Marian

[paint it black]

I thought it was because that girl's boyfriend/husband might be in the crowd.

That's what I'd heard too.

possibly on page one of this thread

[markfiend]

Possibly...

D'oh!

[Red_Kola]

I thought it was because that girl's boyfriend/husband might be in the crowd.

So he got over the drowning then?

[Guedzilla]

Ok, coming almost 2 years too late, there's something else here...

I was just reading through http://www.myheartland.co.uk/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0 , and something ringed a bell...

I've read that "Marian" was a piece of music/ style of music played by the band on the deck of The Titanic as the ship went down. If you watch the (insert personal opinion) movie Titanic, somebody mentions this. The lyrics to Marian make an awful lot of sense if this is related...

I believe "First And Last And Always" was a phrase used during Prohibition as a kind "Yeah, right" to any questions as to whether or not you'd consumed alcohol. I've no where it comes from, or its significance to the rest of the lyrics though...

food for thought

One strange thing came to my mind. One night, 9 years ago, I tippled with my friends at my home and listened to Sisters. Suddenly one of them asked: "What the f*** is that?" It was "Marian". The friend of mine, who asked it was an archaeology student, he had been on excavations on one Estonian island Saaremaa which lies in the Baltic sea, it's a place were men had been sailors since vikings era. My friend told that in this island, while they boozed with local drunkards, those men used to tootle accordion and sing a primitive song which had only 4 words "Miks jätsid mind, Mariaa-aa-naa?", i. e. "Why did you left me, Mariaa-aa-naa?" and the melody... was the same... "Marian"
It's quite impossible that those men have ever heard The Sisters Of Mercy. At first I thought, maybe it was an old sailors tune, then I start to believe my friend was just so drunken that mixed up everyhting... Now, reading the above post, I recall it again...

My mother teaches german language and is overall a germany-afficionada, and I remember vaguely she saying something about a myth about a Marian that lived in the seas and seduced men into the depths of the sea, much like the mermaids. I'm gonna ask her for the details when she's awake...

[Guedzilla]

...and over-reading my own post, "Marian music style"? As in "songs praising Mother Mary"?

[Guedzilla]

She can't remember it!!!

And google won't help either...

[Little_Sister]

Mh, maybe she meant Loreley?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Loreley is also the name of one of the beautiful Rhine Maidens who lured navigators of this river to their dooms with their alluring singing, much as the ancient Greek Sirens did.

and the german entry on Marian says that the name comes from latin (mare) and means something like "belonging to the ocean" or that its for "son of maria"

[eotunun]

Someone told me there is a complete german version of Marian out there...who knows?

And I find a mistake in the german translation..
Ohne deine Hilfe verlier´ ich mich in dieser Welt, not "Ort"..he he..

There is a german Mary-Ann out there, but a very different one. Actually, The Thread on the pretty self-offering Eldo-Heino joke pointed me in the general direction of the idea. ..for Heino sang it, too. Which?
Thich!

Sie hieß Mary-Ann
(I'll omit the attempt to make the transaltion rhyme, sue me now..)

At fourteen years he started as a ship's boy
He was the youngest but already was a man
A man like a tree and strong as a bear
so he went over the sea for the first time

Refrain:
Her name was Mary-Ann and she was his ship
He kept her the faith which no one understood
There were so many ships, so beautifull and big
But the Mary-Ann wouldn't let go of him

As a sailor he had his 18 carat
and after the third journey he already was a mate
And every captain was after him
But to change was so terribly hard for him

(Refrain)

And when had become a coxswain one day
then he loved a girl with strawblond hair
he gave her his heart but she wasn't true to him
So he was on sea again soon, ahoi

(Refrain)

After every journey he swore "now I pay off"
He swore it as captain, but she became his grave
The Mary-Ann sunk on may 19th
in an orcane off the Hudson Bay

(Refrain)

If I'm not mistaken, Marian was written when Eldo already lived in Hamburg, so it's pretty likely that he heard it played in some Hamburg pub someday.
The Leitmotiv of the song of that ill fated ship the narrator doesn't really love, but can't let go off may stand as a metaphor for a relationship/love he won't/can't let go off. It's his ship in the sea of voices.
Consequences included.
I think the rest speaks for itself, if you read the lyrics of Sie hieß Mary-Ann with Marian in mind.
I'd think of it as being very likely that this was an inspiration to the Sisters' song.
Thoughts?
Vegetables?

