Folk songs and real life

Subject: Folk songs and real life
From: *Laura*
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 04:34 PM

In folk songs people are always 'chancing' upon a 'pretty young fair maid' or 'handsome squire' who take one look at them and fall in love.
I wondered if this ever really happens?
Has anyone been wandering through the streets of London town when a hansome young squire they chance'd for to meet? Or had similar experiances!?!?!?
I'd be interested.

xLx

p.s. if someone thinks this belongs in non-music then please move it - I wasn't sure. :-)

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: PoppaGator
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 05:26 PM

Love at first sight, or whatever, is not an everyday occurence -- that's why it's noteworthy enough to write about.

Like all events that rarely happen, however, this *does* happen once in a great while. And, since hope springs eternal, people will gladly sing about it and listen to songs about it.

Any such experiences I may have had didn't work out in the long run. ;^)

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 05:26 PM

It's the same as in books and films: more things than usually happen during a normal real life can happen during 24 hours in a work of art. The process is condensation.

Things like described in usual songs etc. do happen in the real world, but only to few people and even to them not in such close succession.

Books and songs are mostly written about unusual people and happenings. A book about my life, for instance, wouldn't sell at all.

Some gifted songwriters, however, can write about very common events and people and make them the theme of very uncommon songs. These writers are the greatest in my mind.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 06:07 PM

Not quite love at first site but I have had a couple of interesting relationships develop very quickly at folk festivals.

(posted as an anonymous guest to protect the guilty)

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 06:09 PM

Interesting to note, in Folk songs, that whenever a woman needs a man to row her across the water to find her true love he always has to be a "Handsome Boatman"....WHY???
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 06:13 PM

ah, Laura....of course those stories happen in real life! People meet and fall in love and live happily ever after.......and....like OTHER songs explain, 'young maids' get pregnant and the handsome squires leave town...or lure the unfortunate maids out to a lonely spot and do 'em in!

Like Wolfgang says, ther are WAY more stories than you can write songs about....except the songs usually leave out the boring parts of the story.

Why, I myself once...ummmm.....never mind...*grin*

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 06:21 PM

What did you say Bill? Been there, seen it, bought the "T" shirt, made a hole in it, mended it, wore it again, made another hole etc etc. mmmmmmm
Sounds like real life to me.
Best wishes. Mike.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 28 Dec 04 - 06:41 PM

I agree with Wolfgang - it's a time problem: Every one of these songs would exceed the longest of ballads if the true story was told ... Who would listen? Also, maybe the songs let you dream about something that rarely happened in real life where criteria of selection other than love were the norm - relative financial security (for women) or good housekeeping and childbearing qualities in the partner (for men), and the predominant attitude was 'Love will come later'. For many, love never came.

Wolfgang, I'm sure you underrate your life! Marrying late (and there must have been a life before marriage!), having lively young children and spending nights with strange women in foreign airports must surely rate!

It seems you got your own Internet connection as a Christmas present - or are you still working at this ungodly hour? Happy Hogmanay to you (and your family), Laura, PoppaGator and all Mudcatters!

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 01:06 AM

I believe that Bill D is, once again, right on the money.

People, I just wrote a very long polemic here...and somehow lost it while trying to post. I doubt I can put it together again aywhere close to how I said it.-----Yes, I'm pissed off. I just want you to know that I think I nailed several ideas I'd been pondering for the last 50 years. Suck is life!!! (Of course I meant SUCH is life.)

I'm going to bed!!

Art

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 01:52 AM

It can happen.... I chanced across a handsome young man in a potato field once.... we were practically inseperable after that.... (except that it really was in a monastary garden and we had to consider the monks...). He sailed across the seas (alright, flew to China to teach) where we lost contact. After a certain 'revolution' (Tianamin Square - my first reaction was 'what's he started now?), everyone lost contact with him... even his parents thought he was dead, so I married another. When he did eventually turn up, he married another too.   This would be a wonderful song, but it took 7 years in all from first sight to me giving him up for dead. He wasn't dead, but had narrowly escaped internment and had managed to get out of China with another teacher. They had nothing but what they could carry so they walked out of China, into India, where they made it to a British Consul, who got them home. We did meet again, 10 years almost to the day of our first meeting but neither of us had a half a wardrobe to match up, nor a ring to put together. He is now a priest and I'm here.   One day, maybe, the song will come... but I think the book of his life would be more compelling!

LTS

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Gurney
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 01:57 AM

Geogiansilver, it may be that the boatmen were handsome because they were so fit, which is surely a component of attractiveness.

