Songmail #7:

Palmers' Prayer (Tavern Song)

Happy July!

This month’s Songmail is kinda even more low-fi than usual. So if you’re listening for the first time, do me a favor and listen to another Songmail after this. I swear they’re usually more a) serious and b) better composed! But I digress. I’m back at the Renaissance Faire in the woods of upstate NY. And because of that, we’re doing a Ren-Faire-inspired song this month. It’s called Palmers’ Prayer/Tavern Song in my notes, and thus named it shall stay, uninspiring though the words be. (Sidebar: sometimes I read my notes/texts and go “oh no, the renaissance-speak is SPREADING !” But hey, what’cha gonna do. I’m in the woods surrounded by it.)

So here’s a silly little tavern ditty!

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The Song: Palmers’ Prayer/Tavern Song

Verse: 
Palmers pray for gen’rous luck 
Players paper over something ugly 
Each one to his temple own, 
To get his goods, forget his lonely-
Street or stage: both home to thievery 
Purse and hearts of maids alike 
So sing, deceit, your sweet slow melody 
Rid us of our cares tonight 

Pre-chorus: 
Since no Paradise shall take our rotten dead
We make this place our heaven in its stead

Chorus:
Our angels shall be maids with their kneeling reverent trysts
Only this ambrosia shall ever pass our lips— ! (Audience response: what they’re drinking)
If fools and vagabonds as we 
Shall never in gods kingdom be 
Then our only heavenly chorus shall be this— ! (Audience response: cheers! Huzzah!)


Verse: 
Painters serve the brush and pigment 
Prisoners pray to the light above 
Both sit, crafting worlds from memr’y 
Freedom found for each thereof 
Idols false: escape and liberty 
Burn shall they who serve such arts 
So say those who know divinity 
We who want bear devil’s marks 

Pre-chorus: 
Since no Paradise shall take our rotten dead
We make this earth our heaven in its stead

Chorus:
Our angels shall be maids with their kneeling reverent trysts
Only this ambrosia shall ever pass our lips— ! (Audience response: what they’re drinking)
If fools and vagabonds as we
Shall never in gods kingdom be 
Then our only heavenly chorus shall be this— ! (Audience response: cheers! Huzzah!)

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Postscript

About the lyrics!

The seed of this song was planted before my second season at Sterling, when I read The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman. It’s a fantasy novel (by a normally-horror-author) that follows a thief named Kinch who gets entangled in the quest of a knight named Galva. The book is utterly impossible to put down. Buehlman (who actually worked at Sterling and on the circuit! He’s a lovely guy!) writes such an intricate, grimy, life-filled world that I couldn’t help but imagine a soundtrack of tavern-brawl-backed music for it. So I wrote this little ditty as I was reading.

Originally, the choruses were a little bawdier (and held a different melody):

Pre-Chorus:

Oh, maids beseech the lord to treat them fair,

But preacher I petition for a prayer to a —

Chorus:

Fleet-foot lonely piper wailing,

Steal quick in the dead of night.

Give to me your flute my darling,

And I’ll sing, though green am I

//

Chorus:

Flat-foot lonesome sailor walking,

Hands all rough from the rope and brine

Tell me o of sirens sailor, and

Your ship shall hear my song tonight

And though I love a bit of innuendo, they felt too disconnected from the prayer/heaven theme. So after sitting in my notes app for a while, I axed them, rewrote the chorus, and was left with this song.

(sometimes it’s nice to write renaissance-inspired-bullshit instead of pouring your heart out.)

That’s all for now, folks! Stay tuned for probably August. If that one doesn’t come out, it’s because I’m working on a tarot deck that’s gonna be taking up a lot of my time. If not, then we’ll just pick it all back up in September!

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P.P.S.

What I’ve been listening to lately!

Lads Among Heather

by The Lasses

If You’re Sure You Want To

by Alabaster DePlume

Segodar

by Tara Tiba

Love ya!!! xoxo ttyl my dears.