Very cute. :)

(Now I want a vindaloo/badger mashup, though.)

Posted July 5, 2006 1:03 AM by Tracey C.

I suppose Boola Boola is the sort of thing being parodied but I think the honor of America for making no sense goes to the Rock Chalk Chant of honored memory.

Teddy Roosevelt is reputed to have "pronounced the Rock Chalk Chant ["Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU" repeated five times] the greatest college chant he'd ever heard" "Some have likened it to a Gregorian chant"

Posted July 5, 2006 1:24 AM by Clark E Myers

After reading the Takeru Kobayashi hot-dog-eating story then watching some of the linked videos here, the phrase "un chien vindaloo" just naturally came to mind.

Posted July 5, 2006 1:35 AM by Rob T.

They don't allow drunken crowds at football matches any more.

Anyway, who needs a song for drunks, when the supporters of various teams can sing stuff as diverse as Blaydon Races and You'll Never Walk Alone.

And that's only soccer, as you folk call it. You should hear the Welsh at Rugby Union matches.

Posted July 5, 2006 2:55 AM by Dave Bell

I saw this being performed for no reason in the middle of a Bollywood weepy about a dying young man making everybody's wishes come true. I can't remember the name of the movie, naturally. But all of a sudden the movie called time on the regular plot lines and had a weird competition between a little Indian restaurant and a little Chinese restaurant (in Brooklyn? I think so) and even more suddenly they were doing this Vindaloo number. It was really weird at the time, with no context . . . I can't recall what they said instead of "England:" it might well have been "America."

Does this movie ring any bells with anybody?

Posted July 5, 2006 3:26 AM by Lucy Kemnitzer

Yikes... that is obnoxious. The kind of thing that gets stuck in one's head after running out of leftover Christmas carols.

Posted July 5, 2006 4:29 AM by Rachel

I didn't know about it.

But then again, I'm from that part of the UK that traditionally supports (a) Scotland or (b) whoever is playing against England.

Posted July 5, 2006 4:58 AM by Charlie Stross

Fat good it did them, neeener neeener :-)

Falls over and wiggles feet in the air in glee.

"Football is that game where eleven play and Germany gets to play the final."

Not if we're around they don't.

(plays whistle, gets on car and drives madly around waving flag.)

Posted July 5, 2006 6:05 AM by Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

I knew the thing existed but had never bothered to look up the "lyrics" -- like Charlie, I'm from a part of the UK (Wales) that hopes to kick the shit out of England, at least at rugby.

As for the song, I'm reminded of Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork National Anthem ("We Can Rule You Wholesale"), whose official second verse includes "Ner ner ner" passages in acknowledgment of the tradition that no one remembers any anthem's second verse.

Posted July 5, 2006 6:14 AM by Dave Langford

Coincidentally, just last week i was using this song as a basis when I was trying to come up with a suitably inspiring and stirring Bardic Song for use during Dungeons & Dragons games.

It's not finished yet, but I was quite pleased with the new lyric for the "me an' me mum an' me dad an' me gran" bit.

Posted July 5, 2006 6:36 AM by aboulic

Keith Allen and Damien Hurst - what a combination!

A little history and some other football songs are charted here:

Pop Goes the World Cup

reveals more info, and the battle to win the pop spot of Football songs.

M.

Posted July 5, 2006 6:52 AM by Martyn Drake

Somebody should write a book on football songs... the ones composed for it and, much better, the ones that were shamelessly nicked by fans with adapted lyrics. I suspect something of the sort already exists... In Italy, that list would even include No Woman No Cry.

But who cares. I hereby state that football is that game where 11 play and Italy gets to play the final every 12 years.

(opens the window and shouts MA VIEEEEEENI, to great amusement of the quiet south-Manchester neighbourhood)

Posted July 5, 2006 7:02 AM by Giacomo

Charlie: never understood that attitude. It's not like the English usually support whoever's playing against Scotland.

Mind you, I suspect most of the time Scotland don't really register as significant enough to be against. ;-)

(*hides*)

Posted July 5, 2006 7:23 AM by Paul

I'm thinking that it's a damned shame we don't have songs like this in the US of A. I might actually start paying some attention to pro sports, then.

Posted July 5, 2006 7:47 AM by Dave Weingart

Anna, Giacomo, who could blame you for waving your feet in the air, or screaming "MA VIEEEEEENI!" out the window? That was some spectacular football

Back to the Brits: okay, so you sing at football and rugby matches. Do you have dances?

We had an extremely American day on Monday: a trip to Coney Island for the amusement park and a little dabbling in the Atlantic, then hot dogs at Nathan's, a minor-league baseball game, and a fireworks show.

During the musical intervals they threw in at slow points in the game, I noticed that not only did every kid in the stadium (probably every kid in Brooklyn) know the Macarena, but that some of the kids had a couple of line dances going: a traditional one to "Cotton-Eyed Joe", and one I'd never seen before that combined bits of the cha-cha with an irregular pattern of one-footed stomps and two-footed hops. It was a fan thing.

Anybody else know about that? Does it turn up at games elsewhere, or is it local to New York?

Posted July 5, 2006 7:54 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Recommended: "British Football Chants" by Pete May, from Verbatim XXV:1. You can download the whole issue as a PDF from http://www.verbatimmag.com/25_1.pdf. The article is also reprinted in the book Verbatim, edited by Erin McKean (New York: Harcourt, 2001).

I've never heard any of these songs, being the sort of girl who doesn't care about soccer only slightly more than she doesn't care about any typical U.S. sport, but the article still had me on the floor laughing.

Posted July 5, 2006 8:06 AM by India

Come on, aboulic, don't be a tease; let's hear it.

(In exchange, here's a bit of my friend Cipriano's version of "Thunder Road":

His fireball misfired,
His lightning missed the mark,
And then the party found itself
Encased in Total Dark;
He tried to polymorph them,
The dirty ancient louse,
We did not think it funny
When Sir Kai became a mouse.

And there were dragons, dragons
Flying o'er the road,
Wyverns all around us
And behind us yellow mold--
And there were orcses, orcses
Filling all the woods;
They all jumped upon us
Because we were lawful good.)

Posted July 5, 2006 8:16 AM by Lila

Lila: I have a tape of that! (Or I used to, anyway. It may still be at my parents' house. I should look for it; "Woad of Harlech" is also lots of fun.) How's he doing?

Posted July 5, 2006 9:13 AM by TexAnne

I'm slightly disappointed in myself to realise that my first ever comment on Making Light is going to be about football; but it does seem to be much in the air at the moment, so I'll live with it.

Paul, about the thing where Scottish fans support whoever is playing England: I wrote about this recently. In short, it seems to me that it's perfectly normal football-supporter behaviour to support any team that is playing against your team's main rival. Why should that be any different for national teams?

And, hello everybody.

