Keep a song in your pocket

The Common Household Husband
captains the boat

In the first church sermon I heard in the new year, the preacher said, carry a song in your pocket for the coming year.  That preacher is right - I’m going to need a song, and maybe more than one, this year.   

Three years ago, during the uncertain early months of the pandemic, I must have been looking for a song, because I recently found a document with strange first lines of hymns, mostly gloomy.  Some of them now seem particularly appropriate for the throes of 2020.  According to my notes, I found these in 2020 while searching on hymnary.org for all hymns with the meter 8.6.8.6.  It escapes me now why that meter was important for 2020.

* * * * * * *

First lines of hymns for the covid era

A holy air is breathing round (much needed during a pandemic)

And are we wretches yet alive? (seems a fitting mood for a pandemic.)

Far from the world, O Lord, I flee (good for covid-19 stay-at-home times)

How sweet and silent is the place (describes all large, empty arenas during the height of the pandemic)

Actually a fairly pleasant hymn

How vast must their advantage be (for politicians who cast doubt on the virus, but get the covid vaccine before essential workers do.)

Lo, the destroying angel flies (reminds me of certain episodes of Doctor Who.  Utterly terrifying.  But also reminds me of airborne viruses. When I did a google search for this hymn title I got a bunch of advice about deadly mushrooms. Destroying angel indeed.)

Lord, from the ill and froward man (that is the person that the murky, diseased droplets of virus come from)

My thoughts on awful subjects roll (I hear you, hymn writer.  I ruminate too.)

Not from the dust affliction grows (yes, we have learned that it comes from airborne droplets.)

When languor and disease invade (a hymn for the covid era, for sure.)

When sickness shakes the languid frame (an accurate description of symptoms.)

* * * * * * *

It’s hard to imagine that hymns which start like this would spark religious fervor.   

The song I am keeping in my pocket for this month is The Queen of Connemara.  It's a song

about a boat, earning a living, beauty, facing danger, and the love of family.

I was first introduced to this song in this version, which has a fun jig at the end.  But the

version I love the best is the one that Younger Daughter and I sing at our own piano,

a good clip faster than Cherish The Ladies’ version, at the top of our lungs.

The Queen of Connemara Lyrics:

Verse 1:

Oh my boat can safely float in the teeth of wind and weather

And outrace the fastest hooker between Galway and Kinsale

Where the white foam of the ocean and the dark clouds roll together

There she rides, in her pride, like a seagull over the waves

Chorus:

Oh she's neat, oh she's sweet

She's a beauty in every line

The Queen of Connemara

She's that bounding barque of mine

Verse 2:

When she's loaded down with fish 'til the water lips the gunwale

Not a drop she'll take on board her that would drive a fly away

Like a ship she'll sail out gladly like a greyhound from his kennel

And she'll land her silver store the first at ould Kinvara quay

(Chorus 2x)

Verse 3:

There's a light shines out afar, and it keeps me from dismaying

When the sky is ink above us and the sea runs white with foam

In a cot in Connemara there's a wife and wee ones praying

To the One who walked the waters once, to send us safely home

(Chorus 2x)

The Queen of Connemara

She's that bounding barque of mine