“O mother, hear me!” by Zdenka
Mar. 29th, 2017 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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b2memB2MeM Prompt and Path: Multimedia (orange path)
Format: mixed media (music, graphic)
Genre: angst
Rating: T
Warnings: foreshadowed character death and blood
Characters: Gudrún (Norse mythology)
Pairings: only implied
Creator’s Notes (optional): The Wild square sent me to the orange path, and I chose multimedia. This entry contains three things: 1) a recording of me singing a few stanzas of Tolkien’s alliterative poem “The New Lay of the Völsungs,” based on Norse mythology; 2) a graphic; 3) a transcript of the text that I’m singing. A longer explanation is under the cut.
Summary: Gudrún tells her mother Grímhild that she is troubled by dark dreams of foreboding. Her mother tries to reassure her.
When I first read Tolkien’s alliterative poems about Norse mythology in the meter and style of the Poetic Edda, I really wanted to sing them. I was able to adapt a Welsh carol (I don’t know the original title, but it’s sung in English as “Dark the Night”) to fit a few stanzas of this poem.
I made this musical arrangement some years ago, but the recording is new for B2MeM. (I also couldn’t find my original file with the sheet music, so I had to reconstruct it from memory.)
Tolkien’s poem is based on the Poetic Edda and the Völsung Saga. This section of the poem is a conversation between Gudrún and her mother Grímhild. Although Grímhild tries to reassure her daughter, everything foreshadowed in the dream does happen. The events alluded to are: Gudrún’s marriage to the hero Sigurd; Sigurd’s murder by Gudrún’s brothers at Brynhild’s instigation; Gudrún’s marriage to Attila the Hun (yes, really!); Attila’s murder of Gudrún’s brothers. Poor Gudrún is one of those mythological figures whose life is a never-ending litany of misfortune; marrying Attila the Hun isn’t even one of the worst things that happens to her.
Credits:
Words: from “Völsungakviða en nýja” (The New Lay of the Völsungs), found in: Tolkien, J. R. R. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Music: Canon Owen Jones. (I found the melody to “Dark the Night” in the Oxford Book of Carols.)
Arrangement and performance: Zdenka.
Many thanks to my friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teenybuffalo for helping me record this song with her equipment.
Art: Gudrún (or Gutrune). A detail from one of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Wagner’s Ring Cycle, captioned “Siegfried hands the drinking-horn back to Gutrune, and gazes at her with sudden passion.” From Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain.
Transcript of text:
Gudrún
‘O mother, hear me!
Mirth is darkened,
dreams have troubled me,
dreams of boding.’
Grímhild
‘Dreams come most oft
in dwindling moon,
or weather changing.
Of woe think not!’
Gudrún
‘No wind, nor wraith
of waking thought--
a hart we hunted
over hill and valley;
all would take him,
’twas I caught him:
his hide was golden,
his horns towering.
A woman wildly
on the wind riding
with a shaft stung him,
shooting pierced him;
at my knees he fell
in night of woe,
my heart too heavy
might I hardly bear.
A wolf they gave me
for woe’s comfort;
in my brethren’s blood
he bathed me red.
Dreams have vexed me,
direst boding,
not wind or weather
or waning moon.’
Format: mixed media (music, graphic)
Genre: angst
Rating: T
Warnings: foreshadowed character death and blood
Characters: Gudrún (Norse mythology)
Pairings: only implied
Creator’s Notes (optional): The Wild square sent me to the orange path, and I chose multimedia. This entry contains three things: 1) a recording of me singing a few stanzas of Tolkien’s alliterative poem “The New Lay of the Völsungs,” based on Norse mythology; 2) a graphic; 3) a transcript of the text that I’m singing. A longer explanation is under the cut.
Summary: Gudrún tells her mother Grímhild that she is troubled by dark dreams of foreboding. Her mother tries to reassure her.
When I first read Tolkien’s alliterative poems about Norse mythology in the meter and style of the Poetic Edda, I really wanted to sing them. I was able to adapt a Welsh carol (I don’t know the original title, but it’s sung in English as “Dark the Night”) to fit a few stanzas of this poem.
I made this musical arrangement some years ago, but the recording is new for B2MeM. (I also couldn’t find my original file with the sheet music, so I had to reconstruct it from memory.)
Tolkien’s poem is based on the Poetic Edda and the Völsung Saga. This section of the poem is a conversation between Gudrún and her mother Grímhild. Although Grímhild tries to reassure her daughter, everything foreshadowed in the dream does happen. The events alluded to are: Gudrún’s marriage to the hero Sigurd; Sigurd’s murder by Gudrún’s brothers at Brynhild’s instigation; Gudrún’s marriage to Attila the Hun (yes, really!); Attila’s murder of Gudrún’s brothers. Poor Gudrún is one of those mythological figures whose life is a never-ending litany of misfortune; marrying Attila the Hun isn’t even one of the worst things that happens to her.
Credits:
Words: from “Völsungakviða en nýja” (The New Lay of the Völsungs), found in: Tolkien, J. R. R. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Music: Canon Owen Jones. (I found the melody to “Dark the Night” in the Oxford Book of Carols.)
Arrangement and performance: Zdenka.
Many thanks to my friend
teenybuffalo for helping me record this song with her equipment.Art: Gudrún (or Gutrune). A detail from one of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Wagner’s Ring Cycle, captioned “Siegfried hands the drinking-horn back to Gutrune, and gazes at her with sudden passion.” From Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain.
Transcript of text:
Gudrún
‘O mother, hear me!
Mirth is darkened,
dreams have troubled me,
dreams of boding.’
Grímhild
‘Dreams come most oft
in dwindling moon,
or weather changing.
Of woe think not!’
Gudrún
‘No wind, nor wraith
of waking thought--
a hart we hunted
over hill and valley;
all would take him,
’twas I caught him:
his hide was golden,
his horns towering.
A woman wildly
on the wind riding
with a shaft stung him,
shooting pierced him;
at my knees he fell
in night of woe,
my heart too heavy
might I hardly bear.
A wolf they gave me
for woe’s comfort;
in my brethren’s blood
he bathed me red.
Dreams have vexed me,
direst boding,
not wind or weather
or waning moon.’
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no subject
Date: 2017-03-29 10:04 pm (UTC)Your song makes a great taster--it really brings out the qualities of this passage of the text.
I really like the graphic as well, as it's by a favourite artist of mine and you've adapted it skilfully.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-01 05:21 am (UTC)Thank you very much!
Yeah, I really like Arthur Rackham's art too.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-30 02:26 am (UTC)-Febobe :)
no subject
Date: 2017-04-01 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-30 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-01 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-30 06:04 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
no subject
Date: 2017-04-01 05:23 am (UTC)