The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #158265 Message #3745130
Posted By: GUEST,Simunescu
19-Oct-15 - 07:53 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Bring Back the Birch (Flanders & Swann)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bring Back the Birch (Flanders & Swann)
I've just got this box set. I still can't work out what free thinkers are luring maidens to (it sounds like henge, but I can't think what that could be), but I've filled in all of the other bits I think.
We're appalled by those soft-headed sissies who say That the criminal class is just sick. (Flanders: Pah!) Society's stuck with a crime wave today For renouncing the fear of the stick. (Donald Swann whacks the piano cabinet with one hand) The thug and the pervert finds prison a rest, The murderers mostly unhung; The right way to treat them is six of the best On the seat of the trouble when young.
Bring back the birch. Thrash 'em and cane 'em. Teach these delinquents that violence don't pay. Bring back the 'cat'. Useless to train 'em! Floggings and hangings will show them the way. When this is done, not until then, England will be Merrie England again.
Donald Swann plays an eighteenth-century dance and sings: A pox on this radical penal reform! No man may sleep safe in his bed [His Be-e-e-ed]. Now Newgate's half empty, now Tyburn's a stump, And the peasants want cake and not bread. ("Bah!" puts in Flanders.) There are no witch-hunts all winter, heresy's rife, Free-thinkers lure maidens to ?? The papist and the Jacobite sharpens his knife, And the Luddites are banding as well.
(both Flanders and Swann) Bring back the stocks, bring back the bridle. Hang and draw traitors, and quarter them too. Brand the lone (low?) thieves, transport the idle, Burn at the stake all the heretic crew. Perish reforms. Evil they bring! Back to the day when the landlord was king.
God's wounds! how the commons we coddle today, with the laws these new Parliaments pass. No trial without jury, no work without pay -- the whole feudal system's a farce. The freemen want charters, the serfs won't bear arms, The towns claim exemption from tax. Then there's "Habeas Carcass" and all that red tape: I'd cut through the lot with me axe!
(Flanders and Swann together from now to the end)
Bring back the rack. Chop off their members. Blind them and boil them and break on the wheel. Bring back the knout. Bring back impaling, "Jus Primae Noctis" and trial by ordeal. A Lord is a Lord, a serf's a villein Make England safe for the barons again.
SWANN: Bring back the birch. FLANDERS: Bring back the thumbscrew. SWANN: Bring back the treadmill. FLANDERS: Bring back keelhauling SWANN: Emasculate them, and flay them alive. FLANDERS: Teach them that violence don't pay
(to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean) Bring back, Bring back the cat, O bring back the flogging for you FLANDERS, on a growl: NOT me. Bring back, Bring back, O bring back our cor- po- ral P!!