Subject: RE: mouth music
From:
Murray
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 04:26 AM
The real title is "Dance to your Shadow", by Kenneth MacLeod. One of the "Songs of the Hebrides"-- music noted from the singing of Marion MacLeod, Eigg; arranged for voice & piano by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser. 3 sts. in English (1.1 “Dance to your shadow when it’s good to be living, lad”), 1 in Gaelic (“Bando ribinnean a shioda’s de ribinnean”), with cho. (“Ho ro haradal, sheinni haradal”). A puirt-a-beul song. Sheet music: Boosey & Co., copyright 1921.
--thus my trusty Scottish song index. The Gaelic title is "Bando Ribinnean", evidently meaning "Bands, ribbons", wound in the hair. English stanzas: Dance to your shadow when it's good to be living, lad,/Dance to your shadow when there's nothing better near you./Dance to your shadow when it's fine to be living, lad,/ Dance to your shadow when there's nothing better near you.
st. 2 varies it, "hard to be living... sore to be living"; st. 3 "Dance to your shadow letting Fate to her fiddle, lad... for it's fine to be living, lad." -- the alternate lines do not alter. There is a chorus [which begins the song too]: Ho ro haradal, sheinn i haradal, ho ro haradal sheinn i han dan. The verse in Gaelic is: Bando ribinnean a shioda's de ribinnean, Bando ribinnean a ruidealadh mu'd cheannsa [twice].
The music is headed by a quotation from Carmina Gadelica [a great collection], "But Mary Macrae heeded not, and went on in her own way, singing her songs and ballads, intoning her hymns and incantations, and chanting her own port-a-bial, mouth music, and dancing to her own shadow when nothing better was available."
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