“Voice of the Helpless"
“Voice of the Helpless,” written by Carlotta Perry with music by L. B. Marshall, was published in Sarah Eddy’s Songs of Happy Life. This song discusses the growing, and lucrative, market for bird feathers on women’s fashions. In the song, a young girl hears the cry of orphan nestlings who have been left by their mother, killed by a hunter. The line “Oh! Lovely, unthinking maiden, The wing that adorns your hat” (v. 3) brings culpability to the young girl. Anthropomorphizing the situation, the hymn, in verse 4, asks mothers to “think of that other, that tender mother, Brooding upon her nest” when young nestlings are killed. The music, of the Victorian ballad tradition, adds to the poignancy of this song.
More discussion on this song can be found in Chapter 5, British Hymn Books for Children.
Recording: Annetta Itnyre, November 2014 (verse 5).
Score from: Eddy, Sarah J. Songs of Happy Life for Schools, Homes, and Bands of Mercy. Providence, R.I.: Art and Nature Study Publ., 1897. Google Scholar. Web. 20 July 2012.
An additional page with more about the song and a video recording of children singing all 4 verses can be found in the Bands of Mercy section on this website, here.
This page has paths:
- Part 3: Animal Welfare (Bands of Mercy) Songs Alisa Clapp-Itnyre