The Annotated "Franklin's Tower"

• Robert Hunter, in his response to Jurgen Fauth's essay, explicates his own lyric.
• Andrew Shalit's wonderful deconstruction of the lyric is here.

In another time's forgotten space
your eyes looked through your mother's face
Wildflower seed on the sand and stone
may the four winds blow you safely home

Roll away ... the dew
Roll away... the dew
Roll away... the dew
Roll away... the dew

You ask me where the four winds dwell
In Franklin's tower there hangs a bell
It can ring, turn night to day
Ring like fire when you lose your way

Roll away... the dew . . .

God help the child who rings that bell
It may have one good ring left, you can't tell
One watch by night, one watch by day
If you get confused just listen to the music play

Roll away... the dew . . .

Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
if you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind

Roll away... the dew . . .

In Franklin's Tower the four winds sleep
Like four lean hounds the lighthouse keep
Wildflower seed in the sand and wind
May the four winds blow you home again

Roll away... the dew
Roll away... the dew
Roll away... the dew
Roll away... the dew
You better roll away the dew

"Franklin's Tower"

• Blues For Allah
• Dead Set
• One From the Vault
• Without a Net
• Dick's Picks, Vol. 3.

First performance: June 17, 1975 at Winterland, San Francisco. This was the "Bob Fried Memorial Boogie", and the Dead's show included the first "Crazy Fingers" and the first "Help On the Way." The tune has remained in the repertoire since.

Covered by

• Wartime, a collaboration of Henry Rollins and Andrew Weiss, on Fast Food For Thought (1990)
• Steel Pulse on Fire On the Mountain

In another time's...

Subject: The Annotated Franklin's Tower
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 14:10:34 -0500
From: "P B"

David,
What a fantastic website! It has certainly enhanced my enjoyment of Robert Hunter's lyrics. I thought of Franklin's Tower this morning on the way to work while listening to the last several lyrics of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks:

In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
In another face

After considering more carefully at the lyrics of each song, it occurred to me that they share the theme of a lifelong spiritual journey to enlightenment ("may the four winds blow you home again"; "I got a home on high in another land so far away...way up in the heaven"). Morrison's guiding light is a woman, presumably his wife at the time Janet Planet, while Hunter's seems to be music. I haven't run across anything to suggest that Morrison influenced Hunter, but now I wonder if there was a connection.

Take care,
Carl Desenberg

four winds

[The winds were] "Boreas or Aquilo, the north wind; Zephyrus or Favonius, the west; Notus or Auster, the south; and Eurus, the east."--p. 176.

Here's a list of definitions of the wind gods from Mythtext, a web site:

• Zephyrus: Greek god of the west wind. Son of Astraios and Eos. Believed to live in a cave in Thrace. Known to the Romans as Favonius.
• Boreas: Greek god of the north wind. According to Hesiod's Theogony, he was of Thracian origin, the son of Eos and Astraeos. He was the father of many famous horses, including those of Ares and Achilles. Boreas incurred the enmity of the Athenians when he abducted Oreithyia, the daughter of King Erechtheus of Athens, whom he made his wife. He was said to have atoned for this deed by sending a storm which destroyed a Persian fleet on its way to attack Athens. In gratitude, the Athenians built a temple dedicated to him, and held a festival in his honour, the Boreasmos.
• Notus: Greek god of the south wind. In Greece, the south wind blows mainly in the autumn. Son of Astraeus and Eos. Known to the Romans as Auster.
• Eurus: Greek god of east wind. Son of Eos, possibly by Astraeus. Sometimes equated by the Romans with Volturnus, the god of the river Tiber.

A reader, Paul Rolnick, wrote to alert me to the presence of a "Tower of Winds," in Athens, located on the Agora. It is an eight-sided ("The Eleven"?!) tower constructed ca. 100-35 B.C.E. A frieze depicting the eight winds (yes, eight) runs along the top of the tower, which was used as a giant hydraulic timepiece. Thanks, Paul!

For a set of images of the tower, see Kevin Glowacki's page/

Pursuing that tidbit, I also stumbled across a Tower of the Winds in the Vatican, built by Gregory XIII, and known as the "Torre dei Venti." So, the idea of the winds living in a tower seems to be ancient and pervasive.

There is also a Biblical reference to the four winds, in Zechariah, Chapter 2, v. 6: "I have spread you abroad as the four winds of heaven."

