My Favorite Harpers is the Harper Hall part of My Favorite Things, a parody of My Favorite Things from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The Sound of Music, dedicated to all the fen who appreciate filk. It has references to Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall of Pern trilogy:
Verse is a framing verse: it summarizes Menolly at her lowest, before the story turns, and the later verses recapitulate what it summarizes. Her father, the Sea Holder of Half-Circle, beat her for tuning and for what he called twiddles; when she cut her hand gutting packtails her parents let it heal wrong so that she could not play, and she was forbidden even to sing in the Hold, for fear that Harper Elgion would learn she had taught the children after Petiron died. As she tells Sebell and Piemur at the Fort Hold gather (Dragonsinger, ch. 9), she ran away because she would rather have died of Threadscore than live in Half-Circle another night. As a framing verse it anticipates that confession. Her brother Alemi was the only one who cared.
Verse is the death of the harper
Petiron (Domick’s teacher at Harper Hall, and Robinton’s father) in
Dragonsong,
the first of Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall novels. His pupil
Menolly drums his funeral dirge, though a harper of higher rank
should have played it, because she was the best musician left in
Half-Circle Sea Hold. Stands alludes to the words
Here I stand; I can do no other
, attributed to Martin Luther
at the Diet of Worms in 1521. In her song for Petiron
(Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsinger, ch. 6, p. 102) she
says she will keep her tears for later, but her grief will never go.
Tears for tomorrow alludes to that song. On the final chord
Petiron goes to his rest, and Menolly lets the drum and stick slide
from her fingers into the sea: she could never use them again after
they had beaten Petiron’s last song (Dragonsong,
ch. 1, p. 3). On her first night at the Hall Silvina tells Menolly, who did not know, that Petiron refused to advance himself once his son was elected Masterharper, and took a post halfway to nowhere, Half-Circle. (ch. 1) His wife Merelan, Robinton’s mother, had a voice of unusual beauty and range. Dunca, who holds the girls’ cottage, had hoped to marry him after Merelan died, and according to Silvina he resigned as Fort Hold Harper partly to get free of her. (ch. 2) Page references are to the
editions with ISBN 0-553-13360-8 (Dragonsong)
and 0-553-11835-8 (Dragonsinger). Facts added later are cited by chapter to the Aladdin hardcover edition of May 2016, read as an e-book (ISBN 978-1-665-95643-7).
Verse is about Yanus, the Sea Holder of
Half-Circle and Menolly’s father, and Mavi, her mother.
Both held strictly to the tradition that girls do not become harpers,
and once a new harper arrived they forbade Menolly to play or sing.
Father of the Year
is sarcasm. Menolly says her parents let her injured
hand heal wrong so that she could not play (Dragonsinger, ch. 9), and both Silvina, seeing the
scar, and Manora, headwoman of Benden Weyr, who healed her
feet, condemn it; the scar is the one that
later splits at Harper Hall. Her brother Alemi is the only one of the
family who is decent to her. Menolly’s tunes, he says, are “trivial little whistles” that would stray into the children’s Teaching Ballads, and his order to her is “No tuning!” (Dragonsong, ch. 1–2, Aladdin e-book sample). Mavi tells Menolly not to disobey him, and to behave herself now that Petiron is dead. When Soreel, wife of the First Holder, says the girl knew the Sagas better than the old Harper did, Mavi ends the discussion with “Yanus will do what’s proper.” Mavi refuses to have a sealed slate from Masterharper Robinton opened, because “Harpers’ letters are for Harpers” (Dragonsong, ch. 1–2, Aladdin e-book sample). Lying is no part of the tradition they invoke; despite their claim to propriety, they lied to harpers.
Verse is Menolly’s flight from Half-Circle in Dragonsong. She runs away just when Threadfall is due (Thread is the flesh-eating organism that falls on Pern and that the dragons burn), shelters in a cave, and, in keeping the fire-lizard hatchlings from flying out into Thread, Impresses nine of them. She is later apprenticed at Harper Hall by Masterharper Robinton in Dragonsinger.
Verse is the bond between Menolly and her fire-lizards. The gold queen would not let her escape the incoming tide until she helped rescue the clutch; in keeping the hatchlings from flying out into Thread she Impressed nine and became responsible for them; in return they warn her, once waking her with a vision of a dragon and rider falling from the sky. When they return from their maiden flight she sings to them, and they surprise her by joining in the music. At Harper Hall their descant over the apprentices’ chorus startles its leader that season, Journeyman Brudegan (“Bruddie” to the apprentices) (ch. 3), who is also one of those who later draft the fire-lizards as a chorus. When Morshal’s anger, and later Domick’s, rouses them, they dive at both men to protect her. They will not eat from anyone else’s hands until she arrives, and when she cannot face the girls in the cottage they fetch her pipes from her room.
