Songs for Saturday: Mary O'Meara, et. al.

[mdlbear]

One of the songs Lookingglass Folk have been working on recently is "Mary O'Meara" (words by Poul Anderson, music by Anne Passovoy) -- according to my archives we started working on it in mid-July, and possibly earlier. (Bears have notoriously bad memories; find and grep are my good friends.)

I remember reading the song in Poul's novel, World Without Stars back in 1966, when it was serialized in Analog under the title "The Ancient Gods". A good story, but what really made it memorable was the song, verses of which were threaded through the story. When I heard it at a filksing, at least a decade later, it brought the whole thing back.

OK, before we go any farther, if you haven't heard the song (it's passed out of the filk repertoire in recent years, possibly due to over-exposure) go listen to it! Here's "Mary O' Meara" sung by Windbourne on YouTube. The only copy of the lyrics I could find online is here, on Mudcat -- skip the comments. Darned if I can figure out where I found the chords [pdf]; possibly in a songbook somewhere.

 

Now, go over to kjn | The origins of Mary O'Meara, where you'll find the song that inspired it: "Anna Lovinda", by Norwegian songwriter Erik Bye, published in 1960. The post contains translations of the original lyrics, and a Danish translation that was probably what Poul was thinking of.

Reading those, you can tell that the basic story and most of the imagery of "Mary O'Meara" came directly from "Anna Lovinda". What's more, the meter is fairly close as well. kjn's post has a good analysis, which I'm not going to try to duplicate.

At this point, I'm going to leave you with this stunning performance of "Anna Lovinda" by Sissel Kyrkjebø, Bjørn Eidsvåg, and Åge Aleksandersen from 2006.

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Comments

[madfilkentist]

I once sang "Mary O'Meara" to the "Anna Lovinda" tune at a filksing. For reasons I don't understand (my performance may have been part of it), people weren't particularly impressed.

[kjn]

Thanks for the shoutout! I make a point to sing Mary O'Meara in the "original Norwegian" at every international con I go to, and it seems to be well-received, but it might be the novelty value.

There is also a Swedish translation of "Mary O'Meara". When John-Henri Holmberg (GoH at the Helsinki Worldcon) translated World Without Stars to Swedish he was extremely careful with the meter. He didn't know it had been set to music, but I found that it could be sung to either Passovoy's or Bye's melodies. I should be able to produce a Danish version as well, but then my pronunciation would be even more Swedish-accented than when I sing in Norwegian.

I do have the notation and chords for "Anna Lovinda" lying around for those interested.