Posted July 5, 2006 9:21 AM by Martin McCallion

On baseball songs:

Baseball here used to have more fan involvement than it does nowadays. (Which seems to be the trend for American audiences generally --- at the last Dresden Dolls concert in Boston, their hometown, Amanda Palmer commented from the stage that the trend was palpable even in listening to the audience in live concert recordings from ten or fifteen years ago, vs. now. "Something bad happened in the '90s").

At the turn of the last century, the Red Sox fans had a theme song, "Tessie", which drove other teams to distraction. (One Pittsburgh outfielder was quoted as saying "that damn 'Tessie' song" was at least partially responsible for his team's loss to the Red Sox in the 1903 World Series). This was one of several tactics adopted by fans in a group called the "Royal Rooters", though I don't know if they ever went as far as the choreographed routines I've seen from Japanese baseball fans. At any rate, this all faded away, along with the team's fortunes, and an attempted punk rock revival version of "Tessie" by the Dropkick Murphys is... not well regarded. What's left is the occasional more topical chant. ("Where is Roger? In the shower!" was the on-the-spot improv chant that greeted the rest of the Yankees when they had to pull Roger Clemens from a game early after a very unsuccessful start).

On the other hand, the PA announcers at Fenway, perhaps more out of laziness than anything else, got into the habit of playing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" in the middle of the eighth --- and fans have adopted it as a singalong. After the Sox beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, in Yankee Stadium, Red Sox fans present joined in a hearty choral rendition behind the visiting dugout...

Posted July 5, 2006 9:33 AM by "Charles Dodgson"

Though there's the asymmetry factor in Scotland-England, too. England may be Scotland's biggest rival, but not vice versa. (See also US-Mexico, though the Americans have been winning that enough recently that the US must be gaining in Mexico's rivalry sweepstakes.) I suspect England's biggest rivals are either Argentina or Germany. Germany's biggest are either Brazil or Italy. Brazil's only rivals are previous Brazilian teams.

Posted July 5, 2006 9:41 AM by Doug

Hockey also has a couple of songs, though nothing that's team-specific. "Na na na na/hey hey hey/Goodbye" being a favourite, and also "The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom Connors. (You can find the lyrics here -- Yikes. I can't believe Avril Lavigne did a cover of it.)

Posted July 5, 2006 9:46 AM by Ceri

Vindaloo Day for me was July 1. Here's the post in question.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:03 AM by Elayne Riggs

What I REALLY want to know is why I kept hearing "Go West" (the Village People, Pet Shop Boys) at the end of every game in the World Cup. Someone must be earning some serious royalties right now.

M.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:11 AM by Martyn Drake

Whoever that was with the Bollywood movie, I believe that was _Kal Ho Na Ho_. It's got Sharukh Khan in it. The plot involves a Very Serious Girl who gets taught how to Live by an annoying young man, who (it later becomes clear) is dying (slowly and tragically).

The restaurant part comes in because his girlfriend's restaurant is failing, so he proposes making it into an /actual/ Indian (Hindustani) restaurant, which they do in best 'it is time for a montage' fashion, to the bemusement of the Chinese place across the street.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:43 AM by kate

At some baseball parks, even the trad organ sounds seem to be going out of style. I recently watched a TV showing of a night game between the D'Backs and the A's in Oakland (figuring I could always root for my old home team if the Phoenix guys were making fools of themselves again), and the main "music" was some very enthusiastic bongo and drum from the audience. Much better than those hackneyed rising chords. There were some "Let's go Oak-land" chants, but they fizzled when the A's did.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:50 AM by Faren Miller

What about the "Ha-way oh way oh way oh way" song? That's the one I associate with Foot-ba. (soccer to us). What's its name, anyhow?

Posted July 5, 2006 11:15 AM by Jack Ruttan

I think the lyrics to "Vindaloo" might be a bit too complicated for some. Here, in the upper left, we cheer on the mighty Dawgs (UW Huskies) with "Tequila". All you have to do is shout "Tequila" three times during the song.

The Mariners play two songs during the seventh inning stretch - the traditional "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" followed by "Louie, Louie". People dance to "Louie, Louie", another song that's a little short in the lyrics department (I think it's "Louie, Louie, we gotta go now" but I'm not sure).

Posted July 5, 2006 11:19 AM by Margaret Organ-Kean

Kate, thank you, that's it exactly (the movie with the Vindaloo song in it).

I was really puzzled by the song when I saw the movie and I'm really pleased to know it has a background. It all makes sense now. Kind of.

Posted July 5, 2006 12:05 PM by Lucy Kemnitzer

I don't know if Giacomo wants a book that simply lists all football chants or one that looks in to the history of them. There are plenty of websites that collect them, but I don't think any of them look too deeply into them or their history.

One of my favourites was when Cantona, then at Man Utd and who usually got the chant "Oh ah Cantona (said oh ah Cantona)", was suspended and the opposition fans chanted "Ou est Cantona?".

Also one of the great terrace songs happens to be for Sheffield United, now of the Premiership, which is odd enough to be worth a mention:

The Greasy Chip Butty Song (to the tune of John Denver's 'Annie's Song')
You fill up my senses,
Like a gallon of Magnet,
Like a packet of woodbines,
Like a good pinch of snuff,
Like a night out in Sheffield,
Like a greasy chip butty,
Like Sheffield United,
Come fill me again,
na na na na na na
ooooooo!
oo! oo!

Magnet is (perhaps was) a local Bitter, and it used to be OK, certainly better than Stones, say, or John Smiths.

Posted July 5, 2006 12:10 PM by Paul Herzberg

Charlie: never understood that attitude. It's not like the English usually support whoever's playing against Scotland.

Perhaps the reason they don't is because the Scots never depopulated a huge swath of England because the land was more productive with sheep than people?

Just speculating.

Posted July 5, 2006 12:18 PM by Xopher

Charles Dodgson: I'm no expert on overall fan involvement. I do have a standing gripe, though: when did it become standard to have someone perform the national anthem, instead of leading the crowd in singing it? That's just wrong.

For what it's worth, "Sweet Caroline" was the second song sung during the seventh-inning stretch.

Ceri, absolutely everyone sings "Na na na na/hey hey hey/goodbye". "YMCA" is pretty much universal too.

Margaret:

"Louie Louie, me gotta go. Louie Louie, me gotta go. A fine little girl, she wait for me. Me catch the ship across the sea. I sailed the ship all alone. I never think I'll make it home. Louie Louie, me gotta go. Three nights and days we sailed the sea. Me think of girl constantly. On the ship, I dream she there. I smell the rose in her hair. Louie Louie, me gotta go. Me see Jamaican moon above. It won't be long me see me love. Me take her in my arms and then I tell her I never leave again. Louie Louie, me gotta go."

Posted July 5, 2006 12:26 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I posted last February about football fight songs. Of course, this was American football, specifically Pittsburgh Steelers fan-written songs (SF fen might think of it as filk) written in the buildup to the Super Bowl. "Vindaloo" and its kin sound very similar in spirit to such local efforts as "Here We Go Steelers".

