He only drank wine: the Ballad of Stewball

Oh Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine.

He never drank water, he always drank wine.


His bridle was silver, his mane it was gold.

And the worth of his saddle has never been told.


Oh the fairgrounds were crowded, and Stewball was there

But the betting was heavy on the bay and the mare.


And a-way up yonder, ahead of them all,

Came a-prancin' and a-dancin' my noble Stewball.


I bet on the grey mare, I bet on the bay

If I'd have bet on ol' Stewball, I'd be a free man today.


Oh the hoot owl, she hollers, and the turtle dove moans.

I'm a poor boy in trouble, I'm a long way from home.


Oh Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine.

He never drank water,he always drank wine.








What I like about this subject is the obscurity, the confusion, and the layers of muddled meaning, with fragmentary overlap revealing possible authenticity that may go back several hundred years. We all used to sing Old Stewball ("was a racehorse. . . ") in the 1960s during the folk boom, along with Where have All the Flowers Gone and Masters of War ("And I hope that you die, and your death will come soon/They'll carry your casket in the pale afternoon"), and I used to wonder: how weird is that, that you'd call a horse Stewball. What could it mean, if anything? I just found out tonight that it means a lot.


I now see that I should have had a clue. I was a horse-crazy little girl who read everything she could get her grubby little mitts on about horses, and I am sure I had come across the term skewbald, a synonym for piebald, which means. . . to us North Americans, anyway, pinto or paint. These are black or chestnut or sorrel horses with splashy white markings. Either that, or they are white horses with black or chestnut or sorrel. . . well. Are the zebra's stripes black, or white?


They look like cowponies to me, and for some reason I never took them very seriously.





I don't associate them with thoroughbreds, because the skewbald gene doesn't seem to be very active in modern bloodlines. But if you go back more than 300 years, racehorse DNA was quite different, with fast and gracile Arabians being crossed with the muscular European horses we see rearing up in historical paintings. Skewed, they might have been, with all that genetic confusion. But from the first time the Godolphin Arabian leaped off his springboard to service the fair Lady Roxanne, some fuse was lit, giving rise to the fastest horses in human history.


The name Godolphin pops up in Stewball's fictional/factual pedigree, making me wonder if he truly was descended from that stunning foundational sire, the amazingly prolific stallion who begat Lath, who begat Cade, who begat Regulus, who begat. . . and on and on, unto Man o' War and War Admiral and even Seabiscuit. A little horse who stamps his get.





I tried to find explanatory quotes that didn't go on and on for volumes, This neat paragraph from a Gutenberg site seems to suggest there really was a Stewball, and someone really did write a song about him, wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-y back when.


The horse was foaled in 1741, and originally owned by Francis, 2nd Earl of Godolphin, and later sold. His name has been recorded as "Squball", "Sku-ball", or "Stewball". He won many races in England, and was sent to Ireland. The Irish turf calendar states that he won six races worth £508 in 1752, when he was eleven years old, and was the top earning runner of that year in Ireland.[1] His most famous race took place on the plains of Kildare, Ireland, which is generally the subject of the song of the same name. The early ballad about the event has Skewball belonging to an Arthur Marvell or Mervin. Based on the horse's name, Skewball was likely a skewbald horse.


I also found far too many versions of the Stewball ballad and didn't know where to start: should I throw all of them at you and let you pick and choose? I finally picked out a few that demonstrated some overlap. Songs are like fairy tales in their tendency to drift and drool and slop over into each other, but always with some essential kernel of truth, some nub of the story that has real staying power.







My source for most of this material is an extremely detailed site called Thoroughbred Heritage, which serious horse-ites should visit forthwith:

http://www.tbheritage.com/index.html

Skewball: The Ballads

In America, the Stewball ballad was "...most popular in the Negro south, where the winning horse is known variously as 'Stewball' or 'Kimball," and was apparently one of the chain-gang songs. The song was recorded by Leadbelly in 1940 (CD available via the Smithsonian Museum), by Joan Baez (album title Joan Baez), by Peter Paul and Mary, and a number of successive artists.

Skewball (Harding B-6 (54) 00668)

You Gentlemen Sportsmen I pray listen all

I'll sing you a song in the praise of Skewball

And how they came over you shall understand

By one Squire Irvine the Mell of [of] our land.


