A Case of Your Rubbish

December 30, 2018December 30, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

This holidays I’ve been reading a few books. I finished the 1971 biography of Bob Dylan by Anthony Scaduto. This was a follow-on to my reading of Joan Baez’ autobiography, And A
Voice to Sing With: A Memoir, last year and The Mayor of MacDougal Street a few years before. I know I have quite a few more Greenwich Village biographies to read to fill out the picture of New York folk in the 60s, including Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell and others.

At the same time I have been reading Leonard Cohen’s posthumous collection of poems and lyrics, The Flame. So when someone on the Joni Mitchell Facebook group posted A Case of You and mentioned that it was their favourite love song, it got me thinking.

The other book I’m reading is Boys Will be Boys, by Clementine Ford. I haven’t finished the book but it is a sequel to Fight Like a Girl and tackles many of the same issues. While confronting, I highly recommend reading both of these books.

How does this all fit together? Well I read that A Case of You was about Leonard in this
cohencentric post detailing the relationship between Joni and Leonard in 1967-1968 and since. Of course there are other claims that the song might be about Graham Nash or possibly James Taylor. Unfortunately the weight that can be placed on ‘she told me in confidence’ is fairly negligible. In reality, for the subject of this post it doesn’t matter which male rising-star of the New York 60s art scene it was.

Now to the song. I first heard this song sung by Tori Amos, and more recently a cover by one of my favourite contemporary artists, Mike Rosenberg (Passenger). The lines that strengthen the case for a Cohen subject are the drawing of a map of Canada with portraits of the subject (The Flame is absolutely full of self portraits of Leonard). The use of holy wine in the blood, love as ‘touching souls’ and fear of the devil are very similar to the imagery common to Cohen’s work.

Just like Clementine Ford, I am about to step on a great many toes and probably upset a few idealists. Unlike the ‘love song’ interpretation that prompted this article, I think A Case of You is a song throwing some serious shade. Shade written in the subtle and beautiful way that was/is
expected of a female artist (until the arrival of our gracious queen Taylor Swift of course).

I think some people interpret it as a ‘love song’ because they see it as someone mourning a relationship that didn’t work out because it was too intense, or the other party had problems.
Looking closely, I don’t see it this way. I see it as the 1960s equivalent of #metoo. If a woman
thought that a relatively famous man was a narcissistic, shallow rake then it could be very detrimental to her career to say so publicly. We cannot imagine that the 1960s music business was a nicer place than the 2017 Harvey Weinstein world of film.

At the time of their relationship, Leonard was a 33yr old accomplished poet and Joni was just 24 and at the very beginning of her music career. A detailed read of the Cohencentric article cited above paints a clear picture of the relationship and the ongoing fallout. Just to be clear, I am not insinuating that any non-consensual activity took place.

I am a big fan of Leonard Cohen as the many covers I have done of his songs attest. However, reading The Flame, I get the impression of a man who is deeply confused regarding his relationships with women. The classic (and toxic) religious iconography of the whore
or virgin dichotomy runs strongly through his words. This didn’t anger me reading the book, it made me sad. The desire to love, but the incapacity to form healthy, mutually respectful and honest relationships is tragic.

I can hear Clementine say “boo hoo for him”, and indeed, the trail of shamed, hurt and discarded women that suffer at the hands of men who have been raised dysfunctional is a worthier
problem than one lonely heart.

In this particular case, a careful reading of the lyrics reveals that Joni got her own back in a song that has been covered over 300 times, long before Taylor was lambasting (yes I had to look it up) her ex-lovers in song.

The song starts with the lover claiming to be “constant as a northern star”, a reference to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Interestingly, the reference is from the point in the play just prior to Caesar’s demise. Joni goes on to point out that a star is constantly in the darkness.

My favourite part of the song, and the one which I think has most listeners confused is the statement in the chorus that “I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet”. In Australia
the purpose of alcohol is usually to get one drunk, preferably too drunk to stand. It might be that Joni sings this so beautifully that we assume she is paying a compliment.

