TMOH

Filk songs somebody (including, but not limited to, me) should write:

• more sea shanties/whaling songs about spaceships
• genderflipped and/or queer Child Ballads
• “I’m going home to Jesus”-type bluegrass songs about donating your body to science

an epic saga of unwanted singing

so first I listened to the Les Miz soundtrack, because it was in my head

and then when I’d run through the whole thing I saw it was right next to my Children of Eden playlist, so I listened to that

and all the awesome stirring dramatic broadway was…inspiring

so now I’m mouthing the words to “Wild and Restless Foam”

no one needs to see me trying to hold a note on “snoooooooow” like that, ok

Things I’ve learned today:

The walk from the writing help center to my dorm takes exactly the same amount of time it takes to sing “Young Edward.”

my brain does cool stuff sometimes

Apparently my vague fanon regarding Mr Stratford’s life is just a huge amalgamation of standard folk song plots where something’s just a little bit off.  Like he’s pretty much the result of the ubiquitous “teenage girl takes up with a roguishly charming young lad and ends up rueful and pregnant” songs…except that the charming young rogue grows up to be a serial killer and nobody dies until many years later of totally unrelated causes.  And later on, Stratford asks someone rather close to him to go for a walk in a nice secluded rural place not far from a major river…but that someone’s a man and it’s somebody else entirely who he ends up murdering in said secluded rural place.  Even his name’s bizarrely appropriate: named him William for the Shakespeare joke, only to realize later that every murderous farmboy in every murder ballad ever is called Willie.

I didn’t notice any of this until a long time after my fanon was established.  Were the folk song lyrics in my head somehow subconsciously influencing my fic planning?  Is it just the natural consequence of him being a young man who kills people in the pseudo-British countryside?  I don’t know, but it’s totally gonna result in some fanfic.

Eventually.

Now I am going to make a list of my favorite songs

For real, not the ones I’ve actually played most since I got my laptop.

It goes like this:

1. The Mary Ellen Carter (Tommy Makem & Liam Clancy)
2. Rambling Rover (every version ever, I can’t pick just one)
3. Shores of Botany Bay (The Irish Rovers)
4. The Bonnie Ship The Diamond
5. Ho Jayegi Balle Balle (Daler Mehndi)
6. Fogarty’s Cove (Stan Rogers)
7. Dragostea Din Tei (O-ZONE)
8. St. Brendan’s Voyage (Christy Moore)
9. Moskau (Dschingis Khan)
10. The Maiden’s Eye (The Pine Box Boys)

yes good

(be warned: the last one is creepy and violent and just awful. This means it’s the one most frequently stuck in my head in public.)

I figured out what happened to Andy after Unseen Academicals

He went to Fourecks.  It’s obvious, really—just listen to “Waltzing Matilda”:

Andy sang, Andy watched, Andy waited while his billy boiled,

You’ll come a waltzing Matilda…

MONDEGREEN LASS, AWAY

now I’m trying to find a good version of “Fiddler’s Green”

The Houghton Weavers

The Limerick Rovers

Pierce Campbell

Wolfe Tones

have i ever mentioned how much i love recordings of songs where there’s clapping involved?

cause i friggin love clapping, ok