Werewolf music - and not howling either...

[baleanoptera]

Autumn has started to creep over us, an as it's my favorite season I feel like celebrating with some of my favorite songs.Simple logic -yeah? And to follow the path of logic - since autumn can be dark,let the songs be dark as well. Old medieval ballads - well, they can be pretty dark, and disturbing...

Very few of the old Scandinavian medieval ballads are about werewolves. Most tell of trolls, the usage of runes and every now and then a knight. Then again what the werewolf songs lack in quantity they regain in quality.

Garmarna: Varulven/The Werewolf

The lyrics are as following - in swedish first, and then the english translation from the Garmarna website:

Jungfrun hon skulle sig åt stugan gå
Linden darrar i lunden
Så tog hon den vägen åt skogen blå
Ty hon var vid älskogen bunden

Och när som hon kom till skogen blå
Där mötte henne en ulv så grå
Kära ulver du bit inte mig
Dig vill jag giva min silversärk
Silversärk jag passar ej på
Ditt unga liv och blod måst gå
Kära du ulver bit inte mig
Dig vill jag giva min silversko
Silversko jag passar ej på
Ditt unga liv och blod måst gå
Kära du ulver du bit inte mig
Dig vill jag giva min guldkrona
Guldkrona jag passar ej på
Ditt unga liv och blod måst gå
Jungfrun hon steg sig så högt i ek
Och ulven han gick ner på backen och skrek
Ulven han grafte den ek till rot
Jungfrun gav upp ett så hiskeligt rop
Och ungersven han sadlar sin gångare grå
Han red litet fortare än fågeln flög
Och när som han kom till platsen fram
Så fann han ej mer än en blodiger arm
Gud trösta Gud bättra mig ungersven
Linden darrar i lunden
Min jungfru är borta min häst är förränd
Ty hon var vid älskogen bunden


Translation:

The maiden she would to the cottage go
Linden trees quiver in the grove
So she took the path through the forest blue
She was carrying the fruit of love

And when she reached the forest blue
There she met with a gray wolf
O dear wolf please don't bite me
To you I will give my silver gown
The silver gown won't suit me at all
Your young life and your blood must go
O dear wolf please don't bite me
I will give you my silver shoes
Silver shoes won't suit me at all
Your young life and your blood must go
O dear wolf please don't bite me
I will give you my golden crown
A golden crown won't suit me at all
Your young life and your blood must go
The maiden she climbed up high in an oak
The wolf he paced the ground and howled
The wolf dug up the oak by the roots
The maiden gave a heart-rending cry
The young page saddled his gray steed
He rode slightly faster than a bird could fly
And when he came to the wooded place
He found nothing more than a bloody arm
God comfort, God improve me, young page
Linden trees quiver in the grove
My maiden is gone, my horse is dead
She was carrying the fruit of love


The story seems rather straight forward; a girl alone in the woods gets eaten by the wolf, but the circumstances might be a little bit more complex.

Firstly –the line about the linden trees quivering in the grove. The Linden is in Nordic folklore a symbol of family, and the quivering linden trees give the impression that something is threatening the family. Secondly the expression of being “taken by the wolf” was sometimes used as a euphemism for loosing once virginity. Then there is the last line in each verse “She was carrying the fruit of love” – this seems to indicate that the maiden is pregnant. In swedish this line is slightly more ambiguous and could also be translated as “she was by love bound”. When Garmarna have chosen to translate it as carrying the fruit of love it’s probably based on the lore that Scandinavian werewolves were particularly dangerous to pregnant women. The next song is a good example of this danger.


Garmarna: Vedergällningen/vengeance

This is perhaps one of the creepiest songs I know. The first time I heard the song it was playing in the background, and I wasn’t paying any attention to the lyrics until the last verse. But then I sat up and said: “What!?”


Jag blev född förr än tuppen gol
-Mina stigar de ligga så vida
Min moder blev död innan upp rann sol
-Själv måste hon sorgen förbida

Min fader drager så vitt om land
Så ond en styvmoder han på fann

Först skapte hon mig i nåler
och sade jag skulle tråna
Så skapte hon mig i kniver
och sade jag skulle icke trivas

Så skapte hon mig i saxer
och sade jag skulle icke växa
Så skapte hon mig i ulven grå
och sade jag skulle åt skogen gå

Hon sade jag skulle ej få bot
Förrän jag druckit min broders blod

Så lade jag mig under lida där
styvmodern min skulle framrida

Så lade jag mig under spånge
Där min styvmoder skulle framgånga
Där tager jag till med mäste
Min styvmoder utav häste

Så tog jag till med harme
hennes foster ur hennes barme
När jag hade druckit min broders blod
Så blev jag en riddare bold och god



Translation:
Before the cock crew I was born
- Far are the paths that I follow -
My mother was dead before the dawn
- Long, long she awaited her sorrow

- My father travelled the country round,
An ill stepmother to me he found.

