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November 22, 2011
Lavender Blue
In the fall of 1985, I was listening to a cassette tape of Misplaced Childhood by Marillion. I'm pretty sure I stretched the tape by playing it so much.
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I was listening to a wide variety of music at the time, but this album was something else entirely. I was fascinated by the lack of breaks between songs.... the whole album just flowed together, like some modern pop opera.One of the tracks "Lavender" was particularly intriguing because it was a song within a song. In it, the singer is talking about a song that some children are singing:
I was walking in the park dreaming of a spark
When I heard the sprinklers whisper
Shimmer in the haze of summer lawns
Then I heard the children singing
They were running through the rainbows
They were singing a song for you
Well it seemed to be a song for you
The one I wanted to write for you, for you
Lavenders blue, dilly dilly, lavenders green
When I am King, dilly dilly, you will be Queen
A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
I.O.U. for your love, I.O.U. for your love
[...]
When I heard the sprinklers whisper
Shimmer in the haze of summer lawns
Then I heard the children singing
They were running through the rainbows
They were singing a song for you
Well it seemed to be a song for you
The one I wanted to write for you, for you
Lavenders blue, dilly dilly, lavenders green
When I am King, dilly dilly, you will be Queen
A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
I.O.U. for your love, I.O.U. for your love
[...]
Ever since hearing Lavender, somewhere in the back of my mind I've been wondering about the origin of the song within the song. It was supposed to be a children's song, but it wasn't one I grew up with. I admit I never did any kind of search, nor did I ask anyone else about it - I just wondered.Fast forward from 1985 to 2011. I was rummaging through some boxes in our basement, looking for some Christmas music for my daughters to play on the piano. We've just moved into a new house, so I had to go through a number of boxes before finally stumbling on the right one.
In one of the boxes that I searched along the way, I discovered some old sheet music. My grandmother had played the organ, and a collection of music books and sheet music was given to me after she passed away. I had never gone through it in detail. Tonight, after the girls went to sleep, I looked at everything in the pile, and there it was: Lavender Blue, in sheet music, dated 1948.
I thought immediately of the Marillion song, and at the same time I wondered how close the original song would be to the one encapsulated within Marillion's Lavender. Here are the lyrics from the chorus on the sheet music:
Lavender blue, dilly dilly, lavender green,
If I were king, dilly dilly, I'd need a queen:
Who told me so, dilly dilly, who told me so?
I told myself, dilly dilly, I told me so.
However, the top of the score indicates that the music is from the movie So Dear To My Heart. Hmm, that seemed suspicious - I couldn't imagine that this song was originally written for a Disney movie. So I went searching in Google - finally - after 26 years, and darned if this isn't an old and very well known English folk song.If I were king, dilly dilly, I'd need a queen:
Who told me so, dilly dilly, who told me so?
I told myself, dilly dilly, I told me so.
Looks like untold scores of children in England knew what took me 26 years to stumble upon.
For comparison, here is Lavender by Marillion:
And here is Lavender Blue, sung in the folk song style:
Posted by Hammer at 12:02 AM