Final* Version !!! (yay)

[capri0mni]

Of that "Irish Proverb Song"

Oh, jingling pennies sing a merry song,
But once they're spent, we think of them no more.
The words we trade stay with us all life long,
Within our vaulted hearts, for rich or poor.

This coin will slip between my fingers in a day
But every word I've ever heard is in my heart to stay.

Oh, how this penny glitters in the light!
But I'll not weep or fret when we must part;
The words my mother said to me each night
They will forever echo in my heart.

This coin will slip between my fingers in a day
But every word I've ever heard is in my heart to stay.

This penny in my purse I'll trade away.
It will be sure forgotten by day's end.
But all your words are in my heart to stay.
Their weight and worth, true measure of a friend.

This coin will slip between my fingers in a day
But every word I've ever heard is in my heart to stay.

Great Caeser's coin is now all worn away.
It cannot buy a simple loaf of bread.
But tales he told we're telling still today,
And so remember, though great Caeser's dead.

This coin will slip between my fingers in a day
But every word I've ever heard is in my heart to stay.

There is no penny ever spent or lost
But it gets counted on a banker's page.
But pennies all will one day turn to rust,
And shining words ring true from age to age.

This coin will slip between my fingers in a day
But every word I've ever heard is in my heart to stay.

How carefully we guard, with lock and key,
Each glinting coin that's counted in our share
Oh, how much richer would our lives all be
If we but traded words with equal care?

This coin will slip between my fingers in a day
But every word I've ever heard is in my heart to stay.

To hear the tune, copy the bold text, and paste it into the text window at Concertina.net's tune-o-tron and click [submit] (you may have to turn off your pop-up blocker, some have, but ymmv).

X:1
T:This Penny in my Purse
C:Ann Magill
M:3/4
Q:1/4=120
K:FMaj
C F2 C F2| C F2 G F2| E D4z| D G2 F E2| E D2 E D2| E F4 z|
F C2 F D2| F E2 D E2| F G2 z| G B2 A G2| F E2 D E2|G F4 z|
z2 F E2 E| D2 E F2 E| F2 G A2 A| G4 z G| B2 A G2 F|
E2 D E2 E| F2 G F2 E| F6||

The proverb this comes from btw, is:

"A word is more enduring than worldly wealth"

You can download a .wav of someone speaking this in Irish, and read a little explaination of it here.

It is, naturally, snappier and catchier and pithier in the original language.

Other proverbs I'm tempted to write songs for:

Life is the strange son (challenging, I know, but...)

Whoever brings you one story, will take away two (I disagree, somewhat, with the explaination provided here)

Two people shorten the road

and The Grace of God is found between the saddle and the ground (mainly, because I can think of three interpretations of this simultaneously, and that amuses me).

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

I love that last one. My first thought was that you find religion when you're falling off a horse. My favourite interpretation is that the grace of God is a horse.

I can't think of a third one at the moment.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, those are the two that sprang immediately to my mind, and I agree, I like the second interpretation better, too ...

Considering how important the horse goddesses were to the ancient Celts (Rhiannon, Macha, Epona), that may, in fact, be the "serious" interpretation, and the atheist crying out "Oh, God! Oh, Help!" as she slips from the saddle is the "comical" interpretation.

The third interpretation is the one provided by that website: That God gives his grace to the people who take risks and climb into the saddle in the first place.

But, as I implied above, some of their interpretations seem to come out of left field...