Lay the Bent to the Bonnie Broom

[NikolaiI]

Does anyone know what this means? "Lay the bent to the bonnie broom," it's from "Cruel Sister," by Pentangle. They sing it every other line, and there are maybe 20 stanzas in the song.

[TheFifthElement]

Well, I don't know for certain, but I'd hazard a guess that it's something to do with having intimate relations in the bushes ;)

Bonnie - is a celtic term for 'pretty'
Broom - is a shrub
'Lay the bent' is the bit I'm not sure about.

[Whifflingpin]

Bent is grass, so "lay the bent" might mean "crush the grass."

In the song "Now is the month of maying" there is a similar phrase with, possibly, the same meaning - "Say, dainty nymph, and speak - shall we play barley break?"
.

[Shalot]

What does "bonnie" mean. There is a song called When Will We Be Married and one of the lyrics is

"I made a black bow for your bonnie head

What kind of head is a bonnie head?

And what kind of broom is a bonnie broom?

[NikolaiI]

Well, I don't know for certain, but I'd hazard a guess that it's something to do with having intimate relations in the bushes ;)

Bonnie - is a celtic term for 'pretty'
Broom - is a shrub
'Lay the bent' is the bit I'm not sure about.

Hm, maybe. They sing it every other line; the song is about two daughters, the younger good and the elder evil. The "Cruel Sister" drowns the other when a prince or someone comes from a far off land to woo them. Then some minstrels see her body and make a harp out of her breast-bone and hair, to play for the family. When they set it down on the stone, though, it plays by itself, and tells everyone the bride drowned her younger sister.

Thanks, it helps to know what the words mean. I'm not really sure how it ties in with the song, though.

[Whifflingpin]

"I'm not really sure how it ties in with the song, though."

It does not have to tie in - or even be meaningful, for that matter.

The ballad is old with many variants, and the refrain has such versions as "Binnorie o Binnorie" and "Downe a downe hy downe a downe." So don't expect too much sense from it.

[Niamh]

cmae across this somewhere on the internet. Apparently 'lay the bent to the bonnie broom' is an old saying of celtic origin meaning, 'Dance around the old oak tree.' Mostlikely of Scots gaelic origin.

[Whifflingpin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrain

"Note : the refrain of 'Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom' is not traditionally associated with the ballad of The Cruel Sister (Child #10). This was the work of 'pop-folk' group Pentangle on their 1970 LP 'Cruel Sister' which has subsequently been picked up by many folk singers as being traditional. Both the melody and the refrain come from the ballad known as Riddles Wisely Expounded (Child #1).

Here, the refrain is syntactically independent of the narrative poem in the song, and has no obvious relationship to its subject, and indeed little inherent meaning at all. ..
. . .
Phrases of apparent nonsense in refrains (Lay the bent to the bonny broom?), and solfege syllables such as fa la la, familiar from the Christmas carol Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly, have given rise to much speculation. Some believe that the traditional refrain Hob a derry down O encountered in some English folksongs is in fact an ancient Celtic phrase meaning "dance around the oak tree." These suggestions remain controversial. "

[NicolasGambolin]

Does anyone know what this means? "Lay the bent to the bonnie broom," it's from "Cruel Sister," by Pentangle. They sing it every other line, and there are maybe 20 stanzas in the song.



I've found this on the internet. It suits the song quite well I suppouse, being a story with some dramatic and paranormal events.

" That is to fashion a cross inside the croft with one stick of bent and another stick of broom. These two reeds had great spiritual power to the pagans. After the christians had their way, the pagan ways were subverted to chirstian uses. The cross of bent and broom would keep the devil out of the house. "