Displaced Fairytale

Sadie's taffy reciepe for the fairytale displacement was very inspiring because she took something people used in real life and revealed the fairytale within it.

I wanted to do that, but with a song. I took a song that people listen to and enjoy in reality and I wanted to reveal the fairytale within it or rather displace The Little Match Girl into realism, however some people guessed The Juniper Tree which also fits. Like Sadie, I changed many things from the original. I decided to use a song called Eli the Barrow Boy by The Decemberists. I performed the song in class. Now I changed many of the lyrics from the original lyrics written by The Decemberists, and the way it was sung and the use of the guitar. You can listen to it here on you tube with a video someone made to it. I played it twice through in two different styles of playing because both interpretations were dramatic and effective however The Decemberists only play it once through with little variation. I was trying to capture the haunting images from The Little Match Girl and the beauty of it in my own cover of the song. But isn't all of literature, all of life, just a cover of something else, an imitation? Nothing is new, we should ask the question "What's old?", not "What's new?". Sutter touches on this topic in his first blog entry and refers to Plato. Plato says that writers are cons and they can only imitate, and all that poets, writers, and artists can do is limited imitation. He explains the rest through his theory of the three beds.

Here is my cover of a song by the Decemberists which is how I displaced The Little Match Girl into realism, which has more impact when it is done in an oral presentation or concert accompanied by a musical instrument, like the guitar. Like Plato said in The Phaedrus, the living word has a soul.

My Cover of or Version of: Eli the Barrow Boy

Eli the barrow boy walks around town,
Sells coal in the snow,
And he cries out,
All down the day.

Below the chimney stacks,
He is crying,
“Yule logs and candle wax,”
For the buying,
All down the day.

“Would I could go home to my father,
Bring him gold and silk, a loaf of bread,
But I cannot for I have sold nothing,
So still I push my barrow all the day,
Still I push my barrow all the day.”

Eli the barrow boy, when they found him,
Dressed all in corduroy he had frozen in,
The alley down the way.

They lay his body down in a churchyard,
But still when the moon is out,
With his pushcart,
He calls down the day,

“Would I could go home to my father,
Bring him gold and silk, but nothing instead,
For I am dead and gone, frozen in the churchyard,
But still I push my barrow all the day,
But still I push my barrow all the day”

I used the chords Am, C, G, F, but you could transpose the song into any key to suit your fancy.