Fats Domino had a hit with a song entitled "Let the Four Winds Blow."

This note from another reader:

Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 10:59:28 -0800
From: Michael Zelner
Subject: Franklin's Tower lyric

DD:

I received a kind e-mail thank-you today from a reader of r.m.gd in response to my posting the text of a newspaper article there. She ended her note with the following:

> May the forewinds blow you safely home!

Huh, I thought. I always heard it as "four winds." I don't have the sheet music in front of me, but I think it's that way there, too. So of course I went to your Annotated Lyrics Web page to check, and you have it as "four winds" also.

But then I got to thinking, why not "forewinds?" I looked it up in the OED:

"Forewind (Obs.) Also for-. [f. FORE - pref. + WIND sb. Cf. Du. voorwind] A wind that blows a ship forward on her course, a favourable wind."

So I learned something new today -- hope you did, too.

MZ

_________________________





Michael Zelner


Oakland CA USA


e-mail: michaelz@zoka.com


_________________________

"Sing, blow away the morning dew,
the dew and the dew"

There is also the traditional celtic tune, "The Morning Dew", here in notation via the Tune Web.

This email from a reader:

Subject: roll away the dew...
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 07:19:36 PDT
From: "Dominic Mastroianni"

Hi David,
This morning I was reading "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and some lines (117-18) from 4.1 caught my eye. Theseus is describing his hounds, which "are bred out of the Spartan kind," and he states, "their heads are hung/With ears that sweep away the morning dew." A link to "Franklin's Tower," with its "roll away the dew" and "four lean hounds?" To make the case stronger, these lines are preceded by a few from Hippolyta (his betrothed), who recalls the barking of "hounds of Sparta" - "I never heard/So musical a discord, such sweet thunder" - an uncanny description of how the Dead can sound. Feel free to use this on your site if you think it's worth noting. Take care, and thanks for all the work you've done to help illuminate the songs.
--Dom Mastroianni

From: mattrob487@aol.com [mailto:mattrob487@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 1:01 AM
Subject: concerning Franklin's Tower in your annotated web page

What do you think about the definition of a Franklin:

Main Entry: frank·lin
Pronunciation: 'fra[ng]-kl&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English frankeleyn, from Anglo-French fraunclein, from Old French franc
Date: 14th century
: a medieval English landowner of free but not noble birth

It sounds as if Hunter is describing a tower on a free person's land, probably surrounded by feudal lords. So in "God save the child that rings that bell..." Hunter is referring to freedom?
Thanks for the website. It rocks!!!!
_________________________________________
Matthew Robertson

Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 11:10:56 -0500
From: Dave Gomolka
To: ddodd@well.com
Subject: franklins tower

Hi Dave,

For some reason Franklins Tower just popped into my head and I thought I would do a little web search on those two words. I found a site regarding a lighthouse [Pigeon Point] in California. I wonder if Hunter might have had a bit of this in mind when he penned the lyrics.

Here is the site:

http://www.lanternroom.com/lighthouses/california/cal34.htm
[Note the salient sentences: "The conical-shaped masonry structure remains in a good state of preservation despite it's many years of service. Though the sentinel stands where the British ship Sir John Franklin was wrecked shortly before the tower was built, the point bears the name of an earlier shipwreck. The Franklin ran afoul of the rocks in January 1865 and the captain and crew perished."]

Your site is very interesting; I just wish I had more time to peruse.... I experienced the Dead many times from 77 to @ 90 and it was always a spiritual journey....

Thanks,

David Gomolka

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

Subject: Franklin's Tower - "...four lean hounds..."
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 20:24:40 EST
From: Plnnr@aol.com

Dear David:

I visited your annotation site today for the first time in many moons. I'm glad to still see that it is up and running.

While looking through Bartlett's today I came across a familiar phrase that just blew my mind - "four lean hounds." It is from an e. e. cummings poem. Sorry that I didn't write the entire reference down, but I figured you would have your own copy of Bartlett's and could do the leg work.

Again, I'm glad to see that the site is still expanding. That is certainly a testament to Hunter's and Barlow's "well-readedness."

Take care. I'll write again as things flash by.

Lee Tyson

Here's the quote (and for more on Hunter's allusion, see his explication of the lyric):

"four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before."
--e.e. cummings, "All in green went my love riding." (1923)