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Topic: "To France" Questions< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
ThetaWave Offline




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Posts: 5
Joined: Jan. 2001
Posted: Jan. 23 2001, 18:27

Hi all,

I'm very glad I finally found this BB on the net, because I've been a MO fan for years now.

And I hope someone can help me answering some questions regarding the lyrics of "To France":

First of all, what is this song about at all? And what does the chorus actually mean:

"don't you know you're
never going to get to france
Mary Queen of chance will they find you
never going to get to france
could a new romance ever bind you"

Perhaps this is only hard for me to understand because I am not a native English speaker - but for me these words make absolutely no sense, at least not together.

What is a "Queen Of Chance", and why should someone never be going to "get to france", and who is Mary (has she perhaps been some french queen)???
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Ugo Offline




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Posted: Jan. 23 2001, 19:44

The "Mary" referred to in this song is most probably Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots. The song, then, could be an account of her unhappy life. You can see my reply to a similar question in the Discovery forum, "Significance of lyrics" topic.

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Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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Thea Cochrane Offline




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Posts: 445
Joined: Nov. 1999
Posted: Jan. 24 2001, 10:21

But is the lyric "far from the highlands" (highlands of Scotland) or "far from the islands" (islands of Scotland, or the Channel Islands)?
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ThetaWave Offline




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Posted: Jan. 24 2001, 14:22

Thanks for your help again, Ugo!

I'm afraid I do not completely comprehend the archive search functionality yet - because when I searched for "to france" yesterday, I got no hits! But I will keep on trying.

Thanks to the link you supplied, now nearly all of my questions have been answered - except perhaps what the "chance" means...
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Ugo Offline




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Posted: Jan. 24 2001, 16:09

Mat: The booklet says "islands", the Amarok Player tracklist says the same. So it's probably the Scottish islands.

Theta: The Archive Search did not work on "to france" because there wasn't a topic with such a title, before yours smile.
"Queen of chance" is an old-fashioned way of saying "Queen by chance" = by accident.


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Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: Jan. 24 2001, 18:57

'Queen of chance' is, perhaps, queen who relies on chance, luck, tempts fate, etc...

Just another angle on it really. I agree that the lyric is 'far from the islands'.

The bit about 'will a new romance ever bind you?' may refer to the number of relationships she had - there's a short history here http://members.aol.com/skyelander/mary.html that includes info on that sort of thing. Marriages are tended to be seen as binding - maybe this is asking "will your next relationship last?". That's quite open to interpretation though - perhaps Mike just liked the words wink
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ThetaWave Offline




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Posted: Jan. 25 2001, 16:22

Thanks Ugo, Korgscrew! Now, thanks to you, "To France" finally makes sense for me!
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riper Offline




Group: Members
Posts: 1
Joined: Oct. 2001
Posted: Oct. 15 2001, 09:51

hi all
please help!!!
can someone send me some score (notes passages) from this Song. I'm triyng to plat it but i have not that much sense of music
thanks a lot folks

here's my email
riper75@infinito.it
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