The Ancient Ballads

The Great Silkie of Sules Skerry

The American Folk Experience

The Great Silkie

by John Fitzsimmons | The American Folk Experience

Child Ballad #113

The silkie be a creature strange
He rises from the sea to change
Into a man, a weird one he,
When home it is in Skule Skerrie.

When he be man, he takes a wife,
When he be beast, he takes her life.
Ladies, beware of him who be
A silkie come from Skule Skerrie.

His love they willingly accept,
But after they have loved and slept,
Who is the monster that they see?
‘Tis “Silkie” come from Skule Skerrie.

A maiden from the Orkney Isles,
A target for his charm, his smiles,
Eager for love, no fool was she,
She knew the secret of Skule Skerrie.

And so, while Silkie kissed the lass,
She rubbed his neck with Orkney grass,
This had the magic power, you see
To slay the beast from Skule Skerrie.

If you have any more information to share about this song or helpful links, please post as a comment.

Thanks for stopping by the site!

~John Fitz

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I am indebted to the many friends who share my love of traditional songs and to the many scholars whose works are too many to include here. I am also incredibly grateful to the collector’s curators and collators of Wikipedia, Mudcat.org, MainlyNorfolk.info, and TheContemplator.com for their wise, thorough and informative contributions to the study of folk music. 

I share their research on my site with humility, thanks, and gratitude. Please cite their work accordingly with your own research. If you have any research or sites you would like to share on this site, please post in the comment box.  Thanks!

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"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry"
Vernon Hill's illustration of the tale. From Richard Chope's 1912 collection Ballads Weird and Wonderful.[1]
Song
GenreFolk song
Songwriter(s)Unknown

"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" or "The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry" is a traditional folk song from Orkney and Shetland. A woman has her child taken away by its father, the great selkie of Sule Skerry which can transform from a seal into a human. The woman is fated to marry a gunner who will harpoon the selkie and their son.

"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" is a short version from Shetland published in the 1850s and later listed as Child ballad number 113. "The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry" is the title of the Orcadian texts, about twice in length. There is also a greatly embellished and expanded version of the ballad called "The Lady Odivere".

Shetland version

"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" was collected from a lady from Snarra Voe, Shetland, and 7 verses from its transcription were published by Capt. F. W. L. Thomas in the 1850s. It was later included in Francis James Child's anthology, and catalogued as Child ballad number 113.[2]

Alan Bruford has noted that "silkie" is an anomalous spelling for "selkie", and in other ballad specimens, the mythical being instead of being a "great" selkie is rather a "grey" selkie.[3]

The ballad begins:

1. An earthly nourris† sits and sings,
And aye she sings, "Ba lilly wean,†
Little ken† I my bairn's father,
Far less the land that he staps in."†

2. Then ane† arose at her bed fit,†
And a grumly† guest I'm sure was he,
Saying "Here am I, thy bairn's father,
Although I am not comely."

A synopsis is as follows: A woman, nursing a baby, laments that she does not know the child's father or where he lives. A man rises up to tell her that he is the father, and that he is a silkie — a shapeshifter that takes the form of a man on the land and a seal in the sea, and that he lives on a remote rocky island called Sule Skerry. He gives her a purse full of gold, takes his son, and predicts that she will marry a gunner who will shoot both him and their son.[4]

Orkney version

There are Orkney versions which place the heroine's setting in Scandinavia,[5] opening with the line: "In Norway land there lived a maid".

"The Grey Selchie of Shool Skerry" was published by R. Menzies Fergusson in Rambling Sketches in the Far North (1883), changing its title to "The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerrie" in the second edition, Rambles in the Far North (1884).[6]

The same 14-stanza version with some spelling differences, entitled "The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerry" was printed in the 11 January 1934 issue of The Orcadian newspaper. It was later reprinted by Finnish folklorist Otto Andersson, who also collected a traditional ballad tune for it.[7][8]

This version contains an exchange in which the seal-groom's marriage proposal is declined by the Norwegian nurse.[7] The selkie makes the same fateful prediction as in the Shetland version, that the woman will marry a gunner, who will shoot both the selkie and their son. It further supplies the grim conclusion that the gunner brings back a gold chain which she recognizes as the one that was given to her son to wear.[9]