Verse is about Silvina, Harper Hall Headwoman, who befriends Menolly when she arrives and settles her in, runs the household, and keeps the kitchen hopping. She is a good friend and a bad enemy, and her approval is a major asset. Seeing the scar on Menolly’s left hand she asks who bungled the healing of it, an unspoken condemnation of Mavi. She will not let Menolly apologize for her fire-lizards, and dismisses fools like Dunca, who has charge of the girls’ cottage and fears anything new or strange. Dunca withholds a summons from Domick, so that Menolly misses her first lesson with him. A headwoman carries a great deal of clout. On Menolly’s arrival Silvina scolds Robinton in front of the assembled harpers for subjecting the child to an ordeal, sends the lot of them into the Hall, and puts Menolly to bed; the crowd parts for her, respectfully and with a smile. (ch. 1) She is among the masters whose voices Menolly hears settling the journeymen’s postings (ch. 11); she rakes Dunca over after the brawl at the gather, and Piemur leaves his marks with her for safekeeping (ch. 10). She tells the kitchen that Menolly has nine fire-lizards and that the Hall will have eleven when the Harper’s two eggs hatch, overrules Dunca over Menolly’s room, will not have Menolly apologize for her fire-lizards, and orders that she have whatever food she needs. (ch. 2) She also questions Menolly about Petiron and examines the reed pipes Menolly made herself, with a critical eye, and praises them as well made for something cut with only a belt knife. (ch. 2) When Silvina chides Dunca for not knowing Menolly had Impressed fire-lizards, Menolly’s sharp ear catches the edge in her voice, and so does Beauty, who thrums a warning at Dunca. (ch. 2) Shonagar praises her as indispensable to the Hall, adds that she is also a good musician, and tells Menolly to make the occasion to hear her sing. (ch. 7) On Threadfall day she moves Menolly out of Dunca’s cottage into a room in the Hall, overriding her objection (“who was headwoman in this Hall?”), and outfits her from the storeroom, telling her that an apprentice harper has appearances to maintain. (ch. 6) She tells Menolly that she answers to Robinton first, to Silvina second, and only then to any of the other masters; when Menolly cries out in the night she tells Master Morshal to hold his silly tongue and sends the crowd of harpers back to bed. (ch. 7)
Verse is about Master Morshal, Craftmaster of Theory at Harper Hall, who resents Menolly’s presence there and belittles her. Robinton tells her she need not sit classes with Morshal, who teaches only at the apprentice level; he says Morshal’s dislike of women is a standing joke in the Hall, mimics him saying that it is a waste of time to teach girls, and advises her to give him the courtesy due his rank and age and to ignore his biased thinking (Dragonsinger, ch. 8). Menolly hears, in Robinton’s mimicry of Morshal, her father’s opinion echoed in the Hall (Dragonsinger, ch. 8), and that opinion is the tradition that harpering is a man’s occupation, which one of the women in Petiron’s room states (Dragonsong, ch. 1, Aladdin e-book sample). Craftmaster in Musical Theory and Composition, he quizzes her on theory and is annoyed that she answers everything correctly. When she misses chords because her scarred hand will not stretch, he refuses to acknowledge the hand as the reason (he has told her he wants no excuses), and dismisses her with a complaint that girls presume to be harpers and pretend to compose. Roused by his anger, her fire-lizards dive at him to protect her (Dragonsinger, ch. 3).
Verse is about Journeyman Talmor, who teaches the girls’ gitar class at Harper Hall. He is patient with Pona, showing her an alternative chording and slowing the tempo, and short with the rest; he has Menolly demonstrate, and is startled when she plays a new piece cold. She cannot bring herself to play less than her best, which shows the others up: they answer with a chill silence and hostile stares, though Audiva watches her with fierce intent; she later tells Domick that the girls all knew about the message Dunca withheld. Menolly overhears Pona at the cot door shouting that Menolly is an apprentice, that the girls have rank to uphold, and that she should go where she belongs, with the apprentices (ch. 5). Talmor did not place her in his class and says he will inquire (ch. 5).
