Category: family

Cheerful Voices: There was an old woman who had a little pig

Byartsyhonker December 16, 2013 0 Comments
Cheerful Voices by Kathryn Rose My grandfather used to sing this to me. He sang a sort of postlude, too, to a different tune which I have now forgotten. I don't know why pig mortality was something my grandfather was singing to me about, or indeed whether two grown-ups dying of broken hearts is really appropriate material for a four-year-old, but I don't remember it bothering me at all. Some of...

Wedding Hymn

Byartsyhonker October 28, 2013 0 Comments
When I was choosing music for the wedding, I had a bit of a hard time: there was so much that was good, and that I wanted to include, but it was also important that the wedding itself not be completely taken over by the music; also that the service itself wouldn't go on for too long! With some regret I limited myself to five hymns and an anthem. One of my favourite hymns is "O Love divine, how...

Early Music Experiences

Byartsyhonker October 13, 2013 1 Comment
Ruth of Moss and Jones asks: What are your earliest music experiences? What do you remember, perhaps vaguely, being played in your house when you were a toddler / pre-school aged child? This is interesting: I think for me, the first question and the second aren't necessarily the same. My instinctive answer to "What are your earliest music experiences", you see, isn't to do with listening to music...

Changing Horizons

Byartsyhonker August 4, 2012 1 Comment
I'm visiting ancestral lands, and part of this particular trip has involved sorting through the last of my things in my father's house, which will be put up for sale in spring 2013. It's been an emotional few days.  I may write at more length on the process later, or I may not. I found this poem by my grandmother in the front pages of a folder full f my grandfather's coin collection, and thought...