The Books Theory

I'm going to try something a little new with this post. I figure since this is my concert blog, I can make it a broader music blog, and thus it's an appropriate (see: only) place I figured I could put this out there.

According to this post on The Book's awesome blog, their track Free Translator is, at its base, a 'very well known folk song.' They haven't said what it was and of course it's been dismantled and poeticized in the process of making it into a song, but I have a theory that it was originally Oh My Darling, Clementine. I tried running the lyrics through freetranslator.com, the site the band claims to use, and used the languages they mentioned, but the website didn't offer swedish from german or something specific like that. I used Google Translate but the technology has gotten so good now a days that the end product was pretty accurate to the original sooo this remains purely speculative.

Free Translator's chorus is a repeated And I see, which I think could somehow be the folk tale's repeated Oh my darling. I've posted the rest of the song's lyrics below, with some connections to Oh My Darling, Clementine in orange. You can read all the words here. Could the Books have used Oh My Darling, Clementine? I'll never know, but it feels like it (to me).

And I see

The hold-out boy and the weather girl, The miner is an excavator
know the wind moves in a patient way
Like a two-decade day "Dwelt a miner forty niner"

The man in the mouth of a drain
Laughing and chewing erasers "Thou art lost and gone forever"
Like a black dog in the snow

Write in relief and sleep again
and you cant believe your eyes
and you cant find your pen
and the man in the hole
is your new friend's friend

Symmetrical foot in your mouth
and your high speed legs
Your knee-jerks a mark of distinction
It's an elevator put-on

Count your dollar, only one
and count it again
one one one
You can't count it when your dead, no
You keep a pure nose
Write in relief and sleep again
and you get in the hole,
with your new friend's friend
and he cant believe his eyes
and he can't find his pen

And the meteorological man
With a whirl-wind girl
And a mote in the sun
And a squid in a bag
And a raccoon hat
And a talking plant
And a careful goat
In a sewer system shaft