Came a Harper ~ Page 155

October 21, 2013 aimo 3 Comments

A sombre mood still hangs over for some, but not with others…?

3 Comments

A king there lived in the north country
A hey ho bonny o
And he had daughters one, two, three
The swans swim so bonny o
These daughters they walked by the river’s brim
The eldest pushed the youngest in
The swans swim so bonny o

Oh sister, oh sister, pray lend me your hand
And I will give you house and land
I’ll give you neither hand nor glove
And thus you’ll give me your own true love

Sometimes she sank, sometimes she swam
With a hey ho and a bonny o
Until she came to a miller’s dam
The swans swim so bonny o

The miller’s daughter, dressed in red
She went for some water to make some bread

Oh father, oh daddy, here swims a swan
It’s very like a gentle woman
They placed her on the bank to dry
There came a harper passing by

He made harp pins of her fingers fair
He made harp strings of her golden hair
He made a harp of her breast bone
And straight it began to play alone

He brought it to her father’s hall
With a hey ho and a bonny o
And there was the court, assembled all
The swans swim so bonny o
He laid the harp upon a stone
And straight it began to play alone

And there does sit my father the King
And yonder sits my mother the Queen
And there does sit my brother Hugh
And by him William, sweet and true
And there does sit my false sister, Anne
Who drowned me for the sake of a man
The swans swim so bonny o

(The Bonny Swans version by Loreena McKennitt)

What kind of man marries a girl’s sister because the girl herself died? An a**hole, that’s who. Reminds me of Wrede’s version for this particular ballad:

‘Mother and father, queen and king,
Farewell to you, farewell I sing.
Farewell to William, sweet and true,
Farewell, dear sister Meg, to you.
But woe to my fair sister Anne
Who killed me for to take my man.
…
“You desecrated my sister’s body, and for what? To cut up our peace and raise doubts where there were none.”
“To find out the truth,” the minstrel said, but he sounded a little shaken.
…
“For most of what the harp sang, I do not know, but this much you can hear from anyone at court: ‘William, sweet and true’ was true to neither Anne nor Eleanor.”‘
(Patricia C. Wrede, Cruel Sisters)

Also, how creepy is cutting up a dead girl for a harp? Thank god Willow doesn’t do that.

Heh. Most fairy tales are pretty grotesque in their original forms. (Dismemberment and rape tend to be fairly high on the list of awfulness.) We did decide to change this one up some, obviously.