I Will Go Up the Hill lyrics and meaning

Eisiu į kalną
Rugelių pakirsti,
O mana mergelė
Eis po manim rišti.

Eisiu į kalną,
Dalgį skumbindamas,
O mano mergelė
Eis paskui verkdama.

O, kaip aš pjoviau,
Plačiom pradalgelėm,
Verk mona mergela,
Graudžiom ašarelėm.

Taip aš neverkiau
Pas motušį augdama,
Kaip aš dabar verkiu
Rugelius rišdama.

I Will Go Up the Hill: song interpretation

This song can be understood as a harvest song about a young woman's tears and lost youth. At the beginning the speaker goes up the hill to reap rye, while his young woman follows behind to bind the sheaves. Shared work opens the song, but sorrow quickly appears.

As the man cuts broad swaths, the young woman follows weeping bitter tears. This image may be read as the hard lot of a young woman, when work itself becomes a cause for tears. The harvest is not only labor here but also the sign of a new, more difficult life.

The final stanza reveals the reason: she did not weep like this while growing up with her mother, but now she weeps while binding rye. These words can be understood as longing for carefree girlhood in the parents' home. This is one possible meaning, but the motif of lost youth and a hard lot is clear.

I Will Go Up the Hill: symbols and phrases

Hill and rye
The hill where rye is reaped marks harvest labor and a new, harder stage of life.
Scythe
The ringing scythe is the tool of hard field work and the background to the young woman's tears.
Weeping young woman
The young woman binding sheaves and crying signifies a difficult female lot under labor.
Growing up with mother
The remembered carefree youth in the parental home is set against the present work full of tears.

I Will Go Up the Hill: song history

"I Will Go Up the Hill" belongs to work songs, more precisely to rye-harvest songs in which field labor is intertwined with the young woman's sense of her lot. The song is built on the image of paired labor: the young man goes up the hill to reap rye, and the young woman follows behind to bind the sheaves; the broader he cuts the swaths, the more bitterly she weeps.

The last stanza reveals the cause of the weeping: she did not cry so while growing up with her mother as she now cries binding rye. The harvest therefore marks not only work but a passage into a harder life without carefree girlhood. The exact place and time of this version's recording are not given on the page, so the song is presented through genre features; the motif of lost youth is common in Lithuanian work and family songs.

sources

  • Lithuanian Folk Songbook, vols. 1-23, Vilnius 1980-2011 (LLTI)
  • Catalogue of Lithuanian Folk Songs, 6 vols., Vilnius 1972-1986

I Will Go Up the Hill: sources