Monday 29 May 2017

The Lord Of The Dance

Poul Anderson wrote a convincing Odin and could also have handled Hindu gods but no one can do everything.

"The Lord of the Dance" is:

an unconventional Christian hymn;
a title of Shiva;
a fictitious pagan god in Hellblazer (see here);
an Irish dancer (see here).

There is one pagan rewrite of the hymn in Hellblazer and another in SM Stirling's The Scourge Of God, Prologue, which I am starting to read.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor. Paul!

I'm actually familiar with that hymn, "The Lord of the Dance," which I first read in Fr. Andrew Greeley's 1984 novel LORD OF THE DANCE. But I somehow missed how that hymn was reused by Stirling in THE SCOURGE OF GOD.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Prologue, p. 4.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Thanks! I will soon reread that text, to see how "The Lord Of The Dance" was rewritten in a pagan sense.

Sean

Jim Baerg said...

The hymn "Lord of the Dance" reuses the tune from an earlier hymn "Simple Gifts".
That tune was used by Aaron Copland in the ballet "Appalachian Spring".