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10 Sep 06 - 05:42 PM (#1831397) Subject: Lyr Add: I'LL HANG MY HARP (from Pamela Morgan) From: CET This is from Pamela Morgan's CD, "Ancestral Songs". The liner notes describe how she learned the song from two brothers on Fogo Island. Does anybody know the origin of this song? From the style, I would guess it's from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. She sings it beautifully as she does all the others on the CD. I'll hang my harp on a willow tree I'm off to the war again My peaceful home holds no charms for me Nor the battlefield no pain The lady I love she will soon be a bride With a diadem on her brow Oh, why did she flatter my boyish pride? She's going to leave me now She took me away from my warlike lord She gave me a silken suit I thought no more of my master's sword But played with my lady's lute She seemed to think me a boy above Her pages of low degree But if I had loved with a boyish It would have been better for me I'll hide in my breast every selfish care I'll flush my cheeks with wine And when smiles await the bridal pair I'll hasten to give them mine I'll laugh and I'll sing though my heart may bleed I'll walk in the festive train And if I survive, I'll mount my steed And off to the war again One golden tress of her hair I'll twine In my helmet's sable plume Then on the fields of Palestine I'll seek an early doom And if by the Saracen's hand I fall 'Midst the noble and the brave A tear from the lady I love is all I'll ask for a warrior's grave |
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10 Sep 06 - 05:48 PM (#1831403) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: John MacKenzie Edmund I found this looks pretty early to me. Tavern in the Town is the only other song I know with a line about 'Hanging my harp [heart?] on the weeping willow tree' Giok |
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10 Sep 06 - 06:29 PM (#1831434) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: Malcolm Douglas For an old posting of this song here (1976), see thread Unknown, 'to me anyway' song from crusades The text was harvested for the DT, and can be seen at THE SARACEN Both can be found easily enough via the onsite search engine. Not added to the DT entry so far is the information, added to the discussion in 2001, that the song was written by the prolific Thomas Haynes Bayly in the first half of the 19th century. |
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10 Sep 06 - 07:38 PM (#1831495) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: GUEST,CET Many thanks, Giok and Malcolm. And thanks to Jim Dixon for doing all that research in 2001. I particularly enjoyed finding the University of South Carolina's music library website. |
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11 Sep 06 - 04:29 AM (#1831684) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: GUEST Norfolk traditional singer Walter Pardon sang it - he leaned it from an uncle and thought it to be Victorian - he was always very accurate in dating his songs Jim Carroll |
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11 Sep 06 - 04:40 AM (#1831687) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: John MacKenzie I wonder if the hanging a harp in a tree, willow, weeping or otherwise is derived from the story of the Greek god of the wind Aeolus. There is an instrument played only by the wind called an Aeolian Harp info on site here . Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge here. Giok |
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11 Sep 06 - 09:31 AM (#1831813) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: Malcolm Douglas I should think it's a Biblical rather than Classical reference. |
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11 Sep 06 - 11:49 PM (#1832337) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: GUEST,thurg Please elaborate on the biblical reference ... |
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12 Sep 06 - 02:05 AM (#1832392) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: Kaleea As I recall, an actual Greek Aeolian Harp which I once saw was as tall as me--about 5 feet--& had something like a dozen strings of differing gauges which were tuned to the same note. It's been so many years back that I can no longer recall which note. The wind going across the strings caused the strings to sound-vibrate-creating a fabulous sound, but the overtones were magnificent, and amazing! I ran into a fellow harper at a renfair once. Her harp was a small, freestanding lever harp. The stiff breeze blowing about that day vibrated her harpstrings & made quite a lovely sound. In the "church modes," aeolian is the mode, or scale, which sounds like the scale which you hear when you play all of the white keys on a piano from beginning and ending with A, aka, A natural minor. It might be interesting to go back in time & be a fly on the wall to find out why the original person, way back whenever, chose one of the wind gods, Aeolus, Keeper of the Winds, for the natural minor. |
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12 Sep 06 - 07:53 AM (#1832530) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Psalms 137: 1. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. 2. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 3. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. 4. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? Mick |
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12 Sep 06 - 01:46 PM (#1832808) Subject: RE: Lyr Add: I'll Hang my Harp From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Jim Dixon (if you're following this) Re your attribution to Bayly in the other thread, where did that come from? All the copies I've looked at have either no attribution or only an arranger; I can't find a copy atrributed to Bayly. Mick |