500 bright guineas on the plains of Kildare

I'll bet upon, Sportsmen, that bonny-grey mare

Skewball hearing the wager, the wager was laid

He said loving master, its don't be afraid.


For on my side thou'st laid thousands of pounds

I'll rig in thy castle a fine mass of gold.

Squire Irvine he smiled, and thus he did say,

You gentlemen-sportsmen to-morrow's the day


Your saddles and bridles, and horses prepare,

For we will away th [to] the plains of Kildare.

The day being come, & the horses bro't out,

Squire Irvine he order'd his rider to mount.


All the people then went to see them go round

They swore in their hearts that they ne'er

touch'd the ground.

And as they were riding this was the discourse

The grey mare will never touch this horse.


O, loving kind rider come tell unto me,

How far is the grey mare behind you said he...

O loving master you bear a great smile,

Grey mare is behind me a large English mile


For in this country I was ne'er seen before

Thou hast won the race & broken lord Gore.





This one strikes me as the most authentic-sounding, but who's to say there aren't much older versions that you couldn't understand worth a tinker's hoot because Irish people have marbles in their mouths. It has the nicest sportsmanlike, cantering rhythm to it. Skewball actually speaks in this one, which is kind of nice, and is very encouraging to his master. One element that remains the same in practically all of these is Stewball's rival, a grey mare, though her name changes from one version to another.

Skewball (Steeleye Span)

You gallant sportsmen all, come listen to my story

It's of the bold Skewball, that noble racing pony

Arthur Marvel was the man that brought bold Skewball over

He's the diamond of the land and he rolls about in clover


The horses were brought out with saddle, whip and bridle

And the gentlemen did shout when they saw the noble riders

And some did shout hurray, the air was thick with curses

And on the grey Griselda the sportsmen laid their purses


The trumpet it did sound, they shot off like an arrow

They scarcely touched the ground for the going it was narrow

Then Griselda passed him by and the gentlemen did holler

The grey will win the day and Skewball he will follow


Then halfway round the course up spoke the noble rider

I fear we must fall back for she's going like a tyger.

Up spoke the noble horse, ride on my noble master

For we're half way round the course and now we'll see who's faster


And when they did discourse, bold Skewball flew like lightning

They chased around the course and the grey mare she was taken

Ride on my noble lord, for the good two hundred guineas

The saddle shall be of gold when we pick up our winnings


Past the winning post bold Skewball proved quite handy

And horse and rider both ordered sherry, wine and brandy

And then they drank a health unto Miss Griselda

And all that lost their money on the sporting plains of Kildare


Not all these lines rhyme, obviously, but who notices with a thrilling song like this? The lines "and horse and rider both ordered sherry, wine and brandy" may be the forerunner to the strange lines, "he never drank water, he only drank wine", though it's not unheard-of for winning horses to have their water trough spiked with a pint or two.

Stewball: A Version

Source: Fiddle Players' Discussion List, Meghan Merker

Way out in California

Where Stewball was born

All the jockeys said old Stewball

Lord, he blew there in a storm


CHORUS: Bet on Stewball and you might win, win, win

Bet on Stewball and you might win


All the jockeys in the country

Say he blew there in a storm

All the women in the country

Say he never was known


When the horses were saddled

And the word was given: Go

Old Stewball he shot out

Like an arrow from a bow


The old folks they hollered

The young folks they bawled

The children said look, look

At that no good Stewball


Here the Irish roots of the thing are pretty much buried, but it's a fast-paced, exciting version, with the very strange lines, "All the women in the country/Say he never was known". Known in the Biblical sense? It may be that, as with the Black Stallion, Stewball is one of those horses that came out of nowhere, with no papers to prove himself, nothing but a supernatural capacity to set the track on fire.





Stewball: Another Version

Source: Fiddle Players' Discussion List, Meghan Merker

There's a big race (uh-huh), down in Dallas (uh-huh)

Don't you wish you (...) were there? (...)

you would bet your ( ) bottom dollar ( )

On that iron ( ) grey mare ( )

Bet on Stewball & you might win, win, win

Bet on Stewball & you might win!


