Back in the autumn of 2024 I was trawling the music filing cabinet drawers looking for inspiration for anthems to take us through Advent. That’s when I rediscovered “Dance, Little Lady”, written by our very own Rev Debby Plummer, and perfect for the third Sunday, on which we remember Mary. Jeremy had introduced this song to the choir some time ago, when he and Debby were both serving in the parish, and we enjoyed singing it. Texturally deliberately ‘thin’, the melody is for upper voices singing in unison, accompanied by a drone in the lower voices, and a drummed ostinato.
Quick sidebar: a drone in music is a sustained low-pitched chord, and an ostinato is a regular repeating rhythm.
Typically of Debby’s songs, the tempo is fast, and there’s a lot of text to enunciate clearly:
Dance, little lady, fling back your head
For your childhood is ended you’re a mother now instead!
Set your necklace a-jingling, skirts in a twirl,
For the child growing in you is the Maker of the world!
Chorus: with her “Fiat” she attending to his word
Makes her decision to be mother to the Word,
With her “Fiat” our salvation is begun.
Mary of Nazareth says “God’s will be done”.
Run, little lady, it isn’t very far
Where your cousin in waiting for a baby as you are
And the child growing in her will jump for the joy
Of his cousin, his Saviour, your hidden baby boy.
Hail, little lady the future calls you blessed
For your gift of a welcome to the greatest of all guests,
When you answered the angel “God’s will be done”
And you shared out your life-blood with your Maker’s only Son.
Second sidebar: “fiat” is Latin for “let it be”.
The song tells the story Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Elizabeth felt her baby ‘leap’ for joy inside her, and she herself was unable to contain her joy, bursting into singing what we now know as the Magnificat.
Debby leaned into other references to Jesus’ life being a ‘dance’ with humanity, and dance rhythms being used in worship songs: Lord of the Dance, Tomorrow will be my Dancing Day, The Summons, and Sing we of the Blessed Mother, to name just a few. Furthermore, dance is a valid form of spiritual celebration and worship, for example:
- Psalm 149:3 – Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre!
- 2 Samuel 6:14 – And David danced before the Lord with all his might and very little modesty.
- Psalm 150:4 – Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!
- Ecclesiastes 3:4 – a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance
- Psalm 30:11-12 – You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy
- Ephesians 5:18-19 – You are the true Lord of the Dance—the One who turns our wailing into dancing
In absence of either baritones for the drone or a drummer for the ostinato, Tom improvised an accompaniment at the piano. In order to get the words out clearly (mostly!), we took it under tempo, and recorded it for the 2024 parish Digital Advent Calendar: https://youtu.be/fBYyv-0BV-E
Bur why include this song now, in the Lent issue of the parish magazine? Because it also tells of the annunciation, of Mary’s “yes”, and “fiat” – God’s will be done. This is remembered during Lent, on the third Sunday.
St Margaret's Church Prestwich 