The Mandelbear's Musings

She got the which of the what-she-did, Hid the bell with a blot, she did, But she fell in love with a hominid. Where is the which of the what-she-did? from The Ballad of Lost C'Mell.

I'm not quite sure how I managed to fall into the Cordwainer Smith rabbit hole this time, but all the evidence points to looking up something about light sails sometime on Tuesday. It might have been a chance reference to CD, carried on board Cosmos I: The First Solar Sail. In any case, it included a copy of Smith's story about light-sailing, "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul". It was the (somewhat loosely-coupled) inspiration for the first song I wrote after discovering filk: "The Shores of the Night". (If you're keeping score, that's where the "ships" part of this post's title comes from.)

And somehow from there I wound up on this radio play version of "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", which starts with the song quoted at the top of this post. The "C'" in her name is a contraction of "Cat" (if you're still keeping score).

Cats appear in many of Smith's stories -- C'Mell herself appears in several of them. As far as I know, though, the only actual cats (as opposed to cat-derived underpeople) appear in the "The Game of Rat and Dragon" (audiobook version here). If you haven't fallen in love with The Lady May by the end of the story, you're obviously not a cat person and I'm very sorry for you.

Scattered through Smith's stories are dozens of little poems and scraps of song, like "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" (which, as far as I know, is the only one anyone has set to music -- that's what triggered this post). I've thought about it, but ...

And if you were still keeping score and wondering where the shoes from the title went, you'll find them in "Think Blue, Count Two" --

Lady if a man Tries to bother you, you can Think blue, Count two, And look for a red shoe.

As far as I can tell, only a small handful of filk songs have been written about Cordwainer Smith's stories. I've written two of them: "The Shores of the Night" and "A Talk With the Middle-Sized Bear" (from "" -- I wrote about it in Songs for Saturday, 2012-02-11. There is also "Scanners Live in Vain" by Zander Nyrond, and there are at least two versions of "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", neither of which I can find lyrics to.

( lyrics: )

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