Way out / in California / when old Stewball / was born

All the jockeys / in the nation / said he blew there / in a storm


Now the value / of his harness / has never / been told

His saddle / pure silver / & his bridle / solid gold


Old Stewball / was a racehorse / Old Molly / was too

Old Molly / she stumbled / Old Stewball / he flew


And here are more fragments of the version I know: "now the value of his harness has never been told/His saddle pure silver, his bridle solid gold". I wonder who makes these decisions as the song morphs from decade to century, from artist to artist. Leave one detail out, add another. I'm actually quite grateful to have learned (just tonight!) that Stewball wasn't really Stewball at all, but Skewbald, with crazy skewed markings like forked lightning: a horse that could run up a storm.

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And the wheels in my head started turning

I'm Lookin' Up From Somewhere Below
The Atmosphere Is Warm And They've Got Plenty Of Coal
Maybe Someone Above Can Hear My Story
How A Fool Lost His Soul For A Moment Of Glory


Chorus
And That's All, That's All, That's All
THAT'S ALL THAT I CAN REMEMBER


Now Bill Was My Friend, Throughout My Short-Lived Life
'Til I Caught Him Out With Mary, My Wife
Then The Wheels In My Head Started Turnin'
A Death Plan I Made Up For Both Of Those Concernin'


REPEAT CHORUS


They Took Me To Prison And They Locked Me In A Cell
They Gave Me My Last Big Meal Then Strapped Me To A
Chair
Then They Turned On The Juice, And I Felt Somethin' A
Burnin'


REPEAT CHORUS TWICE.

SPECIAL NOTE... Alternate First Verse exists... it was
only ever used in Burl Ives' rendition of the song...
Neither Lefty Frizzell nor Cowboy Copas used it in
their renditions. Frankly, I like the first verse in
the Frizzell and Copas versions better... however I
have printed the alternate first verse below:


Come Listen While I Tell You 'Bout A Man That's Gonna
Die
Be Patient With Me Won't You Please, If I Should Start
To Cry
Maybe One Of You Can Understand My Story
How A Fool Lost His Soul For A Moment Of Glory...

As usual, this came in the back door.

My dear friend David West is facing a medical crisis, will soon be having what amounts to emergency surgery to install a pacemaker, mainly because his pulse is dropping to as low as 30 beats per minute. He needed a ride from Abbotsford to Vancouver and back, had no prospects, but suddenly after a Facebook request, two people stepped forward who are happy to be of service.  I pray this is a good sign and that he'll come through it and feel better than he has in a long time. 

Pooh and Piglet can't be separated.

At any rate, in the midst of all this, David finds a skinny little stray cat hanging around his place, obviously direly cold and hungry. He took it in and began to plump him up, though Kitty is still understandably wary. In reading about all this on Facebook, suddenly a song sprang into my head, a song by Burl Ives that is lodged in my head forever:

Well, here it is! A few months ago I looked for this album and couldn't find it. When we first got our cat Murphy back in 1990, I kept singing this song, and my kids kept saying, "That's not a real song. You're making that up." I got most of the lyrics wrong, so they were almost right. But here it is! And it's about someone finding a stray cat and taking it in.

But that led to something else, and I still can't find it. On one of his more obscure, darker albums, Ives recorded a song called That's All I Can Remember. It was sombre and almost sinister, with Ives singing in a very low-key and almost resigned voice. Very spooky. It reminded me a bit of Long Black Veil, and the story is essentially the same except that in this one, like in a gangster movie from the 1930s, the guy gets "the chair". One can almosts see him screaming and convulsing and clutching the arms of the chair as the plumes of smoke rise above his head. 

I can't find the Ives version anywhere, though I know it will sneak onto YouTube some day. There are only a couple other versions, and this one is nice, but a little too cheery and Latin-sounding. There are some variations in the lyrics, with Ives introducing and setting up the story in a more dramatic fashion. Understandable, since he was such a kick-ass actor.

Ives was supposed to be folksy and recorded lots of children's songs, but in his soul he was Big Daddy, surly and menacing, with a sense of restrained power that might fly out and do terrible destruction. As in this song. It's literally sung from the pits of hell, where he will fry for all eternity. Not exactly a song you want to sing for the kiddies.

Look at the little kitty cat
A-walkin' down the street
I bet he's got no place to go
Or nothin' good to eat
Look at the little kitty cat
With tiny tired feet
He ought to have a place to go
'Cause he's so very sweet

Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty, here little kitty
Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty cat.

