Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.

Subject: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 11:17 AM

I was wondering about the need to travel to visit certain places and the songs about this concept.

Not just visits to historical or spiritual places but including modern vists that could be described as a pilgrimage. Including visits needed to be taken to famous music sites etc?

To be a pilgrim....

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 11:51 AM

The only thing that I have ever done that could be described as a pilgrimage - was to visit Giant Redwood Trees in their natural home in the Sierra Mountains of California. This fine song perhaps goes some of the way to explaining why this vist was so important.


I asked the Master Builder
Why did he make John Muir
From the seed of a man, so hard and unforgiving.
A father who tried to use the Gospel to ensure
That his son's life would never be worth living

And the Lord's voice answered on the High Sierra wind
From the mountains where the clear waters lie, saying:
"Hold the bravest heart, above the gravest of sins
And I'll show you how to make a hero rise"

Chorus:
Leave Calvin and the Bible
To the parish o' Dunbar
Give a blind man back his eyes to find
The brightest o' the stars
Then lead him to the altar of a better God by far
In the vale of the redwood cathedral

I asked the Master Builder, how did he find a way
To put the man in the mountains
And the mountains in the man?
How long did he search to find the uncommon clay
That he needed for his Master builder's plan?
And the Lord's voice came down from the High Sierra skies
Saying: "Take a heart, - of hard Scottish stone
Plant the seed of a wild place, deep down inside
And I'll show you how to call a hero home"

Chorus:
Leave Calvin and the Bible
To the parish o' Dunbar
Give a blind man back his eyes to find
The brightest o' the stars
The lead him to the altar of a better God by far
In the vale of the redwood cathedral

And as I stand by the thunder of the roaring mountain falls
And hear California call you saviour
I cannot help but wonder, had a different fortune called
Would you have done the same for Scotland the Brave -
Your home and your father's

Chorus:
Leave Calvin and the Bible
To the parish o' Dunbar
Give a blind man back his eyes to find
The brightest o' the stars
The lead him to the altar of a better God by far
In the vale of the redwood cathedral

God lives above the redwoods, so men say
Looking down, straight and true at the best of all his treasures
And if a man should stand among them to pray
It's against them the Lord would take his measure.
And who grew straighter than long Johnny Muir?
A redwood of flesh, blood and bone
Filled by the Master Builder with a passion so pure
For the mountains no single man can own.

Chorus:
Leave Calvin and the Bible
To the parish o' Dunbar
Give a blind man back his eyes to find
The brightest o' the stars
They lead him to the altar of a better God by far
In the vale of the redwood cathedral.

Lyrics & music © Copyright 1991 by Brian McNeill.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 01:43 PM

Tom Paxton wrote a song about the need to travel -- not to one particular destination so much as just to travel -- in the beautiful "Bound for the Mountains and the Sea" (which is in the DT).

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: mg
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 03:51 PM

Marion wrote one along those lines...there is the beautiful Lourdes Hymn..and the children's crusader hymn...and people go to Chimayo in New Mexico US for pilgramages..carrying big crosses...probably a lot of Spanish songs involved in that. mg

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 04:46 PM

having seen the Redwoods just once, I can see how they would easily inspire a song...nice one.

I have an unfulfilled desire to visit Scotland and see where my distant ancestors were from....I already have the songs.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: Marion
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 06:31 PM

Hi Shambles. Click here to see the song of mine that Mary mentioned.

I started that thread to get some ideas for a song about going to places as a pilgrim - not only in the religious sense, but to sites of historical, musical, or natural significance, and if you browse through the thread you'll find some suggestions that I did use.

Marion

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 08:00 PM

Thanks Marion

The song is just the job.

But I did not refresh that thread as the title and site suggestions were confined to the USA. I thought a wider and more general thread on all aspects of pilgrimage may be just as interesting.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: Burke
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 05:55 PM

This old Girl Scout song came to my mind. It's not really a specific place but it feels sort of pilgrimage to me.

I Know a Place

I know a place where no one ever goes.
There's peace and quiet, beauty and repose.
It's hidden in a valley beside a mountian stream.
And lying there beside the stream I find that I can dream
only of things of beauty to the eye,
snow peaked mountians towering to the sky.
Now I know that God has made this world for me.

One can imagine herself as in a dream,
climbing a mountian or down a small ravine.
The magic of this peace and quiet always shall stay,
to make this place a haven each and every day.
Oh how I wish I never had to leave,
and all my life such beauty to receive.
Now I know that God has made this world for me.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: GUEST,Jeni Warnken
Date: 17 Aug 05 - 12:01 PM

That song was actually written for Flying "G" Ranch in Colorado. It was written by Nancy Child Robinson in the mid 60's.

