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While There's Breath...  by Lindelea

While There’s Breath...

Whence Cometh This Story?

It might have something to do with hearing someone sing “Irene, Good Night” recently, which made it run in my head for a few days, and then when we had a fire going on the hearth I thought back to a camping trip, where a counsellor named Bruce told us a story he’d read earlier that summer—well, it was a book, really, later made into a movie—that had made a great impression on him. He must have told the story well, for though I’ve not yet seen the movie or read the book, parts of the story still remain vivid in my imagination.

The book was called Sometimes a Great Notion, written by Ken Kesey. (Yes, that Ken Kesey, the one who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.) I looked it up just now, and from the reviews it must be a powerful book indeed. I’ve put it on my summer reading list, as a matter of fact, though I hear it’s some 600 pages. Ah, well, Lord of the Rings is longer and I made it all the way through.

Music and lyrics by Huddie Ledbetter and John Lomax, 1950

(Chorus)
Irene, good night; Irene, good night.
Good night, Irene; Good night, Irene;
I'll see you in my dreams.

Last Saturday night, I got married,
Me and my wife settled down
Now me and my wife are parted,
I'm gonna take another stroll downtown.

Sometimes I live in the country,
sometimes I live in town,
Sometimes I take a great notion,
To jump into the river and drown.

I love Irene, God knows I do,
I'll love her till the seas run dry
But if Irene should turn me down,
I'd take the morphine and die.

Stop rambling, stop your gambling;
Stop staying out late at night,
Go home to your wife and your family
Stay there by your fireside bright.

I found a midi file at this location:
http://www.rienzihills.com/SING/goodnightirene.htm

It’s a mournful song, indeed, and a haunting one. No wonder I’ve been singing it on and off the past few days.

But then, it also has something to do with “Runaway”, a story I wrote, and scrapped, and that JoDancingtree picked up off the rubbish pile and rescued. She breathed life back into the story, enabling me to stitch up its wounds and finish it.

In “Runaway”, Thain Peregrin has a bad scare in which his son disappears and an apparent conspiracy between his most trusted hobbits is unearthed. Did I say “apparent”? Well, the conspiracy was real, but it wasn’t that the hobbits were in league with ruffians, more that they were trying to prevent a scandal precipitated by the son of the Thain taking it into his head to run away.

In the story, one or more of Pippin’s advisors allow their imaginations to run away with them, and Pippin and Merry allow their emotions to run away with them, and... but let us not belabour the title of the story. In any event, a great wrong is very nearly perpetrated, and when the dust settles new trust has to be built between Pippin and the hobbits who are nearest him, including Ferdibrand. The trust is fragile, but you can see the potential for growth by the end of the story.

A reader commented (was it you, FantasyFan? It has been so long, and I’ve lost the note) that it might be good to see Ferdi and Pippin in a situation where Ferdi must trust his cousin, and Pippin can prove the oath he took to be as loyal to the hobbits who serve him as they are to him.

And so we have this story, which I fear does much too closely resemble “In the Greening of the Year” for my comfort, but sometimes things work out that way. What you will read here is how the story wrote itself out, and hopefully it is not so terribly repetitious that you turn away and mutter that you already know what’s going to happen. Really, you don’t...





        

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