Lady Odivere

A cognate to the "Grey Selkie of Suleskerry" includes "The Play of Lady Odivere" ("The Play of de Lathie Odivere").[5] This piece is a dramatic ballad in style, over 90 stanzas long.[10] And it may be in large part a piece of contrived fiction by Walter Traill Dennison, mish-mashed into a kernel of a traditional ballad, in the estimation of modern folklorist Alan Bruford.[11]

Here, the Lady Odivere is in peril of being burnt at the stake for adultery by her husband, when she is rescued by San Imravoe, a selchie who is a jarl of high degree in his realm.[5][11] [12]

Ballad tunes

The original tune was preserved by Andersson, who heard it sung by John Sinclair on the island of Flotta, Orkney.[7][8] Andersson said, "I had no idea at the time that I was the first person to write down the tune. The pure pentatonic form of it and the beautiful melodic line showed me that it was a very ancient melody that I had set on paper".[13]

The best known tune today is non-traditional, having been written by Jim Waters in 1954. Child was interested only in the texts of the ballads he collected, and Jim explains that the tune was "just the best I could do as a way to get a fine ballad sung".[citation needed] Over the next two years, he introduced the ballad to the Boston area at a time when "hootenannies" filled the Great Court of MIT on a weekly basis (before recorded folk songs were widely available). Jim Butler added the song to his repertoire, according to his notes, in October 1954, on a page labelled "MITOC Supp.", being the MIT Outing Club addition to his typewritten Child Ballads. Butler taught the song to several people, including Bonnie Dobson. This is the tune that Joan Baez popularized as "Silkie" in the early 1960s. Waters' own daughter recorded a version of the song in 2024.

Although Jean Redpath disparaged Water's tune as "phony", preferring a longer version of Child 113 to another tune, by 1965, Jim Butler had heard Waters' tune sung by a Scottish student at the University of British Columbia, unaccompanied in the traditional style, and under the impression that he had learned it from his grandfather. "This has to be one of the most flattering things that has ever happened to me",[citation needed] added Waters, who eventually copyrighted his version and assigned it to Folk Legacy Records. Folk Legacy reassigned all copyright interest to James Waters in August, 2012.

American folksinger Pete Seeger set the poem I Come and Stand at Every Door by Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet to Waters's tune for "The Great Silkie" in the early 1950s. In this version, the song takes the point of view of a child victim of atomic warfare.

Recordings

  • Joan Baez recorded it as "Silkie" on her 1961 album Joan Baez, Vol. 2.
  • Pete Seeger included his version of Hikmet's "I Come and Stand at Every Door" on a 1964 concert album, I Can See a New Day.
  • The American rock band The Byrds included the Hikmet/Seeger version on their third album, Fifth Dimension (1966).
  • The Seeger song was later covered by This Mortal Coil.
  • Roger McGuinn of the Byrds later recorded the song with its original lyrics as part of his Folk Den project.
  • The English folk rock band Trees included one variant, as "The Great Silkie", on The Garden of Jane Delawney, their debut album.
  • Glasgow-born folk singer Ray Fisher (1940–2011) included the song on her album The Bonny Birdy (1972). Her brother Archie Fisher has a version on his Orfeo (1970).
  • Judy Collins included her version, "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry", on her 1962 album Golden Apples of the Sun.[14]
  • The Breton folk band Tri Yann also penned an adaptation in French called "Le Dauphin" (the dolphin) on their 1972 album Tri Yann an Naoned.
  • The Highwaymen recorded this song twice, with two different versions. The first version was on their 1962 album Standing Room Only, and the second version was on their 2005 album The Water of Life.
  • In 1981 Angelo Branduardi recorded this tune on his album Branduardi '81, with lyrics by Esenin. The song is titled "La cagna". In 2013 re-recorded this tune (titled: "Silkie") with original lyrics adapted in Italian language, on his album Il Rovo E La Rosa.
  • The Irish band Solas included one variant, "Grey Selchie", on their 1998 album The Words That Remain.
  • A version appears on Maddy Prior's 1999 album Ravenchild.
  • Alasdair Roberts included his version of "The Grey Silkie of Sule Skerry" on his CD You Need Not Braid Your Hair for Me: I Have Not Come A-Wooing, released in 2005.
  • Dave Bainbridge and Troy Donockley perform a version of the song on their 2005 album When Worlds Collide.[15]
  • The Breton singer Cécile Corbel recorded it on her album Songbook Vol.2 (2008).
  • Steeleye Span recorded it as a hidden track on their 2009 album Cogs, Wheels and Lovers.
  • Singer/songwriter and cellist Liz Davis Maxfield recorded a version titled “The Great Selkie” on her 2009 album Big Fiddle. [16]
  • In 2011 June Tabor recorded it on her album Ashore.
  • English folk band The Unthanks perform a version of the song on their 2022 album 'Sorrows Away'.
  • Jim Waters' daughter Susan sang this song for the Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive in 2024.[17]

