Music from the HARBINGERS fantasy series
Several of the books in the Harbingers series are all about music. Mirin, the main character of Book 1, Blackbird Rising, and Book 2, Halcyon, is a minstrel, and she learned everything she knows, including her arcane powers, through her teacher, John. Book 3, Firebird, and Book 4, Ghost Bird, have music in them, too. In Stormclouds, the series of prequel novels to Harbingers, John’s music is important in Book 1, A Gyrfalcon for a King, and especially in Book 2, The Call of the Shrike. In case you were wondering what these ballads and instruments sound like, here are links to let you listen for yourself!
In Blackbird Rising and Halcyon, , Books 1 and 2 of the Harbingers series, Mirin plays a rebec, a medieval precursor to the violin. John plays one in A Gyrfalcon for a King and The Call of the Shrike, Books 1 and 2 of the prequel Stormclouds series, and is the person who teaches Mirin to play. Here is a link to let you know what this instrument sounds like:
In Blackbird Rising, Book 1 of the Harbingers series, the folk ballad “Green Grow the Rushes O” figures prominently in the plot. The ballad is a very mysterious song. See my post about it on my blog, www.fantastes.com. Here’s the link: https://fantastes.com/2017/12/. And here’s a clip with a jolly rendition of it. Mirin’s version is much slower and more somber:
Most of Mirin’s songs in Blackbird Rising are made-up things–except for this one, “My lief is faren in londe (My love is gone away),” a real Middle English love song perhaps made most famous by the gallant (and silly) rooster Chauntecleer in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale:
Book 2 of the Harbingers series, Halcyon, uses mash-ups of two Child Ballads (that is, ballads collected throughout the British Isles in the 19th century by folklorist Francis Child). The most important song in Halcyon is the one Mirin combines with the following song, Child Ballad 58, “Sir Patrick Spens.” The refrain is the same, and some of the lines, but the gist of the song she sings in the novel is very different. Her song is based on the sad love story of Alcyone (Halcyon) and Ceyx from classical mythology (Ovid) and Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess–http://www.librarius.com/duchessfs.htm (around line 61 and following).
This next one is Child Ballad 40, “The Queen of Elven’s Nourice,” also known as “Elf Call.” Mirin sings a few bars of it at the beginning of Halcyon, Book 2 of the Harbingers series, and Keera does too in Book 3, Firebird:
This version of “Elf Call,” by Steeleye Span, is a bit more sinister-sounding:
Firebird, Book 3, is not very musical, because Keera isn’t. She takes after her unmusical father! She does sing a few verses of “Elf Call” until her ghost companion begs her to stop.
Because Book 4, Ghost Bird, follows Keera’s story, it doesn’t have much music either. However, the eerie counting rhyme she uses to call the owls is repurposed from this wonderful folk rhyme and song about magpies. Here’s a version I like.
In that same book, though, music is very important to Yann. He plays an extinct instrument, the Breton harp, similar to the Celtic harps of Scots and Irish folk music. The musician Alan Stivell has revived the Breton harp. Here is the sound:
Music from the Stormclouds prequel series
The first two books, A Gyrfalcon for a King and The Call of the Shrike, are full of music, because John, one of the main characters, is a minstrel. The following is the song John learns from the king’s minstrels and then re-purposes for the “battle song” he and his friends use to play at war. It’s anachronistically based on a famous ballad about the historical Scots Battle of Otterburn, fought in 1388. The ballad has been collected as Child Ballad 161, Roud 3293.
At the beginning of The Call of the Shrike, John plays the following song to annoy Dru. It’s the song of a soldier longing for safety on the eve of a battle, very famous, but written in the early 16th century. However, John in fantasyland knows this song on a different plane, in an earlier era. Here is the version by the early ’60s group The Limeliters, which preserves the boisterous tone of the song as John plays it. Most authentic versions are much more stately and mournful. Luckily, fantasy doesn’t have to be authentic!
