“This Country of Ours” is finished
Bet you didn’t think this day would ever come. I sure didn’t. Eight years it took me to record this book! Jeepers.
This Country of Ours, Part 7:
https://librivox.org/this-country-of-ours-part-7-by-henrietta-elizabeth-marshall/
Links to the other 6 parts on that page, or here:
https://librivox.org/group/208
My next LibriVox solo will be Treasure Island, yay! Pirates and parrots and adventure! I’ve got the first four chapters done already. It won’t take eight years this time ;-) Although my beloved but elderly laptop (mid-2011 Macbook Air) is having Serious Issues and it’s going into the shop on Wednesday so I won’t be able to get any recording done for a while. Boo.
Mood: up, down, up, down. Saturday was horrific. Sunday was ok; today was pretty good. Reading lots of Marian Keyes’s Walsh Family novels. Playing Capitals on iPhone. Listening to podcasts. Discovered a band called The Decemberists and I think I might be developing an unhealthy obsession for their song “The Infanta”.
The lyrics tell a story which is incredibly vivid in my mind. A vast slow-moving procession of nobles on elephants and camels. It’s hot, there are bright flags and sidelong glances, trumpet fanfares, cannon salutes, intrigue.
Meanwhile the little princess, the unwitting cause of all the commotion, is dreaming of a peaceful quiet lake.
Here she comes in her palanquin
On the back of an elephant
On a bed made of linen and sequins and silk
All astride on her father’s line
With the king and his concubines
And her nurse with her pitchers of liquors and milk
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infantaAmong five score pachyderm
Each canopied and passengered
Sit the duke and the duchess’ luscious young girls
Within sight of the baronness
Seething spite for this live largesse
By her side sits the baron
Her barrenness barbs her
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infantaA phalanx on camelback
Thirty ranks on a forward tack
Followed close, their shiny bright standards a-waving
While behind in their coach, in fours
Ride the wives of the king of Moors
And the veiled young virgin, the prince’s betrothed
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infantaAnd as she sits upon her place
Her innocence laid on her face
From all atop the parapets blow a multitude of coronets
Melodies rhapsodical and fair
And all our hearts afire
The sky ablaze with cannon fire
We all raise our voices to the air
To the air…And above all this falderal
On a bed made of chaparral
She is laid, a coronal placed on her brow
And the babe, all in slumber dreams
Of a place filled with quiet streams
And the lake where her cradle was pulled from the water
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
I even forgive them their mispronunciation of “infanta”.
If you’re obsessed with Mad Men, you’ll recognize the song from the opening montage in “Maidenform”, s02e06. Which is of course how I discovered it in the first place.
