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A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill can hold more than his belly can
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week
But I’m damned if I know how the hell he can.
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I remember the sense of connection I had with my friend Ed
from Missouri the first time I came up with "A wonderful bird is the pelican..." and he finished the
limerick. I had grown up in New
England, he in Southeast Missouri, but this 100-year-old bit of delightful
doggerel was part of our shared American culture.
The other night at a friend’s house for dinner we began
talking about Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and ended up waxing nostalgic
about recitations by the old folks of our youth. (The fact that we were celebrating my 76th
birthday may have had something to do with the inclination to reminisce.)
My friend Cathy brought up Abdul Al Bulbul Amir and remembered how her father used to
entertain the kids with a recitation of it whenever he got the chance. Not to be left out,
I remembered a great-uncle, who, back in the days before radio and television
(and even electricity and running water), used to entertain the kids with recitations. In his case, what I remember above all others was The Cremation of Sam McGee.
I felt the guilty urge to make the point that there’s a world of difference
between "Stopping by the woods on a snowy
evening..." and the clashing swords of Abdul Abulbul Amir, but nobody was interested. We all got a lot of mileage from the popular poetry that helped make family and
community – at least in our imaginings of the good old days. It didn't seem to need defending. Nonetheless, in poking around for more information on these two pieces, Abdul Albulbul Amir and Sam McGee, I found several people who needed to label them as doggerel. I'll get to that issue in a minute.
Thanks to the internet, I now know that the pelican limerick was
not written by Ogden Nash, as I had always thought, but by a Tennessee
newspaper editor named Dixon Lanier Merritt.
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| William Percy French |
And
Abdul Abulbul Amir was written
during the Russo-Turkish war in 1877 by an Anglo-Irish songwriter named William
Percy French (1854-1920) for a “smoking concert,” those Victorian era gatherings for men only where new music was introduced and political views were aired. It was stolen and sold off for £5. The thieves passed it on as their own creation, so French never made any money off of it. History
has given him the last word, fortunately, and his creative genius is still
celebrated every year at a festival at
Castlecoote House, County Roscommon.
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| Robert W. Service |
The Cremation of Sam
McGee is a Canadian piece, written a generation later by a sourdough (a resident of the Yukon Territory) and published in 1907. His name was Robert W. Service.
Service was born in England but after finding his way to British Columbia, he eventually got caught up in the rush to Klondike Country, and became
known as the “bard of the Yukon.”
OK, so now for the doggerel bit. The class distinction between classical music, generally
written and performed by people of exceptional musical talent and the popular
music of the masses of ordinary folk is mirrored somewhat in this alleged
distinction between poetry and doggerel.
I say “alleged” as a way of admitting I don’t like being thought of as
the kind of person who judges people by who lives in the “nicer part of town”
and who lives in the “low-rent district.”
I do, of course. I just don’t
like to be caught at it.
Doggerel is a
lofty sounding word for a concept that is anything but lofty. In fact, it's generally associated with the burlesque. Nobody knows the origin of the word, although
it was probably coined by somebody who wasn't much of a dog-lover. It is defined as “comic verse composed in
irregular rhythm,” or “verse that is badly (i.e. crudely) written. When the word is used, it is commonly
preceded by such words and phrases as "mere," "pure" and “deteriorates into.” It is nonetheless "effective because of its simple mnemonic rhyme and loping metre, if the Britannica is your guide. Goethe and Schiller both wrote what in German is called Knüttelvers, or "cudgel verse," and in English even Samuel Butler and Jonathan Swift dabbled in it. Which raises the question of whether this is "bad" poetry or merely another genre of creative language by people with imagination. Are what Ogden Nash and Calvin Trillin wrote doggerel?
"Fleas" (Nash)
Adam had'em.
and if you're one of those who insist it wasn't Ogden Nash who wrote that but Shel Silverstein, here's another one that was written by Nash:
Parsley
Is gharsley.
"On the Assumption that Al Gore Will Slim Down if He's intending to Run for President" (Trillin)
Last week, I told my desk that Gore might run,
Though he appeared to be at least full-size:
A waiter at a Georgetown place revealed
Gore's order had included 'hold the fries.'
