John Brown's Body in Europe

Subject: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: GUEST,Jack Campin (cookieless)
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 02:28 PM

I've just come back from two music/dance camps in ethnically Hungarian parts of Romania (Fundu Racaciuni in Moldavia and Gyimes in Transylvania). At the Gyimes camp, one theme was dances from Felcsik. I was startled to see one Felcsik dance which used the tune of "John Brown's Body". The dance was almost the same as the Scottish "Gay Gordons", but the dancers sang along. I'm told the words begin "My 70-year-old grandfather is getting married again - he's clicking his heels together like a dancer", and continue for up to 40 mostly bawdy verses. The chorus begins "Golya, golya" (Stork, stork).

The person who told me this said the tune is found in other dances and songs from central/eastern Europe. Do they all have something in common? How come they took it up for dancing when the British, who would have got the tune more directly, didn't? Why did it get popular in this part of the world? Or is it originally an eastern European folk tune? - it doesn't sound very Hungarian.

Subject: RE: John Brown's Bawdy in Europe (Ex-humor)
From: Severn
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 02:41 PM

Tomb it may concern:


Can we have it exhumed and brought back?

Then who's really buried in Grant's Tomb?

Golya gee whiz! This is all of His Stork Value!

Can you post the verses?

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: GUEST,Dave MacKenzie
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 08:14 PM

Do you mean the tune isn't used in the UK for dancing or not at all?

I've known quite a few sets of words to it since at least 1959, and I remember being surprised as a child that it was supposedly of American origin.

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 08:44 PM

I've never encountered it used for a dance in Scotland, anyway. (I don't think I've ever been to a dance in England). Since it fits the Gay Gordons so well you'd think somebody would have tried it if any dance precedent were known.

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: Gulliver
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 08:58 PM

Some info on the origins on this thread:
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=71356

Don

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 11:45 PM

I tink dis ver' strange. I has no other info to add, jus' strange.

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: Mr Happy
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 05:28 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 05:33 AM

I should think that by the time JBB became popular, in England at least, traditional dance was well out of fashion, and replaced by quicksteps, waltzes and the like. The Scots and Irish had plenty of tunes, and the welsh were heavily into religion and dancing was wicked. Indeed, given that the Hungarians don't seem short of a tune or two, the oddity is that they took up such a lugubrious tune for a dance.

Perhaps they didn't understand the "mould'ring in his grave" bit.

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: greg stephens
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 05:42 AM

When recording the traditional folk music of many refugees in Stoke(UK) a while ago, I was delighted with an amazing version I got from a Liberian singer.

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 06:51 AM

Maybe it spread through various Protestant churches, or, perhaps, music halls on tours?

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 08:40 AM

The Csango Hungarians of Transylvania are (extremely) Catholic; Protestantism only featured in a small part of pre-1919 Hungary, around Debrecen.

That kind of dance (couples marching round the room with the occasional reverse or turn, no multi-couple formations, a sort of slowed-down polka) only took off in Britain late in the 19th century - the Gay Gordons is from about 1890, the Canadian Barn Dance and Britannia Two-Step from even later. They all go to tunes in march tempo, with no very precise matching of the steps and the melody.

After reading the other thread about the (indefinite) origins of the tune, I'm wondering if it started life somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and I was seeing something that never left home. Presumably emigration to the US picked up after 1848, so there was time for the tune to cross the language barrier before its first English version was documented.

Subject: RE: John Brown's Body in Europe
From: LadyJean
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 05:56 PM

I think the tune for John Brown's Body comes from The Netherlands.