In The Town Where I Was Born...

[poliphilo]

I don't sing. Or maybe that should read I can't sing. Or even I shouldn't sing. I am wholly unmusical. I can't hold a tune. And in the normal course of things I don't even try

But faced with a baby I do.

First I sing nursery rhymes. I find I know the words of ever so many.

Then drinking songs like One Man went to Mow.

Then I move on to Yellow Submarine

And from there I access my cache of music hall numbers- Daisy Daisy, I'm 'Enery the 8th I Am, The Moon Shines Bright on Charlie Chaplin.

Finally I launch into the Battle Hymn of the American Republic and variations thereon- including the old RAF version with the verse that goes, "He jumped without a parachute from thirty thousand feet....(repeat three times)... And he ain't gonna jump no more".

The baby seems to like it. 

I believe my mother is responsible. She used to sing to me when I was tiny. All sorts. Including Daisy Daisy. And- my favourite- The Skye Boat Song. That's the one she used to put me to sleep with. Such a sad song. A lament for Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie. I'd sing it too if I knew the words.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

How did "1066 and all that" put it?

The Royalists - wrong but romantic, and the Roundheads, right but repulsive.

"The Skye Boat Song" tends to be my baby calming song of choice too. And I figure if I only sing it to those babies still unable to talk, they're not going to notice if I fluff the words.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

1066 and All That is full of wisdom.

I wonder if the the Skye Boat Song wasn't the thing that first fired my interest in history. So sad, so yearning, so mysterious! Who wouldn't want to find out what all these names- Charlie, Flora, Culloden- actually stood for- and what exactly a claymore was?