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- Medusa, the snake-haired monster who turned
all who saw her into stone, actually lived most of her life as a beautiful,
winged maiden. She was so lovely that the god Poseidon, lord of
the sea and of horses, fell in love with her, and she became pregnant.
The goddess Athena (who was born directly from the head of a man - the
lord of the Greek Pantheon, Zeus) took a dislike to her, and laid
upon her the curse that made Medusa famous and brought about her death
at the hands of the warrior Perseus. At the moment of her beheading,
Medusa gave birth to Pegasus, the winged horse, whose beauty was such
that he was given a place among the stars as a constellation. The many
interpretations and resonances within this legend perhaps account for
its enduring for more than three thousand years. But I thought
it was time the story was told, for once, from Medusa's point of view.
This song is dedicated to all of us who have been turned to stone by
the goddesses born from the mind of man.
- Most ancient depictions of Medusa show her
with a hideous face, but there are a few in which she keeps her sweet
face under the snaky hair. In these representations she is depicted
as sorrowful; in the ugliest ones, she is more of a "mad hag" type,
often sticking her tongue out, and with leering or wild eyes.
There are a few very early sculptures still extant in which she is depicted
holding snkes in her hands as well as having them in her hair, and some
believe that she was in the older, pre-patriarchal mythologies, an early
earth-goddess.
- Under this interpretation, the conflict between
Medusa and Athena could be seen as a symbol of the eradication of the
older earth and woman-centered world view in favour of the Classical
Greek patriarchal pantheon, with the father god Zeus at its head
- In my song, I mainly wanted to explore the
idea and image of beauty and the "damned if you are" and "damned if
you are not" dilemma that we face in this world where surgically altered,
airbrushed and digitally enhanced supermodel godesses face us at every
turn.
- For more on the Medusa story, you can check
out these other web pages:
- http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/classes/finALp.html
- http://citd.scar.utoronto.ca/CLAA02/Medusa/page3.htm
- http://www.loggia.com/myth/medusa.html
- http://www.pegasus70.com/legend.html
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- The media have given us shot after shot of noisy
demonstrations, police in riot gear, pepper spray and broken windows, but
very rarely do they give airtime to the people who could supply the reasons
that so many people around the world are ready to put their lives in danger
to demonstrate against unbridled economic globalization. This
song gives just a few of those reasons.
- Under one of the provisions of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), elected national governments may not pass
laws that interfere with the profits of a foreign company operating in
their country. Yes, you read that correctly. Canada was sued
under this provision by a chemical company that produced a chemical that
the Canadian government banned, for safety reasons. The company won
a multi-million dollar settlement, paid by the Canadian taxpayer.
This NAFTA provision appears in the agreements that the globalization forces
are trying to have passed on a worldwide basis in documents like the MAI
and its successors. That's just one dubious provision among hundreds.
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| Skye Water Kelpie's Lullaby |
• The Water-Kelpie was a shape-shifting monster of
Scottish legend. He would appear to men as a wild horse, and if the
man mounted the horse, the Kelpie would dash into the water and drown him.
But if he met a young woman, he would appear as a handsome young lord.
In this story, he has been married to a human woman, who upon discovering
his true identity, fled from him, leaving their baby behind since the child
too would likely be a Kelpie. The Kelpie sings his lament in an attempt
to persuade his bride to return to him and the child. This song is
from Skye, the Gesto Collection, translated from the Gaelic. |
Young Clifford
& Fair Rosamond |
King Henry II of England (1154-1189) was a notorious
womanizer, so much so that pretty women were hidden if he was to ride through
their town. This song is an ancient one that tells of how Henry first
heard of the young woman whom he was to make his only long-term mistress:
the lady who was to go down in legend as “Fair Rosamond”.
Rosamond was the daughter of a Norman knight,
Walter de Clifford, who lived near the Welsh border. She was a young
teenager at the time that Henry first encountered her, and the legends
about her are consistent in claiming that the liason was not Rosamond's
choice. This song is a version from the seventeenth century, though
clearly it is from a much older source. For more on the story, keep
reading...
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Queen Eleanor
& Fair Rosamond
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• Eleanor, ruling Duchess of Aquitaine, was the
most powerful and influential woman of 12th century Europe. First
married to the king of France, she divorced him (out of boredom) to marry
the man who was to become Henry II of England. After bearing him many children,
she tired of being kept from any real power, and as soon as her
eldest son was old enough, she organized a rebellion that very nearly unseated
her husband. The son was pardoned by his father, but Eleanor was
thrown in prison, where she stayed for over 15 years until Henry's death.
Perhaps unable to bear the thought of a woman being that powerful and formidable
in war and politics, the popular imagination attributed the rebellion
solely to her son, and developed a more “romantic” reason for the
Queen's imprisonment: that she had murdered the king's mistress ,
Rosamond Clifford, out of jealousy.
The less romantic but much more interesting truth
is that Eleanor had no time for killing off her husband's mistress: she
was far too busy running a court in her native Aquitaine that became the
center of the Renaissance of the twelfth century. She gathered to
her court the best poets, musicians, songwriters and artists of her day
and encouraged and patronized them. The flower of the young nobility
of Europe flocked to her court and many of them in their turn became patrons
of the arts. The seminal work of Andreas Cappellanus, "The Art Of
Courtly Love", was written at or influenced by Eleanor's court as
was much of the romantic and Arthurian literature of the day.
The other thing that kept
Eleanor busy was, of course, plotting with her sons to replace her husband.
In 1174, when her last attempt at rebellion failed, Eleanor was forced
to flee from the advancing forces of Henry's army. She was finally
captured, in disguise among the troops of her allies, wearing men's clothes.
Henry placed her under strict house arrest for the remainder of his life,
despite the attempts of their sons to end her imprisonment. When
Henry died in 1199, her jailers let her loose immediately, knowing that
the new king, her favourite son Richard Lionheart, would hold them responsible
if they did not.
Eleanor began her vivid court
in Poitiers in 1167, the year after Henry met Rosamond Clifford.
There is little question that Eleanor was miffed at the affair, although
she was used to Henry's philandering, he had never before taken someone
on as a "kept woman", and furthermore, he installed her in luxury at the
royal palace of Woodstock, which Eleanor herself had recently redecorated
for her own lying in. (The palace was a favourite one for Plantagenet
royalty, but alas, did not have "an hundered and fifty doors" or any kind
of maze or secret place.) Eleanor was forced, however, to give birth
to her youngest son, John, elsewhere, and shortly afterwards left for Poitiers,
ostensibly to quell the rebellions there among her own barons who chafed
under Henry's rule.
Rosamond remained the king's
mistress until Henry tired of her, and placed her in a convent at
Godstowe, where she died of natural causes in 1177. At the
time of Rosamond's death, Eleanor had been in prison for three years.
This song is an amalgam of two existing ballads
about the death of Rosamond. Each tells part of the story, and so
I took the sixteenth century broadside and filled in the narrative gaps
from the eighteenth century version. The tune printed with the broadside
version was taken from another ballad and was not the original one. It
didn't fit well in many parts of the story, so I wrote a new tune for it. |
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