ADD: A Shropshire Lad (poem by John Betjeman)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 02:19 PM

& Geoff the Duck should really stay off the Web...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: MikeL2
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 02:24 PM

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: McGrath of Harlow - PM
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 01:26 PM

Hi

Well he had Webb feet....lol

Cheers

MikeL2

PS just in case anyone tries to infer that I got it wrong, I do know that the adjective should be "webbed"....!!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: Mo the caller
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:35 PM

You really shocked me there, saying that he never visited Shropshire till after the publication of A Shropshire Lad. The peoms seem to smell of fresh Shropshire air. Why would anyone write a peom with geographical references if they didn't know the area well?
I went googling for evidence, didn't find it, but a quote from wiki seems relevant "Many colleagues were unnerved by his scathing critical attacks on those whom he found guilty of shoddy scholarship".

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:39 PM

Pedants revolt - led by Which (?) Tyler. Should there have been an apostrophe in there somewhere...?

Kitty

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:52 PM

Mo ~ sorry to have shocked you. Wiki says of Housman & A Shropshire Lad, that tho he was a Worcestershire man by origin,

"The poems are pervaded by deep pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation. Housman wrote most of them while living in Highgate, London, before ever visiting that part of Shropshire (about thirty miles from his home), which he presented in an idealised pastoral light, as his 'land of lost content'." (Wiki article on A E Housman)

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 06:16 AM

Mo the Caller - as you say, sometimes spelling is important, sometimes not, but I would suggest that outside the realm of pharmacy (where giving a similar sounding, but differently named drug, could be a matter of life or death) it doesn't really matter that much. Let's face it - the TXT SPK generation don't even use words!

As for this thread, in the first posting, the Subject box says "Subject: Captain Webb the swimmer", which I suspect was originally also the title of the thread, and asked about the song of the Betjeman poem (incidentally - Firefox internal spellchecker doesn't like "Betjeman" as a spelling) and says "I can't imagine JB pinching an A E Housman title". Three postings down someone mentions "A.E. Houseman's poem of the same name". I can't say that I had even noticed that two different spellings had been used. It certainly didn't prevent me finding the complete work online.

The wibbly wobbly web is pretty good at ignoring spelling on information searches -

try typing "a shrpshire ld" into Wikipedia and it produces page asking "Did you mean: a shropshire lad".

Type "Houseman" and you will get to a page listing amongst other things, a junior doctor and around ten people (real or fiction) with that surname. Add initials and you get a different result.

Type "A E Houseman" or "A.E. Houseman" and you are automatically redirected to a page for "Alfred Edward Housman".

This fuzzy search handles bigger differences. Try a lower case germanic "a e hausmann" and you will be asked "Did you mean: a e housman".

"betjemin" produces "Did you mean: benjamin" followed by links to articles, the first of which is "John Betjeman (redirect from John Betjamin)".

I do not think we need seriously worry about a missing, misplaced or supernumerary letter preventing us finding a poet!

That said, for the sake of accuracy:

English classical scholar and poet Alfred Edward Housman, usually known as A. E. Housman, wrote "A Shropshire Lad", which is a cycle of sixty-three poems, many of the poems are simply numbered for their place in the work. Some of the poems have an individual title, but no poem in the cycle is named "A Shropshire Lad".

English poet, writer and broadcaster Sir John Betjeman, CBE, wrote "A Shropshire Lad", which is a single poem about the ghost of Captain Matthew Webb (19 January 1848—24 July 1883). Webb was from Shropshire, and in August 1875 was the first man to swim the English Channel.

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: RamblinStu
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 08:30 AM

Shropshire lad is a nice song and living in Dover Kent, it is one that I often perform. But the history of Captain Webb is quite extraordinary, he was a bit of a Boys Own hero character

It's well worth looking him up on tinternet

Stuart Pendrill

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 09:24 AM

And I'm glad that this thread is recovering from its brief bout of tetchiness as I have the happiest memories of hearing the late Malcolm Fox of Jiggery Polkary performing the song to perfection whilst wearing an Edwardian bathing costume.

Jiggery Polkary had a clog dancing camel too, but that was for another piece.

Georgina

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: Luggage
Date: 06 Jul 10 - 04:17 PM

There is a jazz album by Jacqui Dankworth (daughter of Johnny D. and Cleo Lane) and her band The New Perspectives of settings for Housemans' "Shropshire Lad" poems.
I have a copy but find it very difficult; there is very little of the folk song about it in spite of Houseman's imitating song patterns. It is a bit like the music of the jazz composer (whose name I don't recall) who wrote music for T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland".
For anyone who is interested, there is a good collected poems edition of John Betjeman, published by John Murray Publishers in which you will find "A Shrophire Lad" which was originally in the collection: "Old Lights For New Chancels" of 1940.
Some of Betjemans' poems lend well to song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: Luggage
Date: 08 Jul 10 - 04:44 PM

Sorry about the spelling/typing errors.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 10:16 PM

Hear it for yourself (and give your ears a treat!)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jnT4tOl_qQ

Ross

Subject: RE: Origins/ADD: A Shropshire Lad (John Betjeman)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Dec 22 - 04:48 PM

Captain Webb movie trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB-jywYDPxc

And a HistoryPod piece on Webb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Kdh1TSmJE

Performance of the song by John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris from Among the Many Attractions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok1x7JyRDXU

Subject: RE: ADD: A Shropshire Lad (poem by John Betjeman)
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Dec 22 - 12:16 PM

John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris link not working in the UK.
This works:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlBMrZdwfrw