{"id":2047,"date":"2015-10-09T09:07:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T13:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=2047"},"modified":"2015-10-09T09:07:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T13:07:57","slug":"blogging-the-new-cd-l-is-for-a-lake-of-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/blogging-the-new-cd-l-is-for-a-lake-of-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging the New CD: L is for a Lake of Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seventh in a series of blog posts about the songs on my new CD, Distorted Vision<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This post will work best if you can read it in an Irish accent … though an English, Scottish, or Aussie accent would work fine as well.<\/p>\n

We should probably answer the obvious question: what happened to letters G through K? In this blog series I\u00a0went straight down the line from A is for Anti-Candidate <\/a> to F is for a Faded Coat<\/a>, so why did we jump all the way to L?<\/p>\n

I’ll tell you why. First, because the album only has 11 songs on it, so it was unreasonable to think that I might use all 26 letters of the alphabet. Second, while I could<\/em> have used “G” this time and said it was for a “Great Lake of Beer,” since that’s more of the song’s title, I elected not to.<\/p>\n

Sue me.<\/p>\n

This song is actually based on a prayer attributed to St. Brigid of Ireland, who lived around A.D. 453-523. You can find several versions of her prayer online, some annotating it as a tenth century prayer, but of course if she really wrote it then it would be a fifth or sixth century prayer. This version<\/a> starts as follows:<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to give a lake of beer to God.
\nI\u2019d love the heavenly
\nHost to be tippling there
\nFor all eternity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
\nSt. Brigid of Kildare, rendered in stained glass at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Macon, GA (1903). Image from Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/p>\n

I took St. Brigid’s prayer, added some words here and there to render it in four rhyming stanzas, and also added this chorus:<\/p>\n

I’ll raise my glass in highest honor
\nOf the man who turned the water into wine
\nFor he taught us how to live a little better
\nAnd I’d like to drink with him for all of time<\/p>\n

— “A Great Lake of Beer (for the King of Kings)”<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And because it’s an Irishwoman’s prayer (based, some sources say, on her vision of heaven as having a great lake of beer), I tried to write my best approximation of an Irish tune around it. The only way for you to decide if I was successful, of course, is to listen to it<\/a>.<\/p>\n