Courting is a pleasure

This week's song is an excellent take on this song by John Wilson:

For me, as for many people I suppose, this song has intense personal resonance. The theme of emotional betrayal and its aftermath forms the basis of a large proportion of songwriting. To paraphrase the famous saying, it keeps the juke box full. In 'Courting is a Pleasure' we are given the male perspective of what happens when love is lost. The themes touched upon are telling. They suggest to me two very different responses to heartbreak. In characterizing this heartbreak as 'wounding' the male protagonist admits his emotional life. However, as is all too evident in today's culture, the male response to emotional pain are those of violence and flight. These dark consequences appear in the lyric. I never feel easy with the line 'Up came he love Willie, with a bottle in his hand'. Apart from a reference to parting cups, the only other thing that this could mean is poisoning. 'Married we never will be' seems such a hollow statement, yet it echoes down the years, and although in the context of the song it seems almost superfluous, as a singer, it is the line with the most emotional charge.


The second theme in the song relates to estrangement from ones own land. This, for me, is another quite recognizable response to heartbreak, namely, self imposed banishment. 'Farewell' says the man to all that was familiar as if the whole of his landscape, the backdrop of his entire childhood, has become tarnished with his sense of betrayal and humiliation. The loss of personal landscape linked to the loss of love seems to permeate Carol Anne Duffy's poem 'Give'. I set this poem as a song, and it is the musical bridge used to separate Duffy's verses that is introduced into 'Courting'. This musical phrase has a repetitive persistence and a keening bent note which I find matches the persistence of heartbreak in life. I have been taught that betrayal is one of those gifts that keeps giving. With this in mind the last line of the song is always delivered as a curse.

John

Courting is a pleasure between my love and I
And it's down in yon green valley I'll meet her by and by
Oh way down in yon green valley, she is my heart's delight
Molly, lovely Molly, I will stay 'till broad daylight

Going to church last Sunday my true love she passed me by
I know her mind was altered by the roving of her eye
Well I know her mind was altered by a lad of high degree
Molly, lovely Molly, your looks have wounded me

Up came he love Willy with a bottle in his hand
Saying "Drink this, lovely Molly, for our love will never stand"
Saying "Drink this, lovely Molly, for the bottle flask, go free"
"Ten guineas I'll wager, that married we n'er shall be"

Never marry a fair young maid with a dark and a roving eye
You kiss her and you embrace her and then tell her the reason why
Just you kiss her and you embrace her till you cause her heart to yield
The faint-hearted soldier will never gain the field

Farewell, Ballymonie, likewise the sweet Bann shore
Farewell the husky braes, will I never see ye more
America lies far away, that land I will go see
And may all bad luck attend the one who parted my love and me