Any Australian who had consumed a case of wine and was still standing, would immediately be asking for their money back. The line implies that whatever you drank was weak, ineffective and
‘low strength’. Not very complementary.

The final verse speaks of a universal sisterhood of past-boyfriend gossip. The line “go with him, stay with him but be prepared to bleed” doesn’t sound like good advice. In some ways it
echoes the terrible advice that some women who have been physically abused by their partners get from family and friends. If you can, get out of there, it’s broken.

At the core of the two books by Clementine Ford is the pervasive, structured, power imbalance in society between men and women. The books go into detail on how these imbalances have
been built, how they are maintained and the consequences for both men and women.

For Joni to come out publicly and shine a light on a famous male Canadian poet’s inadequacy when it comes to healthy relationships would likely have spelled the end of her career. My main
takeaway from the Bob Dylan biography was the narrow and treacherous path that he took to success musically and financially, it wasn’t a given that talent brought you money or fame, even for a white male. Phil Ochs was a key example of how it went wrong if you didn’t shake the right hands and keep the right friends. A Case of You, seems to be Joni having her say in a public way, but subtly enough that the less perceptive would misinterpret it, even propagate it.

I’m not wanting to paint heroes and villains here. Everyone has their problems, and life, let-alone romantic relationships is/are hard. But I think we can all benefit from taking out our
pre-programing every now and again and checking it for validity.

Who was Ossian Macpherson?

October 30, 2018December 31, 2018 Daniel Kelly7 Comments

When a certain flavour of fundamentalist Christian has a public and pious rant about the satanic evils of Halloween, I cannot help but feel sympathy and sadness. It isn’t fair to blame people for their ignorance, and in most cases a logical argument about the historical evolution of this and other festivals won’t do much to broaden their view. Having grown up under this ideology, I would have made the same public rants at fifteen.

The key sadness is that this is exactly the type of xenophobia and intolerance of mind which eventually escalates into crusades, racism and killings like the tragic incident in Pittsburgh this week.

Why is this worth blogging about? Well, during the course of a short social media discussion, in an effort to show that Halloween wasn’t ‘just something we imported from America in the last few years’ I found this fabulous poem published in the Hamilton Spectator on 12 November 1864, under the name Ossian Macpherson. Here is the full text of the poem:

AN AUSTRALIAN HALLOWEEN

By Ossian Macpherson.

Bright years, sad years are numbered with the past,
Since, Scotland, I beheld thy green hills last;
My hair is growing grey in manhood's prime,
With painful re-collections, not with time.
But here, once more, if not on Scottish land,
I see around a happy Scottish band.
With hills and dales, till fancy —not in vain.
Has led me back to Scotland's hills again.

Wootong,— I sought upon thy peaceful crest,
For this worn frame, a shelter and a rest.
From many a outstretched hand the welcome kind,
For ever in this heart will be enshrined;
And can I e'er forget, where'er I roam,
Whatever my lot may be, where'er my home,
The hours I passed amid the happy scene;
The mirthful crowd I joined at Halloween.

Tis not for me, too humble is my verse,
The varied fairy mysteries to rehearse;
The varied trials spread before my view,
Each one to seek if some one else was true.
But when I saw the bonny lassies there,
Each for the apple ducking wait her share,
Such laughing faces, rarely to be seen,
Hech! how it thrilled my heart! at Wootong Halloween.

'Tis not for me, else may be I might sing.
Who made the batter, and who found the ring ;
Who found the apples, and whose nuts were cracked,
Who might have stole to where the hay was stacked.
All these and more, perhaps I might unfold.
But they by Scotia's bard have all been told;
Enough for me — the hours were bright and green,
I passed that night at Wootong Halloween.

The poet tried his nuts, with anxious gaze,
And picturing one form amid the blaze;
Perhaps he thought the emblem might be true,
Alas, — his nuts were cracked ere half burnt through.
And when blindfold, before each fairy plate.
He wished— his fond desire— for gentle mate,
His hand thrice grasped the platter that was clean!
No wife for him at Wootong Halloween.

