Mi Contra Fa

Other ballads I may learn

The Brown Girl - not really on-theme but I like the general F U sentiment.

Crow and [Mag]Pie - For the "Just don't have sex then" crowd.  Raymond Crooke sings it.

The Queen of Elfan's Nourice - When you already have a child but you have to care for a different child instead.  Rachel McDonogh sings it.

The Broomfield Hill - When you have to ensorcel a man because if you don't let him have sex with you, he'll kill you.  A. L. Lloyd sings it.

Lizie Wan - Very much the same as Jellon Grame, except with bonus incest.

 

 

Jellon Grame

Another ballad, shortened.  Raymond Crooke performs it.

O JELLON GRAME sat in Silver Wood,
He whistled and he sang,
And he has calld his little foot-page,
His errand for to gang.

‘Win up, my bonny boy,’ he says,
‘As quick as eer you may;
For ye maun gang for Lillie Flower,
Before the break of day.’

The boy he’s buckled his belt about,
And thro the green-wood ran,
And he came to the ladie’s bower-door,
Before the day did dawn.

‘Ye are bidden come to Silver Wood,
But I fear you’ll never win hame;
Ye are bidden come to Silver Wood,
And speak wi Jellon Grame.’

‘O I will gang to Silver Wood,
Though I shoud never win hame;
For the thing I most desire on earth
Is to speak wi Jellon Grame.

She had no ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile but barely three,
Ere she came to a new made grave,
Beneath a green oak tree.

O then up started Jellon Grame,
Out of a bush hard bye:
‘Light down, light down now, Lillie Flower,
For it’s here that ye maun ly.’

She lighted aff her milk-white steed,
And knelt upon her knee:
‘O mercy, mercy, Jellon Grame!
For I’m nae prepar’d to die.

‘Your bairn, that stirs between my sides,
Maun shortly see the light;
But to see it weltring in my blude
Woud be a piteous sight.’

‘O shoud I spare your life,’ he says,
‘Until that bairn be born,
I ken fu well your stern father
Woud hang me on the morn.’

‘O spare my life now, Jellon Grame!
My father ye neer need dread;
I’ll keep my bairn i the good green wood,
Or wi it I’ll beg my bread.’

He took nae pity on that ladie,
Tho she for life did pray;
But pierced her thro the fair body,
As at his feet she lay.

Fair Mary of Wallington

Gonna see about chopping this down to performance length.  Raymond Crooke's performance for the tune.

WHEN we were silly sisters seven,
sisters were so fair,
Five of us were brave knights’ wives,
and died in childbed lair.

Up then spake Fair Mary,
marry woud she nane;
If ever she came in man’s bed,
the same gate wad she gang.

‘Make no vows, Fair Mary,
for fear they broken be;
Here’s been the Knight of Wallington,
asking good will of thee.’

‘If here’s been the knight, mother,
asking good will of me,
Within three quarters of a year
you may come bury me.’
 
She had not been in Wallington
three quarters and a night,
Till on the ground she coud not walk,
she was a weary wight.

‘Give my respects to my mother,
[as] she sits in her chair of stone,
And ask her how she likes the news,
of seven to have but one.

‘Give my love to my brothers
William, Ralph, and John,
And to my sister Betty fair,
and to her white as bone.

‘And bid her keep her maidenhead,
marry shoud she nane; 
If ever she came in man’s bed, 
the same gate will she gang.

She took out a razor sharp
that was both bright and fine,
And out of her left side has ta'en
the heir of Wallington.

There is a race in Wallington,
and that I rue full sare;
Tho the cradle be full up,
the bride-bed is left bare.
 

New cat-egory of repertoire?

I dwell within the lands of fair Atlantia, between the mountains and the sea.  And as it happened one day, someone noticed that "Atlantia" was but one letter away from "Catlantia," and a virtual fellowship devoted to pet memes and sharing pictures of actual pets was born.  As the Bardic War looms, it seems to me that it would be good to represent Catlantia - as an Atlantian ally, naturally.  

