Hi Barbara,

I'm familiar with the song/ballad from Fairport Convention's version. It was fun to read your updated version. Here's how I'm reading it:

At the beginning, we overhear that Tom Linne has disappeared and not even Janet knows where he is.

In the second section, it sounds like Janet has forbidden his music, and he's put up with it for seven months, then he slips out of the house, and in to a bar and there's ... Janet. So, maybe the "she" in whose house he's been imprisoned in isn't Janet's but the Faery Queen (or her equivalent, "the witch" in this version), the mooted "new romance" of the first section? So the mansion is the green hill, and seven months are the seven years in the hill.

He reassures Janet he's not a ghost. This is because Janet doesn't know where he's been this past seven months. Now, this seems to imply they were already together, an item, before he was captured/enchanted (a difference from the original ballad).

They leave the bar and hang out by the river, and the enchantment of the Faery Queen/witch is fading as a result of their closeness. Later, on another visit, Janet picks a rose (in the original is to kill the child), which means that Janet is at this point pregnant. So this meeting by the river is the correlate of their first meeting in Carterhaw in the original ballad. Finding herself pregnant, Janet tells her father, who is having none of it. Janet needs/wants her father's permission to marry, and despairs when he won't give it.

The last section of the poem echoes the Tam Lin sequence I'm familiar with from the song. Janet rescues him from the Faery Queen and he changes form, but, as instructed, she doesn't release him, and so gets to keep him. And presumably doesn't care what her father says now she's got him back.


So, that's how I'm reading it. Some thoughts on the above.

It's not very clear in the second section that "she/her" is the witch. It reads like we're still taking about Janet, and so I found that section confusing until I worked it out. Maybe this could be made clearer somehow?

Given how closely you follow the plot of the original, it seems a little odd that Janet and Tom are already together (assuming I'm reading that correctly) before Tom is enchanted. But only really because I know the original, I guess.

The role of the father, and needing his permission to marry, seems rather at odds with the modern setting. Though I guess her father threatening to kick her out or disown her, and the father of her child not being accessible, would still make sense today. Still, maybe there's some scope for some other cause? Lack of money, desire for a career?

You might also think of a more modern alternative to the rose, I guess. That's also probably the only reference the reader won't understand without knowing the ballad. The rest, I think, stands on its own.

Another thing I wondered about is the relevance of Tom Linne's role as a guitarist in a band. It's mentioned in the opening and at the beginning of the second section, but doesn't seem to play a role or get developed in rest of the poem.


On the metre: like others, I'm finding it hard to hear a clear four beat metre in a quite a few of the lines here. Dan Goia says, "There is, in fact, only one steadfast rule: there must be an identical number of strong stresses in each line." And here you're going for four per line. But these, for example, seem to have three strong stresses:

But there was ALways a PRICE to be PAID

Or— he’s FOUND a NEW roMANCe…

And HE is the FATHer of her CHILD

I can make them four, I guess, but only if I artificially add a lot of stress to words that (to me) don't naturally have a strong stress. Some of the weak stresses are promoted, but they still don't, I think, become strong stresses as a result.

Some others I hear as 5 (or more) strong stresses. for example:

PLAYS a MEAN guiTAR in a LOcal BAND

I can make "plays" weaker, I guess, but it's the verb here, so again, I feel like I'd be imposing a rhythm that isn't naturally in the line.

And OUT of the GATE a DOZEen MEN WALK

You don't actually need "gate" in this line, since it's clear from the previous line, so that would give you an option to lose one stress.

i MUST be—but it’s NOTHing to DO with YOU, JANET

HOLDing him TIGHT, she SAYS, “This MAN is MINE!”

“STOP!” cried TOM LINNE, SPRINGing (UP) from the GROUND

I'd say this last one has at least five strong stresses. "TOM LINNE" is two strong stresses -- and you count it that way in the first line of the poem. I'd say "UP" is too, but maybe you're not counting that? I guess you can drop "Linne", since we'll know which Tom it is. And replace "springing up" with a verb with one stress and the same meaning.

