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| Songwriter Loreena McKennitt. |
I'm sure we could produce a movie or series without Loreena McKennitt, but why the hell would we want to? Consider, among countless others, "Night Ride Across the Caucusus" used in the 1998 movie, "Soldier". "The Mummers Dance" was used in "The Legacy" television series. The National Film Board of Canada incorporated "Tango to Evora" in their documentary "The Burning Times" about early European witch trials. From Wikipedia:
Her music appeared in the movies The Santa Clause, Soldier, Jade, Holy Man, The Mists of Avalon and Tinkerbell; and in the television series Roar, Due South, and Full Circle (Women and Spirituality).
We're talking about a grand slam of song talents here: a top ten lyricist (when she writes her own), a premier composer and musician, and a signficant voice. Before you dismiss the praise heaped on McKennitt as hype/hyperbole, click on some of her early albums and let them convince you: "The Visit", "The Book of Secrets", "The Mask and the Mirror" and, to stretch a point, "Parallel Dreams".
Today is Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt's birthday. Born on February 17th, 1957, in Morden, Manitoba, Loreena's crippling shyness did not prevent her from achieving fame before that horrible day in July, 1998, when her fiancé, brother and friend died in a boating accident on Georgian Bay. We're told that she refused to cancel a command appearance shortly after that tragedy. Halfway through a song that had been inspired by her intended, McKennitt broke down. The music stopped. The lights went out. After long minutes of darkness, the audience prepared to leave. Suddenly, the lights came on and Loreena took up where she left off. The crowd erupted into the longest standing ovation in memory.
The next time logging concerns try to convince you that old growth fauna is a renewable resource (WTF?) that won't be missed, show people this mournful account of oak clearcut more than 350 years ago. "Bonny Portmore", from McKennitt's "The Visit" album, is an elegy for a forest in Northern Ireland, cleared in 1664 while rebuilding a castle there. Apparently, the land was acquired because the down-in-their-luck O'Neill's of Ballinderry had to sell the land to Lord ConWay (no relation to Trump Whisperer, Kellyanne). There are many different versions, including those that personify the trees as a lost lover, all of which choose from a number of extra verses.
This version is sung by Enya:
This is from Highlander III:
On some lyric sources authorship credits are extended to "Dp, Carsten Heusmann, Jan-Eric Kohrs, Michael Soltau, Frank Peterson". At the very least, this arrangement smacks of McKennitt, through and through.
Lyrics:
O bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see
Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree
For it stood on your shore for many's the long day
Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away.
O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.
All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying, "Where will we shelter or shall we sleep?"
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down
And the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground.
O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the Lords of Old England would not purchase Portmore.
There are far worse ways to spend time than watching Loreena's biographical documentary "No Journey's End".
Links:
Index of Titles
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