Edden Hammons - Queen of the Earth and Child of the Skies

Описание: This has been posted, but in truncated version. Both the sound and the title of this tune seem to suggest something mystical, as well as a kind of stunned gawping at nature's beauty and indifference. It suggested images of forests and spirits, death and celebration, etc. But apparently what I actually end up unconsciously thinking for the slideshow was: "Trees. Lots and lots of trees. You can never go wrong with trees." Hmm. Hopefully it turned out all right anyway. Even if haphazardly ordered and poorly chosen chromatically, the images are still purty as hell and you might enjoy them.

They are: James Ward's "Gordale Scar"; an 1895 photo from Leonard Missone, Theodor Severin Kittelsen's "Echo"; William Miller's "Faeries on the Seashore"; Leonora Carrington's "Crookhey Hall"; Benes Knupfer's "Embrace"; Everardus Benedictus Gregorious Mirani's "In the Woods"; Pieter Brueghel the Elder's "Storm at Sea" from 1568; Lucien Clerque's "Bestiare de Plage, Camargue"; Dmitry Kuklin's "The Old Pond, Katya"; John Atkinson Grimshaw's "A Woman on a Path by a Cottage"; Edward Frederick Brew's "Three Ravens"; a Kay Nielsen illustration; William Degouve de Nuncques's "Swamp"; Sydney Long's "Fantasy"; Edden Hammon's frightening stare.

I have no idea what Edden says at the conclusion of the tune. And I hope his sudden appearance at the end startles you. :)

I found more information from someone less ignerrunt, the purveyor of the Old Time Party blog. They say:

"'Queen of the Earth and Child of the Skies' is one of the few slower, crosstuned and slightly 'crooked' pieces of the 51 that Hammons recorded for Chappell, over three recording sessions. Alan Jabbour (in his 1984 notes to the Edden Hammons Collection, vol. 1) identifies the melody as a piece called "The Blackbird," one of the most famous and enduring airs in the British Isles. Several versions were collected in south-western Pennsylvania, but with the generally agreed upon function was that the tune was a "dead march," i.e. one to be played at funerals.

The Irish versions of the "Blackbird" are Jacobite in nature whose lyrics indicate loyalty to the cause of the Stewarts, and Bayard says the song, referencing Bonnie Prince Charlie, was still being sung in south-western Pennsylvania in the early 1930's. Although most Pennsylvania fiddlers seemed to know the melody by the "Blackbird" title, other titles existed: Bayard himself heard it called the "Lady's Lamentation" by an Indiana County (Pa.) fifer in 1951—the title of the original broadside printed in London in 1651.

How it came to be known by Hammons, and how it acquired the title he knew it by, is a mystery. The line "Queen of the Earth and Child of the Skies," however, is known to be from American shape-note singing (popularized so recently in the film "Cold Mountain"). It is similar to a line from a shape-note hymn called "Star of Columbia" (also called simply "Columbia"), found in the Social Harp (1855) and other hymnodies, which begins:

Columbia! Columbia! to glory arise,

The queen of the world and the child of the skies;

Thy genius commands thee with raptures behold,

While ages on ages thy splendors unfold:

Thy reign is the last and the noblest of time,

Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime;

Let crimes of the east ne're encrimson they name,

Be freedom and science and virtue thy fame."

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