eldin raigmore
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Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
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 Posted: Sun May 15, 2011 7:45 pm Post subject: When the levee breaks (also "mourn" and "moan |
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All the work trying to control the flood on the Mississippi has reminded me of the 1929 song recorded by Memphis Minnie and her husband Kansas Joe McCoy. Kansas Joe wrote these lyrics about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1929.
By now Memphis Minnie's and Kansas Joe's work (therefore including the lyrics) is in the public domain. However many subsequent artists have been inspired by Led Zeppelin's music for these lyrics; and Led Zeppelin's music is still under copyright.
http://blueslyrics.tripod.com/artistswithsongs/memphis_minnie_3.htm#when_the_levee_breaks says these are the lyrics:
by Memphis Minnie
recording of 1929
from, copyright notice
| Quote: | If it keeps on rainin', levee's1 goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay
Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan
Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan
Thinkin' 'bout my baby and my happy home
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
And all these people have no place to stay
Now look here mama what am I to do
Now look here mama what am I to do
I ain't got nobody to tell my troubles to
I works on the levee mama both night and day
I works on the levee mama both night and day
I ain't got nobody, keep the water away
Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do no good
Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do no good
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to lose
I works on the levee, mama both night and day
I works on the levee, mama both night and day
I works so hard, to keep the water away
I had a woman, she wouldn't do for me
I had a woman, she wouldn't do for me
I'm goin' back to my used to be
I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan
I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan
Gonna leave my baby, and my happy home |
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However, many people have included:
"Don't it make you feel bad when you're tryin' to find your way home
And you don't know which way to go?
If we stay down South there's no work to do
We gotta go to Chicago.
I'm goin' to Chicago, sorry that I can't take you
I'm goin' to Chicago, sorry that I can't take you"
(and some appropriate last line)
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Also:
Tori Amos sang it with "mourn" instead of "moan".
I looked up the etymology, and "mourn" comes from Classical Indo-European languages' (e.g. Sanskirt, Classical Greek, Classical Latin) word meaning something like "memory" or "remember", while "moan" seems to be only in Germanic languages, to refer to the sound, and to be unrelated etymologically.
John Campbell sang it with
"Well all last night I sat on the levee and cried
Well all last night I sat on the levee and cried
When the levee breaks, there ain't no place to hide"
Some singers sing the first verse as thus:
"If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
If the levee breaks, our home it's gonna take"
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So, clearly, if you translate it into your conlang, you can change or re-arrange the words somewhat, to make it fit as elegiac poetry in your conlang.
Further, if you have a conworld and/or conculture in which things are somehow different, things like;
- living with your parent(s) and/or child(ren) and/or spouse;
- having a home;
- being surprised that a flooding river can make a mountain-dweller have to move;
- floods are not the sort of natural disasters that destroy people's homes;
- the way the destruction of the infrastructure of a region's economy would affect someone is not that they'd have to leave to find work;
- people wouldn't have to leave their loved ones to find work;
- or if they did that's not what would make them sad;
- weeping, crying, moaning, mourning, are all different;
- saying "crying won't help you, and praying won't do you no good" doesn't make much sense;
then you might want to change the story some.
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"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
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