In the meantime, I wanted to point out a song that I discovered thanks to the good people over at It Was Lost. They are re-spearheading a re-initiative of non-overplayed Christmas tunes. As part of that re-initiative, they have created an infinite non-overplayed Christmas playlist on Spotify.
On this infinite playlist, one song has captured my attention. It isn't even specifically a Christmas song. It's an old English ballad that goes back to a time when men could wear ruffled shirts and pantaloons without anyone impugning his fashion sense, or as I like to call them, the good ol' days.
The song is called The Bitter Withy and it is about the Christ child, which is probably why it got lumped in with all the other Christmas music. But this song differs from other Christmas music in a way that is truly awesome.
The song tells a story -- as ballads often do -- about the day that a young Jesus decides he wants to go out and play.
As it fell out on a holy day,
The drops of rain did fall, did fall,
Our Saviour asked leave of His mother, May,
If He might go play at ball.
"To play at ball, my own dear Son,
It’s time you was going or gone,
But be sure let me hear no complaint of you,
At night when you do come home."
It stands to reason that Jesus, son of God, immortal and all-powerful, would want to go play ball. What 5-year-old infant-god wouldn't want to play ball? Though, since he is all-powerful, couldn't he just produce a ball from the ether and summon a host of angles to play with him?
We'll just suspend disbelief for the time being.
Mary lets her five-year-old son leave the house, unsupervised, likely because she is terrified of awakening the wrath of the omnipotent child-god.
Once he's outside, he finds three lordlings. After they exchange cold, yet proper English greetings, Jesus asks if he can play with them. Unbeknownst to the lordlings, they are talking to the pint-sized personification of the Almighty's wrath, so they chortle and say that they can't play with someone so low-born as Jesus.
Big mistake.
Five-year-old Jesus then says, "Nuh, uh! I'll show you!"
Our Saviour built a bridge with the beams of the sun,
And over He gone, He gone He;
And after followed the three jolly jerdins,
And drownded they were all three.
So, because the three lordlings won't play ball with him, Jesus straight-up ices the fools. The God of love and forgiveness leads three children to their death because they didn't want to play with someone beneath their station.
I guess it took him a couple years before he learned that whole "turn the other cheek" business.
I think the best part of the song is that the only thing that happens to him for the murder of three children is that his mother spanks him with some willow branches, probably because she was terrified at the awesome power that her child wielded.
I wonder why Bing Crosby never did a version of this song.
Here's a link to the version I first heard.
1 comments:
nice.
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