Danny Boy

I have three, two-hour, VHS tapes of "Gloria's Greatest Hits."  (Or, I did, until Everlasting Studios overwrote the first one.)

Apparently, I also started a fourth.  There are only five songs on it.  There are two songs, including "O Holy Night," that Leanne and Gloria did for West Vancouver Baptist Church one Christmas.  There is also Gloria singing "Let My People Go," with Trevor on piano, as he is learning to play the piece.

There are also two songs from a Lavender Festival.  The Lavender Festival wasn't Gloria's favorite.  Carol liked it, and Gloria sang for her.  But Gloria always felt better when it was religious music in church.  She didn't feel great about just singing popular songs for some kind of party setting.

This is probably the last time that Gloria is singing at the Lavender Festival.  There is a fragment of "Danny Boy."  It's the last (second) verse of the song.  It's the only time that I have ever heard someone sing "Danny Boy" without wanting to ridicule the performance.  "Danny Boy," as a song, is often so overblown with maudlin sentimentality that the song itself, and even the name, has become kind of a shorthand for maudlin sentimentality in song.  (This isn't aided by the ambiguity of the words.  Is the song sung by a lover?  A parent?  Is it about going off to war?  Or the diaspora?)  But, as I say, this is the last verse of "Danny Boy" that is on the tape.  And, of course, it is a woman, foreseeing her eventual death, and her lover mourning at her grave.  So, I cannot, of course, ridicule that: not now that Gloria is dead and I am mourning her.