Thanks always to Jacques, Bullfinch, Nike Athena, and Mom — and thank you very, very much Ainself. (The only folk song I can sing is "Danny Boy.") (And that's only the first and last verses.)
Also? I know this is a terrible article. It's a concrete representation of "taking a stab at it." Piling on the awful at the very top, like a pestilent cherry, is my complete mystification when it comes to Christianity. Strange & Norrell treats the truthiness of Western religion with the same degree of familiarity and matter-of-factness as the bureaucratic workings of the English government — in the novel, although magicians and clergymen may debate their purpose, the existence of heaven and hell isn't so much 'taken for granted' as 'proved inarguable' — which is probably quite evocative, right? I don't even know why Christianity exists. As far as I can tell, Western religion ought to consist of the Jews, the Muslims, and the other Jews with the two extra festivals holy days. So really, I have nothing for you. If you can do a better job, let me know and I'll link you up.
One of the most important landmarks on the path to properly identifying the Raven King as a character is a modernish-looking faux-folk song called, surprisingly, 'The Raven King.' This song is one of the earliest evidences of John Uskglass's presence readers find embedded in the English culture of Strange & Norrell, and it's also — in my opinion at least — one of the most ambiguous. It doesn't come equipped with a context, and indeed appears all by itself in a footnote, with no explanation or etiology. I suppose that only adds further weight to Clarke's successful facsimile of British history, but it also unfortunately makes solid interpretation almost impossible; this is my best attempt.
If you don't have Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell on you at the moment, 'The Raven King' looks like this:
Not long, not long my father said
Not long will you be ours
The Raven King knows all too well
Which are the fairest flowers
The priest was all too worldly
Though he prayed and rang his bell
The Raven King three candles lit
The priest said it was well
Her arms were all too feeble
Though she claimed to love me so
The Raven King stretched out his hand
She sighed and let me go
This land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King goes by
For always and for always
I pray remember me
Upon the moors, beneath the stars
With the King's wild company
Right, so, the most important thing to do first is identify who is speaking or singing? Then, what is the speaker / singer describing? Lastly, we'll try to answer the question what does it mean? For my money, "who is it?" is the most difficult answer to come by, here; we know that the song describes the Raven King's "regrettable habit," but beyond that, nothing much is obvious at all. Initially, I thought this song might be a duet between two lovers, one of whom is kidnapped by the Raven King out collecting shiny bits of humanity like a magpie collects pieces of broken glass. Examining it more carefully, though, I can hear only one voice. I see no differentiation in mood, attitude, or persona among the statements of selfhood or reference — "my father," "she claimed to love me so," " she... let me go," and "I pray remember me" — that would lead me to believe there are two people involved in the story of the song. Well, there certainly are two voices there: The singer and the father, of course. But, I don't really feel anyone else. In most folk songs conceived as duets or round-robins, there's usually some element of question and answer, or of varied address [1]; I find it difficult to believe that a song contrived in this style would accidentally leave these sorts of obvious details out. So, at the moment, I'm going to treat 'The Raven King' as if it contains a single primary speaker (or singer), unless someone comes up with an excellent description of a division between two or more main voices. No matter how hard I look at it, I simply can't find one.
The only other thing about the identity of the owner of the voice which can be clearly understood from the text is that he or she is probably quite young. The singer's father gives us this information openly, at the beginning of the poem — it's the very first thing presented to the reader (or the listener). The most significant part of the father's statement is "not long," which is repeated three times for emphasis; the singer isn't meant for this world, lovely and flower-like as she — or he — is. Speaking of which: The debate about the speaker's sex has been long and not very distinguished; with new evidence (presented in footnote #2) suggesting that 18th and 19th century depictions of gender weren't as rigid as modern ones, I think a child of either sex is a potential candidate for the role [2]. And although I suppose the object of the Raven King's affection in 'The Raven King' could conceivably be a woman or man in young adulthood, I don't actually think so. I believe, judging by the third stanza, that the singer of the song is young enough to be held in the arms — making him or her no more than nine or ten years old, and more likely a much younger child. Skipping the priest for a moment, let's move on to that third stanza, and the "she" I've been mystified by for so long. I assumed at the outset that the events of the song take place at a wedding, because of the priest and the candles, but this defeated and surprising "she" person really ruined the theory. If the Raven King is abducting someone who's participating in a wedding, and if the material activity of the abduction looks like, "she claimed to love me so... she sighed and let me go," then I saw no way the person abducted could possibly be the bride. It's difficult to let go of yourself regretfully, let alone to hold yourself with ineffective love. But, if we assume that the abduction doesn't happen at a wedding, and furthermore that the person being abducted is a child, then the "she" of the feeble arms becomes the child's mother or sister. Which, shockingly, makes some semblance of sense.
