As I embark on my new project of exploring Celtic and traditional Cornish music, I’ll be using my ways of working tunes into my original songs. I’d like to share with you an example of how I do this.

This song is called Servant’s Child and it folds in the tune The Musical Priest. As with many tunes, this one goes by various names including An Sagart Ceolmhar, The New Bridge Of Eden, The New Bridge Of Erin. It comes up in both Irish and Scottish archives, and is structured with an A, B and C part.

Listen to Servant’s Child

 

The story within this song is of love between two young women in medieval times. I’ve often thought about all the untold stories of same sex relationships throughout history, especially those of women as this reflects my own experiences today. When listening to the tune, I was inspired by each section to hear the arc of a love story across a class divide.

In section A of the tune (first plays in full at 1:41) I could hear the setting of a scene in the melody. Knowing the title of the tune to be ‘The Musical Priest’ no doubt steered me to use a church as a setting for the protagonist (the ‘servant’s child’) to be listening to the singing of another young woman, who is the high-born daughter of the household that she serves.

‘The first time I heard her sing

I never heard such a thing

I couldn’t grasp a sense

Of how the sound came solely

From another’s mouth

She sang the verse

Like an angel cursed

I was just

A servants child’

The ‘servant’s child’ is so in awe at the beauty of the high-born daughter’s singing, she describes at as sounding ‘like an angel cursed’ suggesting the most hauntingly beautiful sound that she can imagine.

‘They practised for the hymns

In the evening I’d creep in

I never really understood how churches

Made you feel so

Close to god

They would rehearse

And I’d immerse

In the sweet sound

I’d be beguiled’

Then, one night the ‘servant’s child’ approaches this beguiling singer, and sparks fly between them.

‘One night you stayed around

And as my feet were off the ground

I had the courage to tell you

It was your voice that woke me

Up each day

Melodic notes

In her anecdotes

And doting

As was I’

It’s here that we get the first full section A of the tune, after the story set-up is complete. Next, the verse describes the high of their relationship where they meet up in secret to spend time together.

‘I know we shouldn’t be up here

But I can’t sleep my dear

I’m living to fall into

Every single cadence

Of her perfect voice

She whispers to me

Like a siren of the sea

A flood in my

Besotted mind’

We then hear the tune continue from section A into B (plays at 2:44), where the guitar accompaniment begins on a D major, rather than the more pensive B minor. This brings a lightness and elation to the uplifting melody which is reflected in the story, where the two young women are fully in love.

At 3:01 the tunes and lyrics take a ‘breath’ via a short re-intro to exaggerate the turn in the story.

‘On the day her mother cried

I knew she wouldn’t be inside

They’d taken her some place

Her talent would not have to

Hide away’

This last verse describes the end of their relationship, as the high-born daughter leaves indefinitely. Some have read this to mean she has died, and others have thought that they are ‘found out’ and she is sent away. However, I wrote this without such dramatic intention. I expect she went off to finishing school, or married to another household as would have been likely in the days, and their relationship just remained a memory held by both of them.

‘I should rejoice

For that angel’s voice

Will move the hearts of

So many now’

The real sadness here is in the acceptance of the situation. Despite the intensity of their love and how happy it made them, our ‘servant’s child’ has to simply wish her love well, as she knows that societal constructs means there is no life for them together.

Section C of the tune, which only comes in once at 4:11, is full of tragedy with it’s stabbing triplets and second emotive violin swell underneath. Then it resolves from 4:21 with the same part we’ve heard before, which is familiar much like the feelings of acceptance at the unfairness of life that the servant’s child no doubt has felt before, and will feel again as a lower-class gay women in that era.

I think it’s important to tell stories like this, bringing to life the realities of people of the past of whom we have little record. It’s these kind of stories woven into traditional tunes that I feel can make this kind of folk music relevant today, and appealing to modern audiences.

This recording features the fiddle and backing vocals of boci, who has arranged and performed this song with me over the last few years. Servant’s Child will be out officially in summer 2024 as part of my upcoming EP release, but for now it’s public on Youtube where we perform it one afternoon in my campervan…