horsemouth royalwatcher (causes of death in english folk songs)

horsemouth has a day off.

the queen is talking about her crown and her coronation.

now as every storyteller knows the thing that symbolizes that the story is over is the reincorporation of elements from early on into the tale - when the first event is reincorporated the story has reached its (natural) end.

horsemouth has (once again) put up the pie chart of causes of death in traditional english folk songs to great acclaim- if you were to add scottish folk songs you could add poisoned (lord randall), you and your two sisters stabbed by a robber who turns out to be your brother (who then commits suicide when he realizes) in the ballad down by the bonnie banks of fordie. (horsemouth’s ganny’s maiden name - true story).

similarly the drowning does not include drowned by your jealous sister, your body hauled ashore made into a harp and that harp played at your sister's wedding to your intended, and the being mistaken for a swan by a trigger happy hunter does not mention that the girl shot was the hunter's girlfriend (a likely story).

folk songs tell a story (that is their main attraction and their main means of keeping themselves remembered). modern songs do not do this so much (they affirm and work emotions - they are attractions based around a moment of transformation - like a lumieres movie).

so with pop songs as with directing a film, by analogy, you want to get into the scene as late as possible (to move your story forward) and get out of the scene as early as possible.

horsemouth should really read his propp and all the other stuff round narrative and should think about the moment of magical transformation in songs. in some songs it is very early ‘STOP.. in the name of love...’ but this is still a chorus that will be returned to later - with the set up in the verse (the payoff line is of course think it over which is almost a throw away).

RIP 'fast' eddie clarke of motorhead this, hawkwind, and a lot of prog, the soundtrack to horsemouth's childhood and youth in the valleys.

 

in search of stone circles

is that it, is it? wondered horsemouth, looking over the hedge at the pile of rocks in the field. the cows munched on incurious. the crows (rooks really - great ugly messy birds) flew back and fore.

the map said standing stones but as he had been warned many were on private land out of sight of the road (of course he should have done a bit more research before setting out).

there’s a ringfort at the top of the hill in the town itself said the retiree who gave him a lift back into town - he remembered the town when it was a village, just the main street.

on the way up he met derek who’d moved back from the forest of dean just in time for the recession, now his construction business was back on track (but stuff was still selling for roughly half of what it was before).

horsemouth was wandering about asking directions. even being equipped with a map didn’t necessarily guarantee being able to discover what road one is on. oops a mob of rooks has just arrived in the garden (there seems to be some running off of the jackdaws going on).

horsemouth is enjoying the vegetarian by han kang - a woman has terrible blood-curdling dreams and decides to stop eating meat, the family do not understand, she slips into mental illness, her brother in law becomes obsessed that she has a birthmark (a mongolian spot) and paints her and himself with flowers (very jean genet).

today is sunny - so perhaps back out to the beach at fountainstown - there are some standing stones near there too - horsemouth should have brought a camera so he could document them for you.

the three deaths of harry smith

harry smith claimed to remember three near death experiences (though later on he only claimed to remember two).

 1.) aged 9- 10, up in the pacific northwest, he swims out too far and begins to drown - his life flashes before his eyes in chronological order.

 2.) later he lives above a jazz club in the fillmore in san francisco. after an afterparty with lots of heroin, gin and weed, they all get in the car for a drive. strangely, on one of san francisco's legendary hills the brakes fail. he is flung through the car windscreen, as he lays on the pavement a priest gives him last rites (and, he says, an opportunistic perv feels his balls). this time his life comes back to him differently. 

'a vast panorama. it was like a giant jigsaw puzzle that I could look at all at once, of my entire life laid out, each part fitted together... ...it was as if life was seen in a way where no mistake is possible. that everything fitted together well, it was absolutely extraordinary, that as it says, I believe in St. Mark 'his eye is on the sparrow' 
 'you see, there was like joy because I realized how foolish I was to have worried about the rent, and what people thought of me, and all those things, because they were so trivial in relation to the grandeur of the construction of the universe.' 

3.) that only leaves his actual death - he died at the chelsea hotel 27th november 1991 - all day his assistant (rani singh) tried to get him to go to hospital - all he would say was 'no.I'm dying. I'll die.' 

then he said 'I'm dying' , coughed up some blood and died.