When from halloo by bearfffbear
The final song from a rarely performed Shakespeare Play: Love's Labour's Lost. The story is one of lust and chastity, and reads much like Cosi fan Tutti. What is rare is to set both parts of the song together. Usually the first two verses are set together as a Spring song, and the last two as a Winter song. I've put the two together as they are meant to be together. Sometimes we are happy and jolly and sometimes we are sad and sorry. But they are both parts of the same us.
I really like the use of the flower "lady's-smock" in verse 1 to suggest purity, and the maidens beaching their probably semen stained smocks in verse 2: "the cuckoo-buds of yellow hue".
Tracklist
| 8. | When | 5:16 |
Lyrics
Love’s Labour’s Lost - Act 5 sc 2
When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring-owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who!”—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
Credits
by and by Willy the Shake and bearfffbear
License
All rights reserved.