Verse is about Master Jerint, Masterharper and Craftmaster of Instrument Making at Harper Hall, who lets Menolly choose a gitar when Domick says she needs one to practice on. She rejects, as too green and badly joined, the one Jerint reaches for, puts back a fine one because it must belong to a master and is too good to practice on, and picks one with a broken string, which Domick tells her afterward was Robinton’s journeyman gitar — a test she passes, since Domick says she has shown she can choose well (ch. 3). That afternoon (ch. 5) he examines the pipes she made herself in the cave, arches his eyebrows at their pure, clear tone, and has her assemble a drum.
Verse is Master Shonagar’s test of Menolly at Harper Hall (he is Craftmaster of Voice). Piemur, his apprentice, brings Menolly to her first session (ch. 3) and tells her Shonagar said that anyone who can sing half as well as her fire-lizards would be an asset, and that it did not matter if she croaked like a watchwher so long as she could get the fire-lizards to sing. In the session Shonagar mutters to himself, in an undertone, that Petiron was “wise enough to know his limitations”; Menolly bridles at the aspersion, and her fire-lizards hiss and echo her. Shonagar is puzzled and explains that he meant no disrespect: for him it was praise, since Petiron had sense enough not to meddle (hardly a soothing choice of word) but to wait until Shonagar could attend to her vocal education. Petiron, it turns out, had passed on Shonagar’s own advice that loud singing is noise, not song. He drills her breathing from the belly, tells her to bring the fire-lizards along because they learn from example, and falls asleep on the sandtable. Master Oldive, the Hall’s healer, treats her scarred hand and her feet, hurt outrunning Thread: at her first visit (ch. 2) he prescribes exercises tightening her fingers about a small hard ball and promises a salve, and Silvina tells her Oldive says she is to keep off her feet (ch. 2, again ch. 6); at her second visit (ch. 5) he gives her the hard-gum ball and shows her how to use it, and also examines Beauty and gives her ointment for the fire-lizards’ patchy skin. In her second session (ch. 5) she is allowed only single notes and then scales of five notes, and is exhausted by the end, in her own account. Shonagar remarks on the pure descant the fire-lizards sang over the chorus and says Piemur believes they will sing for or with anyone. He then sets up an experiment: when Piemur sings, the fire-lizards join him, Beauty taking the descant, and Shonagar sits engrossed, fingers shading his eyes, giving Menolly no sign of his reception; he dismisses them and begins to snore. Piemur tells her that as far as anyone can tell only a flat tone or meals will wake him (ch. 5). He and Domick are rivals, each wanting to teach her full time; other masters want her too, since, as the saying goes, the reward for a job well done is another job. For all that, both are very much her defenders.
Verse is about Master Domick, Masterharper and Craftmaster of Song Composition at Harper Hall, and the quartet scene. Domick, Sebell, Talmor and Menolly play a piece for four instruments (ch. 6). Talmor says Domick has just finished writing it and calls it one of his “tortuous inventions.” Domick tells Menolly she is to play second gitar, with what she sees as the smile of one conferring a favor, and says acidly that the piece is no children’s exercise and she will not find it easy to read. She is so absorbed that she is shocked when it ends, and asks to play it again. Talmor says she has played the fingers off him and Sebell and that Domick is panting for breath, and Sebell, the oldest journeyman under Robinton by his own account and so, by the Hall’s custom, responsible for the newest apprentice (though the apprentices say he has only just walked the tables), (ch. 5) laughs until he cries. Domick says he did not believe Talmor’s account of her, and concedes that the joke is on him. When Menolly hesitates, afraid of his tongue, he is surprised that she is frightened of him and tells her, in a suddenly gentler voice, that it is having to train idiots that sours him. Asked what she would most like to do, she says playing in a group; he smiles, and when she apologizes for missing the dynamics he wrote he has them play it again, stopping them time and again; the session ends when the Threadfall alarm sounds. Sebell had told her that Domick likes no one, himself included, but is a top-rank teacher whose agreeing to teach her is a real concession (ch. 5). At their first meeting (ch. 3, in Jerint’s workshop) he teases and tests her, not kindly: he hears her play and does not let on that she has played very well, and he stops her when he sees that her exertion has split the edge of the scar. In ch. 5 he is angry when she misses his summons, which Dunca failed to pass on; when her fire-lizards dive at him in her defense he stands still, is not intimidated, and refuses to punish her as the victim of envy. He is no martinet. Measured by the Good Bosses section of the author’s home page, he is an ideal one: clear about what he wants, demanding, protective of her, and willing to stand aside and let her work. His kindness is there from the start. His manner softens toward her as soon as he decides she is no luftmensch (an impractical dreamer); after that it is a matter of degree. He and Shonagar are rivals, each wanting to teach her full time, but both are very much her defenders.
