Memory FAIL†
This morning†† I received the following email from my husband:
Hey! That’s nothing like all I know. That’s where
As I went down the water’s side,
None but my foe to be my guide
comes from, and then that wonderfully bathetic verse straight after. And I’ve never tried to sing it. It doesn’t have a tune in my head.
XOP*
*Despite feeling bitterly traduced.†††
When I arrived at the mews later‡ Peter said, Did you get my email? Yes, I said. It’s Helen of Kirconnell, he said‡‡, and it’s in the Oxford Book of English Verse.
Okay. Fine. Whatever. My bad.‡‡‡
So here it is, in all its lurid glory. It’s 17th century and anonymous. From Quiller-Couch’s editorial lips to your ear.
Helen of Kirconnell
I wish I were where Helen lies,
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirconnell lea!
Curst be the heart that thought the thought,
And curst the hand that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd§ Helen dropt,
And died to succour me!
Oh think na ye my heart was sair,
When my Love dropp’d and spak nae mair!
There did she swoon wi meikle care,
On fair Kirconnell lea.
As I went down the water side,
None but my foe to be my guide,
None but my foe to be my guide,
On fair Kirconnell lea;
I lighted down my sword to draw,
I hackèd him in pieces sma’,
I hackèd him in pieces sma’,
For her sake that died for me.
O Helen fair, beyond compare!
I’ll mak a garland o’ thy hair,
Shall bind my heart for evermair
Until the day I die!
O that I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
Out of my bed she bids me rise,
Says, ‘Haste, and come to me!’
O Helen fair! Oh Helen chaste!
If I were with thee, I’d be blest,
Where thou lies low and taks thy rest,
On fair Kirconnell lea.
I wish my grave were growing green,
A winding-sheet drawn owre my e’en,
And I in Helen’s arms lying,
On fair Kirconnel lea.
I wish I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
And I am weary of the skies,
For her sake that died for me.
I think, if I decide to set it to music, I may abridge it a little.
* * *
† So, like, this is supposed to be NEWS?
†† Peter goes to bed way before I ever get around to posting. And he reads the blog in the morning waaaay before I get up.
††† He footnotes too. I knew there was a reason we got together^.
^ I’m sure I was born thinking in footnotes+ but Peter’s deeply solemn++ academic footnotes for his story Flight in my anthology Imaginary Lands are a big personal favourite and doubtless influential. It’s a brilliant story anyway, in the cool, detached, scintillatingly nasty way that no one does better than Peter.+++ Someone should reprint it. Ahem.
+ Someone on Twitter recently posted that she likes the way my footnotes are often their own little stories, that this makes my posts feel more real. Hee. That’s the polite version. It’s also an indication of being unable to follow a train of thought without jumping off the rails and pursuing chimeras into the shrubbery.
++ cough cough cough
+++ Actually I found myself wondering, quite a bit after it was too late, how I dared get involved with someone who writes stories like this. But that’s another digression.
‡ And just by the way, the ME is being a nightmare. Is this post in Eng%%li£shf? Then I’mm doING very, vvry wellggggggh.
‡‡ Oops. Yes, that sounds familiar.
‡‡‡ If it had been in the Norton Shorter Anthology of Poetry it would have been really embarrassing since that’s the collection that is more or less tattooed to the insides of my eyelids. (I’m afraid my beat-up old copy also has snarky marginalia about the utterly crucial poems left out too. I may have mentioned this before. The sins of one’s youth do haunt one.) There are bits of the Oxford English that I don’t totally know. It’s still embarrassing that I don’t know a ballad. I should know all ballads famous enough to get into the Oxford. Sigh.
Not at all in my defence, however, it’s no longer in the Oxford English. It’s in the old Quiller-Couch Oxford English. Which of course is the one I have.^
I’m also puzzled that Peter never sang it. Then why does it have a tune in my head?^^ Hmmmmm. Maybe I should write it down. It’ll probably turn out to belong to ‘Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs Murphy’s Chowder’^^^ or something.
^ Peter’s fancy leather-bound award-presentation Oxford English Verse is too new! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I had to go get my old one!
^^ Actually . . . if Peter had sung it, it would not have a tune in my head.
You can get it in a ring tone.
§ I’ve been trying to track this down, since it shows up in other old Scottish ballads, and having already blown Helen badly I’m feeling the cold draught of my ignorance more acutely than usual. But ‘burd’ appears to have fallen from high estate over the centuries; ‘burd Helen’ or ‘burd Janet’ may have been a compliment in the 17th century but according to a couple of Scottish slang sites if you call your girlfriend a ‘burd’ now it comes over as the lower form of ‘bird’ and you’re likely to reap some fairly brisk language in return.
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