"Pangur Ban" is a natural period piece to perform.  I have Henry Beard's "Poetry for Cats," and I already perform his "Grendel's Dog, from Beocat" often.  Geoffery Chaucer puts a parable about cats in the mouth of the Manciple.  And there's something about a possible Cattes Tale?  (Is this an academic joke? Signs point to yes).  And naturally, that granddaddy collector of animal tales, Aesop, has a few with cats.  And a few more.

And here is a lengthy ballad about a Mayor of London and how he gained his fortune by a cat, just post-period in 1612.  Alas that the cat does not play a larger, more Puss in Bootsy role - he just sells the cat to a king for gold.  And lo, a tune is given!  I need to check out the page a bit to see from whence the tune comes - at a guess, 18th cen at earliest - but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Edits: But wait, there's more...

• The Wife of Bath compared to a cat
• Pseudo-Chaucerian cat poetry from Medieval Pets
• I wondered if cats featured in Reynard tales!  Evidently yes, but the story is not one a cat-lover would enjoy.

Scandanavian folk music - analysis

Völuspá Text, from http://www.voluspa.org/voluspa1-5.htm

Ár var alda þar er Ýmir bygði,
vara sandr né sær né svalar unnir,
jörð fannsk æva né upphiminn,
gap var ginnunga, en gras hvergi.

OK, text again, with alliterating (and assumed stressed) syllables highlighted:

Ár var alda þar er Ýmir bygði,
vara sandr né sær né svalar unnir,
jörð fannsk æva né upphiminn,
gap var ginnunga, en gras hvergi.

The music from the 1780 French book:

Notes that correspond to highlighted syllables:

(F-G) F A
A A G
F F (maybe)
A G G

Notes:

All assignments of stresses are my best guesses, as I don't speak a lick of Icelandic.  Will have to ask Deirdre for help.

Line 1: Not really sure if 'Ar' is stressed or not. It looks a lot like a pickup here.  Aside from that, the two stressed syllables have half notes.

Line 2: Does the "sv" in "svalar" alliterate with the 's' in 'sandr' and 'saer'?  The two plain s-words take half notes, svalar does not.

Line 3: The French rendered "ne upphiminn" as "Neu-phi-min", and it has the most complicated mapping of notes to syllables in the piece, of course it does.  The French has 3 syllables with 6 notes; the Danish has 4 syllables (I think) to assign to the six notes.  I am guessing that the half-note (an F) is what is properly assigned to the stressed syllable.

Line 4: All 3 'g' words take half notes.

Looking at just the words that alliterate AND take half-notes, I get:

F A
A A
F F
A G G

So if this is a 'melodic outline', to be filled in as the unstressed syllable arrangement requires it, it's on a per-stanza basis, not a per-line basis.  Which makes sense, because singing the same melody over and over and over for each verse is already a lot; if it was the same melody for every line, it would be ridiculous.

Interestingly, the final note corresponding to a stressed syllable is a G - the key signature is a B-Flat, so F Major.  If this were the usual final note, I'd say, yup, Dorian mode!  As it is, the piece actually ends on an F.  F also seems to play an important structural role, much more than I would expect if this were really a Dorian piece.

The B-flat actually gets played in the second line (second syllable of 'sandr' and the 'ne' that follows) so, if this was accurately recorded by the collector, it's not a Lydian mode piece (where the B would be natural).

The range is from E to B, a fifth, which fits with other things I've read about epic songs often having that sort of very narrow range.  Also fits on either a lyre or even a kantele.

Composing for alliterative poetry

Sigurth and Brynhild came out really well.  I decided to make it singable, and want to lay out the process as I'm currently exercising it.

Write the Poem

I still compose poetry on paper, not orally. 

Memorize the Poem

The next few steps go much more easily if I've got the poem in memory. Also lets me work aloud and in the car.

Recite the Poem Aloud

I tried to pay close attention to my vocal pitches, as used in recitation.  Where were the natural lifts and falls, and could I use that to guide the melody?

Visualize the Stresses

Recitation didn't unlock a perfect melody.  I turned to an older idea I had.

