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Scarborough Fair

 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your  offspring and hers; he will crush[b] your head, and you will strike his heel.”

To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

 

            It may be that the themes in this passage are motifs within the God Theme. So, while the majestic bass line repeats the God Theme, the trumpets may be sounding forth the judgment motif and the strings may be singing forth a Redemption or promise motif, and all three may play together, at one moment with this one in crescendo, and the others quieter, or, as here, with all three in harmony.

            One way to think of these themes and motifs is in terms of harmony. When the God Theme note is E, for example, the promise motif might be a C and the judgment motif a G, making a standard C chord. Sometimes, however, it can be a little more complex, with not only separate notes that harmonize, but with different words sung in counterpoint. The best example I can think of is Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair, to which the song Canticle was added.[1]

            And as we listen to this complex God’s Theme, and hear the counterpoint within the passacaglia, we can be easily overwhelmed, and narrow our focus to one motif or another. We can be overwhelmed by the terminology, or the intricacies of the composition, and miss the beauty.

            It is not wrong to allow our souls to dance with any one of the motifs. The error comes when we don’t dance at all, or when we refuse to even listen to the others, or when we refuse to acknowledge that the whole is a whole that can and should be experienced as well.

          As a side note, it is interesting that God mentions dust twice, as He curses the serpent to eat dust, and Adam to return to dust in death. Given that the serpent is identified as the devil (who, as a spiritual being doesn't require physical food), and physical serpents don't (to the best of my knowledge) eat dust, the question is raised (but not answered) whether the dust in both uses is a metaphor for death.


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jj4s9I-53g  And I apologize in advance for the political ad that is likely to play first.

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