Subject: The King sits in Dunfermline town
From:
Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Jan 12 - 12:09 PM
I've recently worked up two (or three) different versions of the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens. It's not a song I sing very often, but I always find it rewarding when I do - there are some brilliant lines, from the opening on down (and what a great first line that is).
I particularly like the degree of variation there is between different versions. The first version I recorded sinks Sir Patrick on his way to Norway, and goes into great detail about the weather ("Cold and watery blew the wind and grumly grew the sea") and about events on board ship. (Which is odd in itself, considering that nobody lived to tell the tale - did Sir Patrick Spens climb up the mast and give the helm to a little cabin-boy? Who's to say? It's fifty miles to Aberdeen shore, after all, so presumably the cabin-boy didn't make it.) The second version gets Sir Patrick to Norway, fills in a lot of detail about the fit of pique in which he put to sea despite the look of the moon being all wrong, but deals with the shipwreck itself very laconically - "the bows of that good ship did crack and the salt sea did rush in".
As for the third version, I'm thoroughly ashamed of singing, let alone writing, something that panders so blatantly to the stereotype of traditional songs droning on endlessly; in reality I've rarely listened to a performance of a Child ballad with anything other than fascination (although Child 95 can drag on a bit). I would redress the balance by writing a ludicrously disjointed and interminably long parody of "Desolation Row", but unfortunately Dylan's already written one*.
*It's called "Desolation Row".
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sj
