Jody Bottum, editor of First Things, wants our help

Actually, I’ve been fooling around with ballads and folk songs for a couple of months, now, with the vague idea that I might make my next book of poems something like “New Words to Old Music,” along the line that Yeats marked out with his lyrics for traditional Irish tunes. Of course, mine will be terrible when compared with his, but that’s a problem with the fact that I’m not Yeats, not a problem with the idea itself. Anyway, I called my publisher, the amazing Bruce Fingerhut of St. Augustine’s Press, and he’s ruefully willing to print it, if I get it done—and there, as in so many other things, is the rub.

Do any good tunes come to mind? I’ve already done the old Child’s ballad “Henry Martin” (you can hear the melody and see the original words here, dropping all the original plot and rewriting it as a woman-scorned tale. I think I’ve got a take on new words for the “Gower Wassail,” and “Winyadelpa,” a strange fiddle tune from the Shetland Islands, which has the advantage of never having had words to need replacing.

But I need some more melodies that need new words. If you can think of them, please email me at ft@firstthings.com. I’m really looking for traditional melodies that are (1) haunting, (2) saddled with inferior lyrics, and (3) not widely known.

There’s also a life angle…