Below is my article on the song "Chastity Belt". If you sing the song, please email me at mudcat5.20.jpm21@neverbox.com. I would like to get a recording of you, over the phone, singing the song. I need a couple of field recordings to fill out my commercial examples of the song. The earliest I could trace the song is 1956/57 at an RAF party. But it may be as early as WWII but I would need some confirmation from ephemera songbooks of that era.
If you know of any other recordings of this song or have more info, please feel free to email me at mudcat5.20.jpm21@neverbox.com.
Sincerely,
John Mehlberg
~
My, mostly traditional, bawdy songs, toasts and recitations website: www.immortalia.com
Chastity Belt
I stand at your portals by heart is a bleeding
A prisoner of love I'm unable to sleep
I can't seem to fine the love I am seeking
Oh, let down your drawbridge, I'll enter your keep.
Enter your keep, nonny nonny, enter your keep, nonny nonny
Let down your drawbridge, I'll enter your keep.
Oh, Sir, I deceive you for I am not a maiden
I'm married Sir Oswald, the cunning old Celt
He's gone to the wars for twelve months or longer
And he's taken the key to my chastity belt.
Chastity belt, nonny nonny, chastity belt, nonny nonny
Taken the key to my chastity belt.
Fear not, gentle maid, for I know of a locksmith
Away to his forge we will hasten, on his door we will knock
And we will inquire of his specialized knowledge
And see if he's able to unpick your lock.
Unpick your lock, nonny nonny, unpick your lock, nonny nonny
See if he's able to unpick your lock.
Alas, sir and madam, to help I'm unable
My technical knowledge is of no avail
I can't find the secret to your combination
'Cause the cunning old bastard has fitted a Yale!
Fitted a Yale, nonny nonny, fitted a Yale, nonny nonny
Cunning old bastard has fitted a Yale!
I'm home from the wars with sad news of disaster
A terrible mishap I have to confide
While my ship was passing the Rock of Gibraltar
I carelessly dropped the key over the side!
Over the side, nonny nonny, over the side, nonny nonny
Carelessly dropped the key over the side!
"Alas and alack, I am locked up for ever!"
When up spake a page boy, saying "Leave it to me!
If you will allow me to enter your chamber
I'll open it up with my duplicate key!"
Duplicate key, nonny nonny, duplicate key, nonny nonny
I'll open it up with my duplicate key!
"Chastity Belt" enjoyed some popularity among rugby players in the 1960's & at folk festivals in the UK and it still is sung by many people in the USA & UK but primarily amongst the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA) and Renaissance Fair (Ren-Fair) groups.
I have one informant who learned this song in 1956/57 at an RAF party before he went down to Oxford. He taught the song to Andrew Tracey who incorporated it into a musical called WAIT A MINIM!. This musical, through the cast recordings & world tours, helped disperse the song throughout the English speaking countries during the 1960's. Which accounts for the world wide scope of this bawdy song.
Throughout the 1960's this song was sung in rugby clubhouses along with the more traditional songs like "Dina". The song after the early 1970's seem quite tame in comparison to what was going on and it fell out of favor with rugby players.
An early claim to authorship of "Chastity Belt" from the New York program for the musical WAIT A MINIM! which attributes the song to Jeffrey Smith. [See: http://users.bestweb.net/~foosie/minim2.htm under "Sir Oswalde Sodde"]. "Sir Oswalde Sodde" is the same song as "Chastity Belt". The musical opened 12th of January 1962 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Andrew Tracey who acted in this musical and was intimately involved in the production denies that this song was written specifically for WAIT A MINIM! but he remembers learning the song in the late 1950's from Alan Rosenthal (2).
If you have more info on Jeffrey Smith and the writing of WAIT A MINIM!, please email me at mudcat5.20.jpm21@neverbox.com
"MikeofNorthumbria" in the mudcat.org forum archive remembers this song from the early sixties. He says:
The song was current among folkies at Oxford when I was there in the early '60s, but nobody seemed certain of the author's name. I think it had been composed a year or two earlier, as a comedy sketch for a student stage show. At a very convivial party, I scribbled down the words for Eric Winter, then Editor of the British folk music magazine, Sing!. After obtaining the music from my mate, Bob Pierce, Eric published the song in Sing!, in the spring or summer of 1962. Through that - or some other - channel, the song reached Rory McEwan, who incorporated it into the folk music programme he put on at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival, along with his brother Alex, and Carolyn Hester and Dick Farina. Since then, it seems to have gone around the world. If the real author is out there, will he or she please own up.
The Sing! magazine issue that has 'Chastity Belt' is Volume 6 No. 10 [June 1962]. If you have a copy of this Sing! magazine, please contact me.
I have reports of some people learning this song directly from one of the WAIT A MINIM! cast recordings, others learned it from Sing! magazine and some individuals learning the song as undergraduates at Oxford in the late fifties.
According to David Marks, who used to sing in WAIT A MINIM!, "Chastity Belt" had become "...a very popular song on the local [Johannesburg, South Africa] folk-circuit back in the early to mid 60's. There is a version on one of the Minim albums & we have many versions by various folk singers, recorded at the Nite Beat & the Troubadour, which, incidentally was turned into a sort-of acoustic Folk Revue Coffee Bar in the early 70's & renamed - The Chastity Belt." [Quote from a private email].