Tiny point, but I'd prefer "Nope. I asked", because "Nope, I asked" reads a bit like "I asked nope".

best,

Matt

Hi Marshall (and apologies Barbara.)
I'd say thanks for the link, but ow! my aching head. That ain't no Gaelic, but Scots, a whole different kittle o' keilin.
Long may your crowdies loup.

RG.

Barbara, if you don’t know already, you’ll find Matt to be the best detailed critter we have here, but I still like to squabble with him about stressing.

I too initially gave this three stresses, but on second thought decided that the “Or,” set off by a dash, calls for an expressive stress.

I guess we’re saying, then, that promotions and demotions don’t count in accentual verse and that three or more consecutive unstressed syllables are fine as long it sounds natural. I think Barbara agrees, though here you caught her promoting “of.”

I find that verbs can easily lose their stress. Not any verb, perhaps, but here it works for me.

I think Barbara is actually going for this:

i must BE—but it’s NOTHing to do with YOU, JANet

But she herself said that four unstressed syllables in a row stretches English to the breaking point, so maybe it’s:

i must BE—but it’s NOTHing to DO with you, JANet

Too much ambiguity for me. I suggested a fix here, but for a different reason.

I think she wants:

HOLDing him TIGHT, she says, “THIS man is MINE!”

An unstressed “says” works fine for me here.

I agree about “UP,” but have no problem with an unstressed “springing” or “tom”:

“STOP!” cried tom LINNE, springing UP from the GROUND

That said, the unstressed “tom” is inconsistent with the name’s other appearances, so I like your suggestion to drop “Linne.”

On the whole, of course, I agree that more thought could be given to Gioia’s “implied fourth rule.”

It's not much of a spring if it's not stressed, though, I reckon. It takes a lot of effort to spring up from the ground! I can't easily say the line with the springing unstressed, especially with the pause/caesura necessitated by the comma preceding "springing".

HOLDing him TIGHT, she says, “THIS man is MINE!”

If this is the stress pattern desired, it might work better if "this" were italicised to make this more obvious. Because, after all, he's a man, a mortal: not a ghoul or a witch or an elvish knight. And at least in the original ballad, there aren't any other men around. I'd say that would be a reason to stress "man" over "this", or at least to be unclear which word was to be stressed.

Anyway, I guess we can agree that there are lines in the poem where the metre could clearer and less ambiguous. After all, we're disagreeing on the scansion. I'd say it would be better if the reader didn't have to spend time trying to figure out what is and isn't counting as a stress and where the beat lands. There are many lines here that aren't like this, I hasten to add, where the four stresses are clear and easy to hear. I reckon it's worth trying to make all the lines like that.

best,

Matt

As a phrasal verb, “spring up” would normally take its main stress on the second element. I’d tend to give “springing up” two full stresses, as you suggest, though I have no trouble demoting “spring-” if necessary.

It certainly would’ve saved us some time!

Barbara,
Here is my cursing confusion in the last stanza:

"A curse upon you...Who has stolen this man of all men from me!"
is aimed at Janet (who did the stealing) but the curse of blindness was aimed at Tom.
If it's all to be directed at Tom, maybe change L2 to "Who gave up the honor to love only me"

As for the meter, frankly I can flub up a sight-read of Dr. Suess because I don't know if his first anapest is 0, 1, or 2 headless. So I'm okay with a poem needing a second read to get a reasonable meter.

Yikes! I take a break from the Sphere for a single day, and come back to find even more comments on confusion--content and metrical--in the poem!
(I don't use smilies, but that's a joke.)

Thanks so much Matt, Richard, Carl, and Marshall. I do appreciate your taking so much time with this experiment. Your comments help a lot. (I always used to tell my writing students, "The reader is not inside your head." I seem to have forgotten that key piece of advice with this poem.)

Clearly, I must make it obvious that Janet and the witch are not the same person. I didn't want to go into how Tom was captured by the witch (it's a long segment of the original), but probably a mention would be helpful. It's also tricky to "update" a ballad, particularly one that has so many supernatural allusions that we no longer "get." I've got to think about this, too.

