The Rose & the Briar #4

Sharyn McCrumb’s essay “Music, When Soft Voices Die” in The Rose & the Briar is more or less a short story concerned with the changes that occur in the lyrics of folk songs over the years, whether because of slang or language changes over the years or just forgotten stories. Such is the fate of oral transmission.

As for the story itself, it is overly long by triple and contains little narrative strength, surprisingly enough, since I’ve read many of McCrumb’s mysteries and enjoy them much. It involves the characters in the songs as actors waiting to be summonsed by the singers of the songs. Interesting enough for the short haul. But lacking footnotes, it's not all that informative. But her concern for the songs does show through and that in the end was her intention.

He shrugged. It was hard to explain. It wasn’t every song that concerned him. Just the ones that meant so much to somebody during their existence. The songs that they wept into, or wrapped around themselves as they went into battle, or even the golden-dream tunes that they built into little worlds that were better than where they really lived. (pg 63)

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