This is about Fawn, sung by Dag, from Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series. I've been learning to play clawhammer banjo, and a lot of the oldtime tunes have pretty incomprehensible lyrics. I've been wanting to set my own words to some of the pretty tunes I'm learning so I have an excuse to play them in filk circles! This is my first attempt. In the recording I use a G modal tuning, capo 2, so A modal.
lyrics
(To the tune of The Cuckoo, trad.)
Oh my farmer, she's a pretty girl
And she's surely with beauty crowned
But what draws this old patroller
Is the blazing fire in her ground
My sweet farmer has no groundsense
To life's lantern she is blind
But her blindness sees the answers
No lakewalker could ever find
She has broken the chains of malice
She's escaped from the men of mud
And she's woven our lives together
In a braid of stubbornness and blood
If you want patience, if you want kindness
Fawn will surely fit the bill
But look elsewhere if you want meekness
Just ask the bogles that she has killed
Oh my farmer, she's a pretty girl
And she's surely with beauty crowned
But what draws this old patroller
Is the blazing fire in her ground