I'm gonna ask my mama
If she'll let me take him home
Where I can hold him close to me
So he won't have to roam
He oughta have a lot of milk
And lots of fish and meat
Instead of finding what he can
In the alley or the street

(Musical interlude)

Now look at the little kitty cat
A-sleepin' in his bed
He's got a place to rest his feet
and lay his weary head
I'm going to see that he will stay
As happy as can be
And now when he goes walking
He'll go walking next to me

Oh kitty oh kitty oh how I love my sweet little kitty
Oh kitty oh kitty 
Sweet little kitty cat.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Going over Jordan

"Poor Wayfaring Stranger"

I am a poor wayfaring stranger
Travelling through this world of woe
But there's no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright land to which I go 

Well I'm going there
To meet my mother
Said she'd meet me when I come
I'm only going over Jordan
I'm only going over home 

I know dark clouds
Will gather 'round me 
I know my way
Will be rough and steep
But beautiful fields lie just before me
Where God's redeemed
Their vigils keep 

Well I'm going there
To meet my loved ones
Gone on before me, one by one
I'm only going over Jordan
I'm only going over home 

I'll soon be free of earthy trials
My body rest in the old church yard
I'll drop this cross of self-denial
And I'll go singing home to God 

Well I'm going there
To meet my Savior
Dwell with Him and never roam
I'm only going over Jordan
I'm only going over home

I had some News. I can't say much about it now except that it scared the hell out of me. I don't know what's coming next. Maybe nothing. But I've known too many people who've fallen. Some make it out. Maybe it's nothing. Probably it's nothing. Maybe not though, and my mind pinballs back and forth. I wrote an email to someone I care about and signed myself "Wayfaring Stranger", then realized, hmmmm, that's a song. 

I went through more than a dozen versions on YouTube and didn't like any of them. Most were full of sobbing violins and plunky banjos and tried to sound folksy and just ended up sounding maudlin. Even the great Johnny Cash didn't quite pull it off, and Joan Baez was, well, Joan Baez. Too much herself. Her signature was all over it.

I don't know who these singers are, but I love them, love the care with which they sing this, their utter musicality, pitch, tone, balance, the lean accompaniment, the brilliant a cappella section. All of it. In a very toned-down way it sounds like mountain music, which I am sure it is. Those aching harmonies, simple. These singers do not get in the way of the song.

Poor wayfaring stranger. I wonder if I subconsciously remembered any of the lyrics. I have been chasing my health issues around and around and around for a couple of years now, coming up empty, and this is not a turn for the better. I wonder, like everyone does, what happens to us, if anything, after we die, if we don't just turn to soil, not such a bad thing really. 

When poor Jasper died, I showed Erica and Lauren his little grave in the back yard. Erica blew it off, but Lauren stood there with eyes like saucers. She couldn't quite believe that he was down there, that he belonged there now. I tried to explain to her how we had given him back to nature, that he was at peace now, just like he was sleeping. 

A while later, still saucer-eyed, she said to me, "Maybe you should plant a tomato plant where he is." 

"Why?" 

"Then a tomato will grow up, and Jasper will be alive again."

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Oh, no, no, no. . . it can't be. . . but it IS!

Why do these things come into my head? Today I was walking in Mundy Park, freezing to death on a dank damp trail and feeling a little sorry I'd come, when I heard something in my head.

Something from the past.

It.

Was.

The

Sound of clapping.

A lot of people clapping.

A lot of people clapping at recess. In a circle. Mostly girls, and along with the clapping they were chanting a very strange sort of song.

The words (I'll have to reproduce them phonetically) sounded something like:

Coom-la, coom-la, coom-la feast-a
Ah, nah, nah, na-na-nah feast-a
Eenie meanie etcha- meanie
O-walla walla-meanie
(repeat)
A-nit-nat-natty-naughty-nit-nat-naught
(shhhhh)
FLEE!
(flee)
FLY!
(fly)
FLEE-FLY-FLOW!
(flee-fly-flow)
FEAST-AHH!
(repeat until school bell rings).

I don't even remember if I was part of the clapping circle or not. Probably not, as I was never included in anything - not that I tried very hard to be included. But I do remember it and it struck me as very odd, and then it sort of went to the back of my mind into that foggy place where you can't tell if things are real or not.

I honestly doubted that it happened. I never thought about it anyway.

Then. Today on that trail, not feeling very well, suddenly along with the clapping (quite rapid clapping, by the way, really ripping along), I seemed to hear:

FLEE!
(flee)
FLY!
(fly)
FLEE-FLY-FLOW!
(flee-fly-flow)
FEAST - AHH!

