Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd ("Like a Shepherdess, festively dressed"), is a song by the Swedish poet and performer

Carl Michael Bellman Carl Michael Bellman (; 4 February 1740 – 11 February 1795) was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as well ...

from his 1790 collection, ''

Fredman's Epistles ''Fredmans epistlar'' (English: ''Fredman's Epistles'') is a collection of 82 poems set to music by Carl Michael Bellman, a major figure in Swedish 18th century song. Though first published in 1790, it was created over a period of twenty years ...

'', where it is No. 80. The Epistle is subtitled "Angående Ulla Winblads Lustresa til Första Torpet, utom Kattrumps Tullen" (Concerning

Ulla Winblad Ulla Winblad was a semi-fictional character in many of Carl Michael Bellman's musical works. She is at once an idealised rococo goddess and a tavern prostitute, and a key figure in Bellman's songs of ''Fredman's Epistles''. The character was part ...

's pleasure-trip to Första Torpet, outside Kattrump Tollgate). It is a

pastorale Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood. In Baroque music, a pastorale is a movement of a melody in thirds over a drone bass, recalling the Christmas music of ''pifferari'', players of the traditi ...

, starting with a near-paraphrase of

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (; 1 November 1636 – 13 March 1711), often known simply as Boileau (, ), was a French poet and critic. He did much to reform the prevailing form of French poetry, in the same way that Blaise Pascal did to reform the ...

's French guide to the construction of pastoral verse. That doesn't prevent the supposed shepherd and shepherdess from falling into bed drunk at the end of the song. It has been described as lovelier in Swedish than in Boileau's original French. The epistle's humorous depiction of the human condition has been praised by critics.

Context

Song

Music and verse form

Epistle 80 of ''

'' is dedicated to the poet and founder member of the

Swedish Academy The Swedish Academy ( sv, Svenska Akademien), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III of Sweden, Gustav III, is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish lang ...

Johan Henric Kellgren Johan Henrik Kellgren (1 December 1751 – 20 April 1795) was a Swedish poet and critic. Biography He was born at Floby in Västergötland (now part of Falköping Municipality, Västra Götaland County). He studied at the Royal Academy of Turku, ...

. The song has six

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...

s, each of 8 lines. The

rhyming pattern A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB r ...

is ABAB-CCDD. The scholar of Swedish literature

Lars Lönnroth Lars Lönnroth (born 4 June 1935) is a Swedish literary scholar. He was born in Gothenburg to Erik Lönnroth and Ebba Lagercrantz. His academic career includes professorships at the University of California Berkeley, University of Aalborg and ...

states that the song form of the Epistle is a

Siciliana The siciliana or siciliano (also known as the sicilienne or the ciciliano) is a musical style or genre often included as a movement within larger pieces of music starting in the Baroque period. It is in a slow or time with lilting rhythms, ...

, a musical pastoral piece. The music is in time and is marked

. The source melody is unknown.

Lyrics

The song, written in 1789 or 1790, starts with a near-

paraphrase A paraphrase () is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''. History Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral tra ...

of the French poet and critic

's classic 1674 ''L'Art Poetique'', a guide on the construction of pastoral verse: The Epistle's tone soon departs from Boileau, as the nymph of verse 2 is a prostitute. Furthermore, a horse appears as a symbol of erotic energy, as it does in Epistles 70 (" Movitz vik mössan högt öfver öra") and 71 (" Ulla! min Ulla! säj får jag dig bjuda"), and this is juxtaposed with a mention of Ulla Winblad. However, Bellman displays a fine feeling for nature in the Epistle.

Reception and legacy

Bellman's biographer

Paul Britten Austin Paul Britten Austin (5 April 1922 – 25 July 2005) was an English author, translator, broadcaster, administrator, and scholar of Swedish literature. He is known in particular for his translations of and books on the Swedish musician, si ...

describes the song "with its almost religious invocation of a shepherdess, 'clad for some solemn feast'" as "more lovely in Swedish" than in Boileau's French. He comments that in the Epistle, Bellman depicts the countryside just north of

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

like a

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

painting, with "Mark how between meadows all awry/the Cot to the lake descends... Where farmer heavy on staggering wheel/Makes haste to his hearth and evening meal". However, he finds "quintessentially Swedish" the mood of high summer, with a swallow flying into the room, the cock crowing outside, and the bell of the village church ringing steadily. Everything is perfectly innocent until the last verse, when "''Ulla'', flat in the face of all Boileau-esque canons of what is permitted in a pastoral and forgetting all new-found respectability, falls into bed with her cavalier, both having drunk too much." Lönnroth writes that Bellman, who had begun to observe the human condition with nature's help in earlier Epistles, brought the approach to perfection with Epistles 71 and 80. He notes that the description of the rural environment and Ulla Winblad's way of dressing both respond to the classical ideal of tasteful simplicity without frills. The song perfectly fits Boileau's pastoral idyll, until the last two verses when the "shepherd" and his "shepherdess" throw aside their conventional masks and reveal themselves as "drunk, untidy, and not specially well-brought-up".

Carina Burman Carina Burman (born 1960) is a Swedish novelist and literature scholar. Her research has been focused on Swedish 18th and 19th century literature. She completed her Ph.D. in literature in Uppsala in 1988 with a dissertation on the Gustavian write ...

comments in her biography of Bellman that Epistle 80 is one of six or seven new songs, in her view more classical in tone and better suited to print than Bellman's more strident Baroque verse of the 1770s. The Epistle has been translated into English by Eva Toller. It appears on the 1969 studio album '' Fred sjunger Bellman'' by the Bellman interpreter

Fred Åkerström Fred Åkerström (27 January 1937 – 9 August 1985) was a Swedish folk guitarist and singer particularly noted for his interpretations of Carl Michael Bellman's music, and his own work of the typically Swedish song segment named ''visa''. These ...

, re-released on CD in 1990, and on

Mikael Samuelsson Karl Mikael Samuelsson (born 23 December 1976) is a Swedish former professional ice hockey right winger. Samuelsson began his career in Sweden, starting with small town team IFK Mariefred, followed by Södertälje SK as a junior in 1994. He wen ...

's 1990 ''Sjunger Fredmans Epistlar''.

References

Sources

* * * * * (contains the most popular Epistles and Songs, with sheet music) * (with facsimiles of sheet music from first editions in 1790, 1791) * * *

External links

Text of Epistle 80
on Bellman.net
Text of Boileau's ''Telle qu'une bergere''
on Paradis des albatros {{DEFAULTSORT:Liksom en Herdinna, hogtids kladd 1790 compositions Swedish songs Fredmans epistlar