After Forty Years > IDEAS & IDEALS

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This summer, our alumni reunion of the elementary school was held at the old school in my rural home town, now one-hour drive from Seoul to the south, for the first time in more than forty years after graduation. There were about fifty old boys and girls present. Most of them were already grandfathers and grandmothers including me. The school, with the new buildings and changes, was not, as we expected it to be, what it had been. Everything seemed to have grown smaller than it used to be. It was during the summer vacation, and the school was empty of the students. The open space under the elm tree in the backyard of the school was arranged for a makeshift dining room. We were glad to see the old elm tree there. It was where it was. It has grown old and looked weak and small. In it we could see the present images of ourselves.

      One of my old friends who had never turned up in the previous alumni meetings somewhere else happened to sit opposite to me at the lunch table. I was in the same class with him many times during the elementary and middle-school, I remembered, and we did many nasty, hilarious, and shameful tricks together. After graduation of the middle-school a few of the graduates including me had left home for Seoul to study more, but his circumstances did not allow him to leave home. Like most of the stayers at home, he had accepted his lot and employed himself in growing rice, he said. I met him in almost forty years.

      The hard physical work in the open air has made him look older for his age, but I found him still sanguine in his spirit as ever. Grown tipsy under the influence of some country-made beverages, he recollected our school-days long past with strong emotion in a loud voice. He remembered very clearly many things that had taken place to us, which I had forgotten completely. Many old boys around him listened to his recollections  with sentimental amusement.  

      Then, out of the blue, he asked me to sing "O, Danny Boy." At first I could not believe my ears. I would not be so flabbergasted, if I had been asked to sing a Korean popular song. Of course, I knew the song, but I myself had not sung it for so long that  it had gone completely from my mind until then. How could he, who must have led a rough and coarse life in the country, with unshaven face and untidy clothes, so rude and even vulgar with his manners and language, think out the name of the song, a foreign song, an Irish folk song that we had learned to sing in the classroom so long ago? But I found him serious and sincere in his request. He said he wanted to hear the song sung by me once more. He said with reminiscence that he remembered that I had often stood before the students in the classroom, and sung it at the command of the teachers. He was right. I often did.

      I don't remember how the song came to me first. "O, Danny Boy" was one of the many foreign folk songs I learned to sing at home even before going to school. My elder brother who had learned to sing it at school sang it at home, and told me that the song came from England. I liked the tune of the song, and the words in Korean translation put to it. By the time I went to school, "O, Danny Boy" has become one of the most favorite foreign folk songs along with "Santa Lucia" and "My Old Kentucky Home."

      I just wonder how and when these songs and many other foreign folk songs I learned to sing later in my life came to me first. Most of them must have come to my country long before I was born. Though young, I liked the exotic mood and atmosphere they evoked in me. I just wonder even now how they all travelled so far, arrived in my country, and settled down at a corner of my heart. They all came to me when traveling a foreign country was almost unthinkable and impossible, and possible only for such a person as Marco Polo.

      I could not refuse. I cleared my throat and began to sing, and to my great surprise, he joined me in the singing. As the song spread out, most of the old boys and even the old girls at other tables stopped eating and talking, and joined in the extempore chorus. They all seemed surprised by a foreign song, familiar as well as strange, new as well as old. They were going back to the time when they first sang it during the school days long, long ago.

O, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side;
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are falling,
It's you, it's you, must go and I must bide.
But come you back when summer is in the meadow,
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,
It's I will be here in sunshine or in shadow,
O, Danny boy, O, Danny boy, I love you so.

      At the highest pitch of the song, "It's I will be here in sunshine or in shadow," we almost broke our voice and heart. By the time we came to the end of the first part of the song, we all seemed to have become one in the melancholic feeling and mood by the melody and the words. It was a completely new experience for us all in many years. A great chorus. An unexpected moving spectacle. It had never occurred to me that we liked the song so much, and furthermore, that we had not forgotten the tune and the words in Korean translation, though. When I began the second stanza, many dropped out of the singing because they could not remember the words, but remained good listeners in humming silence.  

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying,
And I am dead, as dead I well may be;
You'll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.
And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me,
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be,
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me,
I simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

      When the chorus ended, we all clapped our hands, felt greatly delighted, and fell momentarily into silence. The song have struck a deep chord within our hearts. All felt very sad as well as pleased. It had never occurred to me or to anybody there at the time that the song had stayed with us for so long with such an appealing power. Like the boy in the song, some of us had left home with young hope and ambition for the city. And like the singer in the song who parts with her beloved with sorrow and awaits his return with unchanging love, more of us had stayed at home, and we met in long years. During the time we all grew old, some have already died and were buried in the public cemetery nearby at home. I thought we were all crying silently without tears remembering the lost youth and thinking of the common fate of us all. I saw tears gathering in my old friend's eyes.
                                                                                                    (August 15, 2001)