The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #85394 Message #1581861
Posted By: Don Firth
12-Oct-05 - 08:15 PM
Thread Name: Songs and parodies about science
Subject: RE: Songs and parodies about science
Sam Hinton MCed the Berkeley Folk Festivals back in the early Sixties. In real life, he was Director the Aquarium-Museum at the Scripp's Institute of Oceanography.
During the festival, I heard him sing this. It's to the tune of It's a Long Way to Tipperary: It's a Long Way from Amphioxus ^^^
Oh a fish-like thing appeared among the annelids one day
It hadn't any parapods nor setae to display
It hadn't any eyes or jaws or ventral nervous chord,
But it had a lot of gill slits and it had a notochord. CHORUS:
It's a long way from Amphioxus
It's a long way to us,
It's a long way from Amphioxus
To the meanest human cuss.
Well, it's good-bye to fins and gill slits,
And it's hello lungs and hair,
It's a long, long way from Amphioxus
But we all came from there.
It wasn't much to look at and it scarce knew how to swim,
And Nerius was very sure it hadn't come from him
The molluscs wouldn't own it and the arthropods got sore,
So the poor thing had to burrow in the sand along the shore. (CHORUS)
He burrowed in the sand before a crab did nip his tail,
And he said, "Gill slits and myotomes are all to no avail,
I've grown some metoplural folds and sport an oral hood,
But all these fine new characters don't do me any good." (CHORUS)
He sulked a while down in the sand without a bit of pep,
Then he stiffened up his notochord and said "I'll beat 'em yet,
Let 'em laugh and show their ignorance I don't mind their jeers,
Just wait until they see me in 100 million years!" (CHORUS)
My notochord shall change into a chain of vertebrae,
And as fins my metoplural folds shall agitate the sea;
My tiny dorsal nervous chords shall be a mighty brain,
And the vertebrate shall dominate the animal domain." (CHORUS)
Unfortunately, I never got around to learning it, so I haven't worked out the chords, but considering the tune it's attached to, they shouldn't be hard to find.
Don Firth
Hmm. . . . I wonder if I should post this on the "BS: Evolution is Heresy" thread……