By Bobby Neal Winters
I’ve been into a pair of books that seem to have a common theme. One of these is The Big Book of Irish Songs for Tin Whistles by Thomas Balinger. The other one is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. I’m going to have to take a bit of time to connect these two.
The Big Book (rather than retype the whole thing I will call it that) is full of Irish songs that are compatible with the standard D penny whistle which means I have a shot at playing them, and I’ve had some good luck in that area. But in learning these Irish songs, I’ve made a discovery. They are like those detective mysteries we like: You don’t want to get attached to the first people who you meet because they aren’t going to be around long.
The song Molly Malone is a good example of this. You meet Molly Malone who sells fish. She’s pretty; she’s industrious. You learn her parents sold fish too, family tradition and all that. At the beginning of the third verse–only two minutes into the song–she is dead. By the end of that verse she’s a ghost, attempting to sell fish in the streets of Dublin, presumably for all eternity.
Not happy.
The songs speak a lot about love gone wrong, sickness, death, and sadness because they were written in reflection of life. We view this world through a veil of tears, the Irish more so than most. Well, if they don’t have more sadness than most, they are much better at sharing it and getting it out of their system. They sing the sad songs; they cry; they feel better for the crying.
Okay.
So what do these songs from The Big Book have to do with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which I will refer to as HP & TDH).
HP and THD is about death. It’s right there in the title, plain for the world to see.
Those of you who’ve not read the book, take this as a spoiler warning.
HP and THD is full of Death. Hedwig, Harry’s owl, dies almost right away. Dobby, his house elf friend, dies. It doesn’t end there. The body count goes up through the whole book.
Why is that?
It’s that way because it reflects reality.
This sounds strange when talking about a book that is based in a world where magic is real. There are Wizards, Witches, Werewolves, Elves, Trolls, Dragons, Centaurs, and giants. Name an imaginary creature no matter how ridiculous, and J. K. Rowling has found a place for it. Yet, within the artistically-crafted imaginary world she has created, she has preserved what is most real: Death.
Death is out there in the world waiting for us from the moment we cry out our first breath.
We don’t like to talk about it. It’s morbid. Yet we have to be reminded that one day we are going to die or we will put off thinking about it until it’s too late.
What do I mean too late?
The phrase “too late” seems to imply that if we act soon enough we can change something. Can we change the fact that we are going to die?
Nope.
As Guy Clark said in Desparados Waiting for a Train, “Come on, Jack, that son of a bitch is coming.” (I wonder if Guy Clark had Irish heritage?)
We can’t change the fact that we are going to die, but we can change the character of the lives we live on the way to meet Death.
I remember many-a sermon with that as its theme.
It’s somewhat ironic that the Harry Potter books had so much resistance from conservative/fundamentalist Christians. That might be just as well. There are people who read the Harry Potter books perhaps just to spite the fundamentalists who nevertheless got a dose of good values along the way.
Good people die and often for no good reason. We have to grieve, but we have to continue living as well. We view this world through a veil of tears, and we live in hope there will be comfort in the next.
In the meantime, we can sing sad songs, cry, and feel better for the crying.
Just like the Irish.
Bobby Winters grew up near Harden City, Oklahoma. He teaches mathematics and computer science, does woodworking, and blogs at okieinexile.com. He invites you to visit the blog and to subscribe.
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