I was toying with the idea to pick any tune that is too “loud” or to “extreme” to play on the family stereo, but that’s to easy. As always it came down to two tunes that I enjoy best by myself. One because it sucks a lot of energy out of me and the other one just because I want to enjoy it in full by myself. I chose the latter, let me revisit the former in a later challenge and keep it a secret for now.

The tale of the forgotten tune

The tune I’ve chosen is the old Appalachian folk tune Pretty Saro performed by Tatiana Hargreaves. I have no memory of how I found this song, but I do remember that I loved it instantly.



At first, I thought it was a murder ballad and the sharp contrast of the protagonist of the tune and Tatiana intrigued me a lot. I kept it like that for a long time, a tale of longing for a lost girl, that he himself had killed. I now know that it’s indeed a longing for a loved one, but it’s not murder, more like leaving a loved one behind and taking the long journey from England to America. There is a lot of variations of this tune, both in lyrics and music and traditionally it is sung in a free style and that’s probably why there is so much variation. It is said that it’s an old English folk tune that got lost and then got rediscovered in the Appalachians going from generation to generation in an oral tradition, but from my point of view it was never lost, was it? It was maybe lost to the greater audience but it was never lost or forgotten. I find it amusing that the tune itself took the same journey that the protagonist did in the tune – Inception warning!

It has and still works like a reset tune for me, just like bread and water can be used to reset your taste buds and how coffee is used to reset your smell, I use this tune as a reset of the music in my head.

Why do I love it so much and why do I like it when I’m alone? It’s not like I think of the great story behind the tune or how wonderful it is that this tune survived in the mountains nor how that makes it part of something bigger than Tatiana, me and the current world – every time I listen to it, but a small portion of that greatness floats around in the back of my head and I want to keep that moment uninterrupted and just dream myself away. What is it that makes me love it, besides the excellent performance by Hargreaves and her sincere expression one might ask? I found a wonderful quote by Jean Ritchie, where she puts into words exactly how I feel about Pretty Saro:

“When a person hears this song for the first time, he usually thinks, if he notices it at all, ‘What a commonplace tune, and what trite words.’ ‘Pretty Saro’ is just that, there’s no denying. All the same, the scoffer will soon find himself humming that commonplace tune and he will also discover that those trite words will not leave his mind and heart. It is one of the simplest, loveliest songs ever sung. We especially like to sing this one on the porch, along the edges of dark, with all the high and low voices filling in the harmonies.”

I can not end this text without giving you the link to a true gem. Alan Lomax (he will come up again in this blog) has recorded, on video, an aged Cas Wallin singing this tune for his family on a porch in North Carolina, back in ‘82. It is lovely and you must watch it! Enjoy one of the simplest, loveliest songs ever sung, this scoffer will certainly do just that.