References

Citations
  1. ^ Chope, Richard (1912). Ballads Weird and Wonderful. New York: John Lane Company. pp. 8.
  2. ^ Thomas, Capt. F. W. L. (1855), "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 1, pp. 86–89. Reprinted in Child (1886), II, p. 494 and Black (1901), County Folk-lore III, pp. 183–184.
  3. ^ Bruford (1974), p. 63.
  4. ^ Douglas, Sheila (2004). "Ballads and the Supernatural: Spells, Channs, Curses and Enchantments". Studies in Scottish Literature. 33 (1): 363.
  5. ^ a b c Freeman, A. Martin; Gilchrist, A. G. (January 1921). "Extra Note on Song No. 48, verse 7". Journal of the Folk-Song Society. 6 (2): 266 (263–266). JSTOR 4434091
  6. ^ Fergusson (1883), pp. 140–141; Fergusson (1884), pp. 242–244; latter cited in Freeman & Gilchrist (1921), p. 266
  7. ^ a b c McEntire (2007), p. 124.
  8. ^ a b Bronson, Bertrand Harris (1962). "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry". The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Vol. 2. Princeton University Press. pp. 564–565. ISBN 9781400874828.
  9. ^ Bold, Alan (2017) [1979], The Ballad, Routledge, pp. 44–45, ISBN 978-1-3153-8974-5
  10. ^ McEntire (2007), p. 128.
  11. ^ a b Bruford, Alan (1997), Narvez, Peter (ed.), "Trolls, Hillfolks, Finns and Picts", The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, University Press of Kentucky, pp. 121–123, ISBN 978-0-8131-0939-8
  12. ^ Dennison (1894), "The Play of de Lathie Odivere", pp. 54–58. Reprinted in Black (1901), County Folk-lore III, pp. 183–184.
  13. ^ Thomson, David (2010) [1954]. The People of the Sea, Edinburgh: Canongate Books., p. 212. ISBN 1847674593
  14. ^ Elektra Records Catalogue No EKS 7222
  15. ^ "When Worlds Collide, by Dave Bainbridge and Troy Donockley".
  16. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=br_4KJnxMkY&list=OLAK5uy_kETeGFo0rFg9TZD5hOZRwGPsdlq_AZps0&index=9
  17. ^ "Silkie of Sule Skerry - Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive".
Lexicographical citations
  1. ^ "nuris". Dictionary of Scots Language. Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  2. ^ "ba". Scottish National Dictionary (1700–). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  3. ^ "lillie". Scottish National Dictionary (1700–). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  4. ^ "wean". Scottish National Dictionary (1700–). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  5. ^ "ken". A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700). Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  6. ^ "stap". A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700). Scottish Language Dictionaries. p. Definition 16. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  7. ^ "ane". The free dictionary. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  8. ^ "fit". Dictionary of Scots Language. Scottish Language Dictionaries. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  9. ^ "grumly". Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
Bibliography
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Silkie_of_Sule_Skerry

Source: Mainly Norfolk

The Great Silkie of Sules Skerry

[ Roud 197 ; Child 113 ; Ballad Index C113 ; trad.]The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry is a shape-shifting song from Orkney. A silkie is a seal. Sule Skerry (Sula Sgeir) is a rocky islet 25 miles west of Hoy Head in Orkney.

Most modern recordings use the tune set by Dr. James Waters of Columbia University in the 1950s. The original tune for this song was nearly lost, but was noted down in 1938 by Dr. Otto Andersson, who heard it sung by John Sinclair on the island of Flotta, Orkney. He said, “I had no idea at the time that I was the first person to write down the tune. The pure pentatonic form of it and the beautiful melodic line showed me that it was a very ancient melody that I had set on paper.”

John Sinclair of Flotta, Orkney Islands, sang The Grey Silkie in a BBC recording made by Sean Davies on the anthology Sailormen and Servingmaids (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 6; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1970). The album’s booklet lists the date of recording erroneously as June 1964, three years after the album was released. The booklet also commented:

In the west of Scotland, where seals abound, there are many tales of their response to human contact. I’ve been told again and again of seals that raised their heads out of grey, curling waves, to listen as long as anyone would sing to them. That this is not superstition is confirmed by a contemporary account of an American woman, who made a pet of a seal and swam with it all one summer. The seal would wait in the surf for her every day and call out to her as she came down the cliff to the beach.

