Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)

Subject: Lyr Add: BAGPIPE MUSIC (Louis MacNeice)
From: oldhippie
Date: 22 Jul 08 - 08:30 PM

I found the following typed on an old sheet of paper. Anyone know who Louis MacNeice was, and why these nonsensical rhymes are titled "Bagpipe Music"?

Bagpipe Music
Louis MacNeice
1937

It's no go the merry-go-round, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crepe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker.
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whisky,
Kept its bones for dumbbells to use when he was fifty.

It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture

The Laird o' Phelps spent Hegmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife "Take it away; I'm through with overproduction."

It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the ceilidh,
All we want is a Mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage,
Took the hyde of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet,
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: Effsee
Date: 22 Jul 08 - 10:22 PM

You ever heard of Google?

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 11:04 AM

Have YOU ever heard of civility. oldhippie, here
is a wikipedia article on Louis MacNiece.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: irishenglish
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 11:07 AM

Louis MacNeice-one of my most favorite poets. He has a line from Meeting Point that just stuns me every time I read it- "God, or whatever means the good."

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: MartinRyan
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 11:18 AM

More than a whiff of "Pop Goes the Weasel" in both the rhythm and the sentiment.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: MartinRyan
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 05:07 PM

Sean Tyrell - that's who I've heard sing it! Been bugging me since I saw the words.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: Effsee
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 09:03 PM

Guest NeilD,yes, but I have little truck with laziness.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 09:09 PM

Happens to be one of my favorites poems.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music - Louis MacNeice
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 02:57 AM

Leon Rosselson used this as a basis for his song ' Brass Band Music,' recorded by Martin Carthy, both are fine pieces of work.

eric

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: GUEST,Ally & Jade
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 05:18 AM

Can anyone please explain to me what this poem even means and what it means?

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: MartinRyan
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 05:29 AM

Hi GUESTAllyandJade
You'll find some clues HERE

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: sharyn
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 12:52 PM

Louis MacNeice was a contemporary of W.H. Auden, a modern poet actively interested in the Spanish Civil War. "Bagpipe Music" is one of his most-anthologized poems. It is quite wonderful if you can find a recording of him reading it.

Sharyn

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: Girl Friday
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 01:14 PM

His poems are rather strange, which is probably why I like him. I remember this poem from my youth
Louis McNeice "Strweets Of Laredo"

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 02:45 PM

I have some sympathy with Effsee. The first post here struck me as provocatively stupid.

The poem is concerned with the threat to aboriginal cultures from empire - specifically the threat to Hebridean culture between the world wars, but MacNeice was intending the point to be applied more generally. Hence the title "Bagpipe music." Tom Stoppard used this poem in his play "Indian Ink" to illustrate the clash of cultures between the Brits and the subcontinent. There are references ("Blavatsky" etc) to a once-fashionable western preoccupation with guru cults, theosophy etc, and it's voice is that of a Kiplinesque Tommy. (The "glass" in the closing lines is a barometer. I'm not sure if the same term is used in US and Canada.)

Many years ago Luke Kelly sometimes recited the first verse of another MacNeice poem, "Dublin" as a preamble to "Nelson's Farewell." Hopefully this one will not need explaining:

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals,
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore...
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air, soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: GUEST,Ken C
Date: 14 Sep 09 - 01:05 PM

Ahh how we all still miss Luke Kelly - and now Ronnie Drew too too. What a marvellous combination that McNiece extract and Nelson's Farewell is!

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: meself
Date: 14 Sep 09 - 03:13 PM

And how we all miss civility - or was there ever such a thing?

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 09 - 03:44 PM

MacNeice's long poetic record of part of his life as it passed, Autumn Journal, is very well worth reading. It contains the memorable summation of our view of the Classical world, infinitely quotable regarding other long-ago memories: "It was all so very, very different - And all so long ago". At my age [77] I often find myself quoting it of things I can well remember which just are not so any longer.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Sep 09 - 04:05 PM

This has, for years, been one of my favorite poems. I understood it when I first read it, more than a half-century ago now, in the 9th grade. I particularly like the last two lines.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: GUEST,Kris
Date: 10 Jan 11 - 01:00 PM

Subject of the poem is ironical

Subject: RE: Origins: Bagpipe Music (Louis MacNeice)
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Aug 20 - 03:01 AM

Who was John MacDonald? A piper?