College football is not immune to silly lyrics in their official fight songs, either. For example, the classic line in my alma mater's song, "alleghenee, genac, genac, genac". Nor is this anything new: if I recall my freshman indoctrination correctly (it's been mumblety-eight years) the song was written in the pre-WWI era -- 1914, give or take a few -- so it's pretty well great-great-grandfathered in now.

Posted July 5, 2006 12:40 PM by Lois Fundis

I expect one reason the fans at Mariners games go for "Louie, Louie" is that the band that made it infamous, the Kingsmen, was a Seattle-based band.

Here in Tennessee, the UT/Vanderbilt football rivalry is ornamented by a Vanderbilt cheer, typically used after UT has either scored, intercepted a Vanderbilt pass, recovered a Vanderbilt fumble, or prevented Vanderbilt from scoring*, that goes "That's all right, that's OK, you'll all work for us some day."

*All of these happen a lot--it was regarded as a dire sign, right up there with blood on the moon, or rivers flowing backwards, when Vanderbilt beat UT, in Knoxville, in 2005.

Posted July 5, 2006 1:20 PM by fidelio

Wikipedia appears to Know All about football chants.

Posted July 5, 2006 1:24 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Kate: It's got Sharukh Khan in it.

A bit off the topic, I know, but every single damn Bollywood movie seems to have Sharukh Khan in it. Don't they have other actors in India?

Posted July 5, 2006 1:32 PM by Lisa Goldstein

Teresa, I think that the change in how the anthem is done happened about the time the performers of the anthem started singing it as a dirge instead of as a soaring triumph.

Our anthem is a long way from my favorite patriotic song (that would be "America the Beautiful"), but it's not supposed to be sung as if you're about to break down weeping. And you certainly can't get a crowd to sing along if you're bending every note, playing with the rhythm, and generally performing it as a psychodrama.

Posted July 5, 2006 1:41 PM by Lucy Kemnitzer

Flies in the curry sauce, shoo shoo shoo!
Flies in the curry sauce, shoo shoo shoo!
Flies in the curry sauce, shoo shoo shoo!
Vind a my loo, my darlin'!

Posted July 5, 2006 2:02 PM by Avram

Isn't the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner" supposed to be from an English drinking song in the first place?

Posted July 5, 2006 2:05 PM by Peter Erwin

As an American baseball fan, the only football/soccer song I am really familiar with is Slade's "When I'm Dancing I Ain't Fighting" but that's not really a chant.

The art of jeering has not died in baseball though. Not too long ago at a game, my wife once entertained our entire section by loudly deriding Derek Jeter's long string of girlfriends every time he came to bat. And this is in Minnesota, not Boston. Oh, the handful of Yankee fans behind us were sooooo pissed.

Posted July 5, 2006 2:09 PM by Jerol J.

It's a tad frightening, but the song makes perfect sense to me.

Rachael de Vienne,
Princess of Pixies
Queen of Goats

Posted July 5, 2006 2:30 PM by Rachael de Vienne

Oh, god, that's what it is! I couldn't figure out why people were running around singing about vindaloo....

Posted July 5, 2006 2:33 PM by Avedon

Peter Erwin -

Isn't the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner" supposed to be from an English drinking song in the first place?

Yes - "To Anacreon in Heaven." (tho' I needed to look up the spelling)

Posted July 5, 2006 2:34 PM by protected static

Dear Peter Erwin:

The Star Spangled Banner is set to the tune of To Anacreon in Heaven.

Try singing this to your national anthem:

To Anacreon in heaven where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be,
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:
Voice, fiddle aud flute, no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot!
And besides I'll instruct you like me to entwine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

The news through Olympus immediately flew,
When old Thunder pretended to give himself airs,
If these mortals are suffered their scheme to pursue,
The devil a goddess will stay above stairs,
Hark! already they cry, in transports of joy,
A fig for Parnassus, to Rowley's we'll fly,
And there my good fellows, we'll learn to entwine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

The yellow-haired god, and his nine fusty maids,
To the hill of old Lud will incontinent flee,
Idalia will boast but of tenantless shades,
And the biforked hill a mere desert will be,
My thunder, no fear on't, will soon do its errand,
And, damn me I'll swinge the ringleaders, I warrant
I'll trim the young dogs, for thus daring to twine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine.

Apollo rose up and said, "Prythee ne'er quarrel,
Good king of the gods, with my votaries below
Your thunder is useless - then showing his laurel,
Cried, Sic evitabile fulmen, you know!
Then over each head my laurels I'll spread,
So my sons from your crackers no mischief shall dread
Whilst snug in their club-room, they jovially twine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

Posted July 5, 2006 2:35 PM by Rachael de Vienne

There's a song that at least until 24 hours ago was #1 on the German singles charts titled '54, '74, '90, 2006 (the first three dates being years Germany has won the World Cup). Made a pretty decent football chant. Then there's the ever-popular "Berlin! Berlin! Wir fahren nach Berlin!" Though today I guess it should read Stuttgart.

Posted July 5, 2006 2:54 PM by James Stewart

Wow, that song is Biohazard level 4. It only took one listen to one of those video links for it to engrave itself on my brain for today. Ouch!

Vindaloo! Na na na!

Posted July 5, 2006 3:22 PM by Clifton Royston

Jack Ruttan: The song you're thinking of used to be played at Columbus Crew (soccer team) games.

It was also used by one of the networks to close out its broadcast of World Cup games several years ago.

I believe the lyrics are actually:

Allez, allez, allez, allez -- AH-ah-lez, allez.

I have no idea who wrote it, or who the performers are...

Two more months, and it will be college football time again:

"In old Ohio there's a team that's known throughout the land--
Eleven warriors, brave and bold, whose fame shall ever stand.
And when the ball goes over, our cheers will reach the sky!
Ohio Field will hear again the BUCKEYE BATTLE CRY:

"Drive, drive on down the field,
Men of the Scarlet and Gray!
Don't let them through that line, we have to win this game today -- (OH-HI-OH)
Straight through to victory, we cheer you as you go --
Our honor defend, we will fight to the end for O-HI-O! (State!)"

Posted July 5, 2006 4:03 PM by Lori Coulson

Me trying to speak French here in Quebec, and not knowing that. Thanks, Lori!

Posted July 5, 2006 4:25 PM by Jack Ruttan

Jack, you missed a good chance there. You could have thanked her in Japanese...Ohio gozaimasu.

Posted July 5, 2006 4:30 PM by Xopher

Sorry, X. I know a bit of Mandarin, from my corner store, and could say "shiu-shiu". But nothing to do with Ohio.

Wanted to chime in that I investigated the wikipedia site cited above, on football chants, and it talks about "Ole, ole" (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Football_chant_ole_ole_ole.mid), and has it as a bullfighting chant.

