What's Bulgine Pie?

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 08:59 AM

I pressed submit to soon. I had sung this chantey for awhile before I ever saw it it print. I thought the line was Bumkin pudding and Bulgine pie. I still sing it that way, though it's not a chantey I use very often.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 08:55 AM

Actually Charlie, I always thought it meant BullShit also.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 09:29 PM

These are excellent notes and no doubt will be harvested with glee by future ethnomusicologists.

Marc-

"Bulgine pie" strikes me as a joke rather than nonsense and it's up to us to figure out its cultural reference.

I still prefer BS (not personally) but I also like Amos' suggestion.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 06:21 PM

I remember those engines from my family's mining days. The smell was horrible. Work around one, and one's body, hair, and clothes stank, and the taste lingered in one's mouth for a long time. The miners cut the taste with whiskey, but I was too young and had to make do with Delaware Punch.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 05:33 PM

It's the mouthful of grease, lub oil, steel bits and rust you are likely to taste after disassembling a bulgine type donkey engine and putting it all back together again, obviously!

A

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 04:53 PM

Before he gave up farming and went to sea, the sailor-chanteyman who first used it sang at Methodist camp meetings. He liked the song "Methodist Pie" but that had one too many syllables for the chantey, so he coined 'bulgine pie'.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: curmudgeon
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 04:35 PM

If you think that doesn't make sense, try the other refrain in the same song:

Rollin' down, rollin' down,
Rollin' down the river.
Rollin' down, rollin' down,
Said the bucko mate to the greaser's wife.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 04:21 PM

I Know Charlie, but don't we all have a song or two we like to sing, that really doesn't make sense if you start thinking about it.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 03:54 PM

Marc-

"It scans well in the line. It doesn't need to mean anything."

But the challenge!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 01:03 PM

It scans well in the line. It doesn't need to mean anything.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Reinhard
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 11:45 AM

It's from the chorus of "A-Rollin' Down the River' as printed in Stan Hugill's "Shanties from the Seven Seas':

Oh, a pumpkin pudden an a bulgine pie,
A pumpkin pudden an' a bulgine pie,
A pumpkin pudden an' a bulgine pie,
Aboard the Arabella!

He explains "bulgine" as American slang name for a railway engine but doesn't explain the bulgine pie.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 11:43 AM

*dessert

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 11:41 AM

The perfect desert after a nice knuckle sandwich. It's similar to a Scooter Pie, only heavier.


Hoist 'er high, and maybe we'll get one!

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 11:32 AM

Good question. How was the phrase "bulgine pie" used?

In a Google search I had run across the term "bulgine" in some 19th century book describing a comic episode where some gentleman was riding a bull and his friends described it as a "bulgine." But that was a play on words of a play on words.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 11:08 AM

Context??

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 06:27 PM

Naow thet's a gnu one.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 06:19 PM

It's probably a typo for 'bulging pie,' one filled to the max.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 05:35 PM

Q-

Thanks for your support on this urgent and ungulate question.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 05:29 PM

A previous thread asked the same question.
Charley's answer is as good as any.

Subject: RE: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 05:22 PM

CET-

In this case the comical reference may be to an actual bull functioning as an "engine" in which case "bullgine pie" would be "bullshit."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: What's Bulgine Pie?
From: CET
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 05:18 PM

I was looking up the meaning of "bulgine" today, and found a reference on Wikipedia stating that "bulgine" is a derisive term for a nautical steam engine or a dockside locomotive. So what's a "bulgine pie"?