I wanted to check my info before I said anything, and what I discovered is more why I'm commenting, rather than to be an ass. The correct lyric, as I though I remembered, is "...we hung up our lyres", even though when you search google for "on the willows lyrics" you come up with lives most of the time. The difference between the two is quite interesting, since "lives" assumes either suicide or acceptance of execution, while "lyres" is just refusing to perform.
Confirmation of "lyres" as correct comes from the original text, psalm 137, where the text is:
By the rivers of Babylon-- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion!
How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem s fall, how they said, Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations! O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones Version and dash them against the rock!
So "harps" becomes "lyres" to serve as a better rhyme for the song's "required."
Either way, a gorgeous song and a moving icon, "lives" or "lyres" not withstanding.
in the script when i did godspell, it was "lives" -- i'm 99.44% sure it's that way in the liner notes to the original cast album as well. maybe they wrote it that way on purpose for the phonetic ambiguity.
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Confirmation of "lyres" as correct comes from the original text, psalm 137, where the text is:
By the rivers of Babylon--
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion!
How could we sing the Lord's song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem s fall,
how they said, Tear it down!
Tear it down!
Down to its foundations!
O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
Version and dash them against the rock!
So "harps" becomes "lyres" to serve as a better rhyme for the song's "required."
Either way, a gorgeous song and a moving icon, "lives" or "lyres" not withstanding.
no subject
in the script when i did godspell, it was "lives" -- i'm 99.44% sure it's that way in the liner notes to the original cast album as well. maybe they wrote it that way on purpose for the phonetic ambiguity.