euphemistic for sex? folk songs?

Subject: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: crooner in Chico CA
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 03:41 AM

C'mon, y'all, let's get this thang goin'! I want to hear about songs that talk sly about sex without really sayin' it, if you know what I mean! You just add 'em here! I'll give you a few examples! (Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just my overworked imagination! I don't know!)

Hokey Pokey. You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out...and then you shake it all about... Now what kind a fool would do that? A second grader maybe; but what was the true inspiration for that song...that's what it's all about, what makes the world go round. Isn't it beautiful?

How about THIS OLD MAN? Have you ever thought about what that dirty old man was doin? This old man, he played two (I forget what he did on ONE), he played knick knack (knick knack? what the hell is that, li'l girl?) on my shoe, with a knick knack paddy WACK give a dog a BONE (!), this old man CAME... ROLLING HOME. OK, maybe it's just a coincidence! three, on my knee (getting closer!) four, on my door (puh-lease!) Or am I mixing this up with another song/rhyme for kiddies? It doesn't matter. There are some silly lyrics out there, to be sure, and some of them I'm quite sure are just silly nonsense...uh huh. Let's hear about it, c'mon!

How about POLLY WOLLY DOODLE? something about being behind a barn, down on my knees, and "I thought I heard a chicken/someone sneeze"? SNEEZE? More than that, right? At least this song is a little more obvious, but... Most people don't give it a second thought... So what I'd like, is for people to list songs that they think fit these examples. I don't know what it all means. I'm only following what seems to me to be an underanalyzed aspect of folk music, not just the double entendre per se but the disparate analogies to sex, with songs that are so much in the popular culture, sung to children, but whose inspiration would not sit well in teh pews of a Victorian church if you know what I mean. Yet those same victorians sing these songs! Get it? Pardon my style of writing and attitude. If you think this topic should be left discrete, then be discrete. Peace.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: alison
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 04:05 AM

Hi if you're looking for sex...... go to the purple/blue box at the top of the page and type in @sex or @bawdy... you'll get heaps..

failing that look up anything with cuckoos, clock winders or lock fitters, (you've got a lock I've got a key etc)

have fun

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 06:23 AM

Could it be you just have raging hormones? I guess sex is where you find it. Lots of blues songs allude to sex without quite discussing: "squeeze my lemon 'til the juice runs down my leg" is only the least discrete example. There was an entire style of blues called "hokum" based entirely on double entendre: "Don't put no more baking powder in your bread you see, your biscuits are big enough for me."

Lightnin' Hopkins saying "Some like the Cadillac, some like the T-model Ford; Ford got the chassis but it can't haul no heavy load" was not talking just about cars.

Enjoy your exploration. Do follow Alison's advice and add @blues.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 07:56 AM

I don't think the Hokey P/Cokey counts: you only put in things you have two of ... or do you mean - no, that'd be silly, wouldn't it?

Gosh Alison, you remind of the lady who complained to Dr Johnson that there were naughty words in his dictionary ... he said she'd have had to look 'em up to know that.

British Music Hall comic Harry Champion ("Henery the Eighth", "Any old iron") wrote a load of songs that sound as though they ought to be about sex, but aren't: "You don't want to keep on showing it, Mary", "Put a bit of treacle on my pudding, Mary-Ann", "Cover it over quick, Jemima", "Of Timothy, let's have a look at it" ... I'm not sure about "Boiled beef and carrots"; if he'd called it "Meat and two veg" ...

Then there's Max Miller:
I love the girls who say they do,
I love the girls who don't;
I hate a girl who says she will
And then she says she won't.
But the kind of girl I like the best -
And I think you'll say I'm right -
Is the kind of girl who says she won't,
But look as though --
Here!!"

Steve

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Margo
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 12:49 PM

Don't forget sea shantys. They are the greatest when it comes to double and triple entendre. Titles that come to mind are "The Fire Ship" , "Blow the Man Down" , "Yeller Girls".

Margarita

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: SandyBob
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 01:20 PM

My alltime favorite is Koko Taylor's Wang Dang Doodle...all night long. Saw her do the song a month ago...still a knockout.

btw, I heard somewhere that the origin of the word jazz was early slang for sex. Where is John Ciardi when you need him...anybody know if this is true?

sandy bob

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: RWilhelm
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 02:24 PM

Then there's Bo Carter, the master of single entendre with songs like "Banana In Your Fruit Basket," "Pin In Your Pin Cushion, " and "Please Warm My Weiner."

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: bob schwarer
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 02:43 PM

"He Died With His Ding-Dong In His Hand". Don't remember who did it.

Bob S.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: emily rain
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 03:35 PM

in a different direction, i like the songs that fool you:

Sherry, she had big ones
Sally had some, too
Alison had little ones
What hate to go to school

And I make my bed
Where I lay my head
And I wish I heard what she just said...

