Tune Req: The Fairy Dance (song, not the reel)

Subject: RE: Tune Req: The Fairy Dance (song, not the reel)
From: Taconicus
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 12:45 AM

Sorry it doesn't qualify as "real" Scottish by your standards. I like the poem.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: The Fairy Dance (song, not the reel)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 02 Jun 07 - 10:20 PM

Well, of course it isn't in Child. Neither is 'There are Fairies at the Bottom of My Garden' or 'The Dong with the Luminous Nose'; and for much the same reasons. The melody doesn't need to sound 'celtic', whatever you understand by that, because the lyric is just a typical piece of bourgeois Victorian romanticism. The fact that it was written by somebody who happened to have been born in Scotland is completely irrelevant to its content, style and tone. As you presumably know, of Mrs Richardson's poems printed in Nimmo only one, 'Ah! Faded is that Lovely Bloom', even mentions a tune; and that states merely "Written to an Italian air".

It may well have been set by one or more people over the years, but I find no trace of any such setting. It would be in the standard parlour song style, I expect, if it exists; certainly not anything that would sound 'celtic' to the modern ear.

Subject: Tune Req: The Fairy Dance (song, not the reel)
From: Taconicus
Date: 02 Jun 07 - 08:09 PM

The poem below is by Carolina Eliza Scott (1777-1853), better known by her married name of Mrs G. G. Richardson. She was born at Forge in the parish of Canonbie near Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. While living with an uncle in Madras, India, she met and married Gilbert Geddes Richardson, a captain in the British East India Company. She was greatly admired in the refined society of Anglo-India but when her husband died in the prime of life, she returned to her childhood home with her five children. She published a volume of her poetry in 1828 which was successful enough for her to produce a second volume of poem and later a novel and essays.

The words can be found reprinted as lyrics to a song, in "The Scottish Minstrel: The Songs of Scotland Subsequent to Burns" by Charles Rogers, published in 1882 by W.P. Nimmo. However, I can't find the melody anywhere. Does anyone here have it or know where it can be found? (No, it's not in Child's, and it's not the reel of the same name.)

Just to be able to sing it I spent about 30 seconds "writing" music for it. I just picked a few likely chords and there it was. I recorded a rough cut of it, of very amateurish quality, and put it on my website here. However, I don't care much for the melody I came up with, mainly because it doesn't sound the least bit Celtic to me. I hope I can find the original melody somewhere.

The Fairy Dance

The fairies are dancing - how nimbly they bound!
They flit o'er the grass tops, they touch not the ground;
Their kirtles of green are with diamonds bedight,
All glittering and sparkling beneath the moonlight.

Hark, hark to their music! how silvery and clear -
'Tis surely the flower-bells that ringing I hear, -
The lazy-wing'd moth, with the grasshopper wakes,
And the field-mouse peeps out, and their revels partakes.

How featly they trip it! how happy are they
Who pass all their moments in frolic and play,
Who rove where they list, without sorrows or cares,
And laugh at the fetters mortality wears!

But where have they vanish'd? - a cloud's o'er the moon,
I'll hie to the spot, - they'll be seen again soon -
I hasten - 'tis lighter, - and what do I view? -
The fairies were grasses, the diamonds were dew.

And thus do the sparkling illusions of youth
Deceive and allure, and we take them for truth;
Too happy are they who the juggle unshroud,
Ere the hint to inspect them be brought by a cloud.


Meanings of uncommon or antiquated words:
kirtles = a long dress or woman's gown, usually worn under a cape.
bedight = adorned, bedecked, equipped
featly = cleverly, smartly
list = choose
hie = hasten, go quickly
juggle = deception