In Scotland, they speak of “seal-people” who are said to belong to a clan whose forbears were seals. In the Shetlands, the folk believed in magical beings who lived in land beneath the deeps of the ocean and put on seal-skin for their ascent through the water. Once on shore, they put off their disguise and appeared as human-beings. Such a one was the Grey Silkie of Suleskerry who wooed and won a Shetland woman.

Here our ballad begins. A brief version of it appears as no. 113 in Child without a tune, but this is no match for the variant which old John Sinclair of Flotta in the Orkney Isles turned up with in January 1934. He has since been visited by Swedish folklorists [i.e. Otto Andersson] and recorded for the BBC. Bronson remarks that his tune is a variant of the air often associated with Hind Horn, another ballad of traffic between spirits and mortals. Sinclair (who learned the song from his mother), worked all his life as a seaman, and a farmer-fisherman until his retirement. He now lives in a cottage by the sea where Silkies perhaps may still appear.

Trees sang The Great Silkie in 1970 on their CBS album The Garden of Jane Delawney.

Ray Fisher sang The Silkie of Sul Skerry in 1972 on her album The Bonny Birdy.

Dave Burland sang The Great Silkie on his 1975 album Songs and Buttered Haycocks.

Alison McMorland sang Great Selkie of Sule Skerry on her 1977 Tangent album Belt wi’ Colours Three. She also sang The Silkie of Sule Skerry in 2001 on her and Geordie McIntyre’s Tradition Bearers CD Rowan in the Rock. They commented in their liner notes:

We owe this version to the Finnish scholar Otto Andersson who collected the tune from John Sinclair of Flotta, Orkney in 1938 and the text from Annie G. Gilchrist.

Hamish Henderson observes, “… the legend of the seal folk who inhabit a kind of half world between their native element and the littoral inhabited by their human kind is a powerful obsessive folklore motif in all areas where the Norsemen held sway…” For valuable insights into the enduring fascination with the stories and the lore of the ‘silkie’ (Atlantic grey seal) we commend People of the Sea by David Thomson, recently reprinted by Canongate, Edinburgh.

Sheena Wellington sang The Great Silkie o’ Sule Skerrie in a concert at Nitten (Newtongrange) Folk Club, Scotland, that was published in 1995 on her Greentrax CD Strong Women. She commented in her liner notes:

Stories and sangs of the silkies or seal-people and their dealings with humankind are found widely in both Norse and Celtic tradition but Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads has only one short version of this ballad and, of course, no melody. This stark tune and the fuller story were recorded in the thirties from John Sinclair of Flotta in the Orkney Islands. In some versions it is the Silkie who offers marriage the second time but while collating my text from various sources I decided that it was likely that the woman would see marriage as the only way to keep her child.

The Clutha sang The Silkie o’ Sule Skerry in 1996 on their CD On the Braes.

Nancy Kerr sang The Great Silkie to John Sinclair’s tune in 1996 on her and her mother Sandra Kerr’s Fellside CD Neat and Complete. Sandra Kerr commented in the liner notes:

As a small child Nancy was sung this at night in the hope that its undulating melody and imagery of mothers singing lullabies to seal babies might send her to sleep. Recently she confessed that the ballad terrified her and that for years she was puzzled as to why the visiting seal/man should have been “grumbly”.

Maddy Prior sang Great Silkie of Sules Skerry in 1999 on her album Ravenchild; this track was later included on the Park Records anthology Women in Folk and on the Maddy Prior anthology Collections: A Very Best of 1995 to 2005. Maddy Prior commented in the original album’s notes:

This eerie ballad from the Shetland isles harks back to the land’s Scandinavian roots. It is a shape-shifting story of a seal / man whose fate is told with great simplicity and grace.

Elspeth Cowie sang The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry on her 2000 CD Naked Voice.

Barbara Dickson sang Sule Skerry in 2001 on her anthology For the Record.

Hector Gilchrist and Liz Thompson sang The Selkie as the title track of their 2003 WildGoose album Selkie. This track was also included in 2007 on the WildGoose anthology Songs of Witchcraft and Magic.