-Lyle Lovett

hey, does anyone know the words to "stan long", the touching ballad of a man with two penises? it was a yearly standard at the minnesota science fiction convention's song-circles.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 03:57 PM

Dr. Demento had a few not-so-subtle classics:

You let me play with your yo-yo, I'll let you play with mine,
You let me play with your yo-yo, I'll let you play with mine.
You got a wiener, I got a bun,
We can put the two together, boy, and have some fun,
You let me play with your yo-yo, I'll let you play with mine.

--this is to the same tune as "Alice's Restaurant"

I don't remember the verses at all, but there was also "My Girl's Pussy," purportedly about a cat, but obviously not.

--seed

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 04:06 PM

Well, there's been a lot of "rolling in the dew" going on in folksong for a few centuries. I once suggested to the folks who were recording the song for me that "One Man Shall Mow My Meadow" might have some less obvious meaning and they were shocked by the idea. Although Gershon Legman doesn't agree, a few people have suggested that keeping the lass from "the foggy dew" suggests something other than atmospheric conditions.

Sandy

Subject: Lyr Add: MY DING-A-LING (from Chuck Berry)^^
From: emily rain
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 04:06 PM

oh, yeah, and then there's "my ding-a-ling" by (?) chuck barry:

when i was a little bitty boy
my grandmother bought me a cute little toy
silver bells hanging on a string
she told me it was my ding-a-ling-a-ling!

chorus:
oh, my ding-a-ling
my ding-a-ling
i want to play with my ding-a-ling
(repeat)

once i was swimming 'cross turtle creek
man, them snappers all around my feet
sure was hard swimmin' 'cross that thing
with both hands holdin' my ding-a-ling-a-ling

then mama took me to grammar school
but i stopped off in the vestibule...
every time that bell would ring
catch me playin' with my ding-a-ling-a-ling

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 04:54 PM

Okay, so it's form the word of folk-pop, but "I've got a brand new pair of roller skates; you've got a brand new key; I think we should get together and try them out, you see." qualifies.

And I sometimes sing:

I could have hmmmm all night
I could have hmmmm all night
And still have hmmm some more
I could have spread my hmmm
And done a thousand things I've never done before.
I'll never know what made it so exciting
Why, all at once my heart took flight
I only know when he began to hmmm with me
I could have hmmm, hmmm, hmmm all night.

which just goes to show the power of censorship--when correctly censored, anything can be turned into a song about sex.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Frank Hamilton
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 05:28 PM

I guess my preceding post on this thread never made it.

Here's some tradition:

Eadie got a blind eye way above her knee.

Keep on truckin' Mama, truckin' my blues away. (Part of this goes like) What's that smells like fish, Mama, tell ya' if ya' really wanna' know.

Honey let me be your salty dog.

Let me be your candy man.

Tell me what diddy wah diddy means.

Everybody's talkin' 'bout a new way of walkin'

Lemon Jefferson's "Black snake moan" is evocative.

Alan Lomax has stated that he thinks John Henry is a tale of sexual euphemisms. Alan was called the Darwin of folk music but we sometimes referred to him as the Freud of folk.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Llanfair
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 06:32 PM

I didn't think it was roller skates, Charlie, it was a combine harvester, and who says size doesnt matter!!!! I like the more subtle double entendres. The Spotted Cow, Going into the bushes to catch a small bird or two, and beware of anyone with a fiddle!!!! Hwyl, Bron.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Chet W.
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 09:40 PM

Excuse me, but I thought that pretty much every song had some sexual connotation in variously veiled degrees. Is it just me?

Chet

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 10:12 PM

for a PRIME example, try 'The Game of All Fours'...listed in the database as The GAME OF CARDS

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 28 Aug 99 - 10:53 PM

The keeper would a shooting go
And under his cloak he carried a bow

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Aug 99 - 10:27 AM

"When properly viewed, everything's lewd"

Ogden Nash?

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Barbara
Date: 29 Aug 99 - 11:13 AM

"Anything longer than it is wide is a phallic symbol." ----- Freud

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

----- ditto

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From:
Date: 29 Aug 99 - 11:28 AM

How about "say so oh play mate" -- with all that talk of "come out and play with me", being "jolly friends", "sliding down rainbows" into "cellar doors"? It's actually gotten so I cringe when my kids sing that song.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: WyoWoman
Date: 29 Aug 99 - 01:15 PM

If I can't sell it
Gonna keep sittin' on it
I ain't gonna *give* it away

(ostensibly, we're talking about an EASY chair... These are great lyrics, which I think we talked about in a previous thread? What was that one? "bawdy lyrics?" something like that...)

ww

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: bob schwarer
Date: 29 Aug 99 - 02:05 PM

"------a good cigar is a smoke"

M. Twain

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: j0_77
Date: 29 Aug 99 - 02:17 PM

Californication Blues :)

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Tony Burns
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 07:38 AM

Remember what Tom Lehrer had to say on this topic.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Nathan in Texas
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 10:46 AM

The Nightingale Song (in numerous variations} has the soldier & the lady sitting down by the stream to "hear the nightingales sing."

