sinesalvatorem:

shedoesnotcomprehend:

moonsofavalon:

colorfulcandypainter:

tobinlaughing:

clarasteam:

lilliburlero:

neil-gaiman:

ellenkushner:

shredsandpatches:

junkybowels:

plaidadder:

argonauticae:

argonauticae:

im putting together a couple of scottish folk mixes bc that’s what i do and im honestly curious if anyone in my country has ever been unequivocally happy about anything ever

scottish trad music genres:

• Everyone I Love Is Dead
• The English Have Stolen All My Sheep
• You Want To Be My Boyfriend? First You Must Answer These Riddles Three
• The Protestants Have Stolen All My Sheep
• I Love You A Lot But You’ve Left Me And It’s Raining [fiddle solo]
• The Sea Is Treacherous, Just Like The English
• One Time Bonnie Prince Charlie Punched Me In The Face And It Was Awesome
• The Fairies Have Stolen All My Sheep

We have of course the traditional Irish music genres to go with them:

* Everyone I Love Is An Allegorical Representation of Ireland

* The English Stole My Farm And Put Sheep On It

* You Were My Boyfriend But Now You Won’t Even Come To The Window To Look Upon Me And Our Dead Infant Child (In The Rain)

* Whack Fol Too La Roo Umptytiddly Good They’ve Stopped Listening Now Let’s Talk About Revolution

* Something In Irish, I Think It’s About Fairies, Or Maybe A Cow

oooo can I add to this? don’t forget Appalachian folk balladry, the American cousin of Scottish and Irish traditional music and just as uplifting as its Anglo-Saxon highland forbears!!!

genres include:

• I Left Everyone I Love Back Home In The Holler To Be With This Guy Who Doesn’t Wear Shoes Or Have Teeth But He Plays A Mean Jug

• The English Told Us Not To Move West Yet, We Ignored Them, My Entire Family Was Killed

• You Were My Boyfriend But You Tied A Sack Of Rocks To My Petticoats And Threw Me In The Creek (And My Baby Too)

• Mama Loves All 14 Of Us A Lot But She’s Weary Of Our Shit And Now She’s Dyin’ (Gather Round)

• The McCleans Stole A Firewood Log From Our Pile So We Won’t Rest Until The Last Of Their Male Kin Is Laid In The Cold Ground

• We Knew The River Would Rise But We Still Didn’t Fix The Levee 

• The River Rose, The Levee Broke, Everyone Died, It Was Just As We Reckoned (dulcimer twang-a-lang) 

• When The Rebels Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Southern Man And I Feed Their Horses My Best, When The Yankees Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Northern Man And I Feed Their Horses What The Rebels Left

• The Tennessee Valley Authority Killed All My Sheep Somehow

Don’t forget that old standby “The Mine Collapsed and Everyone Died”!

I think someone needs to put in a word for the English folk tradition though:

• I Met a Girl and We Went Hunting (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
• I Met a Girl and We Caught Some Birds (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
• I Met a Girl and We Found Her Lost Pet (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
• I Met a Girl By Staying At Her Parents’ House and She Made My Bed (It Was an Especially Thinly-Veiled Metaphor for Sex)
• I Am a Girl and I Regret Engaging In Metaphors for Sex Because Now I’m Pregnant
• I Met a Girl and Bribed Her Into Sex But She Stole My Horse and Ran Away With It
• I Met a Girl At an Inn and We Had Non-Metaphorical Sex But She Stole My Stuff The Next Morning and Now I Have Syphilis
• Your Fiance Died Either at Trafalgar or Waterloo, Let’s Get Married, I’m Glad You Said No Because I’m Really Him In Disguise
• Lord Nelson Sure Was Awesome
• The Press-Gang Dragged Off All the Important Men in My Life (And Now They Are Dead)
• Farm Laborers Are The Salt of the Earth And Are Never Grindingly Poor
• Begging Is a Completely Viable Career Option With Flexible Hours and Unlimited Access to Alcohol

OH GOD HELP ME I AM LAUGHING SO HARD I CANNOT BREATHE

(plus I know every variant of each and every one of these songs and I’ll send you the links if you want)

I once tried to write a folk song which was all folk songs. I see now I was not trying hard enough…

Some more:

I Fell In Love With A Bloke To Whom My Family Had A Mysterious Never-Articulated Objection (They Murdered Us Both)

This Guy Got Me Pregnant But It’s OK Because My Dad Fancies Him Too 

This Old Flame Of Mine Showed Up And Implied My Marriage Was Bigamous (Now We’re At The Bottom of the Sea)

Robin Hood Did Stuff (Some Of It Was Hella Gay)

I Thought My Wife Was Having An Affair And People’s Heads Got Cut Off (Now I Regret It A Bit)

Extremely Alarming Obstetric Choices and Infanticide

Incest, Alarming Obstetric Choices, Infanticide and Murder-Suicide (With A Bizarrely Inadequate Weapon)

it got better.

A day may come when I do not reblog the Songs of My People post, but today is not that day.

More Appalachian classics!!

• Killed by a Woman’s Rather Brusque Rejection of my Hand in Marriage
• Killed by My Fiancée’s Adultery
• Killed by My Wife Who’s Running off With a Carpet-Bagger
• We’ve Been Building this Railroad for a Very Long Time and I’d Like to Go Home Now
• I’m in Prison Building a Railroad and I’d Like to Go Home Now
• The Mountain is Trying to Kill Us
• Bears
• The Devil’s a Cool Dude But Maybe Don’t Ask Him for Stuff
• Met a Bear But It was The Devil
• My House Is Falling Apart
• I Literally Pray For Death
• Seriously Take Me Home Jesus
• My Banjo’s Bigger Than Your Banjo
• Scarlet Fever: A History

I’m still waiting for the Welsh add-on

I love how Neil Gaiman just randomly pops up in the middle of this chain.

Yo, dude, do you want me to sing the songs of my people?

Behold, Caribbean folk music:

• Animals live such charming lives (which are metaphors for sex)
• I am a successful farmer who grows a lot crops (which are
  metaphors for dicks)
• We should go on a magical adventure (which is a metaphor for sex)
• People who propose marriage are universally assholes
• Don’t be a dick to animals, it will end poorly
• You need to be praying way more frequently than you already are
  (which is probably a lot)
• People who make deals with the devil won’t have long lives, but
  they will be extremely interesting
• HAVE YOU TRIED MY HERBAL REMEDY THAT CURES DEATH AND REVERSES
  CANCER????
• If you do anything impressive with your life, jealous people will
  murder you in cold blood
• Don’t trust foreigners
• ESPECIALLY don’t trust white people
• No, dude, you have no fucking clue how badly it’ll turn out if you
  trust white people you’ll have to kill your own kids no lie

(In reference to the last one, @ilzolende said “Well, I did eat
one of your cookies without permission.”

The songs of my homeland feel so validated by this.)