From 1969. Written by Sandy Dennis and appearing on the second Fairport Convention Album, the song concerns Mary Queen of Scots who spent the last days of her life as a prisoner in
Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire, and was executed in the castle's
courtyard. The song reflects on her years of imprisonment and impending death.
While the circumstances are different (voluntary vs involuntary), this song made me think about the guilded cage lives of American female pop stars such as Whitney Houston, Brittany Spears and Taylor Swift, all of whom have learned the bitter cost of celebrity.
How often she has gazed from castle windows o'er,
And watched the daylight passing within her captive wall,
With no-one to heed her call.
The evening hour is fading within the dwindling sun,
And in a lonely moment those embers will be gone
And the last of all the young birds flown.
Her days of precious freedom, forfeited long before,
To live such fruitless years behind a guarded door,
But those days will last no more.
Tomorrow at this hour she will be far away,
Much farther than these islands,
Or the lonely Fotheringay
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