What Kind of Emotions Are Men Looking For?

"Annie Laurie" Has What Men Hope For

In this class, Miss Reiss spoke to me about a song I was studying to sing, and having difficulty with, a song which has been loved for nearly 300 years. "Annie Laurie" stands for the kind of emotion every man wants to feel about a woman, and, I learned, about the world itself. "Do you think there's great reverence in it?" Miss Reiss asked me. "Tremendous," I said. "Do you like reverence or does it embarrass you?" she asked, and I replied, "I think the second."

The words to "Annie Laurie" in their first version were written as a poem in the early 1700s by the Scotsman William Douglas of Fingland, and the music is by Lady Scott. In his lecture "Poetry and Love," Eli Siegel said the words "are great", they are "tremendously physical and most unlimitedly sentimental." The words of this song makes a one of what you can touch, and expansive, deep feeling. It begins:

Maxwellton banks are bonnie
Whar early fa's the dew;
Whar me and Annie Laurie
Made up the promise true.

"'Maxwellton banks' sounds pretty definite," Mr. Siegel comments. But each stanza ends with the lines, "And for bonnie Annie Laurie / I'd lay me down and die." "There is the feeling of the infinite," he explained, "of permanence."

The second stanza of William Douglas' poem, which Mr. Siegel said is greater than the revised words most often sung to "Annie Laurie," definitely accents the physical. Taking it up line by line, Mr. Siegel explained:

"She's brackit like the peacock" means that from the front she is like the peacock. Now, people in drugstores can think that way; many men have..."She's breastit [breasted] like the swan"—how physical! "She's jimp [slender] about the middle." After the dolefulness, the sweet dirgelike quality of the first stanza, we have all this symmetrical alluringness of the physical.

"This poem," Mr. Siegel said, "is a way of saying, 'Yes, there is something mysterious about you, like the night wind going over the banks of Maxwellton. Even so, I know there is a body concerned, and somehow body and fidelity, the physical and the sweet and infinite, have joined.'"

The music of this song is so beautiful. It puts together other opposites that torment people in love—pride and humility, melting and assertion, high and low. I learned about this in the class when Miss Reiss spoke to me about what the music does technically, and about how I see love.

Like many men, I have had a division between feeling I should have my feet solidly on the ground, and then having sweeping feeling. The song puts the two together throughout, including in the very first notes. It begins with four low, meditative notes, and then it soars. "The careful thoughtfulness in "Annie Laurie' makes for that soaring," said Miss Reiss. I was thrilled by this! I had thought having great feeling was utterly different from being a smart person who takes care of himself. But Miss Reiss showed me that the two can and need to be the same. "Reverence should be sensible," she said, "and should go along with being a good critic. If there's a feeling of big size, is it good for oneself?" she asked.

I am so happy to say that I am seeing the answer is "yes." And here is "Annie Laurie":

Annie Laurie

Maxwellton banks are bonnie
Whar early fa's the dew;
Whar me and Annie Laurie
Made up the promise true.
Made up the promise true,
And never forget will I;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and die.

She's brackit like the peacock,
She's breastit like the swan;
She's jimp about the middle,
Her waist ye weel micht span.
Her waist ye weel micht span,
And she has a rolling eye;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and die.

I love Aesthetic Realism for teaching me what it means to have accurate, big, ever-growing emotion. People everywhere are desperate to have the kinds of emotions this education can make possible in their lives, and I want them to know it.

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