...thus proving that it is in Golliardic meter.

Thank you for posting that; it's my favourite of the Carmina Burana.

Posted December 14, 2005 4:29 PM by abi

*slaps self*

Studied it at the same time as the CB, but it's not one of them, is it? Pfft. Sorry.

Posted December 14, 2005 4:30 PM by abi

*giggles*

Posted December 14, 2005 4:53 PM by glinda

Still, Abi, you were close. The same guy had other stuff in the CB. Think of this one as an outtake.

Posted December 14, 2005 5:00 PM by Teresa Nielsen Haydent

And, while we're at it, let's put our hands over our hearts and sing "To Anacreon in Heaven" at the start of the baseball game on opening day.

Posted December 14, 2005 5:01 PM by Alan Bostick

Alan, I never go to a baseball game without doing that.

Posted December 14, 2005 5:09 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Teresa, when you say CB, do you mean the Manuscript of Benedictbeuern, or the subset of it that Carl Orff set to music? The term has been used for both.

Posted December 14, 2005 5:11 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I still feel stupid. Post in haste, repent at leisure.

For some reason, the verse:

Jejunant et abstinent poetarum chori,
vitant rixas publicas et tumultus fori,
et, ut opus faciant, quod non possit mori,
moriuntur studio subditi labori.

Always makes me think immediately of

Time, that is intolerant
of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week,
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.

In another vein entirely, if the absence of letters (vowels, to be precise) is an indicator of vice in this forum, surely the addition of a consonant to your name is a typographical halo, Teresa.

Posted December 14, 2005 5:20 PM by abi

At first I thought she was using it for particularly twisted posts. But no.

Posted December 14, 2005 5:32 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Xopher,

My memory, refreshed by a web search, is that this song is not from the text of the Carmina Burana. See for instance this site, which indicates that Poem X was from a separate source.

On the other hand, it's been 15 years since I studied any of this, and I've been found, this very day, to be wrong about something I learned yesterday.

Posted December 14, 2005 5:32 PM by abi

I see that Alan Bostick has already mentioned what H.P. Lovecraft used to do when faced with a crowd singing that vulgar filk of "To Anacreon in Heav'n."

Posted December 14, 2005 5:51 PM by Arthur D. Hlavaty

Heeeeeee!

Since the tune for "Good King Wenceslas" is a 12th-century spring carol, it actually is a good fit temporally as well as metrically. Of course, said tune (Tempus adest floridum) is basically a hymn, but...this one's sort of a hymn. ;)

Posted December 14, 2005 6:17 PM by Lea

I also like the alternate lyrics in one of Pamela Dean's Secret Country books:

Conrad sat in yonder wood; Conrad spurned his kingdom;
Conrad thought on Chryse's blood; messengers did fear him

-- and hell, now I can't remember the second half of the verse. I think it's mostly but not exactly like the original. But it's generally entertaining for me to hear the tune and think about a king who wanted to murder a unicorn.

Posted December 14, 2005 6:17 PM by Marie Brennan

My heart when imbued with nectar flies to the upper regions

My 'heart' (really my stomach) does something like that after I've eaten raw oysters.

Posted December 14, 2005 6:32 PM by Serge

And, as long as we're talking Wenceslas, there's always Walt Kelly's abbreviated "Good King Sauerkraut," and his rather longer "Deck us all with Boston Charlie."

Posted December 14, 2005 6:40 PM by Janet McConnaughey

You cheer me! I so want to get together a group of merry carolers to go about the neighborhood singing this. If anyone asks us why the words are different, we can smile and say, "Oh, those are the LATIN words"!

Posted December 14, 2005 6:58 PM by Kiwi Carlisle

There was a book I read, ages ago (in gradeschool) which had the protagonist (a Calvin sort of kid, absent Hobbes restraining behaviors) signing, "Good King Wences backed his car, on a piece of Stephen".

I don't recall there being any other lyrics.

The plot was about a bread pudding recipe winning a baking contest.

TK

Posted December 14, 2005 7:34 PM by Terry Karney

on a piece of Stephen

Ouch! I've always had a soft spot for Wenceslaus, since it was the only Christmas song I knew which mentioned my given name.

Posted December 14, 2005 7:46 PM by Linkmeister

Linkmeister -

You need to go farther afield for Christmas songs about your saint, whose name-day is celebrated in England as Boxing Day. I know bits of a Swedish carol but can't find it on the Web; here's an English carol:

Saint Stephen was a clerk

The Swedish one, as translated by the Trapps or their arranger, opens

St. Stephen was riding and he traveled afair,
Watch with us this Christmas night
When over the Orient he saw a blazing star.
Watch with us and pray for us all.