Flying "G" ranch is being sold by Mile High Council this summer much to the dismay of many in the council.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 17 Aug 05 - 02:44 PM

I have always liked the song that starts:

Faraway places with strange-sounding names, faraway over the sea.
Those faraway places with strange-sounding names are calling, calling to me.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: frogprince
Date: 17 Aug 05 - 03:30 PM

Something a little more metaphorical

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 17 Aug 05 - 03:32 PM

Maybe Simon and Garfunkel's "America" qualifies.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Aug 05 - 06:47 PM

It seems appropriate to put a link here to this current thread about the killing this week of Brother Roger of Taizé.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 12:40 AM

I wonder whether the Austin Lounge Lizards song, I Want To Ride In The Car Hank Died In,
qualifies.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:37 PM

How did this thread go to sleep so shortly?

Douglas Hyde published the following English version in 1899. The Gaelic original has no title, it comes from one of the monastic manuscripts and may be twelfth-century. Sean O'Faolain's translation, which is copyrighted, was set to music by Samuel Barber, and opens the Hermit Songs as "At Saint Patrick's Purgatory."    The version in this post comes from A Literary History of Ireland from Earliest Times to the Present Day (1899).

Alas, for my journey to Loch Derg,
O King of the churches and the bells;
I have come to weep thy bruises and thy wound,
and yet from my eye there cometh not a tear.

With an eye that moistens not its pupil,
after doing every evil, no matter how great,
with a heart that seeketh only (its own) peace,
alas! O King, what shall I do?

Without sorrowfulness of heart, without softening,
without contrition, or weeping for my faults,
Patrick, head of the clergy,
he never thought that he could gain God in this way.

The one son of Calphurn, since we are speaking of him,
alas! O Virgin, sad my state!
he was never seen whilst alive
without the trace of tears in his eye.

In (this) hard narrow stone-walled (cell),
after all the evil I have done, all the pride I have felt,
alas! my pity! that I find no tear,
and I buried alive in the grave.

O one-Son, by whom all were created,
and who didst not shun the death of the three thorns,
with a heart than which stone is not more hard,
'tis pity my journey to Loch Derg.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Jan 16 - 09:20 PM

It's a fairly short step from pilgrimage to war at times:

http://turba-delirantium.skyrocket.de/bibliotheca/walther_vogelweide_palaestinalied.htm

A very frequently performed song but I've never heard anyone sing all of it, verse 11 included. The point of it was to be a rallying cry, and it leads up from the mystical ecstasy of the opening to the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" sentiments by a brilliant series of dialectical steps. It is both one of the most evil pieces of propaganda ever written and a work of genius.

Subject: RE: Pilgrimage songs and pilgrimage.
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Feb 16 - 01:58 PM

I only just found out that Douglas Hyde, a most dedicated philologist specializing in the Gaelic, became the first President of Ireland....and that at a most advanced age. I want to find out more about him. But that is another subject.

I posted his six-verse translation into English, a post or two back on this thread. Hyde was one of the founders of The Gaelic Journal, which printed the Gaelic original of this poem in its volume IV in 1893, six years before Hyde published his translation; I suspect a direct connection there. The Gaelic Journal, in printing an original Gaelic version eight pages in length, credits manuscript C 88 at what is today the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, for its source.
More than one copy exists of this poem, it appears in a number of manuscripts. In one manuscript, don't know which one, it has nine verses. The Maynooth version has eight verses.

Here are the six verses, in the original Irish, corresponding to Douglas Hyde's English translation earlier in this thread.

Truagh mo thuras ar Loch Dearg
A Righ na gceall is na g-clog!
Do caoineadh do chneadh is do chréacht,
'S nach dtig déar tar mo rosg.

Gan súil dfhliuchadh a ruisg,
Iar ndéanamn gach uilc dá mhéid,
Le chroidhe nach iarran acht síth,
Mo thruagh! a Rí, cad do dhéan?

Gan tuirse croidhe, gan maoith,
Gan doilgheas ag caoi mo locht;
Níor shaoil Pádraic, ceann na gcliar,
Go bhfaghadh sé Dia mar so.

Aon-mhac Calphuirn, ós dá luadh,
Och, a Mhuire, is truagh mo chor!
'S nach feacaidh an feadh do bhí beo
Gan lorg na ndeor ar a rosg.

I gcaraidh cumhang cruaidh cloch,
D'éis a ndearnas d'olc is d'uaill,
och, is truagh nach faghaim deor
Is mé adhlaicthe beo san uaigh.

A Aoin-mhic lér cumadh cách
'S nár sheachain bás na dtri ndealg!   
Le croidhe nach cruaidhe cloch
Is truagh mo thuras ar Loch Dearg.