The Migration Patterns of Imaginary Birds

Folk Music - Queen Jane

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Queen Jane Seymour was the third wife of Henry VIII, and was Queen of England for all of a year until she died of complications from child birth. She was a descendant of Edward III, making her a heir to the theoretically extinct house of Lancaster. She was also supposedly the wife that Henry loved the most. He wore black for three years after her death.

 I've been listening to two songs about her recently. Both titled The Death of Queen Jane, one performed by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the other performed by John Jacob Niles.

The John Jacob Niles version, which I discovered today, makes use of Niles's impressive sense of the epic. The song ending with the stunning line "King Henry put his head in his hands, and said my merry England is a sorrowful land." Another line that stands out is "The flower of England will flourish no more." Which seems to mean that the most beautiful girl in England has gone, but can also be read to imply a sort of curse placed on the country.

The Bascom Lamar Lunsford version is much simpler. A series of guests come to Queen Jane's bedside, weep unti their heart is sore, and say "The red rose of England will flourish no more." Again, meaning partially the line of Lancaster is dead (which is off for a variety of reasons, but history doesn't matter to folk songs), but more literally it implies that the death of something so beautiful is such a tragedy that even nature should take notice.

Download 16 Death Of Queen Jane

Download 2-04 The Death Of Queen Jane

Another Resurrection

03 City Of Refuge (Acoustic Version)

"But the Grave will spew you out"

(I don't know anything about the legality of this, but I'd be honored to be sued by Nick Cave)

The Bird from Henry Lee

In the song Henry Lee, a woman kills a man for turning down her offer of a sexual liaison, and after arranging the cooperation of the townswomen to cover-up the murder her secret is revealed by an overly talkative bird (in some versions a parrot).  

On the most well known version of the song, the recording included in Anthology Of American Folk Music, indicates that the bird is going to "fly back" to "the merry green land" to tell of the woman's deeds. Now in this version the Merry Green Land is the home of Henry Lee's true love (on other versions the bird says that the murderess was Henry's true love), its also ostensibly far away and therefore kind of useless as a crime fighting location.

I've personally always though "the merry green land" had something of a morbid ring to it (like 'the happy hunting grounds'). Which would connect it with birds in celtic myth, who were harbingers of death... Among other things...

Anyways, the mention of the merry green land is a rarity among different versions of the song, which makes that thought little more than whimsy. At most the bird is probably symbolic of guilt, at least its an unusually talkative bird.

Update: According to the completely unauthoritative "mythencyclopedia" website. Celts believed that the dead could reappear as birds. Which actually would make quite a lot of sense in the context of this song.