I don't remember the intervening verses, but it also gets to the story of King Herod and the Cock, with

The rooster was roasted and in gravy he lay,
Watch with us this Christmas night
He rose up and crowed as it were the break of day.
Watch with us and pray for us all.

Posted December 14, 2005 9:05 PM by Janet McConnaughey

I'm personally fond of the PDQ Bach take, "Good King Kong."

Good King Kong looked out on his feet
And he saw that they were large...

Posted December 14, 2005 9:19 PM by Nomie

It made me think of PDQ Bach first, and his re-wording of Ben Jonson's "Song to Celia":

"Eye me only with thy drink,
and I will pledge with this;
Or leave some wine but in the cup,
and I'll not look to kiss.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
doth ask a drink divine;
but if Jove's nectar I can't sip
some ale will do just fine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
not so much honoring thee
as giving it a hope that there
it would not withered be.
But thou thereon did'st only breathe,
and sent'st it back to me;
since when it smells, I kid thee not
of pretzels and chablis."

Posted December 14, 2005 9:20 PM by Carl

Now I'm, trying to figure out if that's the same hymn to food that a friend of mine sings to the tune of the Palestiniad (Becuase there's nothing like grim sad music about how happiness if to be found in food and wine)

Posted December 14, 2005 9:33 PM by Lenora Rose

Alan and Xopher, when the 7th inning stretch comes around, much fun can be had with the fact that when you cross Harry Carey and Iron Butterfly, "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida" scans to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Posted December 14, 2005 11:19 PM by James J Murray

Harry Caray, that is. . .

Posted December 14, 2005 11:21 PM by James J Murray

James -

In a Gadda da Ballgame is almost as good as my all-time cross-tuning: Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening to Hernando's Hideaway.

Posted December 14, 2005 11:50 PM by Janet McConnaughey

Aargh. That should be "cross-tuning favorite".

Posted December 15, 2005 12:03 AM by Janet McConnaughey

Janet, thank you. I've never heard either of those. Maybe I should start a movement (pace, Arlo!). ;)

Posted December 15, 2005 12:40 AM by Linkmeister

Is it Emily Dickens whose poems can be sung to "The Yellow Rose of Texas"?

Because I would not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me...

Posted December 15, 2005 9:09 AM by Carrie S.

Agh! Dickenson! Of course I meant Dickenson.

Posted December 15, 2005 9:12 AM by Carrie S.

I run (literally) with the Hash House Harriers. We go for a run and then have a beer. Some groups stop in the middle of the run for a beer. Yes, really. We also engage in singing obscene songs some of the time. What kinds of people do this? Believe it or not, most of us are serious runners. We're also skewed to the rather bright. At one run of about 75 to 100 people, there were five people with at least one physics degree.

Anyway, around the holiday season, we've been known to sing "Walking Around in Women's Underwear". Imagine this, if you will. You're walking through a back alley in Washington, DC. You come upon a bunch of people dressed in running. Everyone is holding a beer. They'e all laughing and joking. Soon everyone breaks into singing "Walking Around." Yes, it's a bit surreal.

Posted December 15, 2005 9:47 AM by Chuck Divine

Is it Emily Dickens whose poems can be sung to "The Yellow Rose of Texas"?

Most famously (perhaps) used as a plot point in the Neil Gaiman script for Babylon5, Day of the Dead, which also featured Penn and Teller as Rebo and Zooty (Zoot Zoot).

It really isn't that hard to fit most of her poetry to a number of tunes of similar meter. To make this "on topic" I also note that you can use the melodies from What Child is This and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear...

John

Posted December 15, 2005 9:49 AM by John Peacock

Or even "Dickinson".

Obligatory mention of "One song to the tune of another", which is played thus:

The teams have in front of them the words but not the music of a song which is different to another song of which they have neither the music nor the words. The tune of this second song, which is quite unlike the first song both in words and music, will be played but without the words to which the teams will substitute the other words they have from the first song which obviously will have no tune because that’s made way for the tune from the other song without its words.

Or to put it another way:

A music round where each of you will start by vocalising the lyrics normally in tune with a popular song of my choosing. However, the refrain usually associated with what we call the first song will be dispensed with, and instead we’ll take another tune, or second song, from which the vocal part has been removed leaving just the melody line of the second song (that’s the one without the words) and accompany the first song (that’s the one without a tune but with lyrics).

So - and here comes the clever part - what you’re literally doing is singing one song to the tune of another.

Posted December 15, 2005 10:56 AM by ajay

James, I like to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" displaced by three syllables. Use the standard tune, but sing

To the ballgame, take me out
To the park; buy me some
Peanuts and Crackerjacks I don't care
If I never get back for it's root, root,
Root for the hometeam if they don't
Win it's a shame for it's one,
Two, Three strikes! you're!
Out at the old ballgame--take me out!

