When next I went to Caledonia

[shewhomust]

Last month I wrote about the song When first I came to Caledonia, with its hauntingly surreal lyrics; I was particularly taken with the quatrain:

If I had pen from Pennsylvania
and I had paper so snowy white
and I had ink of rosy morning
a true love letter to you I'd write

which I found characteristically idiosyncratic - where else would you find the idea of writing in the rosy colours of the dawn sky?

Well, you live and learn. My brother burned some of his band's music onto a CD for me, so I could make a couple of tracks available on their web site. But there was a third song, Green Grows the Laurel, which includes the verse:

I wrote him a letter in red rosy lines,
He wrote back an answer all twisted and twined,
Saying keep your love letters and I'll keep mine,
You write to your love and I'll write to mine.

A quick Google reveals that not every version of the song contains those words (I found them in the version sung by Cara Dillon). So I'm not the only one to be a little nonplussed by the notion. Yet this version has its own coherence, in the idea that the writing reflects the nature of the writer: the true lover writes in the the red heat of passion, the red of the roses associated with love, and the false deceiver replies in writing as twisted as his/her own nature.

It's so tempting to wander off down the byways of red letter days here...

Comments

[sovay]

where else would you find the idea of writing in the rosy colours of the dawn sky?

I'm reminded of the Yiddish folk song "Oy, Dortn, Dortn," about two separated lovers:

Oy, dayne eygelekh vi di shvartse karshelekh
Un dayne lipelekh vi rozeve papir
Un dayne fingerlekh vi tint un vi feder
Oy, shraybn zolstu ofte briv tsu mir

Oh, your eyes like black cherries
And your lips like rosy paper
And your fingers like pen and ink
Oh, that you might write often to me

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Nice. And again, that makes an entirely different sort of sense. Is it really a folk song? It feels too elaborate a conceit, like something from the metaphysical poets.

[sovay]

Is it really a folk song? It feels too elaborate a conceit, like something from the metaphysical poets.

I know it's a folk song rather than an art song and it dates back at least to 1901. But I have no idea whose lyrics these are.

[sovay]

Looking for the lyrics to Dave Van Ronk's "Fair and Tender Ladies," I ran across the following verse in someone else's version:

I wish I was on some tall mountain
Where the ivy rocks were black as ink
I'd write a letter to my false true lover
Whose cheeks are like the morning pink

Even if the morning-image has been transposed to the lover, I thought it fascinating that in a stanza about letter-writing, the rocks are still "black as ink."

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

"Black as ink" is a standard comparison, isn't it? -

- Googling that, as you do, I found this riddle:

As black as ink, and isn't ink,
As white as milk and isn't milk,
As soft as silk and isn't silk,
And hops about like a filly-foal.

in which I suspect "black as ink" has replaced "black as coal" (only because it makes a better rhyme). But I digress -

and then it seems only natural that ink summons up the rhyming pink. Except, of course, that we set off from examples which don't make us of that rhyme at all. And then I had to google "pink ink" and found myself in a flood of gay and lesbian literary festivals. Isn't the internet a wonderful place?