Bard of all coming time, immortal Burns,
When with each coming year that night returns;
That night that thro' all Scotland far and wide,
The midnight fairies still are wont to glide, —
With what bright fire thy spirit would have glowed,
What strains of rapture would have from thee flowed,
Couldst thous have dreamt there ever would have been
Another Scotland here and Halloween.

Thou didst not dream, when burst to life thy strains.
Never to die while Scottish life remains,
That in this land to white men then unknown,
Peopled by hideous barbarism alone,
Thou didst not reck there e'er would come the day
That, distant o'er tie ocean far away.
There, on a lovely hill top, would be seen.
The glorious revelry of Halloween.

Oh! that thy spirit would upon me rest,
And for one lonely moment till my breast;
'Twould be ere from this friendly root I part,
To speak the thanks, warm from the poet's heart
Wootong, farewell! I yet may see the day,
When back my happier footsteps yet may stray,
And treasured up in memory, I ween
'Twill be again to join in Halloween.

Konongwootong, Nov. 1, 1864.

I made a recording of this poem set to my own tune here.

So many questions arise from this find! Who was Ossian Macpherson? What was he doing in a tiny town in the middle of Victoria in 1864? Was there really a Halloween celebration or is this imaginative reverie?

To the first question, Ossian Macpherson, is almost certainly a pseudonym. James Macpherson (1736-1796) was a relatively famous Scottish writer, poet and politician who claimed to have discovered and translated a set of ancient epic poems by the (mythical?) bard Ossian. James was instrumental in the highland clearings and the veracity of his work on the Ossian poems is questioned by scholars. ‘Ossian Macpherson’ would have been a fitting pen name for any aspiring Scottish poet travelling in Australia in the 1860s.

To the second question, we first need to answer “where in the world is Konongwootong?”. I initially assumed this would have been a mining town named by Chinese immigrant miners, but it is a native phrase describing a creek in grassy land. Konongwootong is a place of sadness as the Whyte brothers who owned the pastoral run killed between 55 and 60 men, women and children of the Konongwootong gunditj clan there in April 1840 after they had taken 40 sheep. There is a memorial here. So it is likely that ‘Ossian Macpherson’ was either visiting or working in the Konongwootong on the pastoral property.

A search on Trove shows that the latest poem, A Modest Minister, published in the Hamilton Spectator, March 1874 was a biting piece of political satire directed at a local Minister (political or church?), whose name probably rhymed with Cozey, regarding the way in which he acquired his land. This shows our author remained in the area for at least another ten years and was not afraid to ruffle feathers.

A John A. Macpherson was running for the seat of Dundas in the 1871 election and appears in several Trove articles relating to property issues in the region, his fellow candidates were James Gardner and David Gaunson, possibly one of them was ‘Cozey’.

The first poem that appears by Ossian Macpherson was published on 23 December 1857 in the Kyneton Observer:

THOUGHTS ON SIGHTING BALLARAT.

Slaking my thirst beside this cooling rill,
Uncertain what my future lot may be ;
Driven about, the sport of fortune's will
Footsore, I've wandered Ballarat to thee.
My breast is fill'd with many an anxious thought.
A stranger—in this giant infant land;
A wanderer—in these fields with riches fraught
Seeking a crust amid a varied band.
Shall I succeed?

Oh! do not droop, my heart,
Tho'all looks dark—yet fate is sometimes kind;
Do not sink now—all wearied as thou art,
For little mayst thou reck what lurks behind -
Yon sun now hid behind the blacken'd cloud,
Methinks ev'n now its voice is speaking loud,
And bids me yet a little longer wait.

For I have traversed many a spot on earth,
And climb'd full many a dreary hill in life ;
Thought that my star was darken'd at my birth,
Foreboding nought but endless care and strife
But hope is strong—and though the past has been
A chain of trials, I would fain forget;
That star would yet shine brightly and serene
And I will not despair—not yet—not yet.

OSSIAN MACPHERSON,

Ballarat.

