{"id":5487,"date":"2022-08-29T21:34:47","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T21:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5487"},"modified":"2022-09-01T09:53:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T09:53:09","slug":"where-oaken-hearts-do-gather-by-sarah-pinsker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5487","title":{"rendered":"Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather<\/em><\/strong> by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny<\/em> #39, March-April 2022) opens with an online discussion of a song:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2192This song, included among the famous ballads documented by Francis James Child, is an allegorical tale of a tryst between two lovers and its aftermath. \u2013Dynamum<\/em> (2 upvotes, 1 downvote)

>That\u2019s awfully reductive, and I\u2019m not sure what allegory you\u2019re seeing. There\u2019s a murder and a hanging and something monstrous in the woods. Sets it apart from the average lovers\u2019 tryst. \u2013BarrowBoy<\/em>

>Fine. I just thought somebody should summarize it here a little, since \u201cabout the song\u201d means more than just how many verses it has. Most people come here to discuss how to interpret a song, not where to find it in the Child Ballads\u2019 table of contents. \u2013Dynamum<\/em>

\u2192Dr. Mark Rydell\u2019s 2002 article \u201cA Forensic Analysis of \u2018Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather\u2019\u201d, published in Folklore, explored the major differences and commonalities and their implications. In The Rose and the Briar<\/em>, Wendy Lesser writes about how if a trad song leaves gaps in its story, it\u2019s because the audience was expected to know what information filled those gaps. The audience that knew this song is gone, and took the gap information with them. Rydell attempted to fill in the blanks. \u2013HolyGreil<\/em> (1 upvote)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This passage pretty much limns the rest of the story in that: (a) it shows several people on a forum discussing the song Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather<\/em> stanza by stanza\u2014during which we learn it is about a man meeting a woman in the woods and having his heart is excised and used to grow an oak tree; (b) it illustrates the usual online friction between participants (most notably in this case between BarrowBoy and Dynamum above, with the former constantly downvoting the latter); and (c) we first hear of HolyGriel\u2019s account of Rydell\u2019s academic work, which leads a documentary maker called Henry Martyn to investigate further. Martyn later discovers that Rydell visited the location referred to in the song, a village called Gall in England, and (spoiler) he subsequently disappeared. Then, towards the end of the story, Martyn also travels to the village to do research for his documentary. There, he meets a very helpful (and knowledgeable) young woman called Jenny. . . .
This is very well done (the online comments and exchanges are pitch perfect), but the story has an ending you can see coming from miles away. An entertaining piece but not a multi-award winning one.1<\/sup>
***+ (Good to Very Good). 6,700 words. Story link.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. This won the Nebula and Locus Awards for 2021, and is a finalist for this year\u2019s Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. It\u2019s a well executed piece but it doesn\u2019t have the substance of a multi-award winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny #39, March-April 2022) opens with an online discussion of a song: \u2192This song, included among the famous ballads documented by Francis James Child, is an allegorical tale of a tryst between two lovers and its aftermath. \u2013Dynamum (2 upvotes, 1 downvote) >That\u2019s awfully reductive, and I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1282],"tags":[50,217,1286,1287,1284,1283,12,367],"class_list":["post-5487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sarah-pinsker","tag-50","tag-3-5","tag-folk-songs","tag-human-sacrifice","tag-online-conversation","tag-sarah-pinsker","tag-short-story","tag-uncanny"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5487"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5533,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487\/revisions\/5533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}