Too many songs

[ladyofastolat]

We're almost at the end of term, which means that all the project boxes are coming back from schools. When unpacking and shelving, I constantly have songs in my head, prompted by the book titles. Some are pretty easy to guess. No prizes for working out what song I have in my head after shelving "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes", or "Dem bones." But what about these?

(Apologies for my librarian habit of not capitalising words in book titles. I found it so hard to learn, but now I can't do it any other way.)

Guess the song inspired by these titles:

The other side of the mountain
Daisy-head Maisie
The nursery rhymes of England
Three books in a row, all called "Romans."
Rubbish: Where does it come from, where does it go?
How do birds fly? / How do fish swim?

However, I've still not managed to work out why I end up with "Every sperm is sacred" in my head every time I shelve projects, nor why I've been singing "A drop of Nelson's blood wouldn't do us any harm" for most of today.

We're off soon for a Morris dance Christmas dinner - one tonight, and then tomorrow we're off to dance in Lymington (on The Mainland), and then have another dinner. Much singing will ensue. I love singing carols, but I hate the way most people sing them - too high for me, and far too slow (in my opinion.) Our dance groups like, wherever possible, to sing carols to one or other of the traditional tunes they used to be associated with, before Victorian worthies attached them to slow and ponderous dirges.

However, in some cases, it's got rather silly. "While Shepherds Watched" works beautifully to the tune of Ilkley Moor. However, at some point in the past, we had this bright idea of singing Ilkley Moor to the tune of House of the Rising Sun, and vice versa. (Try it. It works.) So of course, inevitably, we now occasionally try While Shepherds Watched to the tune of House of the Rising Sun. (Try it. It works surprisingly well.)

We also - I'm sorry, purists - tend to sing "Little Jesus sweetly sleep" in an incredibly sweet and twee voice, and then go into the chorus... "We will rock you," tune courtesy of Queen.

Pellinor has fun on Good King Wenceslas: "Bring me flesh and bring me wine" (this sung very fiercely, emphasising the "shh", while rubbing his hands together) ... "thou and I shall see him die."

But, hey, at least we have fun. ;-)

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Fun!

The other side of the mountain (The bear went over the mountain. But she was coming round it at the time, so he missed her)
Daisy-head Maisie (... give me your answer, do)
The nursery rhymes of England (the hard times of old England?)
Three books in a row, all called "Romans." (Got me there!)
Rubbish: Where does it come from, where does it go? (Who knows where the wind blows)
How do birds fly? / How do fish swim? (... I gotta love one man till I die...)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Half right!

Daisy-Head Maisie actually gets me singing Crazy Man Michael, a Fairport Convention song. It's the rhythm of the words, that just lend themselves to the rhythm of the song. I never expected anyone to guess this, though.

Romans, Romans, Romans... "Rawhide!" (Rollin' Rollin' Rollin')

"Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eyed Joe"

And as for the last one... half the time I actually sing the Tom Lehrer parody, rather than the original song - or else some bizarre medley of the two.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Crazy Man Michael - hadn't thought about that in years! But I'm kicking myself over Rawhide.

[westerling.livejournal.com]

Also, you can sing the words to the theme from "Gilligan's Island" to all the songs ever written. Seriously. Try it.

And for some reason lost in the depths of time, when we sing Ilkley Moor in our morris community, we always sing:
Where hast thou been since I saw thee? (I saw thee)
On Ilkely Moor b'tat
Where hast thou been since I saw (where hast thou been since I saw) where hast thou been since I saw thee (without your trousers on)

On Ilkley Moor b'tat (where's that?)
On Ilkley Moor b'tat (where's that?)
On Ilkley Moor b'tat (where the girls play football)

And so on, with "without your trousers on" being inserted in the same place in every verse (except the worms, of course, only have one trouser). The teenagers are particularly keen on this song, but it got even funnier when we sang "while shepherds watched" to it, because, well:

"The angels of the Lord came (the angels of the Lord came) The angels of the Lord came down (without their trousers on)"...It was really amusing the first time we sang it--the looks on people's faces as they realized what was going happen--very, very funny.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

We sing "where the ducks play football", and "with pervert's trousers on". The "pervert's trousers" in question were, as I understand, a pair of costume breeches with very deep pockets. They became quite iconic in the student society that taught me quite a few of my songs, and cropped up in more than one song.

[westerling.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. So, how is it then, that we have similar variations despite being across the pond from each other? It makes me wonder where our teams picked it up...possibly from one of the visiting English teams, or from one of our sojourns over there? The "without their trousers on" predates my joining the community, but the "where the girls play football" is a relatively new addition. I suppose it's possible that the latter came over with the Flag and Bone Gang, who came to our Harvest Ale two Octobers ago? I'm curious to track this down, now. So many of the variations we sing are made up by Somebody On the Spot in the Pub, I'd assumed that was, too.

I've always maintained that one of the requirements for being a morris dancer is the ability to appreciate the same joke repeatedly, regardless of how old or how many times it's been repeated. My favorite example of this is when we sing the Eynsham foxhunting song: the last chorus starts "over hedges and ditches..." and from that point on, the person leading the song struggles to sing the actual words over the rest of the group singing "over hedges and ditches and hedges and ditches and hedges and ditches and hedges and ditches and hedges and ditches and hedges and ditches and hedges and ditches and hedges and ditches..."

I can't explain why this is funny to me, but it is. Every time. And apparently, I'm not alone.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

The additions to the song do seem to be fairly widespread. (See Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Ilkla_Moor_Baht'at), for example.

We never seem to tire of our "one song to the tune of another" thing. Another current favourite is singing (more or less) the words of The Wild Rover to the tune of the Banana Boat Song. ("Nay oh! Nay oh! Never will play the wild rover no more.") I think we picked that up from some other Morris side once. Maybe the problem is that the amount of alcohol consumed means that we can't actually remember the previous 293 times we've heard the same joke before...

[westerling.livejournal.com]

When I asked at the pub the other night, several members of Juggler Meadow Morris Men tried to claim that they'd started the whole Ilkla Moor thing...but they didn't know anything for sure, they were just making it up. I have pointed out the Wikipedia article to them since then, so we'll see what I hear back from them about that.

We had a carol sing at the pub on Monday, with an accordian player in attendance, even, which did help speed things along (and cause the rest of the patrons to finish up and leave, allowing us to take over the whole place and Molly dance on in the bar.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I am very dubious of most claims to have invented folk song embellishments, especially since the internet normally reveals at least a dozen different people claiming the same. We were certainly singing it (or our "pervert's trouser" embellishment) back in 1989, but when founder members of that student society returned for a reunion, they, too, were singing it, suggesting it had been current back in 1982 or so.

We tried carol singing with an accordion player for a few years, but the musician stubbornly played it in "his" key, even though none of us could sing anything like that high. When you like singing carols, there's nothing worse than having your favourite carol played in a key you can't sing it in.