Do You Care?

“Care” is an interesting and rather flexible concept. As a noun, it once had a very negative meaning, which today we would equate with “worry.” There was a song about “dull care” whose lyrics go back to the 17^th century, and show how both “care” and “dull” have changed in meaning. The song starts by addressing Care directly, as if it were a bothersome person:

“Begone, dull Care,
I prithee be gone from me –
Begone, dull Care –
you and I will never agree.”

In Australia and New Zealand, the expression “No worries!” is very common, and is almost the same as saying “It’s O.K.” But, even on this side of the equator, as recently as 1926, we still find “cares” appearing in songs such as “Bye Bye Blackbird”:

“Pack up all my cares and woe,
here I go, winging low,
Bye, bye, blackbird.”

Incidentally, a black bird – unlike the bluebird which always signifies happiness – has had a variable significance in different songs and poems. There is the song, almost a hymn, which begins, 

“Morning has broken,
like the first morning,
blackbird has spoken,
like the first bird.”

But the black bird which speaks, in a famous poem by Edgar Allen Poe called “The Raven,” has only one repeated word to utter, and it is a message of doom:

“Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

Yet another usage of this very versatile idea has to do with caring and not caring. Somehow it seems to fill many different verbal and musical needs. A song dating from the Civil War era, when many slaveholders were sometimes suddenly forced to depart  and leave their holdings behind, had as
its refrain:

“Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care –
The Master’s gone away.”

The main part of that song was about another fate the Master might meet if, while being ridden, his horse was painfully bitten by a blood-sucking insect called a “horse fly.” In some American regions, this insect is known as the Blue Tail Fly. According to the song, the singer (presumably a slave) had accompanied his master on foot, with the specific duty of brushing away those nasty flies. In the song, the horse is indeed bitten, upsetting him so much that he throws his rider into a ditch, with fatal results. Apparently, there was an inquest, at which a jury had to determine the cause of death. Happily for the singer he was exonerated, and the entire blame laid upon that pesky insect, as eventually testified on the Master’s tombstone:

“Beneath this stone I’m forced to lie,
A victim of the Blue Tail Fly.”

Having discussed what other people do, or do not, care about, the question may arise; what do I myself really care about? What, to me, matters most? I once gave a speech on that topic – and I based it on the lessons I had learned early in life from songs we sang at school. One of those songs was a “round” which said, over and over again:

“Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.” 

Of course! Life is but a dream. It doesn’t have to make any more sense than any other dream, something we have no control over. Why not just assume that everything is happening for the best, and simply try to make things as pleasant as possible – for yourself and (I suppose) for all those other people out there rowing their own little boats down the stream.

Then there was another song, which was about a “Jolly Miller who lived on the River Dee.” He was so jolly that, apparently, he never actually operated his mill, but spent all his time dancing and singing. And his song ended with these jolly words:

“I care for nobody, no not I,
If nobody cares for me.”

After World War II, there much concern among Americans to help people in Europe still suffering from its ravages. One effort, called the “Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe,” organized the sending of individual packages of food under the convenient acronym CARE. “CARE packages” were a big feature of those post-war years. 

The Hallmark Company, for many years, used as its slogan, “When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best.” I once licensed that company to use just three of my original greetings. I still think the very best was the one that said:

“HOW ARE YOU DOING? –
And With Whom Are You Doing It?”