Of the countless musical horrors that have come our way since, say, 1966, I can think of none more simultaneously noxious and hilarious than Pentangle’s deadly earnest hymn to hymen defense, “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme.”
A traditional cautionary tale for lassies on the importance of due virginity vigilance—as in defend that vagina, with a brick if necessary—dating back to at least 1689, “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” is also known by other titles such as “The Sprig of Thyme,” “Maiden’s Lament,” and “Heed Thee Not the Booty Call Lest Thy Be Sad and Blue.”
Everything you need to know about “folk baroque” troupe Pentangle is (1) they choose the name Pentangle because it’s the device on Sir Gawain’s sword in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and (2) I have never heard a Pentangle song I didn’t find instantaneously and almost supernaturally annoying. I would sooner listen to Foreigner’s Greatest Hits in its entirety than a Pentangle song—any Pentangle song—which is frightening when you think about it.
The lead track on Pentangle’s 1968 debut LP, and sung in what has every sign of being a hypnotic trance by Jacqui McShee in a voice like fragile glass, or to put it more medievally, in a voice that chimeth like a church bell for the dead, and taketh away all thine mirth, “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” opens with the warning words, “Come all you fair and tender girls/That flourish in your prime/Beware, beware, keep your garden fair/Let no man steal your thyme.”
I’m not certain if that line about keeping your garden fair is a call for the “landing strip look,” and “thyme” has to be the weirdest term for chastity ever, but McShee’s next lines make clear that keeping your panties on is a dire necessity in a world full of players looking to mug your maidenhead and carve another notch onto their belts of caddishness: “For when your thyme is past and gone/He’ll care no more for you/And in the place where your thyme was waste/He’ll spread all o’er with rue/He’ll spread all o’er with rue.” Rue and possibly a sexually transmitted disease as well, it should be added.
Voltaire once said, “It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity is thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.” “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” is a call not just to build that barrier, but to defend it like the Berlin Wall, lest you be deflowered and left in the lurch by a lothario named Larry.
The truly monstrous thing about “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” is that it is far from one of Pentangle’s more unlistenable songs. Vocalists/guitars Bert Jansch and John Renbourn play some nice intertwined guitars, accompanied by some cool drumming and a very snazzy stand-up acoustic bass. Still, “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” is one creepy tune, and McShee’s eyes are every bit as glassy as her vocals (you HAVE to see this one on YouTube), and when all is said and done Pentangle is the wrong name for this band. They should have called themselves Poontangle.
