Evangeline

from Evangeline by Bethan Le Mas

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about

Telling the hundred-year-old story of someone who's dead and cannot correct you is inherently twisted. I go back through time to see Evangeline but already know what will happen - that there will be a second war, what will become of her, her husband, her children - because these are the things that led to my existence. While the rest of the album feels what Evangeline might have felt, and explores how universal those feelings can be, this opening track is both an acknowledgement that I am controlling the narrative and a cry against the inevitable heartaches that are racing along to meet Evangeline - for all I can put myself in her shoes, I cannot stop what's coming, and no matter how much I shout, she cannot hear me.

lyrics

Once there was a woman
I am one eighth part her
Finely measured and divided
Mixed with coal and Jersey butter
This is all fractured framing -
She did not ever know of me
And I do not even know her name,
We shall call her Evangeline

And spy her of an evening
In 1938
Through the memory of a memory
Of a girl who came home late

"Come in, my daughter
The night's grown cold and dark for hours
Closer, my daughter
What kind of trouble are you bringing to this house?
So you've been out dancing
Don't you know there's gonna be a war?
No, you wouldn't know it
You didn't see the one before"

"So Mama, tell me
Did you never dance with a man?
Yes Mama, tell me
Are you grown too old to understand?"

How the young resent the old
And the old, in turn, the young
For one is battle weary
And the other's war's to come
But time is a slippery rope
Without affixèd ends
Who says where the sun ceases setting
And begins, once more, to ascend?

So I fall (fall with me)
Through the bounds of a century
Past my grandmother to her mother
Pseudo Evangeline
The cause is affecting
The effects are yet unseen
The trenches are refilled
The land returned to green
The babes are all unborn
And some are unconceived
And the war is called the Great War
For worse cannot be foreseen

Yet all this is to happen
For my presence makes it so
Even when the rope is slipperiest
You cannot dare let go

Unhide the marriage certificate
With its damning date!
(Tell her you lied)
Tell your daughter
You too once came home late!
(Do right)
Tell her how you adored her
When she was newly born!
(By what he left behind)
Tell her how to love
A man that's lost at war!

But if I can put words to her
She cannot hear me
That is my share of the rope
Hers is mortality

So fall, fall with me
To she we call Evangeline
And we'll meet her in the burning
Of 1917

credits

from Evangeline, released June 5, 2020
Written by Bethan le Masurier.
Vocals, piano, harp, cello and guitar performed by Bethan le Masurier. Drums performed by Ben Hughes.
Produced by Bethan le Masurier.

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about

Bethan Le Mas image

Bethan Le Mas England, UK

I am a British singer-songwriter, playing piano, guitar, cello,Celtic harp, ukulele, and whatever else I can get my hands on. Livestreaming on twitch.tv/cornyears

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