Still, we're waiting up here for the decision between Portugal and France. Portugal would mean a better street party.

Posted July 5, 2006 4:37 PM by Jack Ruttan

Jack, it was the first song I thought of when the topic of football/soccer appeared.

I'm interpreting the "allez" as the French equivalent of "up and at 'em," but it's been many years since I was last in French class, so I could be -very- wrong.

Xopher -- ah yes, the other meaning of "ohio!"

I'm told the state's name actually means 'beautiful river' in the local Native American dialect (Shawnee, perhaps?).

Posted July 5, 2006 4:39 PM by Lori Coulson

My friend Gavin, who collects all sorts of pop music oddities, loves football songs, and (as I recall) thinks "Vindaloo" is the best, or at least the funniest.

The only other one I remember him telling me was the song for Scotland's national team before the World Cup: "Don't Come Home Too Soon."

Posted July 5, 2006 4:42 PM by Scraps

I'm delighted that someone else appreciates Vindaloo. I believe it's just about the best football song ever written. It's clearly post-ironic; it is obvious to all that the people who wrote it were both taking the piss and celebrating the genre.

The weirdest football song of all time to my mind is (Put 'em) Under Pressure, the Republic of Ireland's 1990 effort which mashes up clips from other football songs rewritten to feature Ireland, together with the opening riff from the Horslips' Dearg Doom (which is why I know it, being mad Horslips fan). It was Number 1 in Ireland for 13 weeks.

Oh well, never mind. Hey chaps, it's forty years of hurt now!

Posted July 5, 2006 4:45 PM by Alison Scott

Hockey has its share of great chants. My favourite was came after a much publicized incident in which Jim Schoenfeld of the Devils yelled "have another donut, you fat pig" at referee Don Koharski. For the remainder of that year's playoffs (at least for the away games), fans taunted Schoenfeld with a lovely chant, with one side of the rink yelling "have another donut" and the other side answering with "you fat pig." (Maybe you had to be there.) I believe Koharski suffered the same chant that year, but I didn't see any of those games.

And of course there was the great chant from the 1972 Canada/Soviet Union hockey series: "da da Canada/nyet nyet Soviet."

Posted July 5, 2006 4:57 PM by Greg Ioannou

Lucy -- You're welcome. For awhile, that was my favorite Bollywood movie, despite the complete (and fairly distracting) tone change from the first half of the movie to the second. (I later figured out that was par for the course, with Bollywood.)

I will now stop being off topic completely.

Posted July 5, 2006 5:06 PM by kate

Wikipedia says, "Ohio is an Iroquois word meaning 'good river.'" This is an oversimplification in that the Iroquois were (and are) several different nations speaking closely-related but different languages.Many of the native people who lived in this area* at the time white folks** started moving in were Iroquoian; a group called "Mingo" ("enemy" or "stranger" in the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware, tongue) were mostly Seneca and seem to have been the dominant group in this part of the valley at the time. I suspect "Ohio" is their word, more or less, but the history is a bit jumbled.

The French translated the name of the river as "La Belle Riviere", which is how it's shown on many early maps of the area. (They included the Allegheny River as part of La Belle Riviere, too.) The English/American settlers seem to have restored the Indian name, and "the Ohio Country" as they called it included most of the valley from well above Pittsburgh to down around Louisville, if not all the way to the Mississippi.

*I live in Weirton, West Virginia, which is on the Ohio River, 35 miles west of Pittsburgh, just across the river from Steubenville, Ohio, and 30 miles north of Wheeling, West Virginia (which is the county seat of Ohio County, so named 27 years before the state of Ohio was formed). This region was a hotbed of disputes among Indians, French, and English (including between Virginia and Pennsylvania) for much of the 1700s, from before the "French and Indian War" (a.k.a. the Seven Years War) to the Whiskey Rebellion.

**Some of the white folks brought black folks with them, too, of course. As slaves, at least mostly; many of the settlers were from Virginia, after all -- and this was Virginia until 1863 -- but slavery was still legal in Pennsylvania in the early days, too. Just last week a lady was telling me a family story from those times about a woman from our area who was taken captive by Indians. (This would have been in the 1780s or so.) With her was another woman she kept describing as "a black helper." I don't think the person telling me the story could admit to the S word, and I was too polite to bring it up, but I'd be willing to bet the black "helper" was not there of her own free will.

Posted July 5, 2006 5:34 PM by Lois Fundis

protected static and Rachael de Vienne: thanks for the links (and the lyrics!). I hadn't known that the original lyrics were so, um, unusual. Not what one normally thinks of as drinking song.

I had a somewhat surreal encounter with an English football song almost twenty years ago in London, walking across a bridge over the Thames one night. A group of drunken men came stumbling past me, singing, "Drink, drink, wherever you may be, for we are the drunk and disorderly..." Which really weirded me out, because I was very familiar with the tune, but only from the (original) religious version of the song, having sung it a number of time in church choir: The Lord of the Dance.

It's only now, thanks to Google, that I discover that the "Drink, drink" version is, in fact, an English football song. So far, I've found it on pages for Arsenal, Manchester United, and Newcastle United, so it seems pretty generic.

(Apparently the tune is taken from an old Shaker hymn. And now I have the vision of a group of Shakers being exposed to the football-song version...)

Posted July 5, 2006 5:34 PM by Peter Erwin

The lines "Me and me Mam and me Dad and me Gran / We're off to Waterloo / Me and me Mam and me Dad and me Gran / And a bucket of Vindaloo" are just perfectly English on so many levels.

Despite being sort-of English myself (Welsh and Irish ancestry, but living in England most of my life) I picked up the anyone-playing-against-England reflex myself, on the rare occasions I notice there's football on. In Glasgow this year, they were all selling supporters' T-shirts for Scotland, Portugal, Sweden, and whoever else it was in the same group as England. Quite confused some of the visitors. The great mass of the English tend to think of the Scots as just a different kind of English, when they think of them at all - the same as, say, Liverpudlians or Mancunians - but the Scots never forget that they're an independent kingdom who were never conquered, and that even after the Act of Union in 1707 the English went to great lengths to keep them economically subjugated and powerless.

The traditional Welsh rugby song, 'Sosban Fach', makes only slightly more sense. (Note that the translation there is very rough - the chorus actually translates as "large saucepan boiling on the floor, small saucepan boiling on the fire" - and it isn't the version I learnt at school.) Mind you, the Welsh tend to sing hymns, from the Methodist influences. And when drunk, they don't sing worse, just more and more slowly.

Posted July 5, 2006 5:36 PM by Sam Kelly

Peter Irwin,

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free;
'Tis the gift to be right where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
We will be in the Valley of Love and Delight.

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn, will be our delight
'Til by turning, turning, we come 'round right.

Hmm...LOTD, LOTR...nah. Not getting much beyond "It's so great to be Sauron, it's so great to be King/It's so great to be the bearer of a Ring" for the first section, and "'Bring all the twenty* Rings to me/for I am the Lord of the Rings', said he" for the second. I'll work on it.

