This came to me after my good friend (from high school, through U of M and Princeton Seminary) Donald Marsden suggested I write one for Gambino, which is the name my high school friends oddly chose for me. It refers to the well-known crime family of NYC at the time (early 70s). I don't know why they picked that moniker for me--I was a well-behaved youth (except for occasional slips). Probably because the head Gambino Capo was named "Carlo", the Italian form of my first name. Still, guys.... Anyway, it makes a fine hornpipe, more than Carlo Gambino deserves. So my late teen photo stands in for him. Not only that, but this photo was taken by said Donald Marsden, in the Arb of Ann Arbor, MI, when we were both somewhat morose undergrads. I dedicate this hornpipe to you, Donald!

Gambino's Hornpipe

The term, approximately meaning “pride” in Old English, is used in a crucial place in the Anglo-Saxon Poem “The Battle of Maldon” in which Ealdorman Byrhnoth of Essex led his fierd and army to doom along the estuary outside Maldon. Though bottled up on an island, with the Saxons holding the isthmus, the Vikings plead with the Ealdorman to allow them to come to the land to fight. Obviously a mistake from a strategic point of view, Byrhnoth allows this “on account of his ofermod.” Sense of fair play? Overweening pride? Arrogance? Anyway, the tune has a prideful cast to it, enough to characterize the tune. Or not. [The image shows the modern-day causeway over the Blackwater that the Vikings couldn't get across with Byrhnoth's men holding it. It was a more temporary connection back then, available only when the tide was out.]]

Ofermod

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