Odessey and Oracle

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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When I wrote this post about the Picardy third in "Time of the Season," I was dimly conscious of the Picardy third in "Butcher's Tale," but then I got thinking about them some more and I realized that they're pretty similar in that the Picardy third comes at the end of a section, and that section is just repeated to make up the song.  (This might not be strictly true of "Time of the Season" because that section changes a bit for the organ solos.  The basis is fairly similar, but I don't think that Picardy third is there because there aren't any vocals.)  In any case, those similar structures are an-other feature that gives the album a coherence.

Also, because I'd been oblivious to that Picardy third for so long, I thought, "What other things am I missing!?"  So I was thinking about the album and looking at the lyrics, and I discovered something about "Brief Candles."

There's a great feature in the parallel phrase in the third line of the first verse: "To realize that she was strong and he too weak to stay."  There are two clauses (as objects of "realize") here: "she was strong" and "he too weak to stay."  That second clause doesn't have a verb of its own; it's only understood through that parallel structure and taking the verb from that first clause.  So: "she was strong and he [was] too weak to stay."  The he is sort of a parasitic pronoun in that it has to use the verb from the other clause; like the person it refers to, it's weak.