*Not counting the One, which he has when he's saying this.

Posted July 5, 2006 5:58 PM by Xopher

tch, Teresa, they don't all shout 'ENGLAND' at the end of 'Vindaloo'; they shout 'ENG-GER-LAND'. For English football fans, their country's name is a three syllable word, hence the choice of 'Vindaloo' for the song, of course.

Posted July 5, 2006 6:11 PM by Rob Hansen

Back at good ol' UC Davis (go AGGIES!) we had an ode to drinking for our football fight song. Also for baseball, soccer, basketball, track, chess . . . it was a multipurpose song, good for any profane occasion and centered on what we were best known for (at least on frat row and in the dorms). It started:

Oh, we had a little party down in Lakeport
there was Harry, there was Mary, there was Grace.
Oh, we had a little party down in Lakeport
and we had to carry Harry from the place.

Oh we had to carry Harry to the ferry
we had to carry Harry to the shore.
Oh the reason why we had to carry Harry to the ferry
was that Harry couldn't carry anymore.

Posted July 5, 2006 7:04 PM by Claude Muncey

lori, ack, it was the first song I thought of when the topic of football/soccer appeared.

I'm interpreting the "allez" as the French equivalent of "up and at 'em," but it's been many years since I was last in French class, so I could be -very- wrong.

i believe it is actually the spanish "ole" (don't know how to type accents) & the bouncing souls, who recorded a song with the chant as its chorus, agree. i don't know if they made up the chant, though, or just borrowed it.

Posted July 5, 2006 7:04 PM by miriam beetle

Charles Dodgson: I think that it's only fair to point out that the Red Sox did win the World Series in the year that the Dropkicks recorded a new version of "Tessie" (and for the record, I think it's a great song - although I am a Dropkick Murphys fan and the Red Sox fail to move me). And the Dropkicks' raging-at-injustice punk cover of 'The Fields of Athenry' - which I know is the 'official' song of Irish rugby and at least a couple of football clubs - blows the sad ballad-y versions all to hell (YMMV, of course).

I think you need to be a bit careful when you compare your run-of-the-mill live concert with concert recordings from fifteen years ago - it's not a big stretch to imagine that people are a lot more vocal when they are being recorded, and Amanda Palmer isn't old enough to have personal experience from the early eighties. Although I wonder if high ticket prices are a factor - it kind of does drive me crazy when people in the audience sing along to the songs (I paid to hear the band, not the drunk guy beside me). But the Dresden Dolls have definitely encouraged and benefited from considerable fan involvement, and it's really the trademark of Dropkick Murphys shows.

BTW, I would have to translate, "Allez, allez, allez, allez" as "Go, go, go, go," which goes a long way towards demonstrating how much more mellifluous French is than English.

Posted July 5, 2006 7:33 PM by debcha

Xopher:

The original words. From memory, so requires a grain of salt (not included). I think LOTD is a better lyric...especially the Pagan version, but that's just because I'm Pagan.

Good memory! -- at least, the Wikipedia entry for "Simple Gifts" (I should have known there would be one) seems to agree with you!

The last line you quoted seems awfully familiar -- it's possible we sang those verses once in choir, as a variation on the usual "Lord of the Dance" lyrics.

Before today, I hadn't known there were Pagan versions. Though there's a hint of a pagan, or at least very ecumenical, attitude in the comments of Sydney Carter, who wrote the "Lord of the Dance" lyrics. Reminds me a bit of the attitude of Mike Scott (of the Scottish band The Waterboys), who is avowedly Christian but happily writes songs celebrating Pan. (And also sets W.B. Yeats poems to music, for extra coolness.)

(None of the relevant Wikipedia entries allude to the drinking/football versions, alas.)

Hmm...LOTD, LOTR...nah. Not getting much beyond "It's so great to be Sauron, it's so great to be King/It's so great to be the bearer of a Ring" for the first section, and "'Bring all the twenty* Rings to me/for I am the Lord of the Rings', said he" for the second. I'll work on it.

Oh, please do. That sounds charmingly blasphemous.

Posted July 5, 2006 8:02 PM by Peter Erwin

Claude Muncey: Ah, I learned that as the UC Berkeley drinking song... For after all, does it not continue,

California! California!
The hills send back the cry,
we're out to do or die
For California, California!
We'll win the game or know the reason why
(the team sucks!)

And when the game is over we will buy a keg of booze, and drink to California 'til we wobble in our shoes, so Drink! Tra-la-la Drink! Tra-la-la

I doubt Leland Stanford Junior College could manage something so fine. ;)

Posted July 5, 2006 8:13 PM by Madeline F

No, no, no!

I mean, the Ohio thing. You're thinking of 'Good Morning!'

Posted July 5, 2006 8:41 PM by Painini

Quoth Xopher: You could have thanked her in Japanese...Ohio gozaimasu.

Er. Well, actually, that would be "good morning"; the "thank you" you're probably thinking of is "arigatou."

(Blah blah ultrapolite verb "gozaru" blah special forms of adjectives "hayai" (early) and "arigatai" (grateful) blah blah bonus random Tokugawa sumptuary note.)

Posted July 5, 2006 8:45 PM by Julie L.

1- Theresa: I believe the dance you described is the "Electric Slide", much favored around here at weddings and company parties

2- The best place to hear the "Star-Spangled Banner" is here in Baltimore, its birthplace, where every schoolkid has to learn all the words. At Orioles games the "O" at the the end is held for a very long time in honor of the "O's" and is made even more dramatic by our unfortunate Cockney pronunciation: "Aaoooooo say does that stor-spangled banner yet wave"

3- "Vindaloo" is the Best.Anthem.Ever.

Posted July 5, 2006 8:50 PM by jain

Debcha, I'm with you on admiring the Dropkicks' version of "Tessie." AND "Fields of Athenry." Although I'm a lifelong Sox fan and only a Dropkicks fan as of last year.

And, Jack, I hadn't realized that the "allez" or "ole" or whatever chant had a thing to do with football! I'm accustomed to it as "audience begging punk or ska band for an encore." Seems to have spread way beyond the Bouncing Souls.

Miriam: alt-1-3-0.

off to see the Dropkicks next week...

Posted July 5, 2006 9:26 PM by Rikibeth

Teresa -

"Louie, Louie" has words? Well, knock me over with a feather!

Yes, "Tequila" is simple, but that's so (insert name of despised campus group here) can remember the words.

Posted July 5, 2006 9:31 PM by Margaret Organ-Kean

Not getting much beyond "It's so great to be Sauron, it's so great to be King/It's so great to be the bearer of a Ring" for the first section, and "'Bring all the twenty* Rings to me/for I am the Lord of the Rings', said he" for the second. I'll work on it.

Dammit, Xopher, you made me waste a perfectly good mouthful of iced tea! When you get that finished, I want a copy!