There's also a one-syllable displacement, but it's more difficult to sing. And it ends by just stopping after 'ballgame' - you never sing the last note or the word 'take'. Very disconcerting.

Posted December 15, 2005 11:16 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

The melody of the Ode to Joy section of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony works with "Mack the Knife" and the Marine Corps Hymn ("From the halls of Montezuma...").

My favorite has to be singing "House of the Rising Sun" to the tune of "Amazing Grace." And vice versa, which is creepy.

Posted December 15, 2005 11:18 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Xopher - that is just. plain. cool. Thanks!

Posted December 15, 2005 11:19 AM by Mark D.

Speaking of Emily Dickinson, one of her poems muddles well with an old rock hit as follows:

A narrow fellow in the grass
occasionally glides
You may have seen him, did you not?
his notice sudden is.
I don't like ol' Sneaky Snake
He laughs too much you see
When he goes wriggling through the grass it tickles his underneath.

Posted December 15, 2005 11:20 AM by Erik Nelson

Something's wrong with that lyric post for TMOTTBG. I'm not sure what. It works when I sing it.

Posted December 15, 2005 11:24 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I think that, some time around 1987, a CD was released that contained nothing but traditional Xmas songs but sung by rock and pop stars. Most of it left me cold because people kept trying to add their own little trademarked extra to it. But there were some like Annie Lennox who played it straight. Those were my favorites.

Posted December 15, 2005 11:35 AM by Serge

Growing up in Ithaca, I couldn't help but notice that The Council of Elrond's

"seek for the sword that was broken,
in Imladris it dwells"

scans to "Give My Regards to Broadway", better known to us as the Cornell fight song played after every touchdown. I can't read the chapter now without imagining the Big Red brass section accompanying Boromir.

Posted December 15, 2005 12:20 PM by Jon Meltzer

There's also a one-syllable displacement, but it's more difficult to sing.

     [pickups] Oh take me ||

||: Out / to | the ball game | take / / | me / / |

| Out / to | the park buy | me / / | -. |

| Some pea-nuts | and crack-er | jacks / I | don't / /|

| Care / if | I ev-er | get back for | its root, root ||

|| Root / for | the home team | if / / | they / / |

| Don't / win | it's a shame | for / / | / It's one | 

| Two / / | three / / | strikes you're out | at the old |

| Ball / / | game / / | -. | (Oh take me) :||

(Hopefully, that hybrid music notation is readable:

|| = double bar
| = single bar
/ = quarter rest
-. = dotted-half rest)

Posted December 15, 2005 12:52 PM by HP

Credit where it's due: I learned that version at the feet of these guys.

Posted December 15, 2005 12:57 PM by HP

I figured it out. The two middle lines should read

If I never get back for it's root, root, root,
For the hometeam if they don't

Posted December 15, 2005 1:20 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Xopher - I believe it is The Blind Boys of Alabama that have a recording of Amazing Grace a la House of the Rising Sun. I saw them perform it recently on TV - on Trio, possibly. I think I held my breath for the entire song. Yes, it's creepy, but it's amazing.

Posted December 15, 2005 2:23 PM by LeeAnn

Personally, my favourite is swapping tunes and lyrics between "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" Alas, they don't match on choruses, but one verse is usually enough to induce severe confusion in people who know both songs - the first few notes are the same, and then something goes subtly wrong...

Posted December 15, 2005 2:34 PM by coffeedryad

You gotta check out "Full Frontal Nerdity" today. Hint: "eight dorks-a-filking"
http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/nodwick/ffn/ffn.htm

Posted December 15, 2005 2:56 PM by rhandir

LeeAnn - I heard it about 15 years ago, in a vaguely fannish context. Any guesses how long the Blind Boys have been doing it?

Posted December 15, 2005 2:57 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Xopher - The Blind Boys have been together 60-plus years, so who knows. The song is on "Spirit of the Century" which came out in 2000, but I heard the song years ago, too.

Posted December 15, 2005 3:15 PM by LeeAnn

Oh, I wasn't under the delusion that the Blind Boys were upstart punks! Just trying to figure out whether they came up with the idea first, got it from the same netplay (as opposed to network) I did, or simply invented it independently.

I'll probably never know.

Posted December 15, 2005 3:21 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I have that redoubtable BB of AL recording too, and it set me to thinking about the inverse: the lyrics to House of the Rising Sun sung to the tune of Amazing Grace.

I don't believe I'll take the chance on this next time that that hymn is scheduled to be sung by the church choir I'm in.

Posted December 15, 2005 4:18 PM by Rich Magahiz

The Trinity College song from the University of Toronto contains the following verse, sung to the tune of "O Christmas Tree":

Nimium cervisi
Ebriat tirones
Non opportet fieri
Vappas nebulones

(Too much beer makes freshmen drunk. It is not seemly to become useless wretches.)