Verse is Domick’s tribute to Petiron, whose apprentice he was at the Hall: he calls him the finest musician and best instructor it has had. In quiet tones he tells Menolly she has no need ever to be ashamed of her playing, and Sebell adds, or of her joy in music.
Verse is Domick’s reaction when Menolly, afraid of his tongue, hesitates to say what she wants. He is startled that she fears him and tells her, gently, that what sours him is having to train idiots, a complaint anyone who has drilled the unwilling will sympathize with. His kindness has been there all along; she is still too shaken to see it.
Verse is Menolly’s answer when Domick asks what she would most like to do: playing like this, in a group, with the interweaving harmonies and the melody passing from instrument to instrument, which felt to her like flying on a dragon. Domick’s otherwise dour face lights with a slow, pleased smile; Talmor tells him she means it. She apologizes for not following the dynamic markings he wrote, which sends the others into laughter, and Domick has them play it again, stopping them time and again to refine it.
Verse is the end of the practice session. When Menolly asks about the harp part, Domick takes the harp from her, shows her that the scar has split and is bleeding, and stops her, more gently than he usually speaks: it is time to eat. The scar worries everyone at the Hall except Morshal and Menolly herself, who accepts Oldive’s warnings in her head and chafes at them in her heart. The three men are grinning at her, and the dining hall, its doors locked and the girls absent, looks friendlier than she has seen it.
Verse is about Sebell reassuring Menolly about the fire-lizard song. Masterharper Robinton rewrote it, as he had told her himself on her second morning, and told
everyone that she wrote it; Sebell says that is what the Harper wishes, that he only tightened it, and that the
melody is hers and everyone is humming it. What she must learn is to polish her music without losing its
freshness, and that is why she should study with Domick: he has the discipline; you have the
originality.
Menolly cannot reply, and Sebell tells her not to hunch up and asks what is the matter, since she has
gone white: at home she was beaten for doing exactly what she is now encouraged to do.
Doubt that still clings is that reaction; the answer comes in the verse after it.
Verse is about Robinton, Masterharper of Pern, who directs the search for the composer of Petiron’s songs and invites Menolly to Harper Hall. He is impressed when her fire-lizards join in her music, and he sends her to Master Oldive, telling Oldive she must play again (ch. 2). When she fears being a nuisance he tells her she is too young to appreciate the value of nuisance: he is not given to mischief, but he does not smother it. He tells her she belongs at Harper Hall, admits he put unfair pressure on her to join, apologizes for improving her song, and says her songs are what he needs; On her second morning he tells her that the conventional Craft procedure must be observed, in her unusual situation especially, before her training can proceed as fast as she likes. (ch. 2) The arc is Menolly finally believing his encouragement and accepting her right to the fruits of her talent. After Menolly overhears a conversation at Benden Weyr and tells the dragonriders where the fire-lizards nest, and two of the eggs they find are allotted to Harper Hall (one to him, one to Sebell), he drafts her as the fire-lizard expert.
Verse is the hatching of the two eggs that Menolly found for Harper Hall, one for Masterharper Robinton and one for Sebell. Lord Groghe’s queen, Merga, arrives before the hatching and drags him to the Hall; Beauty greets her with raised wings in welcome, not challenge. Robinton’s egg gives a little bronze, which he catches in his hands, and Menolly directs him to feed it, not too much, and to talk to it and soothe it. The other egg is a queen. Sebell, who is not meant to have her, starts to offer her to Robinton, but Menolly jams meat into his hand: it is too late, since they have Impressed, and it does not matter which. Groghe steadies Sebell as he rocks back in surprise. Robinton is delighted with his bronze, which he names Zair, and says that Sebell, who will travel, may be better served by the queen, whom Sebell names Kimi. On Menolly’s first night Silvina had hoped that one of his eggs would hatch a queen, and some apprentices later grumble that he should have had her, until Menolly settles the rumor. (ch. 1 and 8) Masterminer Nicat received two other eggs from the clutch (Menolly says so to Pona, ch. 4), so these two are Harper Hall’s own: one is Robinton’s, and one is Sebell’s (ch. 5). He tells Menolly that it is a magnificent gift and that it has taught him something of what Lytol and Brekke have suffered.
Verse is the brawl at the Fort Hold gather. Lady Pona, granddaughter of Lord Sangel of Boll, accuses Menolly of stealing the two-mark piece that Robinton gave her, and calls on Benis, one of Lord Groghe’s sons, to take it. Menolly, whom Audiva tries to restrain, claims insult; Benis twists her arm and kicks Piemur down; Menolly punches him in the face, and her fire-lizards attack the girls and their escorts while Camo, thinking his pretties are hurt, lays about him. Robinton stops it, answers Pona in a very gentle voice (“overwrought”) and sends her back to Dunca, tells Benis he is glad he knows his rank, and sends him and the other fosterlings to their quarters or he will tell Lord Groghe; the soft words are the nemesis. Pona was sent away by dragon the next day, and Silvina, who had told Menolly to leave the matter to her, has raked Dunca over. Pona’s spite is not new, Dunca’s own grudge is older: she had hoped to marry Petiron, and on the day Menolly arrives she snorts at hearing that Menolly knew him. (ch. 2) At Menolly’s first dinner Pona introduces herself as the granddaughter of the Lord Holder of Boll, and the table learns that Menolly, a Sea Holder’s daughter, outranks them. Pona questions her about the Hatching, where three candidates from her grandfather’s Hold failed to Impress, and asks how Menolly came to have nine fire-lizards; Audiva answers that Menolly was in the right place at the right time and that luck pays no heed to rank and privilege, and teases Pona for making up to Jessuan and Benis. Pona, who opened on her rank, has her own test of rank turned back on her. Next morning Dunca, who says there will be no ranking in her cottage, screams at the fire-lizards and scolds Menolly. (ch. 4 and 5) An earlier example is Dunca withholding Domick’s summons, so that Menolly missed her first lesson with him.
Verse : neither of the two bargains struck for Menolly at the gather is really economic. Baker Palim sells her six pies for a coin, then adds a free seventh the moment he learns she’s the girl who wrote the fire-lizard song; Piemur refuses to let her pay for any of them, treating her instead. Afterward, Piemur opens a haggle with tanner Ligand over a belt she admires, but Ligand never answers it: he gives it to her free, in reward for the punch she landed on Benis, and still seals it with the traditional handclasp, declaring “I’ve struck the bargain.” (ch. 9)
Verse is about Menolly made journeyman (Dragonsinger, ch. 11). Robinton and Domick had set her copying and rewriting in the traditional forms, and Domick checks it: her hand is neat enough to please Arnor, and the traditional forms are duly observed. On her second morning Robinton had told her that the conventional procedure must be observed. That same day Jerint, Domick, Morshal and Shonagar tested her on gitar, other instruments, theory and voice. (ch. 3) The tasks were also a test, and while she worked she overheard the masters, Silvina among them, settling the formalities and took it for talk of postings. That evening T’gellan brings her the blue boots from Benden Weyr. At supper Robinton announces the journeymen’s postings, and then Sebell and Talmor come to her: she has made journeyman. The apprentices chant for her to walk, Piemur kicks her shin, and Sebell whispers that they could carry her. She answers that she can walk anywhere, since she has her harper boots, and walks between them to the oval tables of the journeymen, in blue, while her fire-lizards trill. She has rank and no more need to run or hide.
Verse is about Piemur, a gifted singer, the
smallest of the apprentices, and the first to befriend Menolly at
Harper Hall. He is Shonagar’s apprentice, and believes the fire-lizards will
sing for anyone, and proves it when they join his singing. Because he sings a high treble, Brudegan first suspects
him of the fire-lizards’ song. His treble breaks at the start of
Dragondrums.
Only once his voice has broken is he sent to Drumheights, where
messages are sent across Pern in drum code and where the
drum master and journeymen write him off as a slow learner while he
covertly learns everything. In Dragonsinger he is a cheeky but loyal scamp. Shonagar scolds him for his bold face and dilatory manner and calls him “Rascal” in a mock growl (ch. 3); Robinton, grinning, calls him “this scamp” and hopes Menolly can keep him out of trouble (ch. 4). Both names are affectionate. At her first dinner he sides with Menolly against Ranly, who thinks a girl should not sit with the apprentices, and has Camo fetch her more meat; at the gather he haggles the apprentices’ instruments up to a good price, earns a commission, leaves his marks with Silvina for safekeeping, and takes a beating defending Menolly. He says the girls in the journeymen’s class are a nuisance, but that without them he would have to sing the treble in the plays. (ch. 3) He wagers with Ranly for the right to feed the fire-lizards, and on her first evening, when her feet fail her, he half-carries her back to the cottage instead of going to rehearsal, saying it is sometimes an asset to be small. He tells her what it means to walk the tables
: promotion happens at supper, when a journeyman walks an apprentice to the journeymen’s tables, and Sebell has only just done it. (ch. 4)