It was probably something like those old TV shows I could never find anything about (though if you revisit YouTube a couple of years later, you almost always find something). I tried googling "coom-la coom-la coom-la feast-a", and got exactly nothing. It didn't occur to me to google Flee-Fly-Flow, which is the actual name of the song (though I seem to remember we sang it in reverse order). But eventually, burrowing around YouTube, I hit on the above video and thought it came closest to the spirit of the song, if not the lyrics I remember (which shift and change with every version, like any good folk song). I wasn't a Brownie or a Girl Guide and never went to summer camp (God, I was a freak), so didn't realize that, along with Found a Peanut and 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, this was a  favorite and was sung seemingly everywhere.

I was pleasantly surprised when I recently heard my nine-year-old granddaughter Caitlin chanting some clapping/skipping songs from the schoolyard. They weren't like mine, but they were cool, with the same sort of infectious rhythm. Hell, I was just glad to hear that girls still skip! Most of them weigh 350 pounds, so probably have a hard time getting off the ground.

I shared some of my own decrepit clapping/skipping rhymes with her, minus chunks of lines that escape me, These were met with that "are-you-out-of-your-mind?" eye-roll that I know so well:

I was standing on the corner, not doing any harm
Along came a p'liceman, and took me by the arm
He dragged me round the corner and rang a funny bell
He (something, something, something) and put me in my cell

(Something, something, something) I looked up on the wall,
The bedbugs and the cooties were having a game of ball.
The score was ten to nothing, the bedbugs were ahead,
The cooties scored a home-run, and knocked me out of bed.

This probably isn't too exotic, as I was easily able to find it on the net (though it was under Songs of Southern Michigan, for some reason. Never mind, I lived near Detroit.) Others seem very old to me because the imagery is from another time (and another form of manufacture):

My Mama told me
If I was good-y
That she would buy me
A rubber dolly
My unkie told her
I kissed a soldier
Now she won't buy me
A rubber dolly

(Please note, this came BEFORE it was incorporated into the "clap-clap" hit song and was sung to a completely different tune. We always said "unkie" rather than "auntie", for some reason.)

And there was another one that had dance steps to it, I remember. No tune, just rhythmically chanted:

Charlie Chaplin went to France
To teach the ladies how to dance
First the heel, then the toe,
Right, left, and away we go!

I kind of doubt that ten-year-olds today know who Charlie Chaplin was, but you never know. WE did, because there was actually a Charlie Chaplin show on TV every Friday night, right after the Addams Family: a couple of his early two-reelers. I remember hearing kids discussing it on Monday.

Compared to these primitive childhood war-chants, Flee Fly Flow is beginning to sound like La Traviata. So who wrote this, where did it come from? Some say Latin America - which is quite plausible, because some interpret the second line as "oh, no, no, no, not da Vista" (whatever that means). Other sources claim it's African. The nit-not line, which always struck me as very silly, is probably wrong, somebody's "mondigreen" version. And in fact, this entire song may be a mondigreen (a mis-heard lyric: see previous post).

Like "a ram-sam-sam", it might just be a bunch of nonsense syllables strung together in Jabberwockian fashion.  But it's fun. And it actually exists.

Post-post: That formidable brick building, pictured below, is MY SCHOOL: McKeough School in Chatham, Ontario, which I attended from 1959 to 1964. I don't remember it looking so much like a federal penitentiary, but I guess it did. There was a girl's side and a boy's side and we were not allowed to mix. Almost all the teachers were elderly spinsters, and our principal Mr. Robertson was an ex-navy man who ran a tight ship. We marched in to military music in the morning (I remember especially "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", which turned out to be by Irving Berlin), and every so often Mr. R. would come and inspect the troops. We had to stand at attention until he said "at ease" (no kidding - no one ever believes this). Once in a while we had a treat: we all got to troop down into the nightmarish basement of the place to watch a "fillum". This would usually be a National Film Board educational fillum on hygiene, though we were still too young for warnings about VD. I do remember one about head lice and hygiene (i. e. it only happens to filthy reprobates). This school still functioned up until a few years ago. I don't know what the status is of it now: ghosts probably roam the hall, including Mr. McGuinness, the scary old janitor who was half out of his mind, and the Reverend Russell Horsburgh, who was COMPLETELY out of his mind. Oh, my childhood.