Posted July 5, 2006 9:35 PM by Lee

Here's an interesting and provocative essay about the national anthem and sports.

Posted July 5, 2006 9:45 PM by Tim Walters

Frank DeFord had an essay about the national anthem on Morning Edition a week ago. It's here at Sports Illustrated's site.

He closes:

Next Tuesday is our American national holiday, the Fourth of July. Wouldn't it be nice if all baseball teams would agree to swear off playing the anthem at every game during the season, and only play it once a year, on our Independence Day? That would be enough. Look out to center field. Just as Francis Scott Key assured us: Our flag is still there.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:08 PM by Linkmeister

Jain, it's not the Electric Slide. I know, because the accounting department used to do the Electric Slide en masse at the Tor/SMP Christmas blowout parties we don't have any more. However, when I was double-checking this on Wikipedia, I spotted a link to the Cha Cha Slide, which turned out to be the very thing they were doing. So thank you: a near answer, and a lot of fun to track down.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:13 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

About the Ohio thing: oh right, sorry, hang head in shame, oh hell.

Before today, I hadn't known there were Pagan versions.

When she danced on the water and the wind was her horn,
The Lady laughed and everything was born,
And when she lit the Sun and the light gave Him birth,
The Lord of the Dance first appeared on the Earth.

"Dance, dance, wherever you may be,
For I am the Lord of the Dance," said He.
"I'll live in you as you live in Me,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance," said He.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:16 PM by Xopher

Jack - would you be thinking of Sergio Mendes' Mas Que Nada? It's Brazilian, I think.

O - aria raio
Oba Oba Oba Oba...

Posted July 5, 2006 10:18 PM by Jan Holden

Cotton eye'd joe has a line dance. My sister can do it, so can my friend's daughter Beth. I am hopeless at it as people who saw me at the wedding reception can attest.

The final fantasy version of Vindaloo that you link to has slightly more audible lyrics - one of which is knit 1, purl 2.

I now have that silly song in my head.

Ernie thinks that our 3 month old daughter's first word should be vindaloo.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:24 PM by Kate

Rikibeth:

...I hadn't realized that the "allez" or "ole" or whatever chant had a thing to do with football! I'm accustomed to it as "audience begging punk or ska band for an encore."

I am so with you there (Number of professional sporting events I've attended: 2. Number of concerts: oh, hell, I lost track ages ago :). That's kind of why I'm going with 'allez' instead of 'ole' - 'go,' in the plural imperative, makes much more sense when you are trying to get the band or team to go on than 'ole' does.

Have fun at Dropkicks! I saw them on March 16th - they were a blast. (if you're in the Boston area, might I recommend Mission of Burma, next week at the Paradise, too?).

Posted July 5, 2006 10:37 PM by debcha

I have just one thing to say: On a gagné! On a gagné!

*smooches Zizou*

Posted July 5, 2006 10:44 PM by TexAnne

Anybody else know about that? Does it turn up at games elsewhere, or is it local to New York?

I've seen something similar at Fort Wayne Wizards games, so maybe it's more of a minor league thing. I miss Wizards games.

And thank you for the Vindaloo nostalgia -- I was studying in England when it came out, and the song burned itself into my brain. Strangely enough, I don't feel so bad about getting it stuck in my head now that I'm not hearing it every two hours.

Posted July 5, 2006 10:45 PM by Maggie

Catchy isn't the word for this. I'm afraid I now have an earworm that won't leave for days!

Posted July 5, 2006 11:14 PM by JaniceG

Lee ::: (view all by) ::: July 05, 2006, 09:35 PM:

Xopher wrote: Not getting much beyond "It's so great to be Sauron, it's so great to be King/It's so great to be the bearer of a Ring" for the first section, and "'Bring all the twenty* Rings to me/for I am the Lord of the Rings', said he" for the second. I'll work on it.

Pretty hard to beat the old filk standard by Marc Glasser to the tune of the Marx Bros. "Hooray for Captain Spaulding":

Hooray for Frodo Baggins, the Middle Earth explorer
I just got back from Mordor
Hooray hooray hooray

I went to Sauron's castle, but there I did not linger
I lost my little finger
&etc

Posted July 5, 2006 11:30 PM by JaniceG

Wow - for once an earworm I didn't get. I just don't find the song all that catchy. Vindaloo, schmindaloo. But I've got "Allez, allez!" stuck in my head instead.

One thing I've noticed in a lot of ballparks is that when they play the opening of Car Wash everyone immediately claps along, which makes me really happy for some reason I have no insight into.

Early in my extended college career, my friends and I had a drinking song stolen from Haagar the Horrible. It went Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!...

Posted July 6, 2006 12:14 AM by Larry Brennan

JaniceG, the world has room for an infinite number of silly LOTR filks.

Posted July 6, 2006 12:29 AM by Xopher

The best Engerland football song, as a football song, has to be three Lions, with its obsessive/sad/cynical lyrics:

Three Lions on a shirt
Jules Rimet still gleaming
Thirty years of hurt
Never stopped me dreaming

Best the Dutch came up with is

"Schade Deutschland alles ist forbei.
Alles ist forbei,
Alles ist forbei"

This Worldcup, the Germans retaliated by singing

"Ohne Holland fahren wir nach Berlin"

But now it's also "Ohne Deutschland fahren wir nach Berlin"

Where hopefully France, who already made me happy by knocking out the cheatin, divin bastard Portuguese, will make me happier still by crushing the always jammy slightly less cheatin Italians.

Australia was robbed!

Posted July 6, 2006 12:47 AM by Martin Wisse

My school has a drinking song. It is a filk of "If I Only Had a Brain." We also have a chant. In ancient Greek. There is nothing like a concrete dining hall packed to the rafters with women who are screaming in Greek at the top of their lungs.

Posted July 6, 2006 12:52 AM by Luthe

I can't bring the precise reference to mind, but the image of a roomful of women screaming in Greek is one of those "check where the exits are" moments.

Posted July 6, 2006 5:22 AM by Dave Bell

A band called The Memories recorded an Irish football song to the tune of Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire", and when I saw the man himself play in Dublin soon afterwards, he came out with the football lyrics taped to the back of his guitar and did a verse or two.

No mean feat when the lyrics are unintelligible unless you know Ireland's soccer history:

Jackie Charlton, Eoin Hand
Johnny Giles. Ireland
Mick McCarthy, Steven Staunton
Cascarino!
Tony Galvin, Niall Quinn
Packie doesn't let em in
North of Ireland
South of Ireland
Only one can go

Posted July 6, 2006 5:38 AM by Niall McAuley

Xopher: LOTD, LOTR...nah. Not getting much beyond "It's so great to be Sauron, it's so great to be King/It's so great to be the bearer of a Ring" for the first section, and "'Bring all the twenty* Rings to me/for I am the Lord of the Rings', said he" for the second. I'll work on it.

