Song of the Day - 15th June

Happy Father's Day to all those Dads: biological Dads, adoptive Dads, foster Dads, step-Dads and father figures.

Men often get a bad rap these days. There's a lot of anti-men rhetoric, and talk of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity, and sometimes with good cause.

But there's not enough talk about the good, decent men out there. The ones who don't want to take us back to the time when "men were in charge and women knew their place." The ones who just quietly get on with their lives, being decent human beings and respecting others, the ones who understand that the world has changed, and the ones who have changed with it.

One such is my Dad, Bill Cavanagh. He was born in 1940 and turns 85 this year. Although I credit my mum for giving me my first musical teaching, I credit my Dad for getting me into choral singing (and also Star Trek). As a small child I would watch him sing in the church choir every Sunday and long to be up there with him. At the age of 8 I was allowed to join and I never looked back! My Dad has been an inspiration to me for as long as I can remember. He was a constant, unfailingly kind presence in my life, always caring, never (or very rarely) a cross word, never sexist, never racist, never anything-ist. He is the yardstick against whom I measure all other men.

This song is for him.

The words are a poem called Father by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. They are a loving portrait of a man who sired a brood of children who adored him, giving them a home, and love, and health, and comfort, even if he never made a fortune. The final verse essentially says, in more flowery and more poetic terms of course, that old greeting card maxim: "Anyone can be a father. It takes someone special to be a Dad."

So here's to all the Dads out there. Happy Father's Day.

Father

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

He never made a fortune, or a noise

In the world where men are seeking after fame;

But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys

Who loved the very ground on which he trod.

They thought him just a little short of God;

Oh you should have heard the way they said his name -

'Father.'

There seemed to be a loving little prayer

In their voices, even when they called him 'Dad.'

Though the man was never heard of anywhere,

As a hero, yet you somehow understood

He was doing well his part and making good;

And you knew it, by the way his children had

Of saying 'Father.'

He gave them neither eminence nor wealth,

But he gave them blood untainted with a vice,

And the opulence of undiluted health.

He was honest, and unpurchable and kind;

He was clean in heart, and body, and in mind.

So he made them heirs to riches without price -

This father.

He never preached or scolded; and the rod -

Well, he used it as a turning pole in play.

But he showed the tender sympathy of God

To his children in their troubles, and their joys.

He was always chum and comrade with his boys,

And his daughters - oh, you ought to hear them say

'Father.'

Now I think of all achievements 'tis the least

To perpetuate the species; it is done

By the insect and the serpent, and the beast.

But the man who keeps his body, and his thought,

WORTH bestowing on an offspring love-begot,

Then the highest earthly glory he has won,

When in pride a grown-up daughter or a son

Says 'That's Father.'