Simple Gifts

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
- "Simple Gifts" Elder Joseph Brackett (1848)

One of my favorite moments from President Barack's Inauguration the other day was the John Williams' arrangement of "Air and Simple Gifts" performed by Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill. I was humming along with the tune when it broke into "Simple Gifts" and sort of, um, composing in mid-air. I don't know why. I'm not a fan of classical music at all. But the tune was unmistakable and I went along with it. I looked over at Gia and she was confused.

"How the hell do you know this?" she asked. She had never heard the tune before, which I found amazing because she knows so much about music. I even sang a bit of "Lord of the Dance" hymnal which was written using the "Simple Gifts" tune. Nothing. She had never heard it before.

So I went into a long explanation about "Simple Gifts" that I will share with you all now.

The song was written by an Elder within the Shaker community in 1848. His name was Joseph Brackett. The song was most likely written as a dance song, but it is often thought of as a hymn. There used to be a bit of confusion regarding the origins of the song. Some thought it was much, much older thinking that it went back to the Middle Ages and beyond. There was also some confusion about whether or not it was originally a pagan song that was converted to a Christian hymn (mostly to do with a neopagan version of the song produced in the '70's). Neither of those is true, by the way.

Most folks in the U.S. or U.K. will recognize the tune either from it's incorporation in the ballet "Appalachian Spring" around 1944 or from "Lord of the Dance" itself written by Sydney Carter in 1963. "Lord of the Dance" is extremely popular still today as a hymn in masses from many different denominations of Christianity. Oh yeah, and Michael Flatley. Yikes.

So why the hell do I know about this at all?

Because of the Internet. And comic-books.



You see, I was a big fan of this one title called "Hellblazer" in which the protagonist was a streetwise mage named John Constantine. Don't confuse it with the awful movie starring Keanu Reeves. That film was so far from the uber-cool that was "Hellblazer"! Ugh. Anyway, issue #49 was a stand-alone written by Garth Ennis. Constantine spent the issue re-igniting the holiday spirit to a, well...um, Holiday Spirit. The Lord of the Dance.

Ennis took the tune and it's neopagan faux origins and created a this wonderful story. And I, of course, believed that the Christian hymn I had heard all of my life had it's origins in paganism. Why wouldn't I? And I'm a huge fan of all things with pagan origins. Hello? Green Man! Anyway, great story, great issue, great fun.

A few years later I was at Mass with members of my family and my oldest sister and I got into an argument afterwards about the origins of "Lord of the Dance". Having read a whole comic-book on the subject, I was sure that it's origins were pagan. She, being smarter than I, disagreed. She thought it was always a Christian hymn. Turns out she was right, but I only grudgingly agreed after a night spent (on dial-up) looking into the origins of the damned thing.

So that's it. That's how my mind works. Something piques my interest and I dive into it. I really don't know how I would live without the accessibility of the Internet.

Oh, one weird thing I found out while looking all this stuff up again? The Shakers are pretty much all gone. As of 2006 there were only 4 practicing Shakers left in the world up in Maine somewhere. Their strict belief in celibacy ultimately thinned out their numbers to non-existence. They used to maintain their numbers through conversion and adoption, but the government put the kibosh on adoptions by religious organizations a while ago. And who wants to convert to a belief that is so staunchly celibate? I had no idea about all this. Weird.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the Shaker kids are doing it. Or they would, if there were any Shaker kids.