There was a fellow on rec.arts.sf.written for a while who used this as a .sig:

"Rings, rings, wherever they may be,
I am the Lord of the Rings," said he.
"And I'll bring them all, wherever they may be,
And I'll bind them all in the dark," said he.

The person didn't answer my email asking whether he'd written it, or else where he'd got it; I tried to find an author on my own, without success.

Posted July 6, 2006 5:51 AM by David Goldfarb

Dave Bell winced:
I can't bring the precise reference to mind, but the image of a roomful of women screaming in Greek is one of those "check where the exits are" moments.

You're looking for an im-medea-te exit?

Posted July 6, 2006 8:32 AM by xeger

Dammit! I'm now earwormed with "We're in the loo!" instead of "Vindaloo!" (Ah, mornings!)

Posted July 6, 2006 8:48 AM by xeger

I can't bring the precise reference to mind, but the image of a roomful of women screaming in Greek is one of those "check where the exits are" moments.

Yes, you want to watch your Bacchae in that sort of situation...

(Xopher: good one!)

Posted July 6, 2006 9:01 AM by Nic_C

Not that door, xeger, it only leads to the kitchens and the loading dock, and I happen to know that my mother's sisters are unloading more beer. Much too dangerous, you really don't what to meet the back aunties.

Posted July 6, 2006 9:04 AM by Dave Bell

Mas Que Nada is a kick-ass song. You probably remember it for being the soundtrack to a great Nike advert, some 10 years ago (when ads with people kicking the same ball across cities and buildings were still somewhat original). IIRC, in the ad, the entire brazilian team, bored at the airport, started to play all over the place, doing the most amazing tricks, with Cantona looking at them from a plane with typical French "so what" attitude. For years, I associated that ad with the pure joy of football... in Italy, loads of youngsters started to sing "obaa-obaa" when dribbling each other wild on the streets. (That's something that football has above all other sports: you can play it everywhere, you just need something round enough to kick)

This said, Mas Que Nada predates the ad, and its lyrics are not about football (and I still think that Nike's football shoes are plastic crap).

Posted July 6, 2006 9:20 AM by Giacomo

"Vindaloo" dates back to the '98 World Cup; at the time, parodying the "Bittersweet Symphony" video in the promo clip was up-to-the-minute.

As Scraps said, it's one of my favorite pop-music artifacts ever; I wrote about it (and the other World Cup singles of that year) at some length here.

It's worth noting that although "Vindaloo" endures, "Three Lions" is still the song more likely to be bellowed by triumphant drunken Englishmen on the streets, if my trip back to London a few weeks ago is at all indicative.

Posted July 6, 2006 10:27 AM by Gavin

Wikipedia says that Go West "provides the melody for the common chant 'You're sh*te, and you know you are' "... would that explain why they play it at the world cup? Or is it a subtle joke from west-germans? (the old DDR only provided one stadium for the current tournament, and several of the top german players are actually polish immigrants)

On a side note, when Germany lost the entire stadium was singing "You'll never walk alone", in perfect english. I didn't know so many Germans were actually from Liverpool.

Posted July 6, 2006 10:31 AM by Giacomo

I can't bring the precise reference to mind, but the image of a roomful of women screaming in Greek ...

BTW, speaking of mob scenes, did any NYC persons notice this at all? Or was it as widely reported & noticed as the visit of our Prime Minister 'Honest' John Howard, prominent participant in the Coalition of the Willing, a coupla months back?

Posted July 6, 2006 10:38 AM by Mez

On the subject of sports anthems common in the US, the Gary Glitter song "Rock and Roll Part 2" (the one that goes "daaaa, da-daaaa, da-daaaa, da da daaaa, da-daaa, da-daaa," with the occasional "Hey!") gets played in a lot of arenas. It's hugely popular with the students at Maryland, who sing "lyrics" that basically consist of yelling "You suck!" after the "Hey!" parts, and "We're gonna beat the hell out of you" during the bridge.

After an incident a couple of years ago involving stuff thrown from the student section at an opposing team, the pep band was officially banned from playing the song during timeouts for a few games. The students responded with an a capella rendition during every single timeout, and after the administration relented, it's only become more
raucous.

My sentimental favorite among sports themes is the song for my college rugby team (a club sport, not an official varsity team):

We don't play for adoration
We don't play for victory
We just play for recreation
Williams College RFC

Posted July 6, 2006 10:45 AM by Chad Orzel

Rats, David Goldfarb. Now that I know about that, I can't use it or anything like it. And it's too good; anything I could do I would look at and say "that's not as good as the thing Goldfarb showed me." So probably I won't. :-(

Posted July 6, 2006 10:52 AM by Xopher

Try looking up references to Maenads, Bassarids, or Bacchae.

I prefer to refer to us as a tribe of heathen Amazons upon the river Schyukill.

*only eats men for breakfast on alternate Tuesdays*

Posted July 6, 2006 10:59 AM by Luthe

And now I have the vision of a group of Shakers being exposed to the football-song version... Meanwhile, I was imagining a stadium full of fans belting out "Anacreon in Heaven" (much cooler lyrics than the anthem, though if sung by drunks they'd probably sound more like the Kingsmen's slurred version of "Louie Louie").

As for "allez!", as a tennis fan I'm used to hearing that accompanied by a Francophone player's fist pump. The English equivalent, "C'mon!", seems to have been so popularized by Leyton Hewitt, even non-Aussies pronounce it his way. (So we may hear more of it, even though he lost to the amazing Cypriot in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.)

Posted July 6, 2006 11:02 AM by Faren Miller

Mez, some friends and I met at Eight Mile Creek's downstairs bar early on the evening of 6/26, the day Australia played Italy, expecting to find at least some residual mayhem. We were the only customers, however, and there was no sign that anyone had been there earlier. I guess all the postgame action was at the Italian bars, which are a couple of blocks south.

Posted July 6, 2006 11:50 AM by India

Faren, I used to swear that in the unlikely event I ever attended a baseball game, I would sing "Anacreon" and see if anyone noticed.

Funny how your perspective changes. Since I turned 42, I belt out the SSB with force and feeling (though not at baseball games, which I remain uninterested in attending). I'll be 47 in the fall, and I can't see that changing anytime soon...unless I flee to another country at some point, which looks more and more possible.

Posted July 6, 2006 12:04 PM by Xopher

Dear Xopher,

The Star Spangled Banner is under-appreciated. Only the first verse is sung. This is a mistake.

There are feelings in the full song that some would reject. Yet, it is a war song, written in the heat of battle. The song gives fair warning about the multifaceted American spirit. Those who hate America and those who admire her should think through the words.

Here it is, in all its glory:

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, as it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their lov'd homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us as a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Posted July 6, 2006 12:27 PM by Rachael de Vienne

Obligatory mention of Tom Lehrer:

Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight!
Demonstrate to them our skill.
Albeit they possess the might,
Nonetheless we have the will.

