The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #3216   Message #373834
Posted By: Haruo
13-Jan-01 - 03:29 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Long, Long Ago (Thomas Haynes Bayly)
Subject: RE: Lyric Add: Long, Long Ago
If you have NoteWorthy Composer (or even NoteWorthy Player, which is free), there's a MIDI (of my own manufacture) in my hymnal that you can convert at the push (or about five pushes) of a button. I do not know why Esperantists (granted, we're a bit eccentric) consider "Long, Long Ago" a Christian hymn. But they do. So I put it in my hymnal. The note at the bottom of the page says,
Mi ne tute komprenas, kial pastoro Burkhardt decidis inkluzivigi tiun ĉi nostalgian amkanton en sian himnaron Tero kaj ĉielo kantu. Eble la Esperanta teksto estas iomete (sed ja nur iomete!) pli facile legebla kiel kristana himno ol la angla originalo; tamen eĉ en Esperanto ŝajnas al mi tute klare, ke temas pri gehoma amo, fidelo kaj sopiro pri iamo longe for. (Tamen ja mankas la alkoholo — ;-) oni ne akuzus al Burns pri pieco!) Kaj estas eventuale amuze rimarki, ke kvankam Bayly verkis ĝin en Anglujo kaj unue eldonigis en Usono (kie ĝi tuj fariĝis la plej furora kanto de la jaro 1843), tamen Bennemann en IK nomas ĝin irlanda kanto.I don't entirely understand why Pastor Burkhardt decided to include this nostalgic love song in his hymnal, Tero kaj ĉielo kantu. Possibly the Esperanto text is a little bit (but surely only a little bit!) easier to read as a Christian hymn than the English original is; however even in Esperanto it seems completely obvious to me that the subject is human love, faithfulness and longing for auld lang syne. (However, minus the alcohol — ;-) one would not accuse Burns of piety!) And it may be potentially amusing to note that although Bayly wrote it in England and it was first published in the United States (where it immediately became the number one song hit of the year 1843), nevertheless Bennemann in IK [Internacia Kantaro, 1929, the earliest Esperanto publication of it I've located] calls it an Irish song.
For what that is worth.

And a library should have no trouble locating a hard copy of the notation for you. It's in the Raph book, mentioned above, among others.

Liland