Loreena McKennitt’s version of the haunting Scots song “She Moved Through the Fair”captures the “ghost story” element I love most about this song, which figures in A Gyrfalcon for a King and The Call of the Shrike. McKennitt’s is the version that fits most with John’s mood in The Call of the Shrike, Book 2 of the Stormclouds prequel series:
This Gerry Rafferty version gives a wonderful example of a male voice singing
“She Moves Through the Fair,” although you can find many other great versions on YouTube and elsewhere:
In The Call of the Shrike, John sings the following traditional folk song (“The Riddle Song”) to Lyn. The song is related to one of the many versions of Child Ballad 1 and indebted also to to Child Ballad 46. It is listed as no. 330 in the Roud Folk Song Index. Here is the very young Joan Baez singing it. Ignoring the offensive intro, this clip gives a glimpse of an amazing talent just emerging:
And here’s the better-known Carly Simon version:
Hey, just for fun, here is the (overproduced–too bad, because it’s lovely) Johnny Mathis song from the 1950s, The Twelfth of Never, which was based on “The Riddle Song”:
The song crossed the Atlantic to become a staple of Appalachian folk music. Here the legendary Doc Watson, folk and Gospel singer, performs it:
Completely anachronistically, John sings the following beautiful eighteenth century French love song in The Call of the Shrike, Book 2 of the Stormclouds prequel series–first the sad parts, and then, later in the book, the more cynical parts. Here’s a version by ’60s folk-singer Marianne Faithfull:
Elsebet sings the following medieval Nordic folksong in The Call of the Shrike, Book 2 of the Stormclouds prequel series:
Another well-known Celtic song John and Elsebet sing as a duet in The Call of the Shrike is “O Waly, Waly,” probably better known as “The Water is Wide.” Here’s James Taylor with a touching rendition:
In The Call of the Shrike, Book 2 of the Stormclouds prequel series, Gilles de Rais forces John to sing this chilling song, Child Ballad 1 (“Riddles Wisely Expounded”–also listed as Roud 161) , with some sinister additions and variations of my own. It’s known in various versions by various names: “The Bonny Broom”; “Juniper, Gentle, and Rosemary”; “Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary” (and, ironically, is related to “The Riddle Song,” which John sings lovingly to Lyn). Probably its most accurate title, though, is “The Nine Questions of the Devil.” The matchless Jean Redpath performs the song in the following clip. The verses Gilles demands that John sing are about halfway in. Gilles repurposes the song to suit him and his sinister ways. (My version retains the sinister parts; the misogynistic ones are gone.)
In Stormbird, Book 3 of the Stormclouds prequel series, Wat–whose voice sounds like a croaking raven, according to Mirin–briefly works with a singer, Rhiane. One of the songs she sings is the famous “Somer is icumen in,” a song with a cuckoo in it, of course! The first clip in this post features that song, and here’s another:
Rhiane’s signature song, though, is “The Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird,” a song with a fascinating history. A traditional English folk song catalogued as Roud 413, it is known all over the English-speaking world in many variations. Here’s the traditional version, which speaks to Rhiane’s personal difficulties:
The more often heard Appalachian version of the song, sung by the amazing Bob Dylan, comes next. In this clip, Dylan is live at the Gaslight in 1962, at the start of his career:
For fun and comparison, here’s Townes Van Zandt singing it in 1972 at the University of Minnesota:
In Stormbird, Wat attends a dance. He’s a terrible singer but a fine dancer. What was medieval dance like? That’s a murky subject, but we do have conjecture based on textual evidence, art that depicts dancers, and some idea of what medieval dance music might have sounded like. Here is a group of dancers re-enacting a medieval dance for watching tourists:
In Dark Ones Take It, the origin story of series villain Caedon and his brother Maeldoi, the Dark Rider of that novel and The Nightingale Holds Up the Sky (in the companion Betwixt & Between series), Caedon learns to sing a simple medieval song and accompanies himself on the Breton harp. It is (very anachronistically!) based on some verses about spring from 16th century French poet Jean Passerat. Here’s the verse, from Passerat’s “Love in May” (1580). It’s very hard to find a recording, although it has been set to music a number of times, but here is an English translation of the verse Caedon sings, accessed from http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/jean_passerat/index.htm:
Come, love, through the woods of spring,
Come walk with me;
Listen, the sweet birds jargoning
From tree to tree.
List and listen, over all
Nightingale most musical
That ceases never;
Grief begone, and let us be
For a space as glad as he;
Time’s flitting ever.