Jack-A-Roe, or, To See Ten Thousand Fall |
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This is just about an old song that keeps playing in my mind … It dates back to the 18th century, and has become quite popular in the late 20th. It is best known under the title Jackaroe or Jack-A-Roe, Joan Baez has recorded it, so has Bob Dylan, so have the Grateful Dead, and many others. The story is told sketchily, with large gaps in it. In a prose text, you wouldn’t get away with this, but in a song, in poetry, the listener or reader can fill these gaps in. It is about a girl, daughter of a “wealthy merchant,” who has “sweethearts a-plenty” and “of high degree,” but she only loves Jack the sailor. (Joan Baez’s version leaves out the part where her father forbids her to see him). Anyway, he leaves — “Now Jackie’s gone a-sailing with trouble on his mind, to leave his native country and his darling girl behind.” She decides to follow him — he has gone to fight in a war, and to be able to find him, she has to enlist, and for this she has to disguise herself as a man. Boarding a vessel she gives her name as Jack-A-Roe (in older versions, Jack Monroe), but her disguise is questioned: “Your waist is light and slender, your fingers are neat and small, Your cheeks too red and rosy to face the cannonball” — to which she replies, “I know my waist is slender, my fingers are neat and small, But it would not make me tremble to see ten thousand fall.” And she means it. By the time she arrives the war is “soon over,” and she goes looking for her beloved — “And among the dead and dying her darling boy she found.” She picks him up in her arms, carries him to the town, calls for a physician to heal his wounds, he is healed, and they get married. Here is Joan Baez’s version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lnJSW-OUyM It is fascinating how this song pulverizes gender stereotypes — she risks her life to go looking for him, she carries him to safety in her arms, and this is told as something quite natural for her to do — but there are two more aspects of this song that I want to mention: First, that it would not make her tremble to see ten thousand fall — callous words not expected from a young girl in a love story — but if seeing thousands fall, or the prospect of seeing them fall, would have made her tremble, she would not have been able to do what she did, she would not have been able to save her lover. Not to tremble at that sight is an essential part of her strength. And the other thing: it must have taken time to find her lover among the dead and dying. If she had not spent that time for her search, if in this search she had not walked past or stepped over the dying, she might not have saved this one, but she might have saved two, or five, or ten others? But their dying does not make her tremble, nor does it distract her from her quest — she sacrifices them to the hope, to the slim chance, of finding her lover and saving him. But, could anyone possibly blame her for that? If we feel no empathy for strangers we are sociopaths, but how much empathy, depending on the situation, can be too much? Could we want anyone to put the lives of strangers (how many strangers?) above that of a single loved one? Would we want to live in a world where that would be expected from the girl in our song? From anyone? Can we ponder this question without it making us tremble? This is not an argument for cynically accepting “collateral damages” of violent acts we deem necessary or justified, for our own benefit or for some greater good. It is about acknowledging that there are limits to what we can feel, and to what we can do, and that we cannot feel equally for everyone. And also, that we feel what we feel, not what we are told to feel. But whatever we feel, we still have to choose what we do. |
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(05/2023) |