Whether a particular poem lifts and inspires one above and beyond
the ordinary or “deteriorates into doggerel” is a subjective evaluation, like
all critical evaluations of art and poetry and music. One man’s doggerel is another man’s witty
verse, of course, and truth be known, given the choice between pheasant under
glass and spaghetti and meat balls, I’m hardly alone in preferring the spaghetti. Much as I appreciate “stopping by woods on a snowy evening”
and “How do I love thee? Let me count
the ways…” (and I do love Frost and
Dickinson. And Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
and Keats, and Pablo Neruda…), there’s always room for the pelican…belly
can…hell he can on the bench next to me.
I’ve been thinking a lot in recent times about the old
folks I knew as a
kid. Like the ones my father looked up
to. It was fascinating going to Nova Scotia
every summer where his roots were and watching this man I thought knew everything
there was to know actually looking up to people he himself as a kid thought
knew everything there was to know. The
uncles. Clarence and Cliff and Harold and Austin and Rollie, not to mention some who had "gone on to their reward." The women too, with
names like Cordelia and Annie and Mabel and Lillian and Lola, were no less important, but
it was one uncle especially who had a way with words. And for whom space was always made for yet another story or recitation of poetry.
In 1938, when my mother and father married, they were the
children of immigrants and had few resources to count on to get their lives
started. My father’s mother’s father had
built the house in the woods he and his wife and their nine kids all lived in just after the time of the U.S.
Civil War, in Canada and in territory never before inhabited. Electricity and running water were
unknowns. And when my father bought the
house I grew up in, it too lacked running water for the first year, even in
Connecticut, until he got around to digging a well and putting in a septic tank
so we didn’t need to use the outhouse any more.
He had not acquired the city ways my mother and my sister
and I would soon take for granted, and he seemed to be less put out by the fact we lived with a water pump outside and an outhouse for a time. No "cultural estrangement" apparently. There was always a gap between my father
and me, but when we began spending the summers with my grandmother's siblings in Nova Scotia, when I was about seven, I began to learn something essential about him, things about his roots that made little sense outside that environment. The hunter, the
fisherman, the man who wouldn’t let me get my driver’s license until I could
take apart a carburetor. The culture that had nurtured him consisted of
self-motivated farmers and woodsmen who, in the days before social welfare,
either worked or starved. He was of the next generation, born in Boston, but his heart was always among the woods and lakes of Nova Scotia and when he died we scattered his ashes there.
It took me some time to learn the full extent of that culture he always yearned for. Curiously, at least to me at the time, these people sat
around in large family circles and listened to those who had ways with
words. There was the radio, I suppose,
although I have no memory of anybody listening to it. In time, I was
able to make a connection between that world of self-sufficiency and the world
of story-telling, where one respected the old folks for their knowledge of how
to build things and sustain them. And how to tell the same stories and recite the same poems over and over again until the
rest of us began to pick them up and join in.
When I looked up Robert W. Service I had a flash of instant
recognition. Service made his living
writing poetry eventually. My Great
Uncle Harold never reached the heights Service did - Service made it professionally and
left quite a proud legacy – but he was part of what went into my love of the
rhythm-and-stress patterns of the English language, the cadences and the dry
wit behind the turns of phrase.
Service’s world in the Yukon was not that far from my uncles’ world in
the Canadian Maritimes and Newfoundland.
Rough as timber in their youth, apparently, and soft as a rhyming couplet, as the years went by.
I’ve always envied those who could recite poetry at the drop
of a hat, always marveled at the notion of oral traditions and at the thought
that once there were people who could recite Homer’s Odyssey. And that, even in this day and age, there are
people, I understand (I’ve never met any face to face), who can recite the
entire Qur’an.
To go from Homer's Odyssey to Abdul Abulbul Amir in the same sentence is to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, quite literally, although I'm not on firm ground here with the allegedly sublime. From the heroic to the silly, maybe I should say. But to a seven-year old first learning an appreciation of language and story-telling, the distinction is trivial.
Both of these pieces, Abdul
Abulbul Amir and The Cremation of Sam
McGee, have been musicalized. Abdul
Abulbul Amir was set to music by a vaudeville singer and composer named Frank
Crumit. And The Cremation of Sam McGee was popularized not long ago by Johnny
Cash.
I'm posting the words and the links below, if you’d like to hear
them spoken/sung. And you tell me. Is this doggerel? Or simply the rap music of an age gone by? Have they become outdated, the way I think Seventy-Six Trombones has lost its
appeal? Are they “too silly for words”
as I think Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang
has become and probably always was? Probably “whose woods these are I think I know” deserves a longer life than “the first time I’ve
been warm.” But that’s OK. For now, there’s room at the table for both.
