Anthology of Chalk and Cheese (translations)

By Richard Mure Exelby

A compilation of various songs translated to English from various languages, mainly Norwegian, but also some Swedish, French, Croatian and Serbian, plus, plus. Some translations to Norwegian are also included. Most of the songs are contemporary Christian or traditional. Links to sheet music or videos are provided where possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Mure Exelby
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9788269124446

Richard Mure Exelby

Briter bosatt i Norge i 47 år, har undervist på videregående skole i 35 av disse årene, som har medvirket i ulike ungdomssammenheng, kor o.l. B.A i Scandinavian Studies og Cand Philol i Kristendom.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Foreword

The knight in Chess

Bishop, castle, queen or king

I like the knight more than anything

He can get you in check and your queen in one go

He’s better than any player I know

Bishop, castle, queen or king

I like the knight more than anything

This little piece of doggerel is the real start of this book. Each year at Nevill Secondary Modern, which I went to from 1960 to 1966, there would be a poetry competition for each Year or Form. ¹ I was in the First Year, and entered this poem (which we were encouraged to write during the English lesson,) in competition with the hundred-and-twenty-odd other First Years, - and I won the prize for my year! Neither I, nor anyone else was expecting it.

Next year, encouraged by my success, I entered a new poem, and again won first prize. A hat trick followed in the Third Year: yet again I won the prize for the best entry, although I still remember a brilliant one by Wilson better than I do mine. It was about waking up and looking out the window to find there had been a fall of snow.

"Nobody seems to be getting up,

-And I will follow their example."

The Fourth Year was beginning to get like déjà vu: first prize once more. Then I stayed on for the Fifth Year to take O-levels and predictably won the Fifth Year prize, as well.

The Sixth Year was different. There were only a handful of us, and we were included with Fifth Year competitors. This time, Julie Lyne was awarded first prize, and I came second. One indirect consequence was I became aware she was a Christian, and knowing this set me off on a path that three years later led me to Christ; but that is another story.

In the meantime I was taking A-level English. I had to read poets like Byron and Shakespeare and Milton, so my cultural reservoir of poetic resources was gradually filling….

I have written a few poems besides those for the competition, and a couple are here in this collection, but I was never really a poet as such. I had no overriding urge to express myself in poetry, despite all that encouragement, and a good many other things preoccupied me. ² Modern poetry, in any case, was anything but appealing to the man in the street. Poems at that time, if they were to be considered serious, were supposed to be obscure, not rhyme, preferably use tabu words and otherwise be trendy and incomprehensible; for ever since the 1920s, traditional poetic form was considered unintellectual and beneath the dignity of a good poet; if you had to ask what the poem meant, it was a sign that you were ignorant. Ordinary people felt mocked and looked down on by elitists. ³ As a consequence poetry as an art-form got itself painted up in a corner, divorced from everyday life and irrelevant. ⁴ (Behind the Iron-Curtain, however, the opposite happened, —poetry avoided censorship more easily.)

However, without people even realising it, poetry was becoming more important to everyday life than ever: in the shape of pop-songs. The lyre may have been swopped for the electric guitar, but lyric poetry ⁵ flooded the airwaves; and some of it was nothing like as superficial as the industry plugging it.

Carole King and Gerry Goffin ⁶, the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel were making their clear-cutting mini-portraits of everyday life through their songs, Alan and Marylin Bergman were setting the Windmills of our Mind a-going while the Folk-Song revival with figures like Joan Baez conjured up dramas on the Banks of the Ohio and Dylan told us the answer was Blowing in the wind. ⁷ Song-lyrics were clearly a way of saying things in a way that hit home: The surge of youth-culture in the 1960s and the hippie movement that followed would be hard to imagine without the protest-songs firing up the movement.

Then in 1969, I, who had been an atheist from the age of six, encountered the Lord and became a Christian. Up til then singing had had limited appeal for me, but soon I was also hearing and appreciating lyric poetry in the guise of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, including all those songs from Assembly ⁸ that I’d routinely closed my mind to. I began to appreciate their message and even be helped by them.

On coming to Norway in 1973, I soon became involved in Agape Youth Choir at Storetveit Church, singing modern songs at Gospel Nights and the like. Many of these songs were unknown in an English-speaking setting, and in fact a sight more contemporary and appealing than those you would normally hear in Britain at the time. I saw how helpful they might be back in Britain if only they’d been in English.

Then I remembered all those poetry prizes I had won, and I prayed over whether this talent could be put to use for the Lord.

I tried my hand at Salige Stund uten like and O Jesus Du som Fyller alt i Alle and got nowhere at the time. In both cases the first lines, as with so many other songs, are so poetic, apt and expressive, that you feel totally stumped right at the outset, vainly trying to think of something measuring up to the original.

However, I was asked to accompany someone to the very first performance of John Steffensen’s Sangen om Via Dolorosa. Its potency went straight to my heart, and after the performance, I asked him if he would allow me to translate it. He gave his permission, and I went home. By the time I got there, however, I was getting cold feet. Surely, I had too many other things on my plate, as I’d just started at the University of Bergen? So I prayed about it and asked the Lord if I should withdraw my offer. Next thing, my eyes opened and I saw the following words in Daily Light lying open in front of me:

Be strong, and work, for I am with you says the Lord, and my Spirit remains among you.

(Haggai 2, verse 4 & 5)

All the rest is history. I spent over a year on translating Via Dolorosa, and later tried other songs. ⁹ What you see here is the result of nigh on fifty years of translating off and on as the mood has taken me. The mix over the years is pretty varied; some of the genres are as unlike each other as chalk and cheese, hence the name of this anthology.

I have only actually heard a handful of my translations sung. Most I have only sung to myself, which isn’t quite the same thing. According to a vague rumour, some have been used without anybody thinking I might like to know, and Via Dolorosa was performed once in English by Leikanger Ten-sing. However, they forgot to record it for me, so I never heard the result.

How to pass on the translations to their intended users is a whole chapter in itself. If you do not have someone to help you, you are stumped. Musicians and singers are usually preoccupied with their own projects so finding any interested happens once in a blue moon, and the translation stays in a stack of papers and remains silent.

An alternative is to find some production of the original song on Youtube and text it, which is how I was able to share the English version of The Ballad of Via Dolorosa. This paved the way for the other videos. The other songs could be problematic: you are supposed to find the copyright-holders and ask permission before using their tracks, and the music industry is a total quagmire in that respect, jealously guarding and hedging round every cent of potential income. Luckily, search-engines on Youtube these days generally re-direct their money back to the owners, so it’s less of a problem than it used to be. ¹⁰

All the translations are singable once you realise how to fit them to the tune. When you read them on paper, therefore, please remember that a song-text that voices never share is like a glove