2:58
Fairytale, 1965
Written by Shawn Phillips
I've listened to Donovan for decades, but just the usual hits, not this song, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fable. The tin soldier isn't a metaphor about the fragility of the fighting man, but an actual metal toy. He falls in love with a toy ballerina, but when she is bought, he is thrown in the gutter (though I'm not sure how the one event leads to the other). Years later, they are reunited in the same house, then melt together in a fire. "And in that fire they shall stay / Forever and a day / For the fire, Lord, is the fire of love / Just like the peaceful dove." It's a rather twee tale, delivered in a straight acoustic folk arrangement. In the '60s folk scene, this was the kind of thing you could put on an album and no one blinked.
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