1920s: Bleeding Hearts Deat\ Bird's Nest

Subject: 1920s:Bleeding Hearts Deat\ Bird's Nest
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 12:06 AM

In Dylan Thomas' book "A Child's Christmas In Wales" there is a passage
"Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death , and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest ; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed."

This would be middle class Swansea,1920s.
Can anyone help identify the songs?



Not?Si Kahn nor the one done by a Serbian punk band Goblini
"...I?m climbing up the barricades in defense of evil
My heart is like a bird?s nest
In my soul snakes are tearing the chains..."

Subject: RE: 1920s: Bleeding Hearts Deat\ Bird's Nest
From: meself
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 12:40 AM

Probably not helpful, but consider that the phrases may be a child's mondegreens - which is what might be implied by 'then everybody laughed'. But for the mondegreens to be effective, they would need to relate to songs well-known to Thomas's readers ....

Subject: RE: 1920s: Bleeding Hearts Deat\ Bird's Nest
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 07:48 AM

Possibly this

Christina Georgina Rossetti

A Birthday

MY heart is like a singing bird
    Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
    Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
    That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
    Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
    Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
    And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
    In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
    Is come, my love is come to me.

It was set to music by Hubert Parry, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and several others.

Subject: RE: 1920s: Bleeding Hearts Deat\ Bird's Nest
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 01 Dec 17 - 02:01 PM

Thanks Richard.
Seems to be named by the first line "My Heart Is Like A Singing Bird"
http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=13937 
I can see Auntie Hannah now.
https://youtu.be/TOYeUf2O1qM . No, it's not folk.!