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Canadian Soldiers (date unknown) |
In the song, “Harris and the Mare,” our protagonist reminds Harris that he was a “conshie in the War.” In all the years I have listened to the song, I took that mention merely to be evidence of his peaceful nature–disrupted by the Clary’s attack on his wife and then his own unexpected and primal response in her defense. In the radioplay elaboration of “Harris and the Mare” though, that “conshie” status proves to be the point around which much of the action turns and the circumstance that almost completely frames his relationship with the community.
The radioplay was developed after the song, and premiered on the CBC Radio show
Nightfall on Good Friday, April 9, 1982. You can read a press release about the creation of the piece
here.
Nightfall was a popular radio horror series that ran on CBC Radio in the early 80s. “Harris and the Mare” is a bit of an anomaly relative to the horror aspect, but it’s helpful to understand that context when listening to the first 60 seconds or so of the clip below. The full clip is a little over 20 minutes long, with about a minute each of introduction and conclusion.
I haven’t found a transcript for the performance, but it is all pretty clear, I think. We now have a name for our protagonist, Bart Neilson, and his wife, Jenny, as well. Rogers penned some additional verses for the song to set the stage for the drama, and alters a detail or two of the song. He changes Neilson’s age, making him 14 years younger than in the original song, and also puts a sharper point on the verse that characterizes his fellow bar patrons as neighbors rather than friends.
The most interesting changes, though, happen in the story as acted, and are the ones that pull out the importance of Neilson’s conscientious objector status, and those that raise up the religious, specifically Christian, dimensions of Neilson’s actions.
In World War I Canada, conscientious objector status was mostly tied to membership in a “peace church” tradition, most commonly Mennonite. This was also the case in the U.S. The story makes clear that Neilson’s conscientious objection is tied to his Christian faith, although doesn’t specify what tradition, and it’s clear that his neighbors perceive his objector status as a personal failing–one of courage, masculinity, or perhaps something else. As Amy J. Shaw argues, acceptance even of religious objection was difficult within the context of a war also understood in religious terms–a type of holy war. This gets augmented somewhat in the story by hints that he hasn’t sacrificed like the rest of them, and enjoys his status as a well-paid millwright in part because of that.
What also emerges from this account is that the neighbors’ failure to intervene in defense of Neilson and his wife was more a refusal to intervene. In this respect, the story draws more sharply than the song the extent to which Neilson’s conscientious objection is not only a sign of his pacifism, but is the context for his separation from the community. In other words, contrary to my reading of the song, in which it seems the violence leads to exile, even for someone justified in using it in self defense, that Neilson’s exile was pre-existing and is only intensified by his killing of Clary.
In this way, the radioplay becomes an interesting artistic meditation on conscientious objection more generally–specifically, how the same refusal can be seen as both an act of principle on the part of an individual and as that individual’s betrayal of some of the obligations that people believe bind communities together. In a way, the neighbors’ inaction becomes a kind of reciprocation–both in helping defend him and in refusing to help him. Now, I think that the personal violence of self-defense and the political violence of war are relevantly different, but the radioplay does force some reflection on that point. Incidentally, this has some narrative resonance, I think, with how the mission of Captain John H. Miller’s squad in
Saving Private Ryan serves as a kind of synecdoche for Steven Spielberg’s broader point about World War II).
I suspect a large part of the introduction of the Good Friday themes was driven by the proposed air date of the radioplay (and that a horror radio show might have wanted to go a slightly different direction on Good Friday out of deference to its audience). And, as mentioned above, a religious dimension is historically accurate, as likely the only thing that would have permitted Nielson to be a “conshie” in the first place. Interestingly enough, though, Neilson doesn’t make explicitly religious arguments himself–those characterizations of his reasons are mostly put in the mouth of Harris, the town atheist.
So, for me, most of this is just a little historical context, and perhaps some embellishment, now that Rogers, and his collaborator John Gavin Douglas are not restricted to the tighter economies of the song to develop their themes. The point that really struck me, though, was when Harris analogizes the neighbors’ refusal to help Neilson and Jenny to the Biblical account of the crowd asking Pilate to release Barabbas instead of Jesus. We’ve done a short series of posts on Jesus and the murder ballad, including the crowd’s rejection of Jesus, and even images of a violent Jesus. I’m interested to know whether you think Harris’s comparison rings true.
A lot, I suppose, turns on whether you think Neilson’s act was self-defense (“You’ll never do that again, Clary.”), and what exactly Neilson sacrifices, and for whom.
Next up
With gratitude for your patience for bearing with a post that was long on prose and short on music, our next post will be mostly music, and a few more stories told by those drawn into violence, willingly or unwillingly.