Doing It Wrong

I asked my friend Lilie to compose a song for our province’s largesse presentation to their Eastern Majesties, for which we parade from our Østgarðr encampment at Pennsic to the East Kingdom royal encampment, singing as we march.  Her contrafact (filk) to the tune of We be Soldiers is delightful.

In preparing for the presentation, I discovered that the melody with which I was most familiar is not the original melody, but is instead an interpretation by Curtis & Loretta, who learned it from a Renaissance band,  possibly after an arrangement by William Chappell.  You can go down this rabbit hole yourself — there is much interesting information out there.  I began here:  http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-Soldiers3.html

Desirous of returning to the original melody, I turned to Greg Lindahl’s helpful scan of Ravenscroft’s Deuteromelia, and typeset Thomas Ravenscroft’s original harmonization with my own interpretation, so we can practice beforehand.

We be Soldiers three