Alliterative verse (English and Norse) contains four stresses per line, with unstressed syllables placed according to several templates.  The meter is defined, but not regular. So my approach is to assign four pitches - one per stress - and then use linking notes to fill in the unstresses.  Pickup notes appear and disappear at will.  Generally, after I work through the poem, a general pattern emerges.

I could definitely do this on the harp, visualizing the placements of the notes by looking at/playing the strings.  Since I was using commuting time, I imagined the notes. I started with a "high, low; high, low" pattern for the first line of each quatrain.  That sounded too firetruck-siren-y, so I modified my image of the pattern to "high, low; medium, low."  Suddenly, it came out sounding much better.

Interestingly, it also suddenly took on a home-and-away character, entirely unintentionally.  I thought maybe I was doing "re, la; fa, re."  Turns out it was "la, re; mi, re."  "re" is my home/tonic in Dorian mode, so its dominant is "la" - I expect them to go together.  "Fa" is in their family too. The associated "away" is do-so, with "mi" associated.

Get the Repeated Melody Pattern

Since the Norse verse uses quatrains, I thought I'd have four lines of melody.  Well, three - I intended to have the melody for line 1 and line 3 be the same.  I came up with a pattern that seemed to work.

Start to Practice It. Work Out the Details.

Practice shakes out a bunch of things.

1. I lost my second line of melody and started using a melodic couplet, repeated, for each quatrain.  I am still not sure how I feel about this. My test audience of one did not find it too repetitive/cloying, but I am not sure.
2. I found where my literary ways sabotaged me.  Syllables that I designated as stressed in the written poem did not always come out stressed as I sang through it.  English being what it is, in all cases but one, I can shift emphasis without putting a stress on an obviously unstressed syllable.  Example: I was singing "THAN my own LIFE," when I needed an m-alliteration.  "than MY own LIFE" is what was meant.  That's a valid way to stress that sentence - it's not like my old "pork CHOP, pork CHOP" problem.  On the other hand, I should not have alliterated "aMEND" with "misTAKE".  It sneaks by on paper, but becomes very obvious when sung.
3. I found the places where I wanted to vary the melody, mostly for dramatic emphasis.  One of the nice features (? I think it's nice?) of this style is that I can vary the notes for my unstresses to keep it from being too monotonous.  (I'm sort of thinking of the runo music I've got... the structure of that is probably a different post.)  But there are a few verses where I just entirely replaced the first line of music.

Add Color, If Desired

Brynhild is angry in this song.  I sing her lines in an angry voice.  Someone using the traditional ballad performance style (very little emotion expressed) would skip this, obviously.

Add Harp, If Possible

I just got to this stage.  I first try to find my melody on the strings - that's the only way I can figure out what the accompaniment should be.  I still use very simple open fifths - "re la" underneath those parts that operate at "home," and "so do" under the "away" notes.  Mostly.  The short excursion to "away" in the first melody line doesn't seem worth trying to cram an accompaniment shift - there's a little dissonance but that's okay.  The second melody line goes "do so do re" - it's entirely "away," until the final stress brings it home.

I'm still new to singing with the harp, so this part is challenging.  I'm working on pacing the accompaniment so it lines up with the stresses in the melody.  Also, the first time through, it made it weirdly difficult to perform the "variant" melody lines I mentioned in bullet 3, above.  Hoping some practice clears that up.

The dance weaves under the firethorn

Crown Tourney has a Tempore Cultura Atlantia trifecta going on - French, Norse, 16th cen.

Here is a list of 16th century Danish ballads.  (Norse, 16th cen)

Here is a "Medieval Scandinavian Encyclopedia" saying that ballads are derived from medieval French verse forms. (French, if you squint.)

Here is an Old Danish/modern Danish translation of one of the 16th cen ballads.

Here ("Elvir Hill," 2/3 the way down) and here (page 225, "Elfer Hill") are English or Scots-dialect translation of said ballad. In summary: young man pauses to rest on a elf-hill. Two elven maidens come out, sing and dance, promise him knowledge and prowess if he will dance with them. He stays silent, they threaten to kill him, but the cock crows and he is saved by the dawn.

