TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

I'm sure most will agree that Sandy's version of this song is truly one of the great "deep tracks" within her catalog.

I love to perform it whenever I get the chance.  "You just can't pull a Bruton Town on an audience out of nowhere," insists Chris -  the David St. Hubbens to my Derek Smalls.  He usually vetos me when I begin playing around with it between numbers.  Most of the time, I admit, he's probably right.  

Perhaps, he just gets bored with my long and numerous distorted guitar leads during the song - but I can't help it!  Truly, its the English version of Down By the River. Loud, meandering, and admittedly amateurish solos are required.  

Aren't you glad you live thousands of miles from Tennessee?

Anyway, that's not the point of the topic.  Here it is:

The song makes sense through most of the story.  Girl meets servant boy.  Girl loses servant boy (due to slaughter by unsavory brothers,whose reasons might have even more bizarre connotations).  Girl finds boy's body after strange dream.  Everything is going great.  Drama is continuing to build.........

Then, the song takes a Bergman twist.  I don't really know happens at the end.  The girl gets a cruel hunger.  That sounds cool, but what does she do with the hunger?  Does she eat her boyfriend?  Understandable. After all, she was out there for three days!  

Afterwards, she goes home to her brothers, calls them butchers and claims that they've not only killed her boyfriend, but have indeed killed her as well.  Does this mean she's a ghost?  Did she kill herself, return from the dead and is about to whip them, ala Tales From The Crypt (which would be real cool)?  Or, is she just telling them that they have metaphorically killed her by breaking her heart (which would be fairly lame, IMO)?

I tend to favor an implication of her gorging herself to death in a cannibal feeding frenzy on her beloved corpse, then going home to open an ectoplasmic can of whoop-ass on her incest crazy siblings.  

If I'm way off base though, please let me know.  I sure don't want to be misrepresenting the song when we play it at the old folks home.

Great posting ;)

Sandy's version does seem to have a hint of the supernatural in the final verse, and it's all the better for it. Other versions, such as Pentangle's, simply end with:

Three days and nights she did sit by him,
And her poor heart was filled with woe,
Till cruel hunger crept upon her,
And home she was obliged to go.

This makes it sound as though she just got fed up and went home for a sandwich!

 

The song seems to derive from Boccaccio's story in The Decameron, which was also the basis for Keat's poem Isabella and the Pot of Basil. In the story and poem, the girl cuts of the head of her murdered lover, takes it home and plants it in a pot of basil, to keep it safe.

Maybe there was once a final verse reflecting this scenario?

Tony Rose sings:

“And since my brothers have been so cruel
To take your tender sweet life away,
One grave shall hold us both together
And along with you in death I'll stay.”

Which seems to me to suggest she decides to commit suicide. Which she may already have done by the end of the Sandy Denny version.