Hannah James learned The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry from Mary Macmaster at the Folkworks Summer School 1999 and recorded it with Kerfuffle in 2004 for their second album, K2. She returned to it with Lady Maisery when they recorded The Grey Selkie for their 2013 album Mayday. They commented:

Many of the songs on this album deal with issues of gender and power. The Grey Selkie is an example of how folklore might have been used to justify situations which were perceived as socially unacceptable. Selkies are creatures that only make contact with one human for a brief period before they must return to the sea for seven years, which may have provided an explanation for an absent father or a child born out of wedlock. In this tragic song, the woman is largely at the mercy of others throughout, whether it is society, the selkie, the gunner or ultimately, fate. Hazel [Askew] wrote the new Lydian tune and collated the text from various versions of the ballad.

This video shows Lady Maisery at Folk East 2012:

June Tabor sang The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry in 2011 on her Topic album Ashore. She commented

Seals were once far more common in the seas around these islands than they are today. There was a strong belief in the Northern Isles in the existence of a third race, the Selkies, who lived in a realm below the waves, passing through the ocean as seals but assuming human shape on land. Like the Swan Children of Lir with their cloaks of feathers, for Selkies the sealskin was essential to the act of transformation; its loss or withholding imprisoned them in human form. That fine storyteller the late Duncan Williamson had many tales of the frequently uneasy relationship between Selkies and the men (and women) of the Highlands and Islands. The theme continues to fascinate modern film-makers, artists and writers; for me, of particular relevance are the work of Maria Hayes, and Robin Robertson’s poem At Roane Head.
This version of The Great Selkie was first collected in 1938 from John Sinclair of Flotta in the Orkneys.

Marc Block sang Sule Skerry in 2014 on his CD The Hawthorn Spring. He commented in his liner notes:

My parents used to sing a French version of this song, which is in fact from Orkney, and as a child I was fascinated by the notion of the man diving into the sea and turning into a seal. It seems most versions of The Great Silkie are merely a fragment of a much longer ballad. I found the 93 verses of Lady Odivere on Mudcat, and condensed it down to this version.

Maz O’Connor sang The Grey Selkie on her 2014 CD This Willowed Light. She performed it at Cecil Sharp House in this 2014 video:

Lyrics

Alison McMorland sings The Silkie of Sule Skerry
In Norway land there lived a maid,
“Hush, baloo lilllie,” this maid began,
“I know not whaur ma bairn’s faither is
By land or sea does he travel in.”
It happened on a certain day
When this fair maid lay fast asleep
That in cam a grey silkie
And sat him doon at her bed feet.
Saying, “Awak’ awak’ ma fair pretty maid
For oh how sound as thou dost sleep,
I’ll tell thee whaur yer bain’s faither is
He’s lyin’ close at your bed feet.”
“I pray come tell tae me yer name
And tell me whaur yer dwelling is?”
“My name it is guid Hein Mailer
I earn ma livin’ oot o the sea.
“I am a man upon the land,
I am a silkie in the sea.
An when I’m far fae every strand
Ma dwelling t’is in Sule Skerry.”
“Alas, alas this woeful fate
This weary fate that’s been laid on me,
That a man should come frae the West o’ Hoy
Tae the Noraway lands tae hae a bairn by me.”
He said, “Ye’ll nurse ma little wee son
For seiven lang years upon yer knee,
An at the end o’ seiven lang years
I’ll come back again an pay the nouris fee.”
And she has nursed her little wee son
For seiven lang years upon her knee,
An at the end of seiven lang years
He’s cam back again wi’ white monie.
He said, “I’ll pit a chain roon his neck
An a gey gowd chain o it will be,
An if ever he comes tae the Noraway lands
Ye’ll hae a guid guess on who is he.”
And he said, “Ye’ll wed a gunner guid,
And a gay guid gunner it will be,
And he’ll gae oot on a May mornin
He’ll shoot your son and the grey silkie.”
Oh she has wed a gunner guid
And a gay guid gunner it was he,
And he gaed oot on a May mornin
He shot the son and the grey silkie.
“Alas, alas this woeful fate
This weary fate that’s been laid on me,”
She sobbed and sighed and bitter cried
Her tender heart did brak in three.
Sandra and Nancy Kerr sing The Great Silkie Maddy Prior sings Great Silkie of Sules Skerry
In Noroway there lived a maid,
“Bye-loo my baby,” she begins,
“Oh know not I my babe’s father
Or if land or sea he’s living in.”		 An earthly nourris sits and sings
And aye she sings, “Ba lily wain
And little ken I my bairn’s father
Far less the land that he dwells in.”
Then there arose at her bedfeet,
And a grummlie guest I’m sure was he,
Saying, “Here am I thy babe’s father
Although I be not comely.		 Then one arose at her bedfoot,
And a grumbly guest I’m sure was he,
Saying, “ Here am I, thy bairn’s father
Although I be not comely.
“I am a man upon the land,
I am a silkie in the sea,
But when I’m in my own coutrie
My dwelling is in Sule Skerry.”		 “I am a man upon the land,
I am a silkie on the sea,
And when I’m far and far frae land
My home it is in Sules Skerry.”
Then he has taken a purse of gold
And he has put it upon her knee,
Saying, “Give to me my little wee son
And take thee up thy nurse’s fee.		 And he has ta’en a purse of gold
And he has placed it upon her knee,
Saying, “Give to me my little young son
And take thee up thy nurse’s fee.
“And it shall pass on a summer’s day
When the sun shines hot on every stone,
That I shall take my little wee son
And teach him for to swim in the foam.		 “And it shall come tae pass on a summer’s day
When the sun shines bright on every stone,
I’ll come and fetch my little young son
And teach him how to swim the foam.
“And you shall marry a gunner good,
And a proud good gunner I’m sure he’ll be,
And he’ll go out on a May morning
And kill both my young son and me.”		 “And you, you shall marry a pround gunner,
And a proud gunner I’m sure he’ll be,
But the very first shot that e’er he shoots
He’ll kill both my young son and me.”
And she did marry a gunner good,
And a proud good gunner I’m sure ’twas he,
And the very first shot he ever did shoot
He killed the son and the great silkie.
In Noroway there lived a maid,
“Bye-loo my baby,” she begins,
“Oh know not I my babe’s father
Or if land or sea he’s living in.”
“I am a man upon the land,
I am a silkie in the sea,
And when I’m in my own coutrie
My dwelling is in Sule Skerry.”

