Folk Song Quotes

“An old Russian folk song is like water held back by a dam. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing, but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice gates and the stillness of its surface is deceptive. By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme. Then at some point it suddenly reveals itself and astounds us. That is how the song’s sorrowing spirit comes to expression. The song is an insane attempt to stop time by means of its words.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“...loading your brain with subliminal messages.... How loathsome to turn a sadistic murder into entertainment [in the newspaper] -- and yet how hard not to read about it. What dark comedy to realize that you are scanning for descriptions of torture as you disapprove. Which of course only makes it more entertaining. "But naturally I was hoping they'd report something grisly," you say to your friends, who chuckle lighthearted acknowledgment of hypocrisy.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Don't Cry

“America was an orchard of peachy dreams behind a gauzed fence and a sign that said ‘No Tresspassing’. This land was his land as much as the next man’s. Like the folk songs he sang, it belonged to everyone, so it belonged to no one. The ungodly sin was the fence, not the crossing of it.”
― Nick Hayes, Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads

“Why were so many songs collected in the north-east, for example? In part, no doubt, the answer has to do with the activities of collectors; but the richness of the north-east in songs compared with the barren song terrain of the Lothians strongly suggests that differences in rural social organisation have explanatory value. We need to get away from simply counterposing 'lowland' to 'highland'. We need to see the enormous diversity in social arrangements within Lowland Scotland, even in recent times; and to analyse that diversity case by case without trying to smash it into a spurious shape with the intellectual cudgel of 'improvement'.”
― Ian R. Carter, Calgacus 2: Summer 1975

“The Condemned Cell"

"A child lay on his mother′s knee,
She dangled it with joy and pride,
I wonder what my child will be,
When I no more am by his side.

Perhaps a warrior he'll become,
And armies lead in proud array,
To hear the marshal fife and drum,
And proclaim that he has won the fray.

Perhaps to statesmanship he will rise,
And grasp the rudder of the state,
And leave a name that never dies,
Amongst the noble and the great.

Or if he may not speak the voice,
Which promulgates a country′s laws,
Perhaps in song he will rejoice,
A people's heart and plead the cause.

Ah thus he mused as on her knee,
The smiling babe she fondly nursed,
No thought that of his destiny,
There hung the plight of the accursed.

The mother died the son lives on,
But does her bosom proudly swell,
To hear of victory's he has won,
Oh no he′s in the felon cell.

No states-mans laurel crown for him,
No poet′s bias around his brow,
Beside him stands a shadow grim,
Prepared to beckon come, come now.

And when that awful sign is made,
He has no power to it defy,
As on his mother's knee he lay,
She never dreamt the death he′d die.”
― Gerry Kearns, Larry Kearns, John Howarth