So this John Alexander MacPherson, who arrived in Ballarat around 1857 seems to be a very strong candidate for Ossian Macpherson. John was born in 1833, so would have been just 24 when writing his first poem. Strangely, the Wikipedia page for John makes no mention of his likely ventures as a brilliant poet. John ended up being the Premier of Victoria for just over a year, Sep 1869-April 1870 and died in England at the age of 60 in 1894.

There are around 90 other poems penned by ‘Ossian Macpherson’, many of which look like they have never been published outside the newpaper they appeared in.

Happy Samhain/Halloween to all, I suspect there will be more to this story!

UPDATE: Since writing this post, you will see in the comments that I have been contacted by a relative of Ossian Macpherson. It looks like the John Alexander link was not to be. I have started publishing the poems of Ossian Macpherson (now under the right name) on AllPoetry.com, you can read all the poems here.

Blog Post · Poetry

Footprints in the Concrete

August 10, 2018September 1, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

They scar us deep, those tracks.
Worn into our backs when we are young.
They don’t fade and change as seasons do.

They protrude from our rolling hills,
Like jagged angry escarpments.
Liable to slice the hand run gently,
over our otherwise smooth surface.

Under the leaf litter of time,
the slow growth of weed and bush,
one could mistake them for something else.
A ripple, a minor blemish on the surface.

But they run deep…cut into our souls.
The deflating word, the doubting voice,
The sharp slap across the face in moments
of fledgling defiance.

Only worn thinner in the grinding of the self,
Cut and polish away at your pieces,
Until the crack doesn’t show.

Blog Post · My Own Music

Don’t Look Away

June 17, 2018June 17, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

Surely this is the tipping point.

This is it, the step too far, the final act that exposes the monster and the fraud.

We cringed when he was caught out bragging about grabbing women. We gritted our teeth when he appointed a series of incompetent staff to key appointments in the White House. When he put the oil barons in charge of environmental protection we gasped in horror.

When his children and in-laws began representing the country in roles they were in no way qualified to fill, we cried ‘nepotism’ and nodded wisely.

When he started methodically destroying relations with all of America’s allies, while simultaneously making friends with the most brutal dictator in the world, we stared at our screens in confusion.

As I watched the news report speaking about young children being torn from their mothers at the US border and put in detention where they are not provided with any emotional support, I thought “finally, he has gone too far”.

The picture in this article from the Independent is all you need to see. If your heart breaks and you get choked up with anger and fear and despair, then you are still human. If you don’t, then I don’t know what you have become, or what society or race you are part of.

Jacob Soboroff from MSNBC gives this report of the conditions inside the camp housing the 10-17 year old boys. More disturbing still is the report made by Colleen Kraft at the detention centre where younger children are being held. The rules mean that children as young as two cannot be touched, cannot be give the most basic symbol of human compassion that every child should be given at every difficult moment of their life.

I remember the first day I dropped my twins at child care when they were almost three. My wife and I stopped in the baby room and saw a distressed child, around 12 months old, crying. Even though this wasn’t my child, it hurt terribly, sharing in the fear and despair emanating from this young soul. Scientists know the value of human touch during early development. I don’t for a second judge those parents who need to work two jobs just to keep the family fed, and I am very grateful that my own circumstances mean that all of our children have being at home with one parent full-time until at least two. The long term impact on these children in America, who have been taken from their parents for no good reason, will be severe and long-term.

Worst of all, Jeff Sessions had the unbelievable arrogance and bigotry to quote the Bible in support of this despicable action. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, doesn’t come from the Bible, it comes from human values. One of the most fundamental and widely worshiped human values is the bond between mother and child.

I can’t do much, but I can write songs, so here is my contribution to fighting this latest chapter in the Trump disaster novel. Please don’t look away, stare evil in the eye, recognize it for what it is, and fight it with whatever peaceful means you have.

Blog Post · Poetry

All the Poetry

May 21, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

In the course of wanting access to all of Cicely Fox Smith’s poems, I had to join AllPoetry.com and submit a piece of my own work.

Once I had access to more of the 600 poems that Cicely wrote, I was able to add this song to my collection of her poems that I have put to a tune. It is probably a little overly romantic in its view of the sailor’s life, but still a beautiful poem. Cicely’s allusion to watery worlds orbiting distant stars was incredibly imaginative for her time.

