Day 65: “I wish my Love were in a Myre”?

HaydnCD65 If there’s one thing I’ve learned from listening to Scottish Songs for George Thomson it’s that the song titles are often quite intriguing, even amusing.

Track 20 (“I wish my Love were in a Myre”), for example. The hell does that mean?

I Googled the title and found the lyrics to this very old song on a site called The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive that appears to be a labor of love for a woman named Emily Ezust. The lyrics:

Again rejoicing Nature sees
Her robe assume its vernal hues,
Her leafy locks wave in the breeze
All freshly steep’d in morning dews.
In vain to me the cowslips blaw,
In vain to me the vi’lets spring,
In vain to me in glen or shaw,
The mavis and the lintwhite sing.

The merry ploughboy cheers his team,
Wi’ joy the tentie seedsman stalks;
But life to me’s a weary dream,
A dream of ane that never wauks.
The sheep-herd steeks his faulding slap,
And o’er the moorlands whistles shill,
Wi’ wild, unequal, wand’ring step
I meet him on the dewy hill.

And when the lark ‘tween light and dark,
Blythe waukens by the daisy’s side,
And mounts and sings on flitt’ring wings,
A wae-worn ghaist I hameward glide.
Come, Winter, with thine angry howl,
And raging bend the naked tree;
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul,
When Nature all is sad like me.

Glossary:

Shaw = woody grove by a water side
Mavis = trush
Lintwhite = linnet
Tentie = cautious
Wauks = wakens
Steeks = closes
Slap = gate to the sheep-fold

Submitted by Ferdinando Albeggiani

Authorship

* by Robert Burns (1759 – 1796), title unknown [setting text not yet verified]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)
________

That’s a great entry. Love the glossary. It still doesn’t enable me to understand the song much better, or why the guy wishes his “Love” were in a “Myre.” But it helps. Sort of.

Emily’s project looks amazing. If you visit her site, please consider donating to help her keep it going.

As for my own project, what would help me keep it going is to get past all of these Scottish songs. As I’ve mentioned, the singers (Lorna Anderson and Jamie MacDougall) are very, very fine singers who are, themselves, Scottish. So they know the emotional feel of these old songs. Plus, they can pronounce the words, rolling Rs and all. However, their vocal ranges (on the low side) are not in the sweet spot for me. So the combination of slow tempi, the at-times odd lyrics, and the it’s-not-my-sweet-spot vocal range combine to make this a slow go for me.

Today’s selection of songs again features soprano Lorna Anderson and tenor Jamie MacDougall, both of whom actually are Scottish. They have fine voices.

The music is terrific, provided by the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, which consists of:

Harald Kosik piano
Verena Stourzh violin
Hannes Gradwohl cello

As with the previous CDs of Scottish Songs for George Thomson, this one was recorded where it was likely first performed, or even composed: Haydn Hall, Esterhazy Palace, Eisenstadt.These CDs by Brilliant Classics live up to the reputation for quality BC has established over the years.

Speaking of which, background information for these Scottish songs can be found here.

Here is an excerpt:

This box set brings together for the first time all Haydn’s Scottish and Welsh folksong settings — a grand total of 429 songs. Why, at the age of 67, did the most famous composer in the world undertake repeated commissions from publishers to produce such a remarkable number of songs? One reason is the rather lucrative fee paid per song, the second reason is that Haydn had a genuine affection for Britain and the British that had started with his first visit to the country in 1791–2. He had made many friends and business acquaintances, not least the publishers Napier, Thomson and Whyte who were the driving forces behind these songs.

Described by Sir Roger Norrington as the wittiest of all the great composers, in these songs Haydn allows ample opportunity for his humour and wit to shine through. Remarkably, Haydn received only the melody of the songs by the publishers, not the words — something that HC Robbins Landon described ‘an arrangement that would seem insane to any modern folk song arranger schooled in the methods of Bartók and Kodály’. Nonetheless Haydn rose to the challenge admirably, and apparently enjoyed the task. Each song is a gem, and many of them containing first-class melodies which Haydn no doubt found attractive and inspirational.

Track 11 (“Fee him, father”) is an exception. The melody is very breezy and the interplay between soprano Lorna Anderson and the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt (especially violinist Verne Stourzh) is just plain fun.

Track 16 (“Green grow the rashes”) is another fun song, this one sung by both Anderson and MacDougall.

Track 18 (“My mither’s ay glowrin o’er me”) is a nice tune as well, possibly more for its title than for its musical execution, which was provided by Anderson.

If these songs did not all sound pretty much the same, I’m sure I would have enjoyed them far more. As it was, it’s hard to keep the songs – and even the CDs – separate in my mind.

Here is a link to a YouTube clip that covers precisely what I heard today:

You be the judge.

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