[Little_Sister]

@eotunun: I think there might really is a connection

I found a "problem" in the translation of the German verse:
Ich hoer dich rufen, Marian (I hear you calling Marian)
Kannst du mich schreien hoeren (Can you hear me calling?)

I think the second calling really shoud be a different word - since in the German he also uses a differnt word rufen/schreien...
but I´m not too sure what to use instead maybe crying?

[eotunun]

@eotunun: I think there might really is a connection

I found a "problem" in the translation of the German verse:
Ich hoer dich rufen, Marian (I hear you calling Marian)
Kannst du mich schreien hoeren (Can you hear me calling?)

I think the second calling really shoud be a different word - since in the German he also uses a differnt word rufen/schreien...
but I´m not too sure what to use instead maybe crying?

To scream/to cry out loud is right on target.
Oh, and: Well spotted, LiSi!

[Little_Sister]

To scream/to cry out loud is right on target.
Oh, and: Well spotted, LiSi!

oh thank you

[itnAklipse]

The fact that Von would be the strangest of the bunch some producer has worked with isn't that strange considering that he's one of the few real people, or artistes, in the music industry...

[stufarq]

"A Marian figure" probably means "a figure resembling Mary" i.e. the Virgin Mary.

yep, that is a recognised expression...

also, there's a whole tradition of roman catholic writing called "marian literature" - stories about the virgin mary...

The adjective "Marian" meaning "relating to Mary" can refer to any Mary, such as Mary Tudor or Mary Queen of Scots, not just the Virgin Mary (although, obviously, the Rushdie quotation does refer to the Virgin).

As for the meaning of the song, all the evidence suggests that Marian was a real person, living in Hamburg, and that the drowning imagery was incorporated because of the German meaning of the name.

[eotunun]

..and my Dictionary of Contemporary English included the term "To mar" when I looked for what secondary meanings might be stuck to the title of the song.
(Somewhere I read that there's a rather archaic noun-form of "to mar", which is: "Marian"! I am not sure if I remember that one correctly though, please tell me if I am wrong.)
In that shanty-Schlager Mary-Ann the said ship mars the story-hero's life as well, so that may be the point where Ol´Android got inspired: In a situation of need and grief the narrator of the Sissies song calls for help from a person the very name of whom bears the maring in it. Isn't it ironic?

See also: mar~i~juhana, mar~garine, mar~bles etc.


So I just made a comic out of an english dictionary. Where are me pills, pls.?

[Izzy HaveMercy]

It could also be a plea to all and sundry to please marry Anne Geddes so she stops publishing these bloody piccies of cute babbies that urges MizzIz to go fer another wan!

dinnae unnerstand me wrong, i adore me wee NOOR but fer the mo that's more than enuff fer me!

IZ.

[stufarq]

Maybe he wants to marry Ian

[eotunun]

[eastmidswhizzkid]

the link in response to the OP is dead so here for posterity are the words to the german section with translation. i got them from elsewhere so any complaints/ corrections re. this verion, or complaints re. previously mentioned errors and/or contradictions are yours to repeat/correct, not mine ok?