Links

See also the Mudcat Café thread Origins: The Great Silkie.

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A Perfect Mirror

by | February 11, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself~BuddhaLast night you were so lucky. You didn't have to worry about your grumpy, tired teacher going through hours of journals ands doling out poor grades for what I am sure qualifies for good efforts...
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A Priori

by | May 24, 2016 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

How do I know what I know? The sharp angles of this simple cottage perfected  in every board sawn, shingle split and beam hewn into place goes together placed, splined, slid together, bound more by intuition than knowing.
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Practicing What I Preach

by | April 10, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

It is not where you go. It is how you go. ~Fitz Is there any value in coming to the page this late at night after three hours of singing in a pub, just because I said I would? I expect you to go to the empty page and pry tired and stubborn thoughts and lay them on the...
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Ready. Set. Go.

by | April 7, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

Who forgets to rinse his hair? Me, I guess, for that was the start of my day. I smelled something like coconut oil on my way to school, and then I realized, dang, my hair is still pretty wet. Wet with hair conditioner. And then I get sot school all coconutty smelling...
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The Inn

by | November 21, 2013 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

Every Thursday, for some thirty years, I have been spending this same time each week wrapping up the loose ends of the day before heading down to the inn to play to whomever and whatever shows up. Tonight looks like a fun night: Maroghini will be with me for his last...
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A Late Night Metacognition

by | April 13, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after ~Henry David Thoreau           When you need something done, find a busy person to help you get it done. My mother loved repeating that to me all the way to her dying day,...
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The Shapes of Stories

by | July 9, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

While I have always been a storyteller of sorts, I am not much of a writer of stories--but I have always been intrigued by the relative simplicity at the core design level of most books and movies. A lot of it is tied to my love for Joseph Campbell's work on the...
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Life Outside the Curriculum

by | July 25, 2019 | Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

“My teachers could have written with Jesse James for all time they stole from us...” ~Richard Brautigan, “Trout Fishing in America”        My classroom is often a bit of a mess—a mass of sprawled bodies scattered around like casualties of battle, ensconced in various...
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The Gift Unclaimed

by | February 27, 2018 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

I have an old lobster buoy Hanging dully from A wrought-iron basket hook— A rough cutaway Filled with suet, Clabbered in wire mesh. . I had imagined chickadees Squabbling with angry jays And occasional sparrows, finches— Maybe even cedar waxwings tired of scrounging...
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New Ways

by | February 21, 2017 | Journal | 0 Comments

Time for a change. Feeling it in a lot of ways. After months of steady workouts, I’ve been finding too many convenient ways to let the day slip by. Still feel better than I have in years, but the days seem to have got the best of me. Excuses, procrastination and...
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Last of the Boys

by | August 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs | 0 Comments

Come on over here
and I’ll buy the next round:
cold beer and some shooters
for the boys on the town;
Darby ain’t drinkin’
so let’s live it up
‘cause he’ll drive us all home
in his company truck