Then out of his knapsack, a long fiddle he drew
And he played her such merry tunes as she ever knew,
And he played her such merry tunes, caused the valleys to ring
Hark hark, replied the fair maid, how the nightingales sing.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Frank Hamilton
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 12:17 PM

I am a Tom Lehrer fan. I too am not in favor of censorship. I liked Lenny Bruce as well. But here's where Tom Lehrer and I part company. Don't want to censor it but I do not intend to endorse it.

Mr. Lehrer:

Stories of tortures Used by debauchers, Lurid, licentious, and vile, Make me smile. Novels that pander To my taste for candor Give me a pleasure sublime.

My rejoinder,

Stories of tortures Are not sexual scorchers, Sadistic, facistic and crass Are just too bad-ass. Novels that titilate, This I appreciate, If they leave Sadie Mae far behind.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: kendall morse (don't use)
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 01:03 PM

I was told that "The Foggy Dew" was a gang of highwaymen in Ireland..??? Anyway, having spent much of my adult life at sea, I learned a number of songs that dont even try to hide behind double meanings. Fortunatly, I get very few requests for the real thing these days.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: kendall morse (don't use)
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 01:04 PM

sorry about that, my confuser stutters

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Bert
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 01:07 PM

There is a story (legend) about Marie LLoyd. Seems she was called up before the watch committee for singing lewd songs. She claimed that the songs were fine, it was just the way that the audience interpreted them that was wrong. She said that the songs were no worse than popular parlour songs that everyone was singing and proceeeded to sing "Come into the garden Maud" in such a way as to leave no doubt as to what was going to happen in the garden. The story goes that the case was dismissed.

Also, I have heard that early versions of The Cornish Nightingale were more explicit as to what they were doing 'in the valley below'.

The art of a good bawdy song is that of being explicit without actually saying anything wrong.

Bert.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Margo
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 01:26 PM

I agree Bert. I find many of the sea shantys with their double and triple entendre almost quaint, compared to some of the lyrics today that leave nothing to the imagination.

Charlie, your "I could have HMMMMMED all night" is hilarious. You are right. I never thought of it that way until you "censored" it!

Margarita

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Marion
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 05:02 PM

How about that "You are my sunshine"?

I briefly taught English in a tiny private school for the children of Iranian grad students at U. of Toronto. This was a very conservative crowd, with girls of 8 or 9 wearing head coverings and pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini on the walls. Anyway, I taught the kids to sing "You are my sunshine" and later got a call from one of the parents who said (quite nicely) that this kind of song was not appropriate for children.

I was quite embarrassed by this - I'm just glad I taught only the chorus and not the verse with "As I lay sleeping I dreamt I held you in my arms..."

Marion

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Chet W.
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 06:51 PM

Of course, when Tom Lehrer sang songs about poisoning pigeons in the park, the old dope peddler, and holding your disembodied hand in mine, surely no one thought that he was endorsing such behaviors. It was a joke, perhaps in bad taste, but that was part of the experience as well, that an Ivy League academic would sit at a piano in front of crowds and purvey outrageous innuendo. Then again, let's all be careful with our innuendos (another joke).

Chet

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: SandyBob
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 02:54 PM

Kendall,

I'm curious. What kinds of songs did you learn at sea? Most of us are revivalists...I'd be interested to hear what if anything is in current circulation at sea.

Sandy Bob

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From:
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 03:18 PM

The original 17th century versions of "The Foggy, Foggy Dew", "The Keeper" and "The Nightingale's Song" are in the Scarce Songs 1 file at www.erols.com/olsonw Click. So are a lot of other songs with double entendre about sex. (Also some in Scarce Songs 2 file)

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Jo Taylor
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 06:41 PM

--seed,
wanton seed?

Here's a bit of it:

Often hums but never purrs
But I like the thoughts it stirs
I love it 'cos it's hers,
It's my girl's pussy.

Middle eight:

What a precious thing to handle
No-one else can hold a candle;
It means everything to me -

More?

Jo
I can't dance, I got ants in my pants...

You bring the hotdog, baby, I'll bring the bun...etc...etc...

