18th-century Swedish songwriter - Carl Michael Bellman

Carl Michael Bellman (1740 – 1795). Reminds me of Robert Burns ...

I'd never heard of him till I ran across a reference when I was Googling "Gubbe Noak" (which translates as "Old Man Noah" and which I had always thought was a Norwegian song). In a post by user janolov in Banjo Hangout Tune of the Week for 18 Jan 2009: Two Swedish songs, this thumbnail biography:

He was a Swedish poet and composer, whose songs have remained very popular in Scandinavia. Beginning as a writer of "Bacchanalian" songs, Bellman produced over seventeen hundred poems, most set to music. His life was very turbulent. For a period he had to run away from Swedish creditors. He has good musical and poetic gifts but was devoted to drinking. Carl Michael Bellman was born into a respectable middle-class family in Stockholm. Around 1760 he started to write drinking songs. By the late 1760s Bellman had already became famous with his songs and biblical parodies, which circulated by word of mouth and in handwritten copies and printed sheets.

In most of his songs, Bellman borrowed the tunes from minuets, folk songs, opera, and march music. Some of the melodies Bellman composed himself. The two songs here are probably composed by him. ...

TOTW gives a word-for-word (unsingable) transaltion of "Gubben Noak." The other song is "Måltidssång" (Dinner Song, also known as Fredmans Sång No 21), with lots of stuff about Bacchus and a carpe diem theme to make Burns look like a dour Scots dominie by comparison (sample verse: "Do you feel that the grave is too deep? Well, then get yourself a drink / Then have another, have a second, have a third ...") and a really catchy, syncopated melody ... says janolof of the songs he posted to Banjo Hangout, "When I have worked with them I have found that they also are good instrumental tunes. You don't have to neither drink nor sing to enjoy the songs (well.....)."

For information on Bellman, Wikipedia, as usual, is a good starting place. Also a detailed English-language bio on the Bellmanssällskapet website


Fredmans Sång No 5c
And while I was looking for information on Bellman, I blundered into this ... Fredmans Sång No 5c ... which is lovely ... uploaded by user Elolinona to YouTube and other social media ... Fredmans Sång No 5c [Also "Glimmande Nymph" another beautiful melody ... sounds too complex for a dulcimer, tho' ... ] Lyrics to Fredmans Sång No 5c at http://www.bellman.net/texter/sang.php?nr=5c ... First verse:

Så slår min Glock nu locket til
Uppå sitt stop och vandrar,
Hvarthän, jag icke veta vil;
Gutår! jag dig ej klandrar;
Du har förfall, du måste dö,
Och skiljas från vår lusta,
Men vi med glas på denna ö,
Ditt lof i klunkar pusta. ...