Jesus Christ, Jimmy,
man you say that you’re well;
I say we drive into Boston
and stir up some hell;
put a cap on the weekend,
a stitch in the night,
watch the Pats play on Sunday
and the welterweight fight.

That’s all she wrote boys,
there ain’t any more;
that’s why we’re standing here;
that’s what it’s for.
That’s why we all go on working all day
busting our ass for short pay:
~Hey…

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Fenn Speaks…

by | May 11, 2019 | Essays, Journal, Poetry, Teaching | 0 Comments

I am You, and You are me... Give a damn & figure it out        I feel like one of my students: it’s the night before my big presentation at All-school-meeting, and I still don’t know what I am going to talk about. I just know I am supposed to talk about me......
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Thinking of My Sister

by | September 23, 2014 | Journal | 0 Comments

When Cool Was Really Cool  Life is not counted by the amount of breaths we take,  but of the moments that leave us breathless. ~Unknown             We were coming home from church one morning and Jimmy Glennon pulled up beside us as we approached the Sudbury road...
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Weekend Custody

by | August 21, 2014 | Out of the Forge, Songs | 0 Comments

Jesse calls up this morning—
“You can come downstairs now;
You see the grapefruit bowl?
Well, I fixed it all;
I fixed everything for you.”

Everything’s for you…

“Let me help you make the coffee,
Momma says you drink it too.
I can’t reach the stove,
But I can pour it, though—
What’s it like living alone?”

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Canobie lake

by | June 3, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

Going to Canobie Lake is always the turning point of the year for me. It is like some primal signal that It is time to turn away from the school year and towards the future.  Obviously, it is my hope that you learned some useful skills this year, but, more...
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Welcome

by | August 12, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land... ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden I’ve...
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Garden Woman

by | August 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs | 0 Comments

I woke today and had my tea
and at the window spent the morning:
the same scene I’ve seen so many times
is each day freshly born;
from the ground I turn each spring and fall
come the flowers sweetly blooming;
you disappear among the weeds—
you are the garden woman.

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The Mystery in the Cradle

by | December 25, 2013 | Journal | 0 Comments

This picture is from Christmas eleven years ago when Tommy was only two weeks old, and now all of them—and Gio and Pipo--are playing charades or some such game in the dining room, shouting and laughing at each other's miscues and fortifying another enduring memory...
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Wisdom

by | May 13, 2016 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

Wisdom starts in non-action… The doing and non-doing are the equal balance. Without the luxury of contemplation there would not be a prioritizing of need versus want. Wisdom balances physical reality… Wisdom does not shuffle tasks out of view but finds a way to...
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No Dad To Come Home To

by | August 12, 2014 | Dawghouse, Songs | 0 Comments

Rain’s falling outside of Boston—
Thank God I’m not working tonight.
I’ve got six of my own,
And a stepdaughter at home,
And a momma keeping things right.
I wonder if they’re at the table
With their puzzles, their papers and pens?
When I get off the highway
And pull in that driveway,
Will they run to the window again?

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If you don’t stand, you cower…

by | July 19, 2019 | Journal | 0 Comments

     Maybe it is time to be less forgiving. I have rarely agreed with our president, but I held on to the shreds of truth that shore up his arguments: we can’t welcome every immigrant who makes it to our border; we cannot bow to the audacity of corrupt governments in...
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Me & God

by | April 9, 2018 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

        I am not done with God, nor God with me. I remain obsessed with the notion of the unmoved mover who set the pattern of creation into its initial motion. I stubbornly try to trace my existence back to some infinite beginning—so much so that I loathe the...
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Going Google?

by | July 1, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

When you find yourself in the majority, it's time to join the minority ~Mark Twain I have to admit, Google is pretty impressive. The whole set of features that are offered to the public and to educators for free is pretty astounding: email, document creation and...
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Dallas: 7/7/2016

by | July 8, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

I woke up this morning almost too fearful to read the news. I stayed up late into the night just watching for the breaking stories and updates. Now, I am simplyconfused about how to act. I feel incredibly small and pointless, unsure of where I stand and how to move...
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Searching for an Alibi

by | August 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs | 0 Comments

Here I am out on the road again
and it feels longer than it was back then;
when I was younger, man, it saw me through—
now it don’t do
what I want it to—

Too ra loo ra loo ra lady I—
I’m just out searching for an alibi
Too ra loo ra loo ra lady I
I’m just out searching for an alibi.

