Coarse Dreaming

My obsession with this song is running pretty deep at the moment, it gets richer with each listen. I want to focus on the lyrics, although there's much to be said about the performance: the irregular meter means (I think) that Richard Thompson and Martin Carthy aren't quite sure when the changes are coming, there's a hesitant, on-the-fly quality to the accompaniment; the delicacy and coarseness in Mike's voice (as in Lal's, which is even more devastating).

A phrase keeps popping into my head: coarse dreaming. That applies particularly to Lal's lyrics - Mike's songs are good but Lal's are the real mysteries. 'Fine Horseman' starts in a place you think you understand but then roams far and deep. 'Never The Same' I really haven't a clue about from the off.

For 'The Scarecrow', most takes on it that I've found online focus on the pagan/feritility imagery and in particular the disturbing suggestion of child sacrifice. Or suggest that it might just be about a scarecrow, which of course is fine.


I think it was after I read that Lal had written the majority of the words and Mike had finished them off  that I imagined Lal singing it. So then it seemed to be a song of slow, burgeoning love, a love that starts almost in scorn. It's a fairly common experience to meet someone who later becomes a good friend and/or lover but your first reaction was "what on earth are you?" I outlined this interpretation to James and he said "oh, so it's like a romantic comedy." So in this 'romantic comedy' version, 'Lal', through Mike, is singing to the scarecrow, this "thing on the pole" that has troubled her gaze. Gradually, observing it, pity, tenderness, turn to love. "Now you can lay me down and love me."

The fact that Mike sings it, though, abstracts it, takes it away from a strictly male-female set-up. So it's also more generally about the horror and beauty of the other.

In either of these gazes there's also an inquiry into human agency and usefuleness. The lover or friend (or just fellow man) asks "what are  you good for?" The scarecrow does nothing for itself, it's only a "bag of rags in an overall", it only raises its head (and scares the crows) when the wind lifts it up. But just through its being there, "the corn can grow tall".That's all, maybe that's enough.

What of the fertility rituals and child sacrifice? Again, it's literally a depiction of those things but perhaps it's also about 'Lal' again but this time she's not singing to the scarecrow, she's singing to another but watching the scarecrow, waiting for the sign that she's ripe to conceive. "How could you lay me down and love me?" "Now you can lay me down and love me."

There's also a tension between what's natural and unnatural. In 'Electric Eden', Rob Young says the Watersons were always singing about the seasons, and here they're at it again. The natural cycle, natural processes. In a pastoral vision, men are in tune with nature, they are part of the cycle. But they're also trying to influence it, interfere with it, disrupt it - installing a scarecrow, sacrificing their own.

Last night I listened to it and it was 'Mike' singing this time, singing to himself. The Scarecrow in the mirror.