For Thy Parting Neither Say Nor Sing
So here’s the second sad song of the season that I was able to come up with and let me tell you, they don’t make it easy to find this song. I’m sure it helps if you know more of the song than “Bye bye lully lullay” and more so if you can spell ‘lully lullay’ correctly. Google and I had a bit of a go about this (and you would not believe the sites I found that weren’t the lyrics) until I ran across the alternate title. I’ll give it to you just in case you are curious and so you will have more to work on than I did. It’s also known as The Coventry Carol, unless that’s the real name and the other name I found is the alternate. They didn’t say. Damn ants.
Anyway. This carol is about the killing of all the children under two (if I remember correctly. I might be getting my Jesus and Moses baby stories mixed up) after King Herod hears that a new king has been born. It is sung by a mother to her baby and to the other mothers who have lost their children so yeah. Happy tune. As my mumses said, “You don’t often get to hear about this side of Christmas”. She is putting her thinking cap on to see if she can come up with any other sad Christmas tunes. TheMan came up with one this morning (O come, O come, Emmanuel) so now we are at 3 and one third sad songs. Thirty more and we’ll have a record!
I also realized, because I was singing Oh Holy Night (don’t ask), that there is another category of Christmas tune: The choral heavies. Whereas the solo artist needs to have White Christmas under their belt to be anybody’s anybody, the choirs have to have done Oh Holy Night in order to walk the walk. The “Fall on your knees/Oh, hear the angel’s voices…” part? Definitely not for the timid (or for the early morning commute in a bug. I’m just sayin). You have to go full out with that, a project to the back of the town kind of full out. Big sound! Biiiiiig Sound!
BTW, Bing is to White Christmas as The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is to Oh Holy Night. They may be Mormons but they all have some impressive pipes. Yow. Dammit, now I’m in the mood for big choral Christmas carols.
Yesterday my mumses and Mr. Paul dropped by to take me out to lunch. Yay! Mumses also had a Christmas card for me (the first of the season) which prompted me to get TheMan’s and my cards written and addressed. For some reason I really don’t like just writing “Merry X-mas, us!” on the card and sending them out. It seems so impersonal and production line, at least to me. I’m quite sure your greeting cards are the BOMB. Of course they are! Truly! I however am a blabber so only sending a “Love, us!” under the card jabber just doesn’t do it. Instead I wrote a whole bunch of this and some of that and a couple of you got the other. Someone even got Christmas sprits, which I took pains to illustrate. I draw much better spirits than I do dinosaurs.
Oooo! Another mumses story for y’all. We were supposed to meet at noon-thirty for lunch but they got into town earlier and gave me a ring to let me know. In the middle of the phone call we had this conversation:
Mumses: Is TheMan going to join us?
Boo: Nah. He’s at the hospital.
Mumses: HOSPITAL?!? Oh my gosh! What happened? Is he alright?
Boo: Mumses, he works there.
Mumses: Oh. Right.
My silly mumses. It made me laugh though, and it made TheMan laugh too. To be all fair to the mumses, TheMan’s unit (which works for the hospital) recently moved off site (so they now do work for the hospital but not at the hospital) where TheMan spends a lot of his time these days. However, there is still an office for his unit over at the hospital (where they do work) which TheMan works at a couple times a week.
Heh. TheMan’s unit needs a whole office. Yes, I am 12.
Last year at the booniverse: Sad songs make me skip updating.
Last last year at the booniverse: Now you’ve gone and done it, THEY will be most displeased. Yes, the giant ants.