The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59312 Message #944397
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
01-May-03 - 03:43 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Beltaine Chase Song
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Beltaine Chase Song
It's a modern thing, not traditional at all, based loosely on Robert Graves' imaginative "reconstruction" (White Goddess, 1961, pp. 401-2) of the snatch quoted at Isobel Gowdie's trial for witchcraft in 1662. The single authentic verse he quotes is as follows:
I shall go into a hare
With sorrow and sighing and mickle care
And I shall go in the Devil's name
Aye, till I come home again.