Have a listen to these two pieces. And you have to hear them, sung or
spoken. Reading the verse doesn’t
capture the spirit. Many people have other associations with these two poems
than mine, of course. They learned Sam McGee in school, perhaps, along with
the Gettysburg Address. Or associate it with their father and long
car trips. But see if you can’t find a
way, if only in the imagination, to go back to a time when one sat around and
listened to the old folks telling their tales and reaching for a way to
entertain each other. Back before the
internet. Before television. Before radio. Before electricity.
Here are some of the versions of these two poems, the former
set to music, on YouTube.
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| Frank Crumit |
There’s the wonderfully politically incorrect version done
by MGM.
We forget that the original
confuses Turks and Persians as many do today, and in the heat of war and the
breakdown of the three-cousin monarchies, King George V of England, Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas of Russia, which led ultimately to
World War I, it was not a time of sensitivity toward cultural differences.
But that aside, here’s the cartoon
version.
And here’s a
version by Brendan O’Dowda.
He’s actually the guy who popularized the
songs of Percy French, but if you listen to him doing it after watching the
cartoon version, it’s almost comical in how straight-laced it comes across.
Helps you understand how context is
everything.
Here’s a nice 1927
recording by Frank Crumit, who set it to
music originally.
And another sung
version by Frank Ifield, with a lovely
Irish tenor voice:
And here’s a spoken
version by Tom O’Bedlam.
The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.
If you wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or harass the foe from the rear,
Storm fort or redoubt, you had only to shout
For Abdul Abulbul Amir.
Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun
And donned his most truculent sneer,
Downtown he did go where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
Young man, quoth Abdul, has life grown so dull
That you wish to end your career?
Vile infidel, know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
So take your last look at the sunshine and brook
And send your regrets to the Czar
For by this I imply, you are going to die,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
Then this bold Mameluke drew his trusty skibouk,
Singing, "Allah! Il Allah! Al-lah!"
And with murderous intent he ferociously went
For Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
They parried and thrust, they side-stepped and cussed,
Of blood they spilled a great part;
The philologist blokes, who seldom crack jokes,
Say that hash was first made on the spot.
They fought all that night neath the pale yellow moon;
The din, it was heard from afar,
And huge multitudes came, so great was the fame,
Of Abdul and Ivan Skavar.
As Abdul's long knife was extracting the life,
In fact he was shouting, "Huzzah!"
He felt himself struck by that wily Calmuck,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
The Sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly,
Expecting the victor to cheer,
But he only drew nigh to hear the last sigh,
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
There's a tomb rises up where the Blue Danube rolls,
And graved there in characters clear,
Is, "Stranger, when passing, oh pray for the soul
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir."
A splash in the Black Sea one dark moonless night
Caused ripples to spread wide and far,
It was made by a sack fitting close to the back,
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps,
'Neath the light of the cold northern star,
And the name that she murmurs in vain as she weeps,
Is Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
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| Johnny Cash |
As for
The Cremation of Sam McGee, YouTube has several versions.
I don’t like any of them, probably because
they are not the version I remember as a child.
Too stagy.
Too puffed up.
There’s
this one by
Hal Jeayes.
And there’s even a film
version directed by
somebody named Johnny A. which fails miserably for me because the
visuals are too distracting.
It’s the
voice that should carry you.
And your
own imagination that should do the work.
The Johnny Cash
version works, at least:
The Cremation Of Sam McGee
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton
blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the
Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to
hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd
"sooner live in hell".
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the
Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed
like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till
sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was
Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our
robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were
dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he,
"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last
request."
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he
says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold
till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the
icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll
cremate my last remains."
A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I
would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he
looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his
home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of
Sam McGee.
There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I
hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,
because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate
those last remains."
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has
its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my
heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while
the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -- O God!
how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and
heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub
was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I
would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it
hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a
derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was
called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked
at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry,
"is my cre-ma-tor-eum."
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the
boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped
the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such
a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed
in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him
sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and
the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my
cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking
down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with
grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again
I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll
just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . .
. then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart
of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said:
"Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in
the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the
first time I've been warm."
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
photo credits:
