Opp Amaryllis! (Up, Amaryllis!) is one of the Swedish poet and performer

Carl Michael Bellman Carl Michael Bellman (; 4 February 1740 – 11 February 1795) was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet, and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as wel ...

's songs from his 1791 collection, '' Fredman's Songs'', where it is No. 31. The song is a graceful

pastorale Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood. In Baroque music, a pastorale is a movement of a melody in thirds over a drone bass, recalling the Christmas music of ''pifferari'', players of the traditi ...

in rococo style, involving a sleeping nymph who is invited to come fishing upon the sea's stormy wave. In reality, the nymph is a Swedish woman, Wilhelmina Norman, the stormy wave is a Swedish waterway, and the progression from shore to fishing-boat can equally well be read as a seduction. It is one of Bellman's best-known and best-loved songs, and has been recorded by musicians including Folke Andersson and Edvard Andreasson.

Context

The eponymous character Amaryllis is taken from classical tales. In Ancient Greek literature,

Theocritus Theocritus (; , ''Theokritos''; ; born 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings ...

's ''

Idyll An idyll (, ; ; occasionally spelled ''idyl'' in American English) is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus's short pastoral poems, the ''Idylls'' (Εἰδύλλια). Unlike Homer, Theocritus did not engag ...

s'' portray a goatherd singing a

serenade In music, a serenade (; also sometimes called a serenata, from the Italian) is a musical composition or performance delivered in honour of someone or something. Serenades are typically calm, light pieces of music. The term comes from the Ital ...

outside the cave of the nymph Amaryllis. In Ancient Roman literature, Amaryllis was a heroine in

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

's ''

Eclogues The ''Eclogues'' (; , ), also called the ''Bucolics'', is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil. Background Taking as his generic model the Greek bucolic poetry of Theocritus, Virgil created a Roman version partly by o ...

'', a suite of pastoral poems.

Song

Melody and verse form

The song is in time and is marked ''

Menuetto A minuet (; also spelled menuet) is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually written in time. The English word was adapted from the Italian ''minuetto'' and the French ''menuet''. The term also describes the musical form that ...

''. It has 4 verses, each consisting of 11 lines; lines 2-7 are short. The

rhyming pattern A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB rh ...

of each verse is AA-B-CCC-B-DDD-B. No source has been identified for the melody, which may well have been composed by Bellman himself.

Lyrics

The song, headed "Om fiskafänget" ("About catching fish"), is dated 1773, and was written for Bellman's opera ''Fiskarena''. The song invites the sleeping nymph, in reality Wilhelmina Norman (who Bellman courted in the summer of 1773), to awaken and come fishing. The waterways, too, are Swedish, with familiar fish like

pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

Reception and legacy

The Bellman scholar

Lars Lönnroth Lars Lönnroth (born 4 June 1935) is a Swedish literary scholar. He was born in Gothenburg to Erik Lönnroth and Ebba Lagercrantz. His academic career includes professorships at the University of California Berkeley, University of Aalborg and ...

calls the song a graceful

rococo Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...

style. He notes that people have taken his pastoral songs, of which this is "the best known", as completely conventional works following the classical template of a shepherd-poet in pursuit of his fair nymph. It indeed begins, Lönnroth writes, as an ''

aubade An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, intended for performance in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn. It has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or ...

'' or morning song, like a medieval Provençal

troubadour A troubadour (, ; ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female equivalent is usually called a ''trobairitz''. The tr ...

's. The young fisherman wakens his beloved and, in the first stanza, asks her to come fishing with him in an Arcadian landscape peopled with mythic figures, including

Morpheus Morpheus ('Fashioner', derived from the meaning 'form, shape') is a god associated with sleep and dreams. In Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' he is the son of Somnus (Sleep, the Roman counterpart of Hypnos) and appears in dreams in human form. From the ...

the god of sleep and

Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 t ...

, god of the sea. In the next stanza, he bids her dress herself; in the third, to fetch her fishing-tackle, and in the last stanza to climb into his boat. This plays out as a simple sequence of theatrical scenes. But, writes Lönnroth, it can equally well be read as a seduction. The last stanza drops the pretence of going out to catch

, and states openly that "Love shall rule/In our chests." The seascape, too, he writes, has suddenly changed from calm to stormy; but the shepherd sings that he can find comfort "In thy calm embrace." Lönnroth observes that in Fredman's Epistle No. 25, " Blåsen nu alla", Bellman goes further into full-blown grotesque, sharply contrasting the classical

imagery Imagery is visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions, especially in a literary work, but also in other activities such as. Imagery in literature can also be instrumental in conveying ...

with the drunken orgiastic reality; but in "Opp Amaryllis!", the poet shows his skill in creating drama from a simple shepherd-poem, and undermining the pastoral with discreet hints of storms and death. Bellman's biographer

Paul Britten Austin Paul Britten Austin (5 April 1922 – 25 July 2005) was an English author, translator, broadcaster, administrator, and scholar of Swedish literature. He is known in particular for his translations of and books on the Swedish musician, s ...

describes the song as "one of his most delightful, and for many years twas far and away the most popular. It goes to a charming air." "Opp Amaryllis!" was recorded in 1924 by Folke Andersson and Edvard Andreasson for

His Master's Voice His Master's Voice is an entertainment trademark featuring a dog named Nipper, curiously peering into the horn of a wind-up gramophone. Painted by Francis Barraud in 1898, the image has since become a global symbol used across consumer elect ...

. More recently, the song has been recorded many times; it was among the Bellman songs recorded in 1960 by Roland Bengtsson and Folke Sällström, and in 1988 by the actor Mikael Samuelson. The song was recorded in English by Martin Best in 1995.

References

Sources

* * * * * (with facsimiles of sheet music from first editions in 1790, 1791) * * *

External links

Text of Song 31
at Bellman.net {{DEFAULTSORT:Opp Amaryllis! 1791 compositions Swedish songs Fredmans sånger