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Eighteen Years

by | August 24, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

At midnight I hear the cuckoo clock chiming from it’s perch in a cluttered kitchen locked in cadence with the tower bell gonging this old mill town at midnight to a deeper sleep, like a call to prayer reminding me that this new day, starting in the dark of a hallowed...
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Supermoon

by | August 10, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

Last night the August supermoon reminded me of the fickleness of time and how substance becomes shadow and memories begin to etch themselves immutably into the hardness of what is already lost.
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Raccoon

by | July 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

I’ve stopped the chinks with newspaper and rags wedged tightly against the wind blowing cold three days now. I feed the fire and curse its hissing and steaming mixing green oak with sticks of dried pine calling myself Raccoon grown fat in the suburbs sleeping in...
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Another Wednesday

by | April 20, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

        It is a good night for meatballs. The same meal we have cooked every Wednesday night for thirteen years and counting. Tonight is a beautiful and warm night of vacation week, so more than likely we will have a big crowd joining us—but we never know who. The...
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Why Trump Is Not Flipping Me Out

by | March 18, 2016 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

I wonder why Trump is not flipping me out? I wonder if there is some bigoted, ignorant and right-wing element that lurks inside this folk-singing, poem writing, neo-socialist shell of mine. Maybe it is not that hard for me to make the empathetic reach to feel at least...
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Presenting…

by | February 3, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

"Anything worth succeeding in, is worth failing in."~by Edison?      A contractor friend showed up at my house a few weeks ago just after I finished making the hearth and installing my new wood/coal stove. He complimented me on how "awesome" it looked. I then lamented...
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Waiting for a Poem

by | August 8, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

  It’s not like a poem to come curl by my feet on this morning too beautiful to describe, though I am looking and listening and waiting: A rooster crows above the low hum of morning traffic; the trash truck spills air from brakes and rattles empties into bins; my...
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A New Paradigm

by | November 17, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

     Sometimes, like right now, I long for a pile of papers on my lap that I could speed through, grade with a series of checks and circles, a few scribbled lines of praise or condemnation, and drop into a shoebox on my desk and say, "Here are your essays!" But I...
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The Teacher’s Couch

by | October 11, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

It’s not just a couch; it’s a sofa, too ~Fitz           I remember my first year teaching at Fenn—and it was really my first stint as a true worker with responsibilities outside of what I already had in my wheelhouse—and on this day, some twenty something years ago, I...
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Redemption

by | October 3, 2014 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

Finally, the tall green pines standing sentinel around this cold and black New Hampshire pond are framed in a sky of blue. After a month of steady rains, foggy nights, and misty days, I am reborn into a newly created world—a world that finally answered my prayers: no...
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Raccoon Welcome

by | July 12, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

Welcome
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The Philanthropy of Maynard

by | December 13, 2015 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

 I woke up today with chores on my mind. My buddy Josh LoPresti lent me his woodsplitter, and I had dreams of a mindless day splitting wood and heaving it into a pile for my kids to stack along the fence. But the dryer was broken, and it needed to be fixed. Margret's...
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Another Day…

by | July 7, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

I've been somewhat lax about posting in here of late, but I have been giving myself a bit of a break from writing. In fact, I spent the last month or so just living--and that has been just fine with me. I set a simple goal for myself this summer to get in shape. PJ...
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When the same thing happens again

by | October 7, 2017 | Crows and Swallows, Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

I wonder if God is testing me, giving Me some affable warning Or, perhaps, a more Stern rebuke, replaying A foolish mistake, Rehashing and reminding me Of a harsher possibility. It is only a small 10 mm wrench tightening A loose bolt on the throttle body, slipping...
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Creating a Digital Workflow in the Classroom

by | September 6, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

One Teacher’s Solution To Everything  Years of teaching woodshop at my school has reinforced in me the utility of developing a workflow that works best for the project at hand using the tools and equipment already in the shop. The same can be said of my other life as...
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