Susie's Greenbelt

Will you go to the rolling of the stones
And the tossing of the ball?
Or, will you go and see pretty Susie
And dance among them all?

I will not go to the rolling of the stones
Nor the tossing of the ball,
But I will go and see pretty Susie
And dance among them all.

The song goes on to say that they start dancing and this guy (probably jealous) stabs him in the side, giving him "his fatal wound". So, they bury him in these woods and then Susie walks by with a tablet (does that mean a gravestone, a pad of paper, or a rock to sit on?) under her arm. When she gets to his grave she begins "to charm"--I don't know if she sat down or what. Anyway, she charms "the fish out of the sea and the birds out of their nest". Okay, not too bad--if you want a bunch of dead fish at your feet and birds flying around you. But then she charms "her true love out of his grave so he could no longer rest". That's when the song ends, and to be quite honest with you, I think Susie either died of fright or made tracks for home fast.

But it's got a beautiful tune, and--at least the way a certain group does it, it's haunting. No pun intended. There's this guitar or dulcimer in the backround sort of doing a simple accompaniment, and the whistle just wails.

"The Rolling of the Stones" is supposedly a fragmented American version of Child Ballad #49, "The Two Brothers" (that's quite a sentence about origins!--thanks, Aubrey Atwater). I saw the lyrics to "The Two Brothers", once, and--at least in my impression--the only thing that song has in common with the "Rolling of the Stones" is that the guy gets killed! Oh, and by stabbing, too. I'm not quite sure of the tune...

Back to "The Rolling of the Stones" (and the tossing of the ball?). I love that song. It is absolutely beautiful, and, if you drive down Beacon Avenue all the way down without turning, you get to the boundary between Beacon Hill and Rainier Beach--it's a greenbelt, or greenspace, actually. It's absolutely beautiful, and you can almost imagine a whistle wailing in the trees (no, no, no, I meant the sound, not the musician!) and the song just playing...

So I named the greenspace, "Susie's Greenbelt" in my head. If you ever end up on the Lagan, do visit it. You'll see everything...
Saro