of ponds and pipers

[IEDSRI@aol.com]

   Wieland's excellent challenge to us to revive our never-adequate
discussion of the brilliant and perfect early "Cathy" masterpieces led IED to
begin a new listening, which has resulted in a small discovery! This is IED's
revised reading of the lyrics of the song "Something Like a Song".  
   He is now relatively confident about these words, which, as readers will
see, finally bring all parts of the song's lyrics into a logical
narrative/thematic whole -- one closely related to that of Donovan's "Lord of
the Reedy River", which IED dares to suggest might have been the inspiration
for Kate Bush's great early work.  (Notice the use of the unresolved
repetition of the opening verse as a kind of coda for the song, which Kate
would have heard in the Donovan recording[s], and which is a device she has
used several times since, as for example in "The Kick Inside" and "Under the
Ivy".)
   (As he has done in the past, IED sets the lyrics of "Something Like a
Song" in verse/chorus order -- which, as so often in Kate Bush's songs, is
here a novel variant on the usual pop-song formula -- but with the addition
of prose punctuation, which he believes is appropriate for the sake of
narrative clarity.)


Something Like a Song

There's something that sounds like a song
In my garden, by the willow -- 
A piper:  "Oohoo...

   "Ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, ooh..."

I see him when I turn the lights down low,
In my garden, wading through the pond,
Rest and sing, "Lover, oohoo...

   "Ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, ooh..."
      
      I've called him by every name I know,
      By every name I know,
      But he won't answer me.
      He keeps coming forward,
      But never moving.
      Is there no destiny here?

It sounds like a song
In my garden, by the willow -- 
A piper: "Oohoo...

   "Ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, ohoo, ahoo, ooh..."

-- Andrew Marvick (IED)
   S        R         I