I have found AllPoetry to be an interesting platform in the way it forces users to comment on other peoples work before posting new poems of your own. Something similar runs on r/OCPoetry but this site is much prettier and the process for commenting far easier to use.

The discussion on the poems I have written in the past but posted in other places before prompted me to think a little more about poems as a form, rather than song. Here is the result of my musings on the recent eruption in Hawaii. Having visited Oahu on many occasions, I am fascinated by the way vibrant life is intermingled with such colossal destruction.

The Building Blocks

What strange contrivance of space-time created this selection of atoms?
How did the primordial plasma soup settle on the Hydrogen atom,
or its twin Helium as the start of the puzzle.

Why was Carbon so perfect a thread to weave into flesh, vine and moss?
Why not Boron or Flourine to fashion this cornucopia of life.

How did this jumble of bits manifest into the sunset over a snow-caped mountain?
Or the distraught child in his bombed-out Syrian ghetto.

Are we just the palette of some inter-dimensional artist?
Slapped on the canvas of the cosmos with care or indifference as the mood dictates.

What cosmoses float in the eternal ether made of different stuff?
A few more quarks in the Iron, a little less neutrinos in an Oxygen atom.

How can humanity walk through this reality without being stunned,
by the complex intricate nature of this star-stuff we exist in.

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post

Nine Tailors make a Man

May 7, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

In the New York Times, on 10 December 1904, can be found a letter to the editor arguing over the origins of the phrase ‘Nine Tailors make a Man’, which was obviously in common currency at that time. The correspondent refutes an explanation that a wealthy merchant had nine tailors painted on the door of his wagon in thanks for their work and offers the suggestion that he had heard as a young boy in Scotland that Queen Elizabeth had gathered nine tailors to represent the Tailors’ Guild of the City of London to advise her on a policy issue.

Evidently the New York Times had forgotten its own backlog because it published a letter to the editor of the London Spectator on September 9 in 1882 where the correspondent corrects a review of ‘Harry Erskine and His Times’ by stating that the origin of the saying is ‘Nine Talers (tellers) make a Man’ referencing the custom where the church bell is always rung nine times when a man is buried (one for an infant, three for a girl and six for a women). This incidentally answers a question I had about the lines in The Magpie linking events to numbers.

What started all this? Well the long-form (Nobel Peace Prize nominated) journalist, Ethan Gutmann, chose a recording of Benjamin Bowmaneer to open his new podcast, The Gutmann Report. The ballad, Roud #1514, is also known by The Prancing Tailor or Benjamin Bowman / Bowlabags / Bolibus / Bolderman. The recording chosen was the one made in 1971 by The New Golden Ring, a folk group I had never heard of, but their two albums Five Days Singing Volume I & II are pretty good.

So when I did my own recording of this ballad, I had already heard Kate Rusby’s version, however, as any fans of Kate will know, her voice is so strikingly beautiful that sometimes you forget what she is singing about. When I actually looked at the lyrics I realised that they make no sense. First I thought it was a song about a war with the French, or maybe a reference to Reepicheep from Narnia or Despereaux Tiling with all the thimbles and needles.

Some trawling of the Mudcat threads here and here indicated that the song had something to do with a prevailing view that Tailors were not manly, and thus the butt of several songs and stories making fun of this perception. The Trooper and the Tailor is one example, which reminds me of Alistair Hulett’s Tinker in the Lum. Evidently, cuckholding was a national sport in England. The Butcher and the Tailor’s Wife paints the Tailor with worse cowardice as he gives up his wife at the first threat to his person. This theme reminded me of the excellent story arc of Mr Gold (Rumpelstiltskin) in the psycho-drama disguised as a children’s story, Once Upon a Time.

So is the version of the story in question, Benjamin Bowmaneer, just a case of making fun of Tailors because they pretend that killing a flea (or louse or mouse) is brave sport? There is another interesting aspect to this song, and it is related to the story that Malcom Douglas relays in this Mudcat thread. It could just be one of many fanciful ‘collection’ stories used to justify insertion of songs into books, but the story goes that Mary Spence’ great aunt heard a traveling tailor singing the song around 1804 and memorised it.

