Bid Adieu to Girlish Days - Sung by George 'Giorgio' Joyce
Words and air by James Joyce - Musical arrangement by Edmund Pendleton
Recorded 22 July 1949 BBC radio
A film by Séamas McSwiney for the 100th anniversary of the publication of Ulysses 0202 2022.
“All the videos, songs, images, and graphics used in the video belong to their respective owners and I or this channel does not claim any right over them.”
Actors : John Shelvin (James Joyce) Cecile Morel (Sylvia Beach) Bruno Esposito (Samuel Beckett) Mathias Mégard (Ezra Pound)
This is the only poem generally thought to have been set to music by Joyce himself.
(extract) from CRITICAL COMPANION TO James Joyce : A Literary Reference to His Life and Work
by A. NICHOLAS FARGNOLI & MICHAEL PATRICK GILLESPIE
“Bid adieu to girlish days” Poem 16 (XI); the mood of this poem is seductive. The young poet, happy that love “is come to woo,” urges the girl to welcome the moment and “undo the snood / That is the sign of maidenhood.” The sexual overtones of the poem become even more vivid in the light of Joyce’s original 1905 arrangement of the complete suite of songs (see above, “The Arrangement of the Poems”), in which it immediately precedes poem XIV, “My dove, my beautiful one,” the suite’s climax and central poem. Joyce had earlier labeled this poem “my obscene song” (see Letters, II.73).
In 1904 Joyce had tried unsuccessfully to publish the poem in the Dublin magazine Dana. He also
submitted it to Harper’s in January 1905, but again it was rejected. With two other poems from Chamber Music (I and XII), “Bid adieu to girlish days” was anthologized in The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (1909), edited by John Cooke. (This is the first time a work by Joyce was anthologized.)
Joyce’s partiality toward this poem can also be seen in his efforts to have it set to music. In 1909 he tried actively to interest G. Molyneux Palmer in setting the poem musically: “It seems to me a pity you did not do the song ‘Bid adieu’ which I tried to music myself and hope you may turn to it some day” (Letters, II.227). (For more information see Letters, II.73, 77, 80, 117, and 227. Palmer eventually did set the poem to music.)
Song Lyrics
From Chamber Music by James Joyce
XI
Bid adieu, adieu, adieu,*
Bid adieu to girlish days,
Happy Love is come to woo
Thee and woo thy girlish ways -
The zone that doth become thee fair,
The snood upon thy yellow hair.
When thou hast heard his name upon
The bugles of the cherubim
Begin thou softly to unzone
Thy girlish bosom unto him
And softly to undo the snood
That is the sign of maidenhood.
*To be pronounced "adioo" by the singer, according to Pendleton, since that is how Joyce pronounced it.
Notes on the Song
A "snood" is a type of headband or fillet for the hair, traditionally worn by young unmarried women of Scotland and northern England. The documented history of this word in print dates back to at least the 8th century. Sir Walter Scott explains in a note to Lady of the Lake (1810):
The snood, or riband, with which a Scottish lass braided her hair, had an emblematical signification, and applied to her maiden character. It was exchanged for the curch, toy, or coif, when she passed, by marriage, into the matron state. But if the damsel was so unfortunate as to lose pretensions to the name of maiden, without gaining a right to that of matron, she was neither permitted to use the snood, nor advanced to the graver dignity of the curch. In old Scottish songs there occur many sly allusions to such misfortune; as in the old words to the popular tune of "Ower the muir amang the heather":
Down amang the broom, the broom,
Down amang the broom, my dearie,
The lassie lost her silken snood,
That gard her greet till she was wearie.
Thus, the phrase "The lassie lost her silken snood" would have been used to signify that she was no longer a virgin, yet not a wife.
Ironically, despite the distinctly Elizabethan atmospherics pervading the poems that make up Chamber Music, the word does not appear anywhere either in Shakespeare or the King James Bible (though it abounds in Scott). Indeed, women of that era did not actually wear snoods per se, but rather something similar, known as a "caul." To learn more on this topic, visit the copiously illustrated Snood page of Ye Olde Tudor & Elizabethan Head Shoppe.
Susan Leybourne and Marion Byrne of the Ulysses 100 Project also produced an E-book as a tribute to James Joyce and Ulysses, which was launched on 02 02 2022 at Le Centre Culturel Irlandais. It can be viewed on www.ulysses100project.com along with photos of the centenary celebrations at the Gare du Lyon, Shakespeare and Company, and the CCI.
Supported by the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, and L'Association James Joyce à Saint-Gérand-Le-Puy.
21 окт 2024