I like the idea, Matt, of doing more with Tom's identity as a guitarist, especially since it's because he's a musician that Janet's father objects to him.

Marshall, thanks for explaining your confusion about the curse. Must definitely clear that up.

And now, an attempt to clear up all the confusion about meter. (By the way, I hope those of you who engaged in trying to "fix" the meter enjoy that particular game. I'd hate to think I wasted your time.)

First, I should have said this poem is in ballad meter, which is accentual meter in which some lines may have three stressed syllables, with the last stress being "empty," presumably for an accompanying instrument to add a fill.

Second:The truth is that the system of metrical analysis taught in schools has never made any sense to me; for one thing, it breaks up the natural verbal phrase rhythms that make up poetic lines. This intuition was reinforced, first, when I read an essay by the composer Virgil Thomson about setting words to music. He said the words had to be set according to their verbal phrases.

I did a lot of learning about phrases as research for my second book (Spellbinding Sentences), and was even more convinced that they're the key to verbal rhythm, in prose--or in poetry.

Then I discovered Philip Davies Roberts' excellent, but little-known book, How Poetry Works. Roberts was a musician as well as a poet; in the book he makes clear that the main similarity between music and poetry is that they both have beat. Even more mind-opening, to me, was his assertion that in poetry, as in music, the beats must be isochronous.

What? I had never heard of this term before. (It means that the beats are regularly--more or less--spaced in time.). When I began writing poems this way, the beats being the strong stresses, I felt I had an approach to rhythm that made sense to me.

For instance, I'd read this line (Matt's version)
But there was ALways a PRICE to be PAID
this way:
BUT there was ALways a PRICE to be PAID, and if I were reading the line out loud, I'd have a slight pause after BUT.

I can see that I did slide five beats into some lines--can't remember why, now--so thanks for pointing those out.

So, how does Roberts' approach to rhythm work in practice? Though I'm still learning, I think it works quite well. You establish the number of beats you want in a line, and then you find words to fit in between the beats that will ensure the beats are isocronous. (Tapping your hand helps.)That's usually one to three unstressed syllables--but it could also be none, an effect I really like.

How many unstressed syllables you can fit between the beats depends, at least in part, on the sounds of the syllables. Syllables of longer duration can be tricky. But, then, you can also use longer sounds to fill the spaces between the beats with fewer syllables.

(And, naturally, while you're doing all this, you have to be making whatever kind of sense you're aiming for.)

What I love about writing this way is that it lets me feel the beats while also concocting verbal phrase rhythms that "go with" the beats. In other words, it's like having one instrument that's keeping the beat and another one playing the rhythms of the melody--except that with poetry, it's the same words doing both things! I
find this completely amazing and thrilling.

You may think all this sounds loony, but if you are interested and want to hear more, just let me know.

Thanks again to everyone's who's helped!

Barbara

Ballad metre, as the term is normally used, is an accentual metre that alternates between lines of 4 stresses, and lines of 3 stresses. The accentual-syllabic equivalent is called "common metre", though some people call it ballad metre too, I think.

Anyway, this isn't what your poem is doing. So, maybe you talking about something other than ballad metre? Are there ballads or folks songs where where it's four beats to a line by default, and the occasional three-beat line to be filled in by the music? I'm interested.

The original Tam Lin ballad alternates 4 beats with 3:

O I forbid you, maidens all
That wear gold on your hair,
To come or go by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.

I think it would be interesting to see your poem in ballad meter. It'd make it more folk-songlike, I think.

best,

Matt

Yeah, that alternation between four and three beats is one of the things I love about ballads. I first thought you had a modified ballad meter going in the first two stanzas (4-4-4-3) and was a little disappointed when it didn’t continue.

Tom Linne
 

Matt and Carl--Thank you again! I'll do it!

Matt-- "The Fair Flower of Northumberland" (#73 In The Oxford Book of Ballads) seems to have 4 beats per line:
It was a Knight in Scotland borne,
Follow my loue, leap ouer the strand:
Was taken prisoner and left forlorne
Even by the good Earle of Northumberland.

There may be others; I'm no expert.