This could well be an example of the folk process, with misheard lyrics accounting for the un-intelligible lyrics of the song version in question. Some key phrases that have alternatives in Malcom’s post of The Proud Tailor.

The Proud Tailor Benjamin Bowmaneer

How the world began                                                   How the war began
Nine Tailors make a man                                         England fought to a man
Low cast away                                                               Castors away

Unfortunately I don’t have a way to decide which is the original and which is the poorly heard copy, except that The Proud Tailor was collected around 1928 and Benjamin Bowmaneer was published in 1959 but probably collected well before that.

From Hester Burton’s 1962 book, Castor’s Away!, about the battle of Trafalgar, and the fact that a beaver is also called a castor, it is likely that the line in the Benjamin Bowmaneer version is probably the correct (original) one. However, if the practice of throwing your beaver hat into the air was particularly nautical, why would the reference appear in a song about a tailor? It seems this ballad just keeps asking more questions than it asks. I haven’t even looked at why there are more than six different surnames starting with B for Benjamin.

In any case, it was a pleasant song to sing and as long as you can get past occupation stereotyping, the lyrics have a certain mysterious quality to them.

(image from the British Museum – Creative Commons)

Blog Post · My Own Music

Zombie Sheep of the Murrumbidgee

April 9, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

Now that I have finished writing 11 song about the distant and recent history of Yass, in New South Wales, Australia, I want to make them into an album.

All my previous albums have been digital-only, due to the prohibitive cost of producing albums and the low likelihood of ever selling the 300 minimum run.

I am making my first foray into crowd funding, to see if enough people will pre-order an album to make the production worthwhile.

You can listen to the rough take of all the songs here.

If you like the music, and can afford to buy an album, please consider supporting the Pozible campaign below:

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music · Lyrics and Chords · Poetry · Spirituality and Philosophy

The Stolen Rhyme

February 9, 2018 Daniel Kelly4 Comments

I have always loved the haunting ethereal beauty of Loreena McKennitt’s setting of William Butler Yeat’s poem, The Stolen Child, to music. I tried to practice singing the song before doing this recording for my YouTube channel, but even after 4-5 days I just couldn’t get the verses to flow.

This fired my curiosity, and so I looked a little deeper into the structure of the poem. For reference, here is the complete poem:

The Stolen Child – W.B. Yeats, 1886

    Where dips the rocky highland
    Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
    There lies a leafy island
    Where flapping herons wake
    The drowsy water rats;
    There we’ve hid our faery vats,
    Full of berry
    And of reddest stolen cherries.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand.
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

   Where the wave of moonlight glosses
    The dim grey sands with light,
    Far off by furthest Rosses
    We foot it all the night,
    Weaving olden dances
    Mingling hands and mingling glances
    Till the moon has taken flight;
    To and fro we leap
    And chase the frothy bubbles,
    While the world is full of troubles
    And is anxious in its sleep.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

   Where the wandering water gushes
    From the hills above Glen-Car,
    In pools among the rushes
    That scarce could bathe a star,
    We seek for slumbering trout
  And whispering in their ears
    Give them unquiet dreams;
    Leaning softly out
    From ferns that drop their tears
    Over the young streams.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

    Away with us he’s going,
    The solemn-eyed:
    He’ll hear no more the lowing
    Of the calves on the warm hillside
    Or the kettle on the hob
    Sing peace into his breast,
    Or see the brown mice bob
    Round and round the oatmeal chest.
    For he comes, the human child,
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

I realised that what was causing me the problem is that the length of verse and rhyming pattern within the last lines of each verse is not consistent. Note the rhyming structure in the first verse:

Where dips the rocky highland, Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island, Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berry, And of reddest stolen cherries.

Yet in the next stanza we have:

Where the wave of moonlight glosses, The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses, We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

There are an extra three half-lines, and their rhyming doesn’t fit the model. Verse three is similarly muddled, yet verse four goes back to the structure of the first verse.

