This song was written for the upcoming Stone Creed Grove Midsummer celebration, with the focus on the agricultural activities of the summer. This seemed appropriate as I was out sweating in the garden one day prepping beds for vegetables: That kind of digging in the dirt makes you appreciate the cycles of life quite thoroughly.
The schottische is a popular folk dance in a lot of regions that appears to have originated in Scotland in the early 1800's but was popularized in Germany and later Scandanavia (hence it's name of "Scottish", in German), and from there made it into the US. Its current popularity in Scandanavia, including especially on Midsummer, seemed to make the rhythm an appropriate choice for a Norse-focused ritual in this season. (For similar Norse-influenced reasons, the lyrical emphasis is more on alliteration than rhyme.) There are lots of variations on the dance, but the key concept is a pattern of stepping and slight hops in a straight polka rhythm. This video teaches it far better than I could explain it:
All works below are copyright by yours truly, but may be distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0. That means, in short, you can use them yourself and your grove, and play the song to your heart's content both in private and in public, but must give credit where credit is due, and if you're planning on selling something involving this song we need to talk about that first.
Comments
Faith Burton 4 years, 9 months ago
The story and history of how a song comes together makes it all worth listening to the music. Lyrics are wonderful.
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