timeless moods

Driving along the open road through the heartland of South Kildare.
Rain on the wind.
The fields grey and muddy.
My mood has not been of the best.
Suddenly a Joan Baez song bursts forth from my radio.
It is called: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," and appears to focus on matters taking place a hundred and fifty years ago during the American Civil War.
And lo!
Everything is golden.
For this is no ordinary song.
This song is that rare breed.
A glorious gem.
A song so bad it's good.
And let's be clear.
Joan Baez has a sweet voice.
Great suffering sagotash she has a gorgeous voice.
Anything she sings is imbued with a strange high mystical resonance.
Like great poetry.
Or an article about Arab Muslim terror on The Heelers Diaries.
The present song is an amazing listening experience.
It's almost surrealistic.
Rich swelling melody.
Sweet sensual voiced Joanie.
Impossibly ridiculous lyrics.
As I'm driving, I listen intently.
Yes, it's definitely about the Civil War.
As far as I can make out the chorus goes something like this:

"The night they drove old Dixie down,
Well all the bells were ringing.
The night they drove old Dixie down,
And all the people were singing.
They were singing nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye..."

Yup folks.
That many nyes.
These lyrics conjured up a most remarkable image to me.
The Union army is closing in on Dixie.
They're shelling the town to the ground.
People flood the streets.
And what do they say?
They say nothing.
Instead they sing.
They sing: "Nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie, nie..."
That's fourteen nyes.
What a thing to sing as your town burns down.
I'm telling you my noble friends, this is the sort of lyric that makes me feel good about life again.
As Joan Baez sings, my mind flies back through the years.
I am remembering being in Fourth Class at Kilcullen Boys National School where the venerable old school master Maurice O'Mahoney is teaching us to sing something similar.
We are singing:

"Ha, ha, ha,
Hee, hee, hee,
What a sight to see,
Me and my lolly, lolly, lolly, lolly, lolly, lolly, lolly, lolly, lolly, lollipop tree."

Well I reckon that little ditty helped get me the Leaving Cert. (Ireland's standardised examination for secondary level students.)
I'm definitely going to sing it if anyone ever shells Kilcullen to the ground.
Nine lollies by the way before you reach the one that makes any sense.

Back in the present day Joan Baez is still singing her heart out.
The song takes a break from the nyes to make a heartrending appeal to the listeners' working class sensibilities.
Here's what she's singing in verse two:

"Well my name is Vergil,
And I'm a working man.
Like my brother before me
I took a rebel stand..."

No indeed.
No one could understand this.
Or believe it even.
Joan Baez is and always was a quintessentially beautiful Hispanic woman.
At no time in her life, and by no stretch of the imagination, could anyone accept that she was ever called Vergil, or that she was ever a working man, or that she ever played a significant part on the Confederate side in the American Civil War.
Nye, nye and thrice nye, as we do say in the trade.

Okay, okay.
It's a great song.
Whatever else I've said it's always going to be great.
Joan Baez can sing anything and make it epic.
But it's also one of the most ridiculous songs in the history of songs.
And in the history of ridiculousness if it comes to that.
It most assuredly deserves a place in our pantheon of songs so bad they're good.
Right up there alongside Where Do You Go To My Lovely, McArthur Park, The Highwayman, and that Robert Plant thing where he whines on about carpenters and ladies.