Pink Floyd - Matilda Mother (1967) | Poal: Say what you want.

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Written by Syd Barrett, it is sung mostly by Richard Wright with Barrett joining in on choruses and singing the whole last verse.

The lyrics quote fragments of fairy tales as read from a book to the singer by his mother ("read(ing) the scribbly black", referring to writing in a book as a child sees it), and in the chorus he implores her to "tell me more". "Matilda Mother" represents a common theme in Barrett's work: his nostalgia for childhood and awareness that it could not be regained. Barrett originally wrote the song around verses from Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales, in which a series of naughty children, including Matilda, receive their (often gruesome) comeuppance. He was forced to rewrite and re-record the track when Belloc's estate unexpectedly denied permission to use these lyrics.

Syd Barrett was so enamored of Belloc’s fable that in his initial draft of the song’s lyrics he reproduced entire lines from the original, especially in the refrain:

"And finding she was left alone/Went tiptoe to the Telephone/And summoned the Immediate Aid/Of London’s Noble Fire-Brigade."

These phrases can be heard in the original version of the song, recorded on February 21, 1967. Barrett, Waters, Wright, and Mason did not for a second imagine that there could be the slightest problem with this. Against all expectations, however, when Andrew King asked Hilaire Belloc’s rights holders for permission to use extracts from the text of “Matilda,” the response was a firm refusal. “The iambic beat of Belloc totally fits the metre of the song. The Belloc estate weren’t keen at all, so Syd replaced the extracts.” In reality, what Syd Barrett did was write a new story, a highly poetic text that plunges us into the heart of European legend (Tolkien again!) and that, at the same time, evokes the songwriter’s childhood: a tale involving a king, a scarlet eagle with silver eyes, and a thousand mysterious riders. The final lines of the last verse allow no room for misunderstanding: And fairy stories held me high/On clouds of sunlight floating by.

Written by Syd Barrett, it is sung mostly by Richard Wright with Barrett joining in on choruses and singing the whole last verse. The lyrics quote fragments of fairy tales as read from a book to the singer by his mother ("read(ing) the scribbly black", referring to writing in a book as a child sees it), and in the chorus he implores her to "tell me more". "Matilda Mother" represents a common theme in Barrett's work: his nostalgia for childhood and awareness that it could not be regained. Barrett originally wrote the song around verses from Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales, in which a series of naughty children, including Matilda, receive their (often gruesome) comeuppance. He was forced to rewrite and re-record the track when Belloc's estate unexpectedly denied permission to use these lyrics. Syd Barrett was so enamored of Belloc’s fable that in his initial draft of the song’s lyrics he reproduced entire lines from the original, especially in the refrain: "And finding she was left alone/Went tiptoe to the Telephone/And summoned the Immediate Aid/Of London’s Noble Fire-Brigade." These phrases can be heard in the original version of the song, recorded on February 21, 1967. Barrett, Waters, Wright, and Mason did not for a second imagine that there could be the slightest problem with this. Against all expectations, however, when Andrew King asked Hilaire Belloc’s rights holders for permission to use extracts from the text of “Matilda,” the response was a firm refusal. “The iambic beat of Belloc totally fits the metre of the song. The Belloc estate weren’t keen at all, so Syd replaced the extracts.” In reality, what Syd Barrett did was write a new story, a highly poetic text that plunges us into the heart of European legend (Tolkien again!) and that, at the same time, evokes the songwriter’s childhood: a tale involving a king, a scarlet eagle with silver eyes, and a thousand mysterious riders. The final lines of the last verse allow no room for misunderstanding: And fairy stories held me high/On clouds of sunlight floating by.

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