Bibliography & Discography:
Sing! magazine Volume 6 No. 10 [June 1962] edited by Eric Winter. Rory and Alex McEwen and Carolyne and Dick Farina recorded "Chastity Belt" and issued it on a 1963 mono EP called "Four For Fun" on the Scottish Waverley Records label (see here: http://www.richardandmimi.com/fourforfun.html ). They met in August 1962 at the Edinb urgh Festival.
It is reportedly on an EP called "In a Folk Mood" - recorded by Graham Kilsby issued the late 1960s (Saydisc, Specialised Recordings Ltd, Meeting House, Frenchay, Bristol). From sleeve notes: "... he [Graham Kilsby] is a very popular entertainer in this capacity as can be heard from CHASTITY BELT: a neo-Elizabethan song recorded live at the Bristol Troubadour Club. Graham's several voices are joined by Alun Jones-12 string guitar, Patrick Small-guitar and vocal, Fred Wedlock-bicycle horn and frenzied applause..."
In addition to the above records, Steve Benbow reportedly has a version on his 1967 Decca record "Of Situations and Predicaments", LK 4881.
There is also a spoonerized parody of the song "Chastity Belt" called "Bastity Chelt". "Bastity Chelt" is remembered as being performed at the folk club at Turville near Stockenchurgh on the Bucks Oxfordshire border. Sometime in the late 1960s. (See Mudcat link above). A version of this song was recorded by Jasper Carrott. If you know of other recordings of "Bastity Chelt", please email me at mudcat5.20.jpm21@neverbox.com.
The song "Chastity Belt" can be found in the 1967 book Why Was He Born So Beautiful and other Rugby Songs pgs. 52-53 collected by Harry Morgan.
The song "Chastity Belt" is sung on the 1970 record "Medical Students Sing Rugby Songs" -- the sixth & final record in the Sportsdisc rugby series produced by Harry Morgan the compiler of the 1967 Rugby Songs book.
The song can be found on the Molly Bennett tape ($11 w/S&H) & book ($7 w/S&H) entitled "The Bawdy Beautiful" [see here: http://www.random-factors.com/folkfilk.htm ]. Order by following the link or by snail mail by sending a check to Molly Bennett, 12199 E. Arizona Dr, Aurora CO 80012. Molly Bennett "learned it ca. 1988 from a fellow performer at the Colorado Ren Fair who billed herself as Queen of Tarts (real name unknown)." [Private email]
"Chastity Belt" is in Bawdy Ballads and Dirty Ditties of the Wartime R.A.F. pg. 181. Curiously, the Bawdy Ballads editor, Harold Bennett, thinks that this song is a WWII era song.
The song, entitled "Sir Oswald Sodde (The Chastity Belt)", is sung by Robin James on her 2002 "Songs of Love, Longing & Levity" CD. (Listen to the song & order here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/robinjames )
If you know of any other recordings of this song or have more info, please feel free to email me at mudcat5.20.jpm21@neverbox.com.
Sincerely,
John Mehlberg
(1) According to Peter Kennedy at Folktrax, this was composed by Theo Johnson (see: http://www.folktrax.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/menus/search%20for%20titles_ce_che.htm) for Cambridge Footlights Revue in the 1950's (?). Please email Peter Kennedy <peter (at) folktrax.freeserve.co.uk> if you know the whereabouts of Theo Johnson. Peter is unsure who told him "Chastity Belt" was written by Theo Johnson but he believes that he was told this in the mid-1960's.
If you have more information about Theo Johnson, Cambridge Footlights Revue or the composition of "Chastity Belt", please email me at mudcat5.20.jpm21@neverbox.com<
(2) Andrew Tracey [forwarded by_____ ] wrote:
No, we certainly did not write Sir Oswald Sodde, and I don't know who did. It was being sung by many people around the time I was at Oxford in the late 50s. Your correspondent obviously does not know how old the song is. I have a feeling I learned it from my Oxford friend Alan Rosenthal, now Professor of Film at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. If you feel up to it you could write to him, saying it was me who put you onto him... his email is mstomiya (at) mscc.huji.ac.il
Alan Rosenthal says that Andrew Tracey did in fact learn "Chastity Belt" from him. So far it looks like the late 1950's the song was being sung at Oxford.
I have tried to contact the producers & cast of WAIT A MINIM! to see if they know of if Jeffrey Smith derived the song from another source or if he wrote it himself. I have heard nothing back from them.
Here are various examples of the song "Chastity Belt" in chronological order. - Various
- Minim'Bili - Original Cast Album - Gallotone Records - ca.1962
- Wait A Minim! - Original Cast Recording - Decca Records - 1963
- Wait A Minim! - Original Cast Recording - Tower Records 1966
- Sportsdisc Records
- Medical Students Sing Rugby Songs
- Jasper Carrott
- The Best Of Jasper Carrott
- Banish Misfortune [aka Rusty Sabella and Lauren Pelon]
sj