the song on NPR. The experience that came with that listening was indescribable, but it almost brought me to tears. The song that I had once loved for its mere beauty had become, in a sense, a part of my life.

After two years I learned that I had been no better than a cook and a maid to a guy. He spoke pleasantly often enough to me to keep me around, but most of it was a lie. He swore he was truthful in his actions and words, but I was deceived. Needless to say, we broke up, which is actually a blessing in disguise, but because of that experience, a familiar song became something so new and different that it was profoundly unrecognizable. I think this might've been how Gretta felt too.