And here is most of Sir Bela of Eastmarch's (Poul Anderson's) poem from his short story, "The Queen of Air and Darkness." Like the translations above, it leaves off the ballad's refrain (which is found handily in the post title).  And do you know, if you took out the references to alien plants and animals, it's more or less the same story.

Observation: Sir Bela's poem is much more... poetic.  He uses lots of very original and vivid imagery, whereas ballads tend to be formulaic.  "With starlight in her glance" is not a phrase you will ever see in a traditional ballad.

If I were going to Crown, I would looooove to perform this as an entry (if I could find the music).  It's by a Scadian - one of the Founders, in fact! - and it adheres very closely to a period source as far as narrative and even structure go.  (The Danish ballads evidently nearly always have refrains, while the English ones do sometimes, but it's hardly expected.)  

But I'm not going to Crown, so I'd have to write an original poem and send a non-performing art along.  I'm poking at the idea, looking for an angle that's more than a rehash of Elfer Hill, and also not a ripoff of Sir Bela.

 

Red Mountain Mead Hall and Night on the Town

Two events in two weeks! It's like some sort of record.

Red Mountain Mead Hall

This is a charming, laid-back event at a gorgeous 4-H camp in Isenfir.  The main hall had a large fireplace and a really rustic log-cabin look to it - really felt like a mead-hall. I took classes on Birka posaments and sprang, did my "Beowulf" performance as requested, and enjoyed a quite delicious feast. 

I tent camped, and there was frost on the ground both mornings.  Lessons learned: my old blue puffy sleeping bag is still hella warm.  Next time I put up the pyramid tent, try not putting the stakes in all the way.  Get the pole up, and then get the stakes down.  It was just unreasonably hard to get the pole up.  The only thing I can think that I did differently from when I first got the tent is that I drove the stakes all in.  (I remember I did not when I first used the tent, because I caught my gown on one of them and tore a hole in it.)

Night on the Town

I don't know if I've been to this local Lochmere event before.  Since I've been rationing my events (e.g., since kids), a mostly-fencing event doesn't usually rise to the level of me spending one of my 'chits' on it. Having just spent a full Fri-Sun in Isenfir, I didn't think I'd be able to make this one. But the weather was lovely and my husband was okay with it, so off I went.

Good Garb: I wore my oldest still-fitting violet tunic under my 7th cen. caftan, with appropriate jewelry and headgear. And you know what? I rocked it.  More and more these days, I am looking in the mirror and seeing things that fit well and look right, instead of seeing a to-do list of things to improve.  And at the event, a lady actually recognized what I was wearing down to the era, because she was interested in making the same sort of garb.  Yay more Anglo-Saxons!

Bardic: Lazy afternoon hanging with the bards.  Got some tips from Lord Wyn that might help my strained throat.  Warm up with humming, then open-mouth humming, then la-la-las.  Keep throat relaxed when singing.  I tried it and I think it helped.  I told "Thrymskvitha" here and at Red Mead Hall, and it went really well both times.  Comedy!

Spinning: I entered my spinning into the Novice A&S competition, since I've been doing it just since last year's Sheep and Wool.  And I won!  Woot.

 

 

Practice

I have gotten back into a regular musical practice. While this is good for me, it doesn't lend itself well to blogging.  

I've made progress on Karen Marshalsay's "Key Techniques for Harp." That got me back to the ap Huw manuscript, and I'm reading Paul Whittaker's thesis. His take on the tunings makes some sense to me.  I've also been monkeying with the "24 measures" of Welsh music as given in the MS - sort of a series of chord progressions, except there's only two chords, 1 and 0.  Reading Whittaker, I'm getting more sure that I have totally incorrectly parsed what's a 1 and what's a 0.  Onward!

I assumed that 1 would be Dorian home (plus a third and a fifth above) - like it is for, say, Brian Boru's March.  Then 0 would be a whole step below Dorian home, with its associated third and fifth.  It's more like 1 is home and 0 is an away that's a whole step above, but there's at least one note shared between the two.  

