Introducing Kate Rusby

I'd like to introduce you all to a British musician, Kate Rusby, whose revival of an old British folk tradition brings to light several elements of Middle English poetry. In this entry, I will reference music from her albums The Girl Who Couldn't Fly and Underneath the Stars.

For starters, Kate does a nice job telling tales in song. Both albums contain several tracks that could just as easily have been adventures included in any of the poems we've read this semester. "The Blind Harper" is a witty bit about a blind harper (weird, I know) who steals the king's horse and gets paid--by the king--to do it. "The Goodman" tells the story of a husband who repeatedly comes home to fishy circumstances that are simplistically explained by his apparently playful wife.

Thematic content on both albums closely matches that which we have seen in Middle English lyrics: nature, women and religion. Religion is more scarce than the other two, limited to references to marriage and prayer. Women are probably the major topic of Kate's music, from "Mary Blaize" to "Polly" to "The Daughter of Megan." Waiting for the return of true love, especially from commercial voyages or foreign war, seems to be a major theme, again, hearkening to the Middle English lyrics we've read.

Kate's treatment of nature contains one striking difference from the medieval mindset: she looks on certain natural phenomena with much less fear and much more fondness than would the average medieval villager. Consider the darkness of the forest in Sir Orfeo, and one is struck by Kate's lyrics:

"Here is a tale of the trees in the wood
They were never that pleased on the land that they stood
So they upped and they walked on as far as they could
'Til they felt the sun shine on their branches...

There they did stand, and there they did stay
When there came a young boy who was running away
From a mad world, a bad world, a world of decay
And it's comfort he sought in their branches...

...the trees kept him safe in their branches" (Kate Rusby, "Little Jack Frost").

This is a far cry from Orfeo's experience of the enchantment of the forest. Kate's trees are not dark, but instead uproot themselves specifically for the purpose of moving toward the sunlight. Rather than occluding a friend, they become friends to a runaway who is not afraid of the world in the trees, but who is instead fleeing the world outside the forest. As his friends, they keep him safe in their branches.

To add to the friendly nature phenomenon, Kate's song "Moon Shadow" is an encomium to her shadow in the moonlight, portrayed as a close friend. One has to wonder how the superstitious medieval mindset may have thought of this.

Humor is not absent either. In similar kind to the irony of "Of all creatures women be the best" Kate gives us "Mary Blaize." A few good lines:

"Good people all with one accord remember Mary Blaize
She never wanted one good word from those who spoke her praise...
She strove the neighborhood to please with manners wond'rous winning
She never followed wicked ways unless when she was sinning
At church in silks and satins new with hoop of monstrous size
She never slumbered in her pew but when she closed her eyes" (Kate Rusby, "Mary Blaize").

The hilarity of this piece hinges primarily on common-sense tautologies that introduce a subtle English irony. For more delight, listen to the entire song. It's speedy rhythm sounds anything like the eulogy that the lyrics indicate it is.

Finally, some linguistic bits of Middle English remain in Kate's lyrics. "Bonnie House of Airlie" begins with, "It fell on a day," cf. "Gamelyn" line 81, in which "Gamelyn stood on a day" is clarified in the margin as "one day." So much the better. Kate's use of "on a day" is then a throw back to Middle English. The net effect is to produce songs that seem old, even when they aren't. Kudos to this enterprising musician. Give her a listen.