Roots
I’m not even English myself — just an in-law, really. Even so.
I suppose it doesn’t help that last night’s activity was reading aloud Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood where good King Richard the Lion’s Heart came to Sherwood Forest and set things aright …
But it’s more than that:
And we learn to be ashamed before we walk,
Of the way we look and the way we talk.
Without our stories, or our songs,
How will we know where we come from?
How will we know? The amnesia is nearly complete.
After the speeches when the cake’s been cut, the disco’s over and the bar is shut.
At Christening, Birthday, Wedding or Wake,
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
It also doesn’t help that I’m recently back from another Frey reunion. Everything I said about the vanishing of the songs with my generation? Same song, second verse.
Haul away boys, let them go,
Out in the wind and the rain and snow.
We’ve lost more than we’ll ever know,
‘Round the rocky shores of England.We need roots!
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