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Father K. remembers the case of a mother who had lost a young child and had the
feeling of its presence each time she looked at its photo album. This particular faci led to
the recognition of more "wilncsses" in a bunch of sentimental songs J collected in Tilting.
These songs mention visions, dreams, pictures or photographs of a beloved person, either
deceased or losl track of, and bring up the feeling of his/her "presence" 10 the narrratQr.
Much of the pathos of these songs hinges on the narrator's confusion of past and present.
illusion and reality, the absence and "presence" of the loved onc. The following piece is a
case in point:
"If those lips could only speak"!
choms: If those lips could only speak,
If those eyes could only see,
If those beatiful golden tresses were here in reality,
Could I take your hand as I did when you took my name,
For 'I was only a beautiful picture in a beautiful frame.
I. He stood in a beautiful n1.1nsion
Surrounded by riches untold,
And he gazed at a beautiful picture
That hung in a frame of gold.
'T was a picture of a lady
So beautiful, young and fair;
To this beautiful lifelike vision
He mumlured in sad despair.
2. He stood there and gazed on that picture
And slumbering forgetting pain,
For there in that mansion in fancy
She stood by his side again.
His lips softly munnured
The name of his once sweet bride,
And with his eyes fixed on that picutre
He woke from his dream and cried.
Following is a list of excerpts from other songs of the Tilting repertoire including Ihe motif:
IMU FLA 87-159/CI0633.
2MUNFLA 87-159/C1064S.
31\1UNFLA 87-159/CI06S3.
He's dreaming of the days of long ago
And in fancy he is roaming with his sweetheafl.
("When the harvest days are over, Jessie dear"2)
In all my dreams I seem to hear her sweet voice.
("Moonlight in Mayo"])