While listening to ballads recently, it occurred to me that the words of 'Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight' (Child ballad 195) have a lot in common with Flight of the Heron... and so, inspired by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
luzula's filk balladry, I decided to write that version.
This is based on June Tabor's version of the lyrics. Tabor has recorded the ballad twice with slightly different melodies, here and here. Each verse of this melody goes to two verses of Child's ballad-metre arrangement of the lyrics, so that's how I've written them out here. The verses skip around the plot of parts four and five of Flight of the Heron a little, but will hopefully make sense enough!
I've preserved a couple of Scots words from the original, so should point out that 'aye' in verse four means 'always', and that 'gotten' in verse two is not an Americanism. :) I've assumed 'Ardroy' is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable—although canon doesn't give a definite pronunciation, this follows the pattern of Ardgour, Ardrossan etc.
Child says of this use of the word 'goodnight' that it 'is to be taken loosely as a farewell'—I think here it's Ewen's (merely temporary) farewell to Scotland, but also his 'last goodnight' to the dying Keith.
Thanks to Luzula for beta reading!
( Cameron of Ardroy's Last Goodnight )
( As for the original ballad... )
luzula's filk balladry, I decided to write that version.This is based on June Tabor's version of the lyrics. Tabor has recorded the ballad twice with slightly different melodies, here and here. Each verse of this melody goes to two verses of Child's ballad-metre arrangement of the lyrics, so that's how I've written them out here. The verses skip around the plot of parts four and five of Flight of the Heron a little, but will hopefully make sense enough!
I've preserved a couple of Scots words from the original, so should point out that 'aye' in verse four means 'always', and that 'gotten' in verse two is not an Americanism. :) I've assumed 'Ardroy' is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable—although canon doesn't give a definite pronunciation, this follows the pattern of Ardgour, Ardrossan etc.
Child says of this use of the word 'goodnight' that it 'is to be taken loosely as a farewell'—I think here it's Ewen's (merely temporary) farewell to Scotland, but also his 'last goodnight' to the dying Keith.
Thanks to Luzula for beta reading!
( Cameron of Ardroy's Last Goodnight )
( As for the original ballad... )