"Was ich kann und was ich könnte
(What I can do and what I could do)
Weiß ich gar nicht mehr
(I just don't know anymore)
Gib mir wieder etwas Schönes
(Give me something beautiful again)
Zieh mich aus dem Meer
(Drag me from the sea)
Ich höre dich rufen, Marian
(I hear you calling Marian)
Kannst du mich schreien hören
(Can you hear me calling?)
Ich bin hier allein
(I am here alone)
Ich höre dich rufen, Marian
(I hear you calling Marian)
Ohne deine Hilfe verliere ich mich in diesem Ort
(Without your help I am lost in this place)"

[mugabe]

"Marianne" is noted in pencil by Ezra Pound alongside T S Eliot's original draft for "The Waste Land". Also note the familiar line "Mein Irisch Kind, wo weilest du?" in the same stanza.

http://kurtz.se/junk/Marianne.jpg

[iesus]

Some food for thought and discussion.
Perhaps there is a link to TS Elliot's pome Marina. Someone pointed out that "Marian (version)", version is a hint for Anagram and Marian is an anagram of Marina, which is reference to the poem. The poem itself has a bunch of links to other works...
Poem can be easily found. I will leave a link with analysis of it and quote the text in case it will disappear from the net.
https://poemanalysis.com/t-s-eliot/marina/

T.S. Eliot’s poem, ‘Marina’, belongs to the group of poems which have been designated as “The Arial Poems” composed during 1927 and 1930. After his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927, Eliot began to write a new kind of poetry which “seems to represent a withdrawal from the outer world and an exploration of the inner life under the guidance of Christianity. “Published in 1930, Marian is Eliot’s touching personal poem. The poem explores the theme of paternity by focusing on the rediscovery of his lost daughter of William Shakespeare’s Pericles. Marian is the name of the daughter of Pericles who has not seen her right from birth as he was running away from his enemy facing miseries and threats on land and sea. It is in Act V of Shakespeare’s play, Pericles, Prince of Tyre that Pericles finds out that the dancer and singer performing before him is none else but his daughter. The dancing girl reminds him of his wife Thaisa, he talks to the girl and is overjoyed to find that Marian is his daughter and her mother had died while giving birth to her.

Quis hic locus, quae region, quae mundi plaga?

At the start, the poem, which can be read in full here, quotes two lines from the Latin language, which forms the epigraph of the poem, These lines of the epigraph are a quotation from Hercules Furens (line 1138) composed by Lucious the Younger Seneca (c. 5 B.C. – A.D. 65). The Latin quotation states that awakening from a spell of madness Hercules asks, “What place is this, what land, what quarter of the globe?”
...

“Boat imagery dominates this poem. The rhythms too are wave-like. Grace is truly there in the poem through a jarring note is struck by the section touching on death. Yet the victory over death is decisive. This time ‘resigning’ life is to bring totally positive anticipation of a new life. The experience is close to what we get in parts of ‘Burnt Norton’ the first of Four Questets.’

[paint it black]

Burnt Norton is/was his fave

[bun_2294]

Obviously a little late, but some of the themes and references of the song remind me of a great passage from John Webster's wonderful play, The White Devil, about a woman accused of murdering her husband. Here, the cardinal overseeing her trial is explaining what a whore is -

Shall I expound whore to you? sure I shall;
I 'll give their perfect character. They are first,
Sweetmeats which rot the eater; in man's nostrils
Poison'd perfumes. They are cozening alchemy;
Shipwrecks in calmest weather. What are whores!
Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren,
As if that nature had forgot the spring.
They are the true material fire of hell:
Worse than those tributes i' th' Low Countries paid,
Exactions upon meat, drink, garments, sleep,
Ay, even on man's perdition, his sin.
They are those brittle evidences of law,
Which forfeit all a wretched man's estate
For leaving out one syllable. What are whores!
They are those flattering bells have all one tune,
At weddings, and at funerals. Your rich whores
Are only treasuries by extortion fill'd,
And emptied by curs'd riot. They are worse,
Worse than dead bodies which are begg'd at gallows,
And wrought upon by surgeons, to teach man
Wherein he is imperfect. What's a whore!
She 's like the guilty counterfeited coin,
Which, whosoe'er first stamps it, brings in trouble
All that receive it.

[Pista]

Hello @bun_2294 & welcome to