Novels and Songs -or- How Toad the Wet Sprocket Speaks to Marian Zimmer Bradley

Do you have novels that you associate with songs, and vice versa?  I don't listen to music while reading as much as I have in the past, but when I did, there were songs that became entangled with the mood and imagery, and sometimes theme of the book.  There's a certain exhilheration listening to the opening of "Ramble On" that I will always associate with Frodo's first venturing out of the Shire in Fellowship of the Ring--in that case, there is evidence that the novel influenced Led Zeppelin in some way.  Other times, there is no correlation--like when I was reading The Last Unicorn while listening to John Denver's Greatest Hits.  "Annie's Song" (with its reference to a "knight in a forest") will always remind me of that book, in spite of the movie version, which has a very different feel.

The most powerful connection, for me, between a book and a song is the link that I see between The Mists of Avalon and "Pray Your Gods" by Toad the Wet Sprocket.

When I read The Mists of Avalon for the first--and second, and third, and likely fourth--time(s), Toad the Wet Sprocket was getting airplay, and someone in our speech and debate team got the rest of us hooked on the album Fear.  "Pray Your Gods" is a mournful song, and really, I can't separate the meaning from the novel:  

I will give the secrets you request
And you will be the one to sacrifice
So lay your olive arms upon my breast
And sing the poems, free the butterflies

Pray your gods who ask you for your blood
For they are strong and angry jealous ones
Or lay upon my altar now your love
I fear my time is short
There are armies moving close
Be quick, my love

I feel my body weakened by the years
As people turn to gods of cruel design
Is it that they fear the pain of death
Or could it be they fear the joy of life

Pray your gods who hold you by your fear
For they are quick and ruthless punishers
Or lay upon my altar now your love
I fear my day is done
There are armies moving on
Be quick, my love

The first stanza gives us the idea of a mystery religion, while also evoking "olive arms" (Morgaine was described over and over again as being "little and dark") and physical contact--and the mystery religion described in The Mists of Avalon is one in which the gods are worshipped by way of human sexuality.

The second stanza is rich--the gods who ask for your blood might be the pagan gods, who require a sacrifice (the young stag brings down the king stag, and virginity is also a suitable blood sacrifice).  Laying your love upon my altar evokes that sacrifice of virginity to the truimphant king stag, which happens as King Arthur is preparing for a symbolic battle against the Saxons.

In the third stanza, someone grows old--as both Ladies of the Lake do in the novel.  Meanwhile, "people turn to gods of cruel design," either from "fear of death" or fearing "the joys of life."  Here is where I suspect that my link between the two very different media is not entirely far-fetched:  in both cases, we seem to have a clash of religion.  Because the Toad song mentions "gods" (plural), it is easy to assume some sort of pagan religion.  There is nothing to suggest geography, or a specific cult, which made it ripe for my imagination to fill in details from Bradley's work.  In the context of Avalon, the goddess of Avalon and the god of the Druids are certainly represented as cruel on occasion--by turns, capricious and just.  But Christianity is the opponent, and is one that restricts the pleasures (here, sexual pleasures) available to the common people--hence, the "joys of life."

The final stanza includes a new element--"ruthless punishers."  These might be either the pagan gods or the Christian God, as both have the capacity and the will to punish, according to their priests, albeit for different reasons.

This is how I have always seen the two working together--and at times, I make connections between other disparate works--Browning's "Andrea del Sarto" is in my dissertation, which focuses on the British Modernists.

I consider this a "rhetorical reading"--a work of literature and something, in this case a song, come together simply because of the circumstances of reading, and something new is created--a collaboration that, in this case, sheds light on both works.  If this isn't useful academically--so be it!  I've always found it...fun.