Now, onto the what is happening? part. We know, as I said at the top, that the song depicts John Uskglass stealing someone away to live with him in the forever-after of the Other Lands. We know also that the activity of the song occurs, at least in part, in a church, under the watchful eye of a collusive and "worldly" priest. In the beginning, I guessed that the candles in the second stanza, along with the ringing bell, were part of a wedding ceremony. I made that assumption because, outside of my participation in weddings I have never stepped foot in a church. I have since learned, however, that Christians are always going to church, sometimes four or five times a week and for no apparent reason (maybe those eucharist wafers taste really good). This would mean the abduction could have occurred on nearly any ordinary day. I also learned that there are many opportunities for candles and bells to be used during services in most forms of the Christian church — ceremonies ranging in tone and type from celebrations of Christmas and Easter to the observation of random Saints'-days to the offices of ordinary prayer, when candles are lit for each blessing asked or each individual prayer offered. Bells can be rung by special choral groups or by priests and pastors and other representatives of the clergy for many reasons, including as an indication that services have started, to assist in chants and prayers, or simply as part of the musical portion of devotions. (Which is quite weird, if you ask me, but no one ever has.) Also, inside Strange & Norrell, bells are rung by fairies to designate the beginning and end of their magical activities, and candles can be used to mark the passage of time during a summoning spell. I'm sure, then, that they've been symbolically invoked on purpose. So, the events depicted in the song could occur during nearly any religious ceremony you could think of, and the candles are significant not because they represent a marital union, but more likely because they represent penance done by the Raven King for his crime of abduction. Or, possibly, prayers he is planning to say to excuse himself; one for the father, one for the mother, and one for the child. Or maybe the priest? Or the priest is a fairy? Or, they're all using candles to summon up the Raven King, who rings his own bell, and what? What are you looking at?
To be honest, I'm not really clear on the connections drawn between candles, prayers, and bells, here. It all looks a little shady and pagan to me. Anyway, religion probably figures prominently in 'The Raven King' because, like parental love, it is yet another aspect of earthly existence meant to keep the singer safe that fails him (or her) in the utmost when she (or he) (yes, I'm going to keep doing that for the rest of the piece) catches the less-than-compassionate eye of the Raven King. It's also, if you believe the singer, actually complicit in Uskglass's transgression, being the unprotected ground upon which he trespasses freely to serve his private whims. The priest/fairy in the poem requires of the Raven King only that he acknowledge or atone for his misdeeds, not that he abstain from committing them.
Next, there's the location, the final placement of the action, mentioned in the fourth stanza (or verse). When I read 'The Raven King' as a duet, I saw the shallow land as England, because that's how Norrell sees it — but I don't want to see anything the way Norrell would see it, to be honest with you. I'd imagined the 'shallowness' in terms of "reflection," with the dim, everyday world of familiar objects seeming to become a shadow cast by the brighter and stranger fairy-lands where the loved one of the earlier verses has been taken. But, I'm not so sure. It might be exactly the other way around, now that I think about it. The shallow land could be the fairy country where Uskglass is king as well, and which he is able to disturb at will. But then, he has such an easy job of rearranging England whenever he feels like it that I'm finding it difficult to be certain one way or the other. So, I don't know much about the shifting, watercolor country to where the singer is taken, or where he or she is left, except to say that it's one of the most arresting and lovely images I've ever read.