Dead leaves in your pockets. . .

 
 

 

When you're in the Little Land
You watch the wee folk play,
You see them through a game or two,
You come out old and gray.

 

When you're in the Little Land
They fill your hands with gold,
You think you stay for just a day,
You come out bent and old.

 

 

 

Dead leaves in your pockets

O my enchanted, have a care

Run, run from the little folk

Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets

And snowflakes in your hair

 

 

 

Lights shine in the Little Land
From diamonds on the wall,
But when you're back on the brown hill side
It's cold pebbles after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Music in the little land
Makes the heart rejoice.
It charms your ear so you can not hear
The sound of your true love’s voice

 

Dead leaves in your pockets

O my enchanted, have a care

Run, run from the little folk

Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets

And snowflakes in your hair

 

 

 

 

When you’re in the Little Land

You watch the wee folk play,

You see them through a game or two,

You come out old and gray.

 

Dead leaves in your pockets

O my enchanted, have a care

Run, run from the little folk

Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets

And snowflakes in your hair

  

 

 

 

Why did this leap into my head today, and where did it come from? Until this morning, damned if I knew. I remember my brother singing it in the '60s when he came home from university. Everyone was singing and playing the guitar and going to hootenannys, whatever they were, and most of us sucked our songs off record albums, often with wrong words and crazy chords.

 

It took me quite a while to find any semblance of this song, except for a very Irish version of it on YouTube. His didn't much resemble mine. It spoke of leprechauns, which gave me a clue as to what the song was about. But my version was one of those cobbled-together-from-memory things. I was only 9 or 10 years old and impressionable. I had NO IDEA what this song meant or even where it came from: I remember finding it weird and disturbing, which it still is.
 

 

 

So today, thanks to the good graces of YouTube, I more or less hunted it down, but it wasn't easy. This was originally written by Malvina Reynolds, an eccentric folk genius who wrote Little Boxes (on the hillside) and What Have they Done to the Rain? This was one of her more obscure numbers and sounds like it's based on folk poetry. One false lead took me to a poem called The Little Land by Robert Louis Stevenson (ph?), but it was one of those How Would you Like to Go Up in a Swing kind-of things, echoes of childhood, etc. Not threatening enough.

 

Somewhere I found a reference to the Limelighters, a folk group we listened to a lot back then. It featured Glen Yarbrough (borough? Who has time to check?), a tenor with a voice that would cut through barbed wire. I remember quite a few of their songs, but not this one.

 

 

So it was still pretty obscure when I finally tracked down the available fragments and pieced them together with my  bits of memory: hey, folk singers do that all the time. (I left out one line: someone's version said "Deadly in your pocket," which is completely nonsensical. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy.) But somewhere else, someone made a comment that actually made sense: Reynolds had a sense of social satire which could be quite biting (see Little Boxes). Perhaps the song was about another kind of "enchantment", not by leprechauns, faeries or other "little folk", but by the seductiveness of riches and fame.

 

It actually works. First you're just looking in from the outside, watching all these charming people at play, and it looks harmless enough, so you stay around for "a game or two". But then, bizarrely, you wake up and realize that decades have passed in a flash. The gold pouring through your hands eventually runs out and disappears. As in those alien encounters where people mysteriously lose time, the lurch ahead into old age is frightening: suddenly you're a has-been who never was.

 

 

The dead leaves in your pockets that I took so literally as a child could be the deadened browned scorched currency of false fame, crumbling away into nothing.  And I don't need to explain those snowflakes. Bright lights, white hair, cold stones. To enchant, literally, means to gain magical power over someone by chanting, usually in song. Soon the sound of enchantment becomes so strong that we can no longer make out the voice of the one we love.

 

It's a kind of evil reverse fairy-tale where the victim quickly shrivels under forces he or she can't comprehend. So much for cute little leprechauns, Lucky Charms and Kiss Me, I'm Irish.

 

 

 

Babylon

By the waters of Babylon

by the waters of Babylon

we sat down and wept

and wept

for thee Zion

We sat down and wept we sat down and wept we sat down and wept. . .

A shadow of a miracle of a particle of a shone of a show of a shadow of a song

Reflected backwards from the silver backing of a mirrored dream

we sat down and wept and wept and wept for thee Zion

We sat down and wept

(and wept)

for: thee

*******************Zion*******************