#folksong

Robin Hood is queer. “Oh wow!” you might say, dripping with sarcasm. “The guy who lives in the woods with all of his male best friends who dress in coordinating outfits is queer! Who would have thought it?” But it goes deeper than that. “The Paradoxes of Robin Hood” by Joseph Falaky Nagy highlights many of Robin’s peculiarities. He’s an ethical criminal, a noble wilderness outlaw, and a master of disguises and liminal spaces. To quote Nagy, “As one who exists between several opposed categories — man and animal, culture and nature, knight an yeoman, even man and woman — Robin Hood’s identity is unfixed and malleable.” (Nagy 203).

Queerness is more than just what your gender is or who you like to kiss. To be queer is to be in defiance of how the dominant society expects you to live. In some cases, this is a dissonance, like a sidelong glances at visibly queer folks, or well-meaning people not wrapping their heads around the idea of being nonbinary. In other cases, restrictions are more severe. Many queer people may relate in a very literal way with Robin Hood’s life as a noble outlaw, who puts on disguises to navigate the domain of those who would do him wrong.

Furthermore, Robin is not just queer, he is WILD. Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire by Jack Halberstam discusses the concept of wildness. While queerness is inherently political, existing in relation to society, wildness is the absence of society. It is a great Other, beyond our systems and structures and considered ways of being. Robin Hood exists as an outlaw, beyond society, unrestricted and unfettered, analogous to the other creatures of the forest. Wildness and queerness are different, but they can shed light on each other. And folksong is oh-so very wild.

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I make this sound so official, but really it's just me deciding I've spent enough time Not Finishing the Page™️ and I probably ought to actually ask folks for stories so maybe I'll get off my rump and finish the damn page. So! If YOU have any sort of folkloric stories about your kintype/theriotype/kithtype/linktype/whatever, please feel free to come share them!

What do I mean by folkloric stories? That's a term that tends to puzzle folks. Mainly that's because folks tend to equate words like "folklore" and "myth" with things that are made up or false. That isn't quite accurate. Folklore consists of many sorts of knowledge, but the ones we'll likely focus most on here are myths, legends, folktales, urban legends, folk music, and possibly art. In the academic field of folklore, a myth is defined as a sacred story. We're talking otherkin and therians primarily here, so that could be the story of how Raven stole the light and in doing so created the sun and the moon and the stars or it could be the story of Noah and the dove at the end of the Great Flood. These are both sacred stories that are considered true by those who follow their respective religions. That's what we mean when we say myth. A legend is a story that isn't considered sacred and that has elements of it that may seem larger than life. They're often supernatural or extraordinary in nature. A couple of examples would be Babe the big blue ox here in the US or the black dogs of the British Isles. As to folktales, fairytales, fables, these often involve magic, talking animals, and perhaps some sort of message. For exmaple, there is the frog prince, a fairytale in which a prince is cursed to become a frog, or the three blind mice. The three blind mice also feature in a folksong. These are songs that are just sort of part of a culture with no clear composer and sometimes no clear origin. One of my favorites is the Twa Corbies, a ballad about a conversation overheard between two crows, who were discussing eating the body of a freshly dead knight. It dates back to at least the 1700s.

Folkart is a bit less clear. This is really any type of traditional art - anything from basket weaving to bingata dyework - that is passed down within a culture. This, I don't expect will come up as much. It's a little less clearly defined for our purposes. Beyond that, there's also things like folkdance and traditional foodways and all manner of things. And if you know of anything that fits that bill, please absolutely feel free to share! With any of this, it doesn't necessarily have to be something that originates in a culture you're part of. However, I do ask that you approach all of this - especially mythology - with the same sort of respect and consideration you would give the lore you yourself grew up with and hold dear. All of this means something to the folks from whom it comes. So respect is paramount in folkloristics.

I might not be to good at most things I do, but I am very best at missing you.

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Willy Tea Taylor

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The farmer's wife cooks at the window In that small cottage under the willow Over the river, so freezing, so cold

In that white house up on the hill Where a man saw a way out And took it he did A family moved in I don't think they know

And the blackberry juice drips like blood on the leaves And the blood on the fox drips like dew from its teeth And the dew in the field falls like petals, so sweet And the petals they fall and turn brown at my feet And the rhythms of autumn wash over me

When I return from the city to home I pass by the churchyard He's standing alone That elderly man whose wife I did know Her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother too All sleep side by side beneath the green dew That elderly man thinks that he'll join them soon

And the apples they fall like the shells from the guns And the shotgun it misses the hare when he runs And he moves like the wind with cold air in his lungs And his little warm heart beats in fear like a drum

And the night it draws in like the hand that will fall with its scythen black curtain make tombs of us all And the sun's little visits are starting to shorten And the village it lives through the rhythms of autumn

And the creatures die at the hand of those who kill And the leaves will decay by the winters that chill And some will pass on by their own desperate will Just like that man in the white house on the hill

And the blackberry juice drips like blood on the leaves And the blood on the fox drips like dew from its teeth And the dew in the field falls like petals, so sweet And the petals they fall and turn brown at my feet

reliya bairan piya ko liye jaye re

this train is my enemy it is taking my beloved away

bhojpuri lokgeet, bhojpuri folksong

Let’s continue our Choral Music week with the splendid music of Béla Bartók, here at Musica in Extenso.

Today on Musica in Extenso:

Béla Bartók

4 Slovakian Folk Songs