fairy jacket

[asakiyume]

I found a fairy jacket, hanging on a bush, and thought of "Scarborough Fair."



Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Sewn without seams or fine needlework,
If she would be a true love of mine.

Tell her to wash it in yonder well,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Where never spring water or rain ever fell,
And she shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born,
Then she shall be a true lover of mine.

Comments

[duccio.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should go out for walks early every morning - without my cell phone. Yes, I think I should - without my cell phone.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

why without your cell phone?

[duccio.livejournal.com]

Nothing good seems to come through my cell phone. I see it as a constant interruption.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have to confess I feel sorry when I see people essentially shackled to them--in some interesting place, but focused on the phone.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Neat! :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

That is such a perfect tiny jacket! I wonder how its owner lost it. One of the sides is shorter than the other, so I'm seeing a near escape from a cat. She thought she had the fairy, but no! only the jacket.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I could just imagine it at human size--it would be that gossamer fabric that requires you wear an undershirt underneath.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is quite lovely!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It really looked like a fine, discarded shirt.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I am almost certainly not the only person who always heard that as "a candlewick shirt" (because I had a candlewick bedspread, so I knew that was a kind of fabric, so that's a done deal right there). Of course people still hear mondegreens, but in these days of universally-accessible lyrics I doubt many get so embedded as they did when I were young. As in, okay, I confess it: still candlewick to me. Despite my knowing technically better now.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about mondegreens being less entrenched in our heads now that we can correct them more easily. Though, I do think we still can sometimes prefer the lyrics as we originally heard them--I prefer "You're gonna to make mistakes, you know" to "You're gonna make mistakes; you're young" in Metric's song "Gimme Sympathy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=955p21oIgYw)--it makes it more universal (I'm not young, but I'm sure as hell still gonna make mistakes), and I prefer "orchards of hell," which is a striking image, over "archers of hell" in the Decemberists' "This Is Why We Fight." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rFfRo0SRAg)

I never knew what candlewick fabric looked like, but when I searched for an image, I saw that my grandmother had a candlewick bedspread too!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, candlewick was commonplace in my childhood. I never did see an actual candlewick shirt, but it was easy to imagine, especially with those hippy Simon/Garfunkel types. (What I am finding marginally interesting now is that I definitely knew the song pre-S&G, not as a recorded song but as a song that we sang, almost certainly from songsheets; but either I just never remembered that verse or else the S&G version just overwrote the original lyric with what-I-heard. Or else in fact I never saw it written down and always misheard it from the get-go. Or my big sister misheard it and taught it to me, that's always possible. Or...)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I heard the song first from Simon & Garfunkel and untangled the actual Scarborough Fair lyrics later, when I got all crazily into Celtic fairy lore.

I thought they were saying "camberick"--when I found out the word was "cambric" I lost some gruntle. They were definitely making it three syllables.

I also thought they said "Tell her to leave it in a sickle-bells ablazing in scarlet gartalion."

I recognized that I was hearing a smooshing of songs, but I still imagined a bush with bells in the shape of sickles, and scarlet leaves, all the while wondering what, exactly, gartalion was.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm, gartalion. Under the heraldic spelling - Gartalyan - it is the emblem of the House of the Fallen Heart. Also, of course, the seed-heads yield an oil that makes one part in five of the Perfume of All Desire. Lovesick swains wear its blossoms secretly in pouches next their heart on May Day and for a sennight thereafter: not that this will in any way influence their luck in love, it's just a helpless gesture, a private and intimate confession.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

♥ ♥ ♥

This is now my truth forever.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

What a terrific thing to chance on! :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah--magical things, even in trash and litter ♥

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

There's well over a thousand words in that image. How The Fairy Lost Hir Jacket…?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes--we like to go dancing with the fair folk--maybe they like coming this way from time to time.

A local pizza shop everyone's been waiting for just opened: maybe zie came for some pizza :-)

Too wonderful for words

[docdad2.livejournal.com]

See above.

Re: Too wonderful for words

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-)