I jumped the gun yesterday, so let me make it up to you. Here’s an American singing a fake Irish ballad to an audience of Danes.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I jumped the gun yesterday, so let me make it up to you. Here’s an American singing a fake Irish ballad to an audience of Danes.
Wow. Tom Lehrer isn’t dead!
You can never go wrong with more Tom Lehrer.
I love Tom Lehrer. He is astonishingly influential, especially when you consider he wrote only a few dozen songs, and that in his entire performing career he barely exceeded 100 live appearances.
And while most topical political songs have a shelf life approximating that of unrefrigerated fish in the tropics, his political songs (this one isn’t political, of course) are amazingly fresh and relevant 50+ years later.
He has also led a remarkably unconventional life, simply going his own way, and doing pretty much what he wants to do, at least as far as I can tell. More power to him.
Rick Nestler does a great version of this. The man has an astonishing repertoire of humorous Irish songs about death.
And it’s still frequently sung by Irish ballad-singers–at least the non-“folkier-than-thou” types. Like me.
It’s not that exaggerated, either–the Clancy Brothers sang a song called “Weela Waile” about sticking a knife in a babby’s (baby’s) head. The moral of the song was “Don’t stick knives in babby’s heads”! And this was a children’s song……
that’s a culturally universal message.
Very true. When cooking a babby, use a toothpick or a fork, not a knife, to test whether or not it is done. :P
“Weela Waile”
So Mr. Punch is not English, he is an Irish immigrant?
Makes sense, starts by killing babies, then kills Death himself. That is some powerful Geas.
The moral of the song was “Don’t stick knives in babby’s heads”!
LIBERAL BIAS!!!!!
The song is intended to indoctrinate children into a socialist way of thinking: That people should not have complete freedom to do what they want. Like buying assault rifles. Isn’t that obvious.
(knives don’t kill babies. People with knives kill babies)
no you didn’t.
St Paddys was yesterday.
what?
I <3 Tom Lehrer.
And while we are being topical, how about a bit of the Vatican Rag?
How you know you’re in Canada:
You’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in an English pub listening to a bunch of Icelandic guys singing Scottish folk songs while practicing your French with some German friends and eating Nachos served to you by an Asian waitress with a Spanish accent.
Man, I love this country!
Canada, the cool part of North America (no pun intended).
#12: Can’t top your story but I can come close: while wandering through Kreuzberg, at that time a largely Turkish district, in Berlin some years ago, another American and I spotted at bar called The Celtic Cottage and went in. An all-German band was doing bluegrass. They were quite good, actually, although the accents were hysterical (“Güd öld Röckytöpf, Röckytöpf, Tennüseeeeee”).
Birger at 13.
Quite true, if you don’t count Alaska, which of course historically was part of Russia. Maybe what we’ve got is more square kilometres of cool than USAians do.
A Hermit
Starts with a ‘C’.