The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #127025 Message #2829628
Posted By: GUEST,matt milton
04-Feb-10 - 04:41 AM
Thread Name: Your favorite Irish pub songs
Subject: RE: Your favorite Irish pub songs
"I think you'll find that the Zoological Gardens chorus goes "Thunder and Lightning is no lark..." This is not a meteorological observation, it's about knocking on doors and running away (which of course is no fun in the dark as you can't see the reaction)." - Marje
Thanks -interesting. We called 'thunder and lightning' 'knockdown ginger', when I was growing up in south london.
I know the Dubliners sing it that way. But Brendan Behan sings it as "trouble and strife".
I like both, and I might sing either. You could take "trouble and strife" literally. But it also for me has an association to the missus (as in "me old 'trouble n strife" - wife, in cockney rhyming slang) which is in keeping with the song too – there are plenty of suggestions in the song that the zoological gardens are somewhere you go to do naughty things...