Post by Séamus on Oct 27, 2019 8:27:11 GMT
"Soul day,Soul day,
We be come a souling.
Pray good people remember the poor,
And give a soul cake.
One for Peter,two for Paul,
Three for Him that made us all
An apple,a pear,a plum or cherry'
Or any good thing to make us merry.
Soul day,Soul day
We have been praying for the soul departed.
So pray good people give us a cake
For we are all poor people,
Well known to you before,
So give us a cake for charity's sake,
And our blessing we'll leave at your door.
Soul!Soul!for an apple or two,
If you have no apples,pears will do.
If pears are scarce,then cakes from your pan.
Give us our souling,and we'll be gone"
I'm sure everyone here understands the concept of praying for the dead,even if they (particularly if not Catholic) are disbelievers in the doctrine,but,apart from Halloween, I only became aware of the folk-tradiion side of All Souls (there seems to be blurring and overlapping with All Saints Day also) until I looked at the appendix of a (largely more prayerful and serious) "All Hallows eve" booklet.
The souling songs obviously describe some tradition,not unlike trick-and-treating or carolling, or even mumming.
A similar version of this song was recorded in the 1960s by an English folk choir called the Watersons,which I hadn't remembered hearing of before, but it makes the tradition even more interesting if the souling songs survived post-Tudor England.
Impressively,the Watersons mostly consisted of one family of that name,with some relations. Similar to a lot of the amazing families Ireland has had in the traditional music scene or the Leahy family of Canada.
We be come a souling.
Pray good people remember the poor,
And give a soul cake.
One for Peter,two for Paul,
Three for Him that made us all
An apple,a pear,a plum or cherry'
Or any good thing to make us merry.
Soul day,Soul day
We have been praying for the soul departed.
So pray good people give us a cake
For we are all poor people,
Well known to you before,
So give us a cake for charity's sake,
And our blessing we'll leave at your door.
Soul!Soul!for an apple or two,
If you have no apples,pears will do.
If pears are scarce,then cakes from your pan.
Give us our souling,and we'll be gone"
I'm sure everyone here understands the concept of praying for the dead,even if they (particularly if not Catholic) are disbelievers in the doctrine,but,apart from Halloween, I only became aware of the folk-tradiion side of All Souls (there seems to be blurring and overlapping with All Saints Day also) until I looked at the appendix of a (largely more prayerful and serious) "All Hallows eve" booklet.
The souling songs obviously describe some tradition,not unlike trick-and-treating or carolling, or even mumming.
A similar version of this song was recorded in the 1960s by an English folk choir called the Watersons,which I hadn't remembered hearing of before, but it makes the tradition even more interesting if the souling songs survived post-Tudor England.
Impressively,the Watersons mostly consisted of one family of that name,with some relations. Similar to a lot of the amazing families Ireland has had in the traditional music scene or the Leahy family of Canada.