As a ballad singer, I am acutely conscious of the way that repetition in metre and rhyme makes it much easier to memorise and perform songs. I imagine that William B. Yeats would have been very familiar with the work of the Irish Bards and the use of this style of verse.

It could just be that this poem is intended to be read, not sung, and the discontinuity was intended as part of the work. However, the confusion goes beyond just the rhyme structure. The third verse is about gushing water, which seems to align with the ‘frothy bubbles’ in verse two. This phrase appears to be out of place in verse two, which is about pagan dances in the moonlight.

Yeats purists will probably chide me, but in my ballad version I have restructured the verses so that they are all four line stanzas with a repeated rhyming structure. So verses two and three become:

Where the wave of moonlight glosses the dim grey sands with light
By far off furthest rosses we foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances, mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight To and fro we leap

Where the wandering water gushes from the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes that scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout, leaning softly out
Hoping to find Fintan, knowledge for to gain

From ferns that drop their tears, over the young streams
And whisper in their ears, giving them unquiet dreams
And stir the frothy bubbles, whilst the world is full of troubles
Eyes blind but open, and anxious in their sleep.

The bold lines are my own additions. As students of Irish mythology will know, Fintan is the Salmon of Knowledge. I immediately thought of this on first reading of the verse about tickling trout. I have moved the ‘frothy bubbles’ to the line about streams. Interestingly, there was a note with the published version of this poem, indicating that there is a place in The Rosses where those who lay down to sleep may have their souls stolen by the fairies.

This site has a beautiful photo of the waterfall at Glen-Car. It is definitely the type of place in which one could imagine the fairy folk coming to visit. Yeats would have visited this site in his childhood.

On this lovely site there is a story about using the starlight reflected in forests pools to create powerful wands.

A review of the huge tome of work that Yeats has left us here, will show that he was both very well read and from his work A Vision, he was no stranger to the mystic arts. I wonder what other messages he hid in this and other works.

Ballad Analysis

William’s Razor – Yass History

February 4, 2018January 13, 2021 Daniel Kelly3 Comments

As a lover of ballads it is always exciting when you can pair a particular place and time with a ballad that has been circulating for 100 years or more. I had been singing Mary from Dungloe for many years without realising that Mary was a real person, who had left Ireland for New Zealand just as my ancestors had in the 1800s.

In this particular instance the reverse has occurred. I was inspired to write this ballad after reading the story in a local newspaper from 9^th January 1864. The full story is available here, which is actually a re-print of the story in the Melbourne Leader. The original story from the Yass Courier was syndicated all over the country (maybe even back to England).

To summarise, William Williams, a plasterer who had only been in the town of Yass for ‘some months’, attempted to kill a seventeen year old girl and, failing this, attempted to cut his own throat. The incident was triggered, it seems, by the refusal or postponement of a marriage proposal. To me, this story had all the required components for a great folk ballad, and knowing the incident had occurred less than 1 kilometre from our house, along the river which we walk by every few days, made it all the more fascinating.

As a person who likes a puzzle, I was also intrigued to learn the identity of the young girl and the final fate of William William’s.

The area around Yass was first settled in 1830 and the town itself was gazetted in 1837. In 1848 there were 55 houses and 274 people living in the town. The Australian Handbook, printed in 1888, indicates that the population had risen to 2370 by that time. In any case, there cannot have been more than a handful of 17 year old girls in the town in 1846.

The following clues are found in the primary article about the incident:

