Luke and I sing Old MacDonald almost everyday, and we read poems about all the farm animals. Today, St. Patrick's Day, it was especially poignant. MacDonald is Irish, you know. He immigrated to Canada from Ireland in the 1600's to save his children from having to fight in what seemed like the constant back and forth battle between the Old Irish and the new English and Scottish settlers. When he got to Canada he was given a parcel of land from the government, in exchange for a percentage of his crop income for the first ten years. After ten long, hard years (the land was covered in trees, how was he supposed to farm?!), he had paid his debt to the country and the land was his.
The song written in his honor, "Old MacDonald", is perhaps one of the saddest children songs ever written. "Old MacDonald" HAD a farm - as in, he no longer HAS a farm. So either he's dead, or some multi-national corporation bought him out and the land that had been in his family for generations was sold off, depersonalized, and most likely exploited. Poor Old MacDonald. The old farm house was torn down, the cattle siphoned off to some larger, less clean facility and the stone carrying the family name was heaped with all the other ancient stones that had been dragged from the field where they were once placed to mark the edges of MacDonald's property. If he's not dead yet, he's probably heart-broken over his choice to sell the farm. I know I am. And doesn't Luke look sad, too?
Asha has those exact same pajamas. I'm going to stuff her into them tonight and give her a big hug and think of Luke stuffed in his pj's too!
ReplyDelete