#Octaver 25 2016: the Skies - Moon Cradle

This is a gorgeous setting of a poem by Irish poet Padraic Collum. The artist is Loreena McKennitt, and the song can be found on her third album Parallel Dreams. Her voice is lovely, but she has a few vocal mannerisms which occasionally make her difficult to understand, so I'll provide the words here for anyone who may be interested. It's a beautiful poem. I once sang a setting of one of Collum's poems myself--O Men From the Fields--and I've come to greatly respect him as a poet.

Moon Cradle

Moon crale's rocking and rocking where a cloud and a cloud go by. Silently rocking and rocking: the moon cradle out in the sky. Then comes the man with the hazel and the folding stars in the rack. Night's a good herd to the cattle; he sings, she brings all things back. But the bondwoman down by the boorie sings with a heart gone wild how a hundred rivers are growing between herself and her child. The geese, even they trudge homeward that have their wings and the waste. Let your thoughts be on night the herder and be quiet for a space. Moon cradle's rocking and rocking where a cloud and a cloud go by. Silently rocking and rocking, the moon cradle out in the sky. The snipe, they are crying, crying: liadine, liadine, liadine! Where no tracks on the bog they are flying; a lonely dream will be mine. #Celtic #Collum #LoreenaMcKennitt #music #Octaver