Into a needle she conjured me
And said that longing would torture me
And then she turned me into a knife
And said I would suffer all my life.

She turned me into a pair of shears
And said I'd be stunted all my years.
A grey wolf then she made of me,
And said no good would come of me.

Under this curse I was to suffer
Till I drank the blood of my own brother.

So then I lay in hiding
Till my stepmother came riding.

By the bridgehead I lay watching
Till I saw her horse approaching.
And as she passed I caught her
And down from her horse I brought her.

In vengeance cruel and bloody
I took the child from her body.
And when I had drunk my brother's blood,
I became a knight, gallant and good.
Translation by Alistar Cochrane

The werebeast (be they wolf or bear) are dangerous to pregnant women, since they can steal the life of the unborn and take back their human form – just like the protagonist of this song.The other way to beat the werewolf curse was to have somebody recognize you and call your name. Oddly enough I know no songs about that scenario – perhaps the blood drinking just made for a better story?

Comments

[losyark.livejournal.com]

Those are definately dark. I always marvel at the creepyniess of misleadingly simple ballads and tales. And moreover, how much Disney or whoever the adapting agent is.

Snow white was throttled to death by a comb and a corset before she choked on the apple, and then her step-mother was forced to dance at her wedding in shoes made of iron that were heated red-hot in the fire first.

Red Riding Hood ate her mother's flesh and drank her mother's blood, a symbolic defilement that allowed the wolf's rape to occur. He couldn't touch her when she was pure...

And the little mermaid was set to murder the wife of the prince she loved, before she cast herself into the sea and her body dissolved into foam.

There's just so much that people willingly overlook in contemporary myths and fables.

I sang a song once in choir, and was appalled once that my teacher didn't recognize the line:

"With lightsome heart I plucked a rose from off it's thorny tree, and my false lover stole my rose and left the thorn with me."

Clearly she was raped and left with child.

I think one of the more poignant stories I've heard like this is the Ballad of Tam Lin, which I love to pieces and am trying to work into a novel right now, called "The In-Laws." (A twentith century girl falls in love with a rougish Irish boy, only to learn after she agrees to marry him, that he is the Tam Lin of legend.)

http://tam-lin.org/

It's a bit poor at translating the original intent of the Olde Englishe, but it's a very interesting myth that I don't often see echoed in folktales of other cultures.

Often you hear tales of maidens winning free thier knights, or more often the men freeing thier captive ladies. Rarely do you hear tell of such a bawdy and strong woman, daring first to lay with a man simply because she WANTS to, then defying her father and telling him that she won't take a marriage of convenience just to hide the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock, and then taking ont he Queen of the frikkin' Faeries to get her lover back.

Especially when I don't see Tam Lin as being all that concerned with her to begin with. I think he saw her as an out, not so much as a lover. I wonder how thier married life was... I wonder if they even got married or if he just flaked out and took off...

Hm.

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

Tam Lin! I love the Tam Lin story - for mostly the same reasons you state above. Janet just rocks. I like your idea of setting the story in a more contemporary environment. What will you do with the faeries? Will they be traditional faeries or more modern?

`In-Laws` Link

[losyark.livejournal.com]

I haven`t written much. It`s mostly just in it`s initial stages of planning. I have way too many fanfics that I want to finish up first, and I want to get my other novel, "The Black Tears of the Serpent", done before I try to tackle a new one. What I do have written so far can be found here (http://losyark.livejournal.com/74622.html#cutid1).

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

There's just so much that people willingly overlook in contemporary myths and fables.

There truly is, and the really ironic thing is the attitude that entertainment has become more violent.

But I also think fairytales possess a double-ness that allows for them to be extra dark. The fact that magic and the supernatural are present in fairytales makes it easier for the reader/listener to accept the gory details (like drinking of mother’s blood and so forth), because the story is so clearly not real. The inclusion of say trolls sets the precedent that anything goes, and the storyteller/narrator gets a wider scope to spin her story in. Thereby all the dark little details of the human psyche can be let out in the safe containment of the fairytale. I think this is one of my reasons for liking fantasy so much, be it books, tv-shows or films, for through the fantastical setting some deeper, more disturbing themes can be tackled.

I’m not saying that this is always the case, because once you get into the territory of mythology and certain fables a whole new dimension comes into play.