Folk Process

[akirlu]

So I was listening to Boiled in Lead's version of "Town of Ballybay" a while back and, possibly because I've been listening to Laïs a lot and they sing in French a lot, I had one of those precipitous drops through the language barrier. The lyric as Boiled in Lead reprint it (as do any number of other bands) is "She wouldn't go to bed, unless she had her shimmy on," and I had always wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean. Then it struck me right between the eyes. Not "shimmy", chemise.

And then as I was listening to "Ballybay" again today, I realized that, to me, the gap between the qualia we experience and what we are actually able to express that Kate contemplates here is really just the first transformation of the folk process. Evolution begins with the first step.

Or, as Bruce Cockburn says it, "Everything is motion; to the motion be true." Change is inevitable, right from the beginning.

Comments

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Ah, folk drift, don't ya love it?
Still waiting for the explanation for "hell is dark, hell is deep, hell is full of mice" from version of Dives and Lazerus on the June Tabor/Oyster album.

And it was only listening to 'Childe Owlet' on Steeleye's last album (NASTY song) that I realised that a 'pen knife' was a knife for carving quil nibs, not something red with the Swiss flag on it.

FF

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

"Hell is full of mice," sounds like it's got to be a Mondegreen of some sort, though I don't know of what.

I had the opposite problem with pen knife -- that is to say, I was comparatively late figuring out that when yon wee Britons say "pen knife" they don't mean anything more esoteric than what I would call a pocket knife or Swiss Army knife.

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

That's what we can't figure out, hell is full of something but nowt seems to rhyme with 'mice'
Vice? seems a bit modern.

FF, Tarkan blasting out on the stereo, the neighbours need an education in world music, the prevous album was Strawhead's Sedgemore

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I think hell is full of mice. I don't think it's actually a Mondegreen. Mice just happen to be nasty vermin that rhyme, roughly, with Christ.

[webbob.livejournal.com]

Yes, and a particularly flesh-creeping sensation from them running across one in the night, let alone being swarmed by them.

Plus, you probably remember about Hell quite often: every time a mouse runs over you in your sleep, if you've been caught by the meme where every foot of Hell and every soul in it is infested and overrun with mice.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

A chemise struck you right between the eyes? Was it your sister Kate's?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

You're a walking folk process all by yourself, Dave.

[(Anonymous)]

Gee, I rather like mice (and rats) -- of the fancy/pet strains, that is -- and have always figured that Hell was full of ice, at least the worst circle of it. But "shimmy" does seem rather a stretch from "shameeze".

....Don Fitch

[(Anonymous)]

Arrgh! I hate it when I do things like that. "shameeze", of course, should have been "kameez". At least I didn't use "chamois".

....Don Fitch

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Don, there you go again, doing that shimmy chamois shake. Good thing ya fixed it, though, or I wouldn't have gotten the joke.

Say, I thought you *had* an LJ account? They can be had for free, ya know.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup. But for the last month or so the software has refused to allow typing into the "Username" box. I've now figured out a work-around (log-in first on my "Friends" page), so the horrible and unfannish "Anonymous" thing is no longer necessary.