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 11:19 PM

Hi Margarita, I'd have to say that some of those old quint ones, today nobody would getway singing modern ones as bold.
Maid Of Amsterdam:
"I put my hand upon her thatch
She says young man that's my main hatch.
Blow The Man Down:
"Up to her quarters she piped me aboard
There on her bed I cut lose with my sword
Just as my cutter was forging ahead
She cried my husband & jumped ot of bed"
A prisoner singing to his lady friend vistor
"I say little Rosie turn up your clothes
May be the last time, I don't know
Ol Dollar Mamie:
"Ol Dollar Mamie turn her head & smile
You could hear her holler for a level Mile"

Barry

Subject: Lyr Add: PANCAKE RECIPE (John Kellermann)^^
From:
Date: 01 Sep 99 - 03:52 AM

This isn't a "folk" song. It "came to me" a few years ago one morning while I was cooking breakfast for my bride. It's about pancakes, really...

Pancake Recipe
© 1990/91 John Kellermann

If your woman's always hungry, if she's really hard to please,
Then you need to know the secret of my pancake recipe.
It's really pretty simple, there's just one thing you've got to know,
They take careful preparation, take your time and do it slow.
Don't be in a hurry, take care how you begin.
And get that skillet hot and greasy, before you put your batter in.

You can ask your woman to show you, you can read it in a book,
But you'll never learn unless you take the time to cook.
You can't cheat, you can't fake it, you can't buy them in a store.
But once she tastes your homemade pancakes, she will always want some more.
Don't be in a hurry, take care how you begin.
And get that skillet hot and greasy, before you put your batter in.

Combine your ingredients, the dry and the wet,
The more you practice cooking, the better you'll get.
Let that skillet get hotter as your batter starts to rise.
When you slip it in the skillet, it'll sizzle as it fries.
Don't be in a hurry, take care how you begin.
And get that skillet hot and greasy, before you put your batter in.

Some people think the kitchen is a woman's domain,
And that cooking is an art that you just can't explain.
I found a woman who loves to share the kitchen with me,
And when we cook together we don't even need a recipe.
Don't be in a hurry, take care how you begin.
And get that skillet hot and greasy, before you put your batter in.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: alison
Date: 01 Sep 99 - 04:21 AM

Nice one John..... does it have a tune?

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 06 Sep 99 - 07:42 AM

Ah, Marie Lloyd ... she sang "She sits among the cabbages and peas" unitl they made her change it. Then she sang "She sits among the lettuces and leeks", which was OK - the Lord Chancellor of the day obviously led a sheltered life!

Oh, and it was Rudyard Kipling (good old Rud!) who wrote, "A woman is only a woman, But a good cigar is a smoke". I can't comment; I've been married twenty-three years, and I gave up the weed about fifteen years ago.

Steve

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 04:26 AM

"My Donkey Want Water", "Donkey City", and other Jamaican folk songs have sexual innuendo. The first two often have "unprintable" verses as they were work songs used by digging teams working with pickaxes.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 04:47 AM

Bagpipes too: "he blew up his chanter" etc.
"A wee bird cam tae ma apron".
"Ding doorum" and "faloorum" as in "maids when you're young".
And any songs that describe going "doon tae the broom".

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 05:21 AM

Just the sound of a 'knock knock-knock' ~~


And there was I with me [knock knock-knock]
So a courting we fell straightway

-- see 'The Farm Servant' on my You tube channel, also on forthcoming Mudcat CD set; already posted on the preview thread and lyric on current final-edit thread ...

~Michael~

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 06:00 AM

I recall Nic Jones enjoying sowing his cheapest grain in a young lady's meadow in "The Wanton Seed" on The Noah's Ark Trap.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 06:28 AM

Weirdly, we once had a very moral Christian chap sing Bonny Black Hare thinking it was about hunting. I think he'd only given the text a cursory glance before singing it off his iPhone, but once in the middle of his impassioned rendition the metaphorocal nature of the thing became quite clear. Metaphorical? Hell, it's almost pornographic in its explicitness. When I was sixteen I used to sing it as a chat-up line & the only attention it got me was from a folky woman of 30 who thought I was a lot older... Another story!

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Tootler
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 07:14 AM

Not very subtle but:

Give me a girl who will wriggle and will twist
At the bottom of her belly lies the cuckoo's nest

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Musket
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 09:08 AM

Many an old traditional song refers to "sporting and playing."

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 09:41 AM

As I Roved Out

She took my horse by the bridle and the bit and led him to the stable
She took my horse by the bridle and the bit and led him to the stable
Sayin' I've plenty of oats for a soldier's horse to eat if he is able, wit'
Yer too rai yah fol de diddle ah di ree fol de diddle daree oh

She took me by her lily white hand, led me to the table
She took me by her lily white hand, led me to the table, sayin'
I've plenty of wine for a soldier boy to drink if he is able, wit'
Yer too rai yah fol de diddle ah di ree fol de diddle daree oh

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 04:27 PM

Elsa Lanchester is the grand mistress of the music-hall tradition of double entendre.

Subject: RE: euphemistic for sex? folk songs?
From: Dave Earl
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 04:40 PM

" I've lost me spotted cow"
"Butter and cheese and all"

For your consieration folkies all.

Dave