Posted December 15, 2005 4:34 PM by Ariella

Ariella's verse reminds me of the time I was forced to sing Gaudeamus Igitur at St Andrews. Like everyone singing it that day, I was badly hung over, dressed in a silly costume (in my case, as the Statue of Liberty), and en route to a shaving foam fight. I had already been paraded through Woolworth's and most of the town.

I should have gone to Trinity in Toronto instead, where they clearly don't subscribe to the Sqeers principle of sobriety training.

Posted December 15, 2005 5:29 PM by abi

I try to sing "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun," and it keeps turning into "John Barleycorn Must Die" by the second line. Hmmm.

I really shouldn't be reading this thread at all; I'm singing "Gaudete" on Saturday and all I need is for it to turn into "Bache, bene venies" halfway through.

Posted December 15, 2005 5:57 PM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

Dan, as long as you realize that in the HOTRS version the line "That saved a wretch like me" becomes a belt line, you should be OK.

And Gaudete also has a tendency to become "Ave, Color Vini Clari."

Posted December 15, 2005 6:02 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Gaudeamus Igitur is the school song for my alma mater, Smith College. I don't know how many other students came in to the college knowing some Latin already, but I have to admit that I was a bit surprised during opening convocation when they handed the lyric sheets out. It's not totally inappropriate, but there are a few bits that raise an eyebrow.

Posted December 15, 2005 6:08 PM by Ayse Sercan

Getting back to O Tannenbaum, my high-school band had a not-very organization called the FMA, or Future Morticians of America. Its song, which we then found at least mildly amusing, was

We live for you, we die for you,
National Embalming School.
(bis)
And when you're dead, we dig a hole,
and put you in to turn to mold.
(repeat first two lines)

There's a bit more, but it bounces around among tunes, so would probably be more trouble to read than it'd be worth.

Posted December 16, 2005 12:13 AM by Janet McConnaughey

"Amazing Grace" goes well to the tune of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" for at least the first verse...but it's remarkably hard to sing more than three lines before you're laughing too hard to sing.

Posted December 16, 2005 3:34 AM by Mac

The classic example of this sort of thing, of course, is that the tune for the Major-General's recitative that begins "Tormented with the anguished dread of falsehood unatoned" is very easy to confuse with "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" (more Christmas carols!)

Also, I find that "Men of Harlech" and "Ar hyd y nos" have an alarming and brain-screwing tendency to turn into one another.

Posted December 16, 2005 12:22 PM by Lea

My father liked to sing these words to "Miyasama Miyasama" from the Mikado:

I like pizza, you like pizza
Everyone likes pizza here.
Why don't we get us a pizza
And a case of beer.

Posted December 16, 2005 1:28 PM by JohnD

To the tune of "O Christmas Tree"

The Working Class
Can kiss my ass
I've got the foreman's job at last.

(From my great-grandfather, a labor union activist)

Posted December 16, 2005 8:12 PM by Erik Nelson

Eric's grandfather doubtless knew that he was parodying 'The Red Flag', which is generally sung to the tune of 'Tannenbaum'. I prefer the Billy Bragg/Dick Gaughan rendition of the song to the original tune 'The White Cockade'.

Posted December 17, 2005 1:21 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I'm happy to note that "A Little Belgian Orphan" still seems to be under copyright so I can't cut a copy off the web and saddle you with it. Written by Amanda McKittrick Ros (and released under the psuedonym Monica Moyland, Larne, Irelande), an author and poet who makes one long for William McGonagall, it's a WWI vintage account of fictional German atrocities against a Belgian family so you'll get fired up to fight the Hun.

It's horrible. And, I discovered a year ago, fits so well to "Bell-Bottomed Trousers" that I couldn't get free of it untill Our Hostess supplied the information that "Excelsior" could be sung to the "Underdog" theme.

Posted December 17, 2005 9:50 PM by Bruce E. Durocher II

The Gaudeamus Igitur is one of my absolute favourites when it comes to student culture songs. However, I've landed way too much experience with latin to be able to sit straight-faced when the pronunciations get mangled to what obviously is american english rendering of whatever happens to stand on the sheet. The same goes for my fiancee.

Imagine our distress when in one episode of West Wing, our up till then hero Sam Seaborn stands up and starts singin Gaudeamus Igitur loudly - in the most atrocious american pronunciation I've ever heard of those words.

For those who may have stumbled across the swedish drinking-and-singing-culture, this little translation by the two of us may hold amusement:

Salvete gnomici nunc pullamus verras gavisi
Salvete gnomici nunc pullamus verras gavisi
Tempullum nunc viveamus nec otiosi nec quieti
Salvete gnomici nunc pullamus verras gavisi

Posted December 19, 2005 6:31 AM by Mikael Johansson