According to the novel I just finished ('London', by Edward Rutherford) the Thames boatmen were hired by early insurance companies as firemen, for just that reason.
Interesting book, thought-provoking and enlightening.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Wolfgang
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 06:44 AM

Susanne,

yes, I had a life before marriage. Strange women in foreign airports? Hm, whom could you mean? But foreign women in strange airports, I could, nah, better not.

Wolfgang (grin)

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: muppitz
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 08:40 AM

I can empathise with the Guest at the top, I too have had a few 'interesting', shall we call them encounters rather than relationships, and they have always developed very quickly.

I however am not posting anon, as I don't recall having anything to be ashamed of (Except the time at Bridgenorth when I got REALLY REALLY drunk after being upset by a past 'encounter' and cried a lot!), it has all been damn good fun and damn good life experience!

muppitz x

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 09:56 AM

Hmmm. There was the time I had a reunion in Boston with an ex-girlfriend who played a mean blues guitar. I causually introduced her to one of my college budies I was traveling with and the two of them really hit it off, got married, and lived happily ever after.

One of my verses that reflects back on that experience runs:

It?s better to have loved and lost,
Then never to have risked the cost,
But better yet to try anew,
And fall in love again.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Bill the Collie
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 10:10 AM

Hi Georgiansilver, please tell me why you made a hole in your "T "shirt... it's been driving me nuts.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 10:11 AM

For me it was love at first sight, or second sight for sure a few days later. (At first sight I loved his shoes. At second sight, an allday picnic in the rain at a beautiful nature area, I was thoroughly "snowed.") I spent the next 28 months denying it, but finally gave in and got married. That was 33 years ago today!

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 10:17 AM

I first set eyes on my wife on the 14 November 1978, we "went out" for the first time together on the 22 November 1978, she never went home, over 26 years later we are still together, probably closer than ever if that's possible ....... so yes it does happen

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: *Laura*
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 12:46 PM

Good. :-)
It's nice to have top-ups of faith in human nature - or something... :-)

xLx

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: jaze
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 01:13 PM

Somehow, I thinks "fair maids" even in days of old, would be more apt to get in a boat with a handsome young man than a butt-ugly one.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Willa
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 04:18 PM

GS
The meaning of the word has changed, as so often happens.Perhaps the old meaning makes more sense?

Handsome \Hand"some\ (?; 277), a. [Compar. Handsomer; superl.
   Handsomest.] [Hand + -some. It at first meant, dexterous;
   cf. D. handzaam dexterous, ready, limber, manageable, and E.
   handy.]
   1. Dexterous; skillful; handy; ready; convenient; -- applied
      to things as persons. [Obs.]

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Bert
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 04:49 PM

It does still happen and here's the song to prove it.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 05:09 PM

Wolfgang wisely said:

Books and songs are mostly written about unusual people and happenings. A book about my life, for instance, wouldn't sell at all.


This goes along with the well-known saying, Truth is stranger than fiction. And the reason truth is stranger than fiction is that truth is not limited that which is or may be made to seem believable.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: LilyFestre
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 06:04 PM

I believe in love at first sight...it happened to me! We both were at a function that was out of character for each of us and were there only due to prodding of (different) friends. He was standing on one side of the quad and I was at the other...our eyes met....and something just clicked. We were married within the year....that was over 12 years ago!   :)

Michelle

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Little Robyn
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 06:39 PM

Happy Anniversary Mary.
Robyn

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Amos
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 07:06 PM

Over 25 years ago I met a gal in the company cafeteria and asked her to go diving with me to see the strange manatee. Indeed, yes, she said, and that answer has served all the years since. We wed three weeks later!

A

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Grab
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 08:32 PM

Not through the streets of London Town, but in a dodgy bedsit in Stafford getting a few quid during an Easter vac, the only time I worked over Easter, my wife-to-be rented the downstairs room. I bumped into her on the way out to the gym, and helped unload her stuff. She'd just *returned* from London Town, having spent her money and not found anyone. :-) IIRC I asked her to marry me 3 weeks later and we were married 9 months after (we would have been married quicker if I hadn't been at uni).

Graham.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Hawker
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 08:55 PM

I met my husband at a ceilidh, we met on the frday night and decided to get married 3 days later. It was a holiday romance too, and we are still together 16 years later, so yes, it does happen!
Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 07:52 PM

I'm sure you all know the old story about Noel Coward.

Parlez-vous Francais? he asked a young man auditioning for him.
Un petite peux, said the young chap.
Really...... unfortunately somehow I never feel that's quite.. enough.......

Love at first sight. I never feel it's quite enough to predicate an entire lifetime commitment upon. In my experience handsome squires are generally up to no good.

Subject: RE: Folk songs and real life
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 12:51 AM

Willa is right on the money: a "handsome boatman" is the opposite of an "incompetent boatman," not an "ugly boatman."