But how did the phrase get into the song in the first place? I want
to consider the interesting flub in the recorded version on Bringing
It All Back Home, where Bob gets tripped up and sings something about
"empty-handed...armies."
The previous stanza, of course, contains the image of the "empty-
handed painter from your streets," so Bob seems to be transposing his
own lyrics. What if this mistake was facilitated by something in the
"original" version of the lyrics?
Here's what I'm wondering about. There's this ironical slogan that
one regularly runs across when reading about U.S. (and presumably
U.K.) history. It's Lord Shaftsbury's phrase about the "horny-handed
sons of toil" -- where "horny-handed" means "toughened and calloused"
-- as by hard manual labor. This phase is found in American usage,
but it has also appears as "horny-handed sons of the soil" (honest,
hardworking farmers). Just last year (April 2009), the egregious
George Will even *combined* them in one of his columns: people today
wear denim to pretend to be "horny-handed sons of toil and the
soil."
Anyway, my thought is (1) that Bob, who was from early times a
voracious reader of U.S. history books, would surely have run into
this popular (populist) epithet, and (2) that Bob, with his agile
attention to language, would have noted the vaguely obscene *punning*
possibilities in "horny" and "handed."
My suggestion is that an earlier version of the lyric contained "HORNY-
HANDED armies."
"Seasick sailors" and "horny-handed armies" -- note that this would
extended the alliteration. (I think "armies" may originally have been
another word starting with "h", but enough about that for now.) So
earlier version would have referred to two maladies afflicting men at
arms.
But this is potentially confusing, or just plain repetitive, because
"EMPTY-handed" appears in the immediately preceding stanza about the
painter. So I hypothesize that Bob modified "horny-handed" to "horny-
HEADED." No, it doesn't make any literal sense, but it avoids having
"handed" appear twice so close together and it sounds about the same.
For some reason, Bob didn't leave it at that. (Maybe "horny" would
have been just too bold.) So I speculate that he pursued his personal
pun path a step further by changing "HORNY-headed armies" to "ANTLER-
headed armies" -- antlers are horns, get it? Which he then pushed a
small step further to "REINDEER armies." The syntactic parallel to
"empty-handed" is now totally eliminated, which helps to protect the
singer from flubs (but not always, obviously)
And it makes the song more mysterious, which Bob tells us in
Chronicles was important to him.
The final product ("reindeer armies") is surreal, and the meaning of
the line remains permanently open to creative interpretation. Bob
would have no more idea what it "really means" than anybody else. He
would, however, know how the mysterious phrase got into the song,
which is a different matter.
Go Bob!
Thnkas very much for your erudite post. Quoted in full for those who
might've missed it.
Clearly this phrase "reindeer armies" references Matthew Arnold in his
"Dover Beach" (i dug this elsewhere):
}
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where reindeer armies clash by night.
{
'K so that's not quite true. (insert appropriate smileyface here.)
All i can add to yr query is that bob has lately given us a postscript
to reindeer armys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVjC15jhtw&feature=PlayList&p=84088D06A25F2FA3&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=30
HTH,
dudley
Thanks, DD. Nice link to fave recent Bob video.
BTW - Wallace Stevens in "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," read by
many a high-school student: "If her horny feet protrude, they come/To
show how cold she is and dumb..."
Thanks for the heads up, 'netics.....
I dont have a problem with this line.
Just sang it again tonight in fact, to a crowd....
Certainly the notion of nomadic species wandering around wherever the
government seems it's appropriate might be the alternate sarcastic
view on the war machine of the united states at the time, but Bob was
only making it seen (sic) that way. No - it's much smaller up front -
it's an argumentative description about the friends of this person he
is talking to....
- nate
Dear Dr._dudley,
Just a note acknowledging your most informative post. I ran out of
smileyfaces so I will have to render simple thanks.
But where might have Mr. Arnold derived the phrase?
And might there be other selective meanings and usages of this phrase
in lesser known circles?
Here's what some of those on the left have to say:
http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-all-over-now-baby-blue.html
And here's what their opposite numbers on the right have to say:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/785063/posts
You have to agree that it is a cake to refuse a slice, wouldn't you
say, Mr. Stein?
So, if we follow this path, the whole song is not so much about the
end as it is looking forward to the new beginning. The retreating
reindeer armies (struggle & strife) are following the lover who just
walked out the door. . . forget the dead, strike a match, start anew.
That old life is over, & this one, tho scary and uncertain -- the
carpet too is moving under you -- is the way to go. He's not saying
goodbye, he's saying hello.
~`~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~