YouTube

Thanks to the_red_shoes I spent much of yesterday browsing YouTube. She got me going with a whole collection of different singers giving us their take on "She Moved Through The Fair"- which is one of the loveliest songs ever- and from there I moved to the works of Loreena McKennit- the Canadian New-Age singer-songwriter with the pre-raphaelite hair- and then- as was bound to happen- I wound up looking at clips of the Great Randi exposing fake psychics and off-cuts from Most Haunted.

When I first joined LJ in 2004 nobody was posting video. Now it's all over the shop. Ain't it strange how change mostly just creeps up on us and we scarcely notice? YouTube? It's always been there, hasn't it?  Only it hasn't. YouTube was founded just two years ago. Two years!  And now we take it for granted.

She Moved Through The Fair

She Moved Through The Fair

My young love said to me my mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you for your lack of kind
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say
It will not be long now 'til our wedding Day

And she went away from me, she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here and move there
And then she went onward, just one star awake
Like the swan in the evening moves over the lake

The people were saying no two e'er were wed
But one had a sorrow that never was said
And I smiled as she passed with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in
So softly she came her feet made no din
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say
It will not be long now 'til our wedding day

                                                       Anon + Padraic Colum

The song was collected in Donegal by Padraic Colum and Herbert Hughes and first published in 1909. The lyrics- all except the last verse- are Colum's work. 

I understand some people choose to have this played at their weddings. They must be mad.