Jackie Oates -"Past Caring" - Gloucester Cathedral - 21 October 2010
Channel: AaranAardvark
Date: 2010-10-23

Jackie playing Gloucester Cathedral as part of the Show of Hands Spires and Beams tour of churches and cathedrals across England. Here she performs 'Past Caring' a song based upon a poem by Australian poet Henry Lawson (1867 - 1922).

This poignant ballad tells the story of the hardships and agonies faced by a woman and a mother, it starts with the verse:-

Now up and down the siding brown
The great black crows are flyin',
And down below the spur, I know,
Another `milker's' dyin';
The crops have withered from the ground,
The tank's clay bed is glarin',
But from my heart no tear nor sound,
For I have gone past carin' --
Past worryin' or carin',
Past feelin' aught or carin';
But from my heart no tear nor sound,
For I have gone past carin'.

A beautiful interpretation of the poem accompanied by the drone of a shruti, a type of harmonium that also originates from India.

Jackie's haunting perfomance made even more magical in the setting of this ancient Mercian cathedral.