The 7 Warranted Tunings are then thrown into the mix. If I'm reading Dooley right, exactly what pitches are home and away change based on what tuning you are using.  So 1 can be Dorian, if you're in that tuning. If you're in the most basic and commonest tuning, 1 is actually the major key!

Runo 3 is ready for voice-only performance. Still don't know how to use harp or lyre with it. I have the melody with fingerings down on nylon harp. Accompaniment isn't solid yet, and I haven't done damping for it (for use on wire). Seems like I ought to be able to apply several of the things from Marshalsay to it...

I have also acquired two books that are the start of learning Old English. And I even started to read them. (Unlike some books, which sit talisman-like on my shelves, as if owning them is enough to gain their knowledge.)

And I was finally hit with inspiration for an "Atlantian style" song I have been wanting to write for a while. Right now, it's not saying quite what I set out to say... that should probably be its own blog post.

 

 

Miscellany

Runo 3 (The Singing Challenge)

(Context)  I have ten of thirty verses fairly well in memory; working on the rest.  I've found that 'playing' the notes with my fingers, when I am sans instrument, helps me keep track of which permutation of the melody I'm on.  (Also, keeps me from messing up the 11th measures, which I was doing regularly...)

I've tried the music on early harp, wire harp, and lyre.  Not sure which I want to use for accompaniment yet.  Also not sure if I want to have the accompaniment be the melody or some moving open fifths. Time and practice will help me figure out what's doable and what's not.  I do eventually hit a wall where I can't concentrate on all the moving parts.  And I'd rather focus on the vocal performance and simplify the accompaniment than the other way around.  I can always do an instrumental intro and/or postlude to show off the instrument.

York/Dublin cap

(Context) Finally got around to reworking this.  Managed to make it too short.  Sigh.  I have been really careful with pinning, ironing, and finishing.  Somehow the pins that marked the right length the last time have resulted in a cap that hangs barely below my chin.  Eh, whatever.  It's still pretty cute.  I need to make tying strings, and I'm trying to figure out how I should do that.  My linen coif has 4-strand braided linen ties, made using a fairly coarse linen thread (1.5mm dia?).  I have some nice blue linen thread, but it's much finer.  I could spin it to cord, or try whipcording it... or I could use the (undyed) thicker linen thread I have in a braid or whipcord, or... I'm going to just play around with some things.  I'm also thinking the edge by the face needs a decoration, either a matching blue silk braided band like the bottom edge has, or else those teeny Viking embroidery circles from Oseberg.

Hand spindle/nostepinne

(Context) Found my stuff!  Hiding under fabric stash, naturally.  I don't know/don't think the hand spindle I bought is actually an Oseberg repro, now that I look at it.  It definitely does not function as a ball winder.  It's got a knob at the end of it (like some other things) and the wound ball can't pass over it.

Spindle trials

My darling husband got me three spindles from Hershey Fiber Arts for Christmas, and they are lovely.  I've used the low whorl one as both a low whorl and a high whorl, and I've also tried the spiral-grooved one.

Using low whorl as low whorl: This worked really rather well.  I tried a combination of park-n-draft (modified for the way I'm trying to spin) and a more continuous motion when I spun the spindle in one hand, pulling it right as I drafted off the distaff with my left.  But I wasn't using the tiny ledge cut into the spindle to secure a half-hitch, and I thought it might be abrading the yarn.

Using a low whorl as a high whorl: So I turned it upside down, because the tip in low whorl configuration was totally smooth.  I think that helped, but I found the high whorl set up much harder to grasp.  I had to do a supported spinning sort of park-and-draft, where I spun the thing on my leg until I had a good amount of twist, then drafted out.  When I tried the grasped spinning, I tended to drop it a lot.  I should also try her high whorl spindle, although I suspect the only difference between the two is which end the little notch goes on.

Grooved spindle: Just started this one today.  It's low whorl.  It also works very well.  Jury is still out on whether or not the groove is fuzzing up the yarn.  The yarn is already pretty fuzzy. I think learning to spin worsted in definitely on my to do list.