I’ve been trying to memorize a song to sing to my children at nighttime.
My personal repertoire of 20-odd songs wore thin a long time ago, and as I end up singing two or three songs each night, we cover the same ground pretty often. The kids are bored by them, I’m bored by them, and I’m sure anyone else would be too.
This latest tune is called Herr Mannelig, and I first heard it performed by Garmarna. I’m not sure if its an old song, one they wrote, or music set to a story. In any event, I memorized the refrain first, and that wasn’t too difficult. Its just four lines each for the refrain and each verse, after all:
The first verse:
Bittida en morgon innan solen upprann
Innan foglarna började sjunga
Bergatrollet friade till fager ungersven
Hon hade en falskeliger tunga
The refrain:
Herr Mannelig herr Mannelig trolofven i mig
För det jag bjuder så gerna
I kunnen väl svara endast ja eller nej
Om i viljen eller ej
The Translation this far:
Early one morning before the sun did rise
And the birds sang their sweet song
The mountain troll proposed to the fair squire
She had a false deceitful tongue
Sir Mannelig, Sir Mannelig won`t you marry me
For all that I`ll gladly give you
You may answer only yes or no
Will you do so or no
Its a story about a Troll maiden (bergatrollet) who proposes to a handsome squire (Herr Mannelig) and offers him all sorts of enticements like silver and gold and horses and so on. He refuses declaring her an un-Christian woman. She shrieks and runs back into the mountains. Yer basic Troll-maiden meets boy, boy denies Troll-maiden, Troll-maiden cries-and-runs-off sort of tale.
What is puzzling me is that its proving extraordinarily difficult for me to remember the first verse with any fluidity. I memorized the refrain quite easily one morning, but am having trouble remembering the next line as I go through each line in the first verse.
I would like to chock this up to:
- it being is a sort of older-Swedish dialect, versus modern (where I know Norwegian better)
- being unfamiliar with some words as distinctly different from Norwegian (such as “sjunga”, pronounced “hoong-a”)
- the similarity in tune to the refrain which I know quite well, at this point
- having learned the refrain first (d’oh!)
- not getting how the Troll maiden was able to be in a position to propose anyway, but getting the part about early-before-the-birds-are-up because Trolls are turned to stone by the sun.
However, I am actually fearful of a far simpler and more likely reason: I’m getting older.
I know that Alzheimer’s or some version thereof waits for around a corner years from now, rubbing its filthy hands and slobbering anxiously. But could it possibly be that my ability to recall strings (number strings, textual strings – something I’ve always had little difficulty with), is breaking up? Examples of strings I remember:
- our street address in Calgary, a home we left in 1971
- both license plate#s for our cars
- my SIN#
- the phone number (including area code) of an uncle living in Montreal, whom we visit once a year
- The “To be or not to be” soliloquy
- The “What a piece of work is a man” soliloquy (all of it)
- the network passwords of 42 people at work (where its occasionally my job to have to ask them this!)
- etc, etc.
These are things committed somehow to memory a long time ago (in some cases). Why, when I am trying hard to remember just four lines in out-dated Swedish, am I having trouble?
Very annoying.