"Old Sir Faulk" - Kiri Te Kanawa & Richard Amner

William Walton / Edith Sitwell's...

Old Sir Faulk,
Tall as a stork,
Before the honeyed fruits of dawn were ripe, would walk,
And stalk with a gun
The reynard-coloured sun,
Among the pheasant-feathered corn the unicorn has torn, forlorn the
Smock-faced sheep
Sit And Sleep
Periwigged as William and Mary, weep
Sally, Mary, Mattie, whats the matter, why cry?
The huntsman and the reynard-coloured sun and I sigh;
Oh, the nursery-maid Meg
With a leg like a peg
Chased the feathered dreams like hens, and when they laid an egg
In the sheepskin
Meadow
Where
The serene King James would steer
Horse and hounds, then he
From the shade of a tree
Picked it up as spoil to boil for nursery tea, said the mourners.
In the Corn, towers strain,
Feathered tall as a crane,
And whistling down the feathered rain, old Noah goes again
An old dull mome
With a head like a pome,
Seeing the world as a bare egg,
Laid by the feathered air; Meg
Would beg three of these
For the nursery teas
Of Japhet, Shem, and Ham; she gave it
Underneath the trees,
Where the boiling
Water Hissed,
Like the goose-kings feathered daughter
kissed,
Pot and pan and copper kettle
Put upon their proper mettle,
Lest the Flood the Flood the Flood begin again through these!

!!!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• English
• song
• fox-trot
• classical
• Kiri
• Te
• Kanawa
• Old
• Sir
• Faulk
• Edith
• Sitwell

[fiordiligicymraeg]

From the front it looks like she has really thin legs - lol.

[Amethyst888]

LOL! that's a shadow, you silly :)..

[fiordiligicymraeg]

I'm not silly - i did say it LOOKS. And it does...it just tickled me, that's all

[Amethyst888]

Don't take offence... It's just my expression, I know exactly what you mean :)

[buggerationable]

interesting dress LOL

[Fuliginosus]

Thanks. It was a few months ago that I researched this, but started thinking that Guy Fawkes might have had something to do with it. James the first was alluded to in Mother Goose, so he could be the 'goose king' and his 'feathered daughter' would be 'Mary' in the song. It more-or-less fits together, I think, as an attack on the King James Bible from a Catholic perspective (Sitwell was Catholic). I'm just elaborating on the biblical/historical part; basically I see it as you do.

[GreenGoddessofGaia]

This is of course just my interpretation but I see the picture as a charming country-side home with chickens and sheep, the children are in the nursery getting ready for afternoon tea but there is a lot of crying going on. Old Sir Faulk I see as some neighbour who hunts fox in their fields. And the singer is the mother who is entertaining herself by scrambling bibical references, nursery rhyme references, and lots of puns to create a very clever text. I love this song!

[Fuliginosus]

Does anyone have any idea what the song (ie, Edith Sitwell's poem) is about?

[fiordiligicymraeg]

lets just kiss and make up ;-)