Part of my goal in putting these songs online with endless commentary is that I'd like to encourage filkers. After looking over these songs I'm sure you're saying, “Wow, Jeff is really awesome, he writes such terrific stuff!” Then again, you might not be thinking these things...
In any case, here's one that didn't come together...quite. I started writing a filk about a girl who entered crown tourney with an eye towards being queen by right of arms (it's nearly happened at least once that I know of). The tune Dargason suggested itself, since one of the key points of the dance is going through successive partners...suggestive of winning successive bouts in Crown Tourney. There is just one problem: it's almost impossible to sing Dargason at the speed it's normally played for dance.
Midway through, then, I decided to rewrite the filk for another dance usually done as a changing partners dance: Horse's Bransle. The scansion was different and necessitated rewriting the lines. The first verse of the new version was:
Once long ago lived a sweet and charming damsel Who dreamed of tales of knights and music sung by minstrels Kings and queens and magic rings did populate her dreams, A princess fair, to be won or wooed she hoped to be some day.
There are many, many problems with this verse. First, it sets up the girl's character in a way that is contradicted by the rest of the song. Worse, it doesn't scan to Horse's Bransle; I later found out that I misrememberd the music. That was when I discovered that the repeat in Horse's Bransle is fairly long, which was fine for the introductory parts but it meant writing out fairly lengthy battle sequences. So I went back to Dargason.
The first verse I had was:
First a good knight to find she had, A strong enduring young martial lad And one who wasn't a total cad, So off she went to go find her
and I couldn't finish the quatrain. In any case, the rhyme scheme is AAAA, which is painful to write; the first sentence is particularly painful to gaze upon as it ends on “had.” I kept fiddling with the song and adding components: the boastful braggat was the first verse completed, though it was:
A boastful braggart was her first round foe, He haughtily offered to trade blow for blow “You can go first, as a girl you'll hit light!” He didn't wake up until later that night.
Which not only has problems with the scansion, but it's confusing when you listen to it: incorporating dialog into a song is very difficult. (And yet I keep trying...)
In the meantime, I put it aside and finished We Wish You a Merry Pensic, Are You Patrons of the Megacorps?, Mince the Garlic, and others.
Finally I decided to revisit the song. This time I got out my recording of Dargason and listened to it in the car with the CD player on repeat. This was when I realized how badly my scansion was off with the original verses. I ended up discarding most of the verses I'd written and wrote new ones. The final result is The Girl Who Would Be Queen.