Finally, what can be the answer to that last question, the what does it mean? What, exactly, is the fate that waits for the girl (or the boy) at the end of the song? In the first place, the child is taken from all that she understands and knows (or he is). Next, he or she is introduced to the realization that mere human love isn't strong enough to oppose the will of the Raven King, and that nothing can protect her (or him) from the king's advances; not even God can save him (or her). The Raven King's proximity reveals to the singer the frail and superficial nature of ordinary physical existence — a revelation unfit for consumption by someone as young as our singer, and one that's generally only associated with the infirmities of old age. The king himself doesn't seem to be a source of much comfort, either. In a strange way, he doesn't even seem to be completely present; he "passes by" and makes the world tremble, which is a little odd, and even more tellingly, the singer is with his company, not in his company. I think that's even odder, personally, unless, yet again, there's some crucial element I'm missing [3]. The place to which he takes the singer is the one we've seen, over and over, in Uskglass's applications self-mythology: wild, dangerous, strange, filled with darkness and starlight and a certain kind of frightening self-reliant solitude. The element that's been left out of Clarke's creation (or left for later, perhaps) is the story behind the song, that missing context — is it, like the English folk songs of the 16th century and onwards that it resembles, a modern bastardization of a much older or entirely "foreign" story? Or is it actually what it appears to be, a song composed by the person to whom these events actually happened, a character who hasn't yet made it into a published narrative? Or is it something else altogether, a song like other songs written by a musician or a poet, designed to cater to the topical concerns of the world it describes and built specifically for imagined Yorkshire audiences and avid readers? I don't know, of course, and in not knowing I can't answer that final what does it mean? properly. (Not that I'd necessarily be able to do it, anyway.)
I'd like to say in closing this section that I really have no more mastery of 'The Raven King,' or indeed of the Raven King, than I had when I started out, as is (perhaps?) potentially obvious. Also, regarding a clear opinion on the sex of the singer in 'The Raven King,' I will say that John Uskglass is mostly an equal-opportunity employer; he disperses his visitations pretty democratically between men and women. However, during the epoch of time in which Strange & Norrell and The Ladies take place, only girls and women seem natively capable of discovering and performing his very specific style of magic. And you know how difficult it is to measure up to John Uskglass's exacting standards! When Jane Tobias looked for him in the darkness, she wasn't drawn a study in perspective that set her heart's desire in a position slightly less significant than the pupil of a bird — the king gave her his own image back, replicated to scale. She was much closer to Importance than Strange ever managed to get. So, if we assume that the girl in the song is in fact a girl in the song, she may be Uskglass's daughter. She may be his sister. She may be the greatest English magician he will ever instruct. She may be Catherine of Winchester. She may be our devious narrator. There is no way for me to know, and nothing left for me to say.
[1] For instance, the first folk song of this type — including multiple voices — that springs to my mind is an early American ballad about the Revolutionary War called Soldier, Soldier, Won't You Marry Me? In this song, there's a sweet lass ("O, soldier, soldier won't you marry me / With your musket, fife, and drum?"), a disingenuous soldier ("O no, sweet maid, I cannot marry thee / For I have no coat to put on."), and a slightly ironical narrator ("So up she went to her grandfather's chest / And she brought him a coat of the very very best / And the soldier put it on...") (the song doesn't end well for the solider, poor dumb guy) (or the lass, for that matter). That's also true for The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies, Barbara Allen, O No, John!, and True Thomas, and that's about all the historical folk songs originating in the British Isles that I can pull out of my hat without doing any research. My point is that most 'traditional' folk songs which contain many voices don't tend to keep their subjects and objects a secret, and so I can't imagine that a fictional song intentionally crafted in an "authentic" style would do that, either. Clarke went to (presumably) enormous pains to make her novel look "real" — I don't know why she'd break the fourth wall for a counterfeit folk song. If I'm just skipping large numbers of British folk songs which feature multiple ambiguous voices which Clarke is clearly imitating, however, please let me know. And I might be! So please do.
[2] I had only ever seen Lancelot discussed as "a flower of knighthood," but apparently this is a semi-common poetic technique — or at least a conceit that's been used from time to time by our fancy and melodic friends in the UK. Ainself, who is utterly spectacular, told me about two era-appropriate folk songs called Glenlogie and The Famous Flower of Serving-Men, which both invoke the image of the manflower. I would like to say it's not as disturbing as it could be. I think The Flower of Serving Men particularly would work as a Clarke story. ETA: And check this one out! Because, my friends: it is awesome. Apparently, the manflower grows in all the gardens of the world! That is wonderful, is what that is.
[3] I seem to do a lot of this lately.
