Lyr Add: Roast Beef of Old England

Subject: ADD: The Roast Beef of Old England
From:
Date: 27 Nov 97 - 12:53 AM

This is just one of those songs. You can sure tell they weren't bothered by cholesterol back then.


copied from "Songs of England V.1" copyright middle or late 1800s

words and music by Leveridge



The Roast Beef of Old England
(Leveridge)


When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food,
It enobled our hearts and enriched our blood,
Our soldiers were brave, and our courtiers were good.
O! The Roast Beef of old England!
And O! For England's Roast Beef!

Our fathers of old were robust, stout, and strong,
And kept open house, with good cheer all day long,
Which made their plump tenants rejoice in this song--
O! The Roast Beef of old England!
And O! For England's Roast Beef!

When good Queen Elizabeth sat on the throne,
Ere coffee, or tea, or such slip-slops were known,
The world was in terror if e'er she did frown.
O! The Roast Beef of old England!
And O! For England's Roast Beef!

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bruce O.
Date: 27 Nov 97 - 03:42 PM

According to BUCEM it's a parody of a song in Henry Fielding's ballad opera Don Quixote, 1733. Leveridge's song was widely reprinted and the title sometimes given as "The Roast Beef Song". This one one of his last songs. Some of his are as early as 1697.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Alex
Date: 27 Nov 97 - 09:42 PM

My mother never knew what cholesterol was. If she had known, she'd have fried it for our (high) tea. "What's for supper tonight, ma? Fried cholesterol, black pudding and chips? Yum, Yum!" (sounds of arteries creaking)

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Jen
Date: 28 Nov 97 - 12:44 AM

I always thought it looked a little strange, especially in an anthology of English songs. That's the first page I opened up to when I bought the book. I couldn't resist.

Jen

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bert
Date: 01 Dec 97 - 10:28 AM

Alex,

Black pudding! I'd forgotten how much I miss it. You're making me hungry.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From:
Date: 02 Dec 97 - 06:42 PM

This song was obviously written before the days of Mad Cow Disease:)

I don't know if roast beef necessarily does you in. It's my Dad's favourite dish, and he's soon to be eighty.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Jaxon
Date: 03 Dec 97 - 03:58 PM

Isn't English cuisine an oxymoron? Jack Murray

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 04 Dec 97 - 07:19 PM

In the 1955 film remake of Beggars Opera, they sang:

In Old England we cheer, the roast beef and the beer
And they never have failed us as yet;
For no enemy we fear, when we've drunk up all the beer
And the beef it is roasted and et.
And et..
And the beef it is roasted and et.

Gimme that old time nutrition...

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Will
Date: 04 Dec 97 - 11:51 PM

Well, the beer's still good, at least until mad hop's disease strikes.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Nonie Rider
Date: 05 Dec 97 - 12:47 PM

Mad hop's disease? I would have said that