On Sunday (3 Jan) William and the girl walked by the Yass River, where on discussion about the postponement of the engagement, William produces a razor and threatens to harm himself. The girl grabs the razor from him and throws it in the river.
On Monday (4 Jan) the two talk at the girl’s married sister’s house. William leaves to go to his lodging at a nearby public house.
The girl retires in a room at the back of her sister’s house which has a half-glass door. William comes to her room after she is asleep, claiming he cannot get into his room at the public house. She refuses entry but gives him a blanket and key to the kitchen (a detached building).
William leaves (in his work clothes), towards the river, saying he will drown himself.
William returns when the girl and her sister have gone back to sleep in his Sunday clothes with a new razor. He breaks into the room, wakening the girl.
William says he has come to murder her first and then kill himself.
The girl screams for her sister, who is in a parallel bedroom.
William grabs her by the neck, with the razor in his other hand.
The girl’s sister opens the door to the parlour and she twists free.
The girl’s sister flees through the front door to fetch their father who lives across the road.
The girl flees into the parlour and gets to the other side of a large table.
William cuts his own throat (evidently missing the carotid arteries) and bleeds all over the kitchen.
The girl runs into the street.
The girl’s sister and father re-enter the house to find William lying on the girl’s bed, still bleeding profusely.
Sub-inspector Brennan and Constable Smith arrive in a few seconds.
Dr O’Connor is sent for and eventually sutures the wound after a struggle.
After hospitalisation, Williams claims to have left a sum of £70 or £80 pounds hidden under a stone by the Yass Bridge.

Initial Deductions

Yass – Town Map, 1898

The Yass Police residence has always been on Rossi Street, next to the Court House. The Rose Inn was built by Isaac Moses in 1837 on Comur Street (also next to the Court House) and is situated between the River and the houses on Rossi Street. The only places close to the Police Station, where there could be two residences across the road from each other would be 3-4 blocks within the intersection of Rossi and Dutton Streets.

It could be concluded that William Williams was staying at the Rose Inn, and that the girl and her sister were staying in a house on Rossi or Dutton Street.

I went through genealogy pages to look for girls who were born in Yass in 1845 or 1846 (would have been 17 in 1864) and cross referenced them with the property owners on Dutton and Rossi Street in 1898.

The only name that stands out is Margaret Carter, born 1846 to Eliza Bowra and James Carter. James was a policeman and owned a property on Rossi Street. Margaret had a sister, Sarah, born in 1843. It is a stretch, but Benjamin Warton, husband of Sarah Warton passed away in 1915 and there is a W. Warton property across the road from the Carter residence in Rossi Street.

I have lived in this town for over ten years, but hadn’t visited the Yass and District Museum. On the weekend I went there to look at some of the paintings and pictures of the town in the 1800s and also look at the build dates of various key buildings in the town. I was also able to take a photo of a razor from the period.

Conclusion

I still need to visit the local archives to make 100% sure, but I am reasonably confident that if any 17 year old girl of Yass in 1864 was going to have the presence of mind to wrestle a razor from a bigger, stronger, man, it is likely to be the daughter of a local policeman, Margaret Carter.

I haven’t been able to track down what happened to her afterwards with any certainty, but now with a name and a birth date, I think it should be possible.

Blog Post · Film, TV and Literature · Spirituality and Philosophy

Dan Brown – Origin – A Guided Tour

December 30, 2017December 30, 2017 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

I have been a big fan of Dan Brown’s books, all the way back to Digital Fortress and Deception Point. Origin, the latest book in the Robert Langdon series, is no exception. Even though the books follow a fairly predictable structure, i.e. “middle aged professor saves the world from a shadowy foe with attractive young woman against backdrop of old buildings and paintings”, I still enjoy them.

What I enjoy most is the way that a crucial real-world question of philosophy, science or religion is woven into what appears on the surface to be a low-reader-investment thriller. With this approach, I think Dan Brown has managed to reach an audience which would otherwise never pick up a book on the ethics of genetic engineering, comparative religious studies, ancient architecture or synthetic intelligence.

I won’t go into the plot here, you should go and read the book yourself. What I did find, was that I was stopping every 10 pages to look up a painting, building or religious cult on the internet. In order to save you some time, I have created a list of links to some of the key elements of the book. Some of them I had heard of before, others were entirely new to me. There are no real spoilers in the list, hopefully it will save you some googling.

One day I hope to make it to Spain to do an Origin tour, as I was able to do in Rome and Washington D.C. focused on the content of Angels & Demons and The Lost Symbol. Let me know what you thought of the book, and if you think I have missed anything.

(this post has no association with Dan Brown or Penguin/Bantam, links are all to external sites)