Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (86436)	8/25/2000 12:31:51 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

ALL love songs cover material that was covered at some point in the past- love doesn't change much. She loves you or she loves you not. He loves you or he loves you not. (we haven't had much he loves him and he loves him not or she loves her or she loves her not, but the THEME will be the same- only the sexes will change). Shakespeare ripped off all sorts of themes- but I manage to enjoy him anyway. Same with ALL hymns. Someone thanks some God(s) for something. Some one sees a death and thinks of God(s). Someone contemplates death and thinks of paradise. And all war songs. Someone wishes they weren't at war and that they were home. Someone misses their sweetheart- maybe they're lying on their death bed. Someone sings about a fallen hero. One of the things you are complaining about is that Barbara Allan has archetypes in it. The dignity aspect I think you are just wrong about. I suspect you are merely in a bit of snit because JBE outflanked you. I think you probably liked Barbara Allan before this discussion- but I'm only guessing.

To: Neocon who wrote (86436)	8/25/2000 1:09:56 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 108807

You are trivializing the ballad yourself, Neo. Certain themes are eternal. It is the treatment that counts, and the imagery employed. Tristan and Isolde is an epic poem. Elizabethan poetry is just that -- poetry by recognized poets. Ballads are folk compositions, anonymous. I was comparing the lyrics not to "professional", "classical" poetry, but to rock music lyrics. (I could have used Frankie and Johnny,/i> or St. James Infirmary instead. But, here too, you might have considered the love/death subject matter "trite." What do rock lyricists write about? Aristotelian philosophy?) As for Barbara Allen in particular, there are many, many versions of it. One of the oldest (the one in Quiller-Couch's anthology) does provides a rationale: Barbara was angry at William (called Jemmy Grove here)for dissing her in front of his friends. "O dinna ye mind, young man," says she, When the red wine you were fillin', That ye made the healths go round and round, And slighted Barbara Allen?" I get the feeling that he might have been boasting about his conquest of Barbara Allen, because the final verse could be hinting at that: "Farewell,"she said, "ye virgins all, And shun the fault I fell in. Henceforth, take warning by the fall Of cruel Barbara Allen." This particular version ends there; no rose, no briar, no churchyard. But that's the whole point of folk poetry/music: there IS no single "AUTHOR." Yet the group author of yore is usually a hundred times better at poetic technique than the rock lyricist of today. And poetic technique was what I was talking about.