I’ve been trying to memorize a song to sing to my children at nighttime.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This latest tune is called Herr Mannelig<\/a>, and I first heard it performed by Garmarna<\/a>. 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:<\/p>\n The first verse:<\/strong> The refrain:<\/strong> The Translation this far:<\/strong> Sir Mannelig, Sir Mannelig won`t you marry me 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I would like to chock this up to:<\/p>\n However, I am actually fearful of a far simpler and more likely reason: \u00a0I’m getting older.<\/p>\n I know that Alzheimer’s or some version thereof waits for around a corner years from now, rubbing its filthy hands and slobbering anxiously. \u00a0But 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? \u00a0Examples of strings I remember:<\/p>\n These are things committed somehow to memory a long time ago (in some cases). \u00a0Why, when I am trying hard to remember just four lines in out-dated Swedish, am I having trouble?<\/p>\n Very annoying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBittida en morgon innan solen upprann
\nInnan foglarna b\u00f6rjade sjunga
\nBergatrollet friade till fager ungersven
\nHon hade en falskeliger tunga<\/p>\n
\nHerr Mannelig herr Mannelig trolofven i mig
\nF\u00f6r det jag bjuder s\u00e5 gerna
\nI kunnen v\u00e4l svara endast ja eller nej
\nOm i viljen eller ej<\/p>\n
\nEarly one morning before the sun did rise
\nAnd the birds sang their sweet song
\nThe mountain troll proposed to the fair squire
\nShe had a false deceitful tongue <\/p>\n
\nFor all that I`ll gladly give you
\nYou may answer only yes or no
\nWill you do so or no<\/p>\n\n
\n