The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Ballad #2: Proud Lady Margaret
At the end of Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister tells the council that the stories we tell unite us.
Is he correct? In this episode I argue that he is, and I give examples as to how stories we tell unite us as a country and they can unite us in our conception of our deepest values.
In this traditional Scottish ballad, a knight comes to a wistful young woman in a castle. He is there to woo her. But she sees him as beneath her, due to the clothes he wears. After asking him three riddles, she discovers that he is more than her match, so she agrees to be his. But then he reveals that he is actually her brother, who has been "beyond the sea." She wants to join him, but he tells her that she cannot, for he is dead. The knight is a ghost in disguise.
Lastly, he tells her that the reason for his journey from the land of the dead to her own land is to stop her from being so prideful.
We'll talk about pride, stories, ballads and more. Join in!