How we will celebrate our victory,
We shall invite the whole team up for tea. (How jolly!)
Hurl that spheroid down the field,
And fight, fight, fight!

Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight!
Impress them with our prowess, do!
Oh, fellas, do not let the crimson down,
Be of stout heart and true.

(Come on, chaps)
Fight for Harvard's glorious name!
Won't it be peachy if we win the game? (Oh, goody!)
Let's try not to injure them,
But fight, fight, fight!
Let's not be rough, though!
Fight, fight, fight!
And do fight fiercely!
Fight, fight, fight!

"Wir fahren nach Berlin" sounds deeply, deeply ominous. In translation it's innocuous, I suppose. There was a Private Eye cover of the stadium of Neasden FC, with one speech bubble saying "We're on the way to Wembley" [where the FA Cup Final happens] and another saying "You have to go through Neasden to get there".

Posted July 6, 2006 12:36 PM by ajay

Rachael, yes, I was actually taught that in 4th grade, though I've forgotten most of it. I don't think the "In God is our trust" line is appropriate today, but then it's on our money too, so *shrug*.

I daresay FSK didn't have "Anacreon in Heaven" in mind when he wrote that. It's much too heartfelt to be sung to such a silly tune.

Posted July 6, 2006 12:51 PM by Xopher

Something about flags... There are one or two notorious German songs that I suppose can similarly catch a foreign ear. Particularly the first three words. But then I have an odd memory of little snippets of songs.

(Yes, I am thinking of that song which starts "Die Fahne hoch", which is also a pretty innocuous phrase.)

Posted July 6, 2006 1:47 PM by Dave Bell

Two excellent though now wildly politically incorrect fight songs are

1. Marching Through Georgia

Yes and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.

"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never make the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said and 'twas a handsome boast
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the Host
While we were marching through Georgia.

So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles of latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain
While we were marching through Georgia.

and 2. Bonnie Blue Flag:

We are a band of brothers,
Native to the soil
Fighting for the property
We gained by honest toil.
And when our rights were threatened,
The cry rose near and far;
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star!

chorus:
Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Southern rights, Hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star!

As long as the Union
Was faithful to her trust,
Like friends and brethren,
kind were we, and just;
But now, when Northern treachery
Attempts our rights to mar,
We hoist on high the Bonnie Blue flag
That bears a single star.

As much fun as singing Vindaloo is, it can't match the more serious yet jaunty spirit of these Civil War songs.

Posted July 6, 2006 1:52 PM by Rachael de Vienne

Oh, OK, Pennsylvania. Good. I was having an entertaining time trying to think if there were any /other/ women's colleges that chanted in Greek.

Posted July 6, 2006 1:54 PM by kate

The traditional Welsh rugby song, 'Sosban Fach', makes only slightly more sense. (Note that the translation there is very rough - the chorus actually translates as "large saucepan boiling on the floor, small saucepan boiling on the fire")

Could that possibly be the song that Howl sings in Howl's Moving Castle? I think Sophie refers to it as "the saucepan song."

Posted July 6, 2006 2:23 PM by Laurence

There's also, of course, the quadratic formula as sung to the Notre Dame fight song's tune - the only reason I know that tune, in fact.

Start off with the negative b
Add or subtract square-root-quantity
b squared minus four a c
Divided all by two a. Hey!

Posted July 6, 2006 3:44 PM by coffeedryad

Could [Sosban Fach] possibly be the song that Howl sings in Howl's Moving Castle? I think Sophie refers to it as "the saucepan song."

I think it must be! Howl is Welsh, and whilst I don't have a copy handy, I don't know of any other saucepan songs.

Posted July 6, 2006 4:51 PM by Sam Kelly

Howl is a rugby player too. How cool.

Posted July 6, 2006 4:59 PM by Laurence

Laurence exclaimed:
Howl is a rugby player too. How cool.

Well, yes! There's that great scene where Howl arrives back at the castle stinking drunk after a night out with his rugby mates...

"They think so much about me that they always play without me!" Howl bellowed. Sophie realized that he was only trying to sing Calcifer's saucepan song and lay down again, whereupon Howl fell over the chair ...

... "Rugby Club Reunion," Howl replied with thick dignity. "Didn't know I used to fly up the wing for my university, did you, Mrs. Nose?"

Posted July 6, 2006 5:17 PM by xeger

And Sophie's response is "If you were trying to fly, I think you must have forgotten how."

Posted July 6, 2006 5:22 PM by Laurence

Then there's the football cheer that Daddy learned at Purdue in the late '40s.

(I can't figure out how to do superscripts, so some of this will be verbal equivalent of formula.)

e to the x, dy/dx
e to the x, dx
Tangent, cosine, secant, sine
3.14159
Ampere, foot-pound, BTU
Slipstick, sliderule, yea Purdue!

Posted July 6, 2006 6:49 PM by Pat Sheller

TexAnne: (sorry for lateness of reply--been out of town) I have no idea where/how Sir Cip is, as I've been out of the SCA for lo these many years. I remember him fondly though!

Lisa Goldstein: Some of them have Aamir Khan. But no matter who the stars are, the same 3 singers do all the singing for them.

Posted July 6, 2006 7:07 PM by Lila

JaniceG, the world has room for an infinite number of silly LOTR filks.

Hey, I didn't say you shouldn't try! I was just presenting what I consider the gold standard :->

Posted July 6, 2006 7:17 PM by JaniceG

If we're going further afield, my public high school in Miami Beach had the following official cheer:

Bagels, bagels, two for five
That's what keeps us Jews alive
We play football, we play soccer
We keep bagels in our locker
Go, Beach!

Posted July 6, 2006 7:19 PM by JaniceG

Stop the madness! Oh, wait, it's already too late. See what you've done?

Posted July 6, 2006 7:29 PM by Kip W

I learned the Shaker song "Simple Gifts" at a young age, and I've always loved it. "The Lord of the Dance" is a fine modern folk song, but the Shaker original is clean, elegant and beautiful (like so much of their artistic work[1]).

I think there's some differences in the arrangement, too, but you'll need to consult a musician for the details.

"Simple Gifts" is one loveliest of the New England protestant hymns, and it's the only one you can dance to. Plus, it doesn't hurt that it's long out of copyright, so there's no need to pay royalties to Stainer & Bell.

[1] Today, the Shakers are remembered for their simple and graceful furniture. But back in their heyday, they were also known for their inventions, among them the flat broom and several early washing machines.

Interestingly, the Shakers rarely applied for patents. Taken together, this love of simplicity, dislike for drudgery, and disregard of the Patent Office appeals to something in the modern spirit.

Posted July 6, 2006 9:06 PM by Eric

Just wanted to point out that the second video isn't set to Final Fantasy game footage but rather to scenes of the movie "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children", which has an incredibly vague and thin plot, but even more incredibly eye-popping visuals.

Posted July 6, 2006 9:46 PM by Daniel