Ge rum i Bröllopsgåln din hund!
"Ge rum i Bröllopsgåln din hund!" | |
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Bonniers edition | |
English | Make room in the Wedding reception you dog! |
Written | 10 October 1771 |
Text | poem by Carl Michael Bellman |
Language | Swedish |
Melody | Unknown origin |
Published | 1790 in Fredman's Epistles |
Scoring | voice and cittern |
Ge rum i Bröllopsgåln din hund! (Make room in the Wedding reception you dog!) is Epistle No. 40 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. One of his best-known works, it describes an utterly chaotic wedding at a venue where soldiers mixed up with musicians and the wedding-party; the chimney catches fire, and even the priest robs the collection. The verse-pattern and elaborate rhyming scheme combine to assist the feeling of chaos.
The epistle is subtitled "Angående Bröllopet hos Bensvarfvars" (Concerning the Wedding at Bensvarvars); the song is sometimes known under this name.
Context
Song
Music and verse form
The song has 9 verses, each consisting of 14 lines. The verses have a complex pattern of stresses and
Lyrics
The song, subtitled "Angående Bröllopet hos Bensvarfvars" (Concerning the Wedding at Bensvarvars),[2] describes an utterly chaotic wedding at the Bensvarfvars tavern on Hornskroken street in the Södermalm island district of Stockholm. Soldiers are mixed up with musicians and the wedding-party; everybody talks at once, often angrily; an officer shouts drill commands to the soldiers. Meanwhile, the chimney catches fire; the preacher gives a fire-and-brimstone sermon on St. Paul, David, Saul, and original sin; music plays; soldiers drink; the bride's white gloves split; the bridegroom swears and bursts into tears; a bridesmaid curtsies; and the preacher collapses in a corner. At the end, a brawl breaks out; a Corporal punches everyone he can reach; the bridegroom gets lascivious; some of those present, including the priest, rob the collection meant for the Seraphim Hospital; and the party breaks up in disorder.[2]
Carl Michael Bellman, 1790[2] | Prose translation | Image |
---|---|---|
Ge rum i Bröllops-gåln din hund! |
Make way in the wedding-hall you dog! |
Swedish soldiers with muskets. 1825 illustration |
Reception and legacy
The Epistle is described by the musicologist James Massengale as "of one of the wildest weddings in Swedish literature".[1] He comments that the rhyming pattern effectively hides some of the rhymes, making the descriptive poem imitate prose. Firstly, Bellman does not rhyme the first two lines until lines 5 and 6, when the verse is well under way. Next, he ignores the fact that the music repeats from bar 5, but creates new rhymes and divisions in lines 5–10. To break up the order still further, Bellman interjects short sharp commands, with "Stig in!" (Come in!) at the start of line 6 of the first verse, "Håll" (Halt!) at the start of line 11 in the second verse, "Alarm!" at the start, "Skyldra" (Shoulder arms!) in line 13 of verse 3, and "Gevär!" (Arms!) at the beginning of verse 4. Massengale observes that these syntactic breaks destroy the listener's sense of position in the rhyming scheme, the uncertainty of the rhyme creating a feeling of the tumult of the chaotic wedding celebrations.[1]
The scholar of literature Lars Lönnroth comments that we hear a crowd of heated wedding-guests shouting at one another in a "crazy comic furioso"[13] in which it is impossible to discern who is saying what. What Fredman himself may be saying is also unclear, so that the whole thing, he writes, is a farce from beginning to end.[13]
The critic Bo Nordstrand notes that Lönnroth draws a parallel between the Biblical
The
Göran Hassler states in his annotated selection of Bellman's work that the Epistle has been recorded in interestingly different interpretations by Sven-Bertil Taube on his 1963 album Carl Michael Bellman, Volume 2 (HMV),[16] and by Cornelis Vreeswijk on his 1971 album Spring mot Ulla, spring! Cornelis sjunger Bellman (Philips).[16] The Epistle has been translated into German.[17]
References
- ^ a b c d Massengale 1979, pp. 112–116
- ^ a b c d e f Bellman 1790.
- ^ Bellman Society. Archived from the originalon 10 August 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
- ^ "Bellman in Mariefred". The Royal Palaces [of Sweden]. Archived from the original on 21 June 2022. Retrieved 19 September 2022.
- ISBN 978-0131369207.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 39.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 81–83, 108.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 71–72 "In a tissue of dramatic antitheses—furious realism and graceful elegance, details of low-life and mythological embellishments, emotional immediacy and ironic detachment, humour and melancholy—the poet presents what might be called a fragmentary chronicle of the seedy fringe of Stockholm life in the 'sixties.".
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 63.
- ^ Massengale 1979, p. 180.
- ^ a b c Nordstrand, Bo (1978). "[Review] Tio forskare om Bellman. Föredrag vid Vitterhetsakademiens symposium 15–17 sept. 1976. Red. av Horace Engdahl. Filologiskt arkiv 20. Almqvist & Wiksell International. Sthlm 1977" [Ten Bellman researchers] (PDF). Samlaren: Tidskrift för svensk litteraturvetenskaplig forskning (in Swedish) (99): 186–189.
- ^ a b Lönnroth 2005, pp. 214–215.
- ^ Lönnroth, Lars (1967). "Den växande scenen. En studie i Bellmans 'Bacchi Orden'" [The growing scene. A study in Bellman's 'Order of Bacchus'] (PDF). Samlaren: Tidskrift för svensk litteraturvetenskaplig forskning (in Swedish) (88): 106–154.
- Bellman Society. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
- ^ a b Hassler & Dahl 1989, p. 284.
- ^ Hensel, Jörg. "Bellman mit Berlina Schnauze". UHR-Verlag. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
Sources
- Bellman, Carl Michael (1790). Fredmans epistlar. Stockholm: By Royal Privilege.
- ISBN 978-3-932759-00-0.
- Hassler, Göran; ISBN 91-7448-742-6. (contains the most popular Epistles and Songs, in Swedish, with sheet music)
- ISBN 91-7736-059-1. (with facsimiles of sheet music from first editions in 1790, 1791)
- OCLC 61881374.
- ISBN 91-554-0849-4.
External links
- Text of Epistle 40 at Bellman.net
- Parallel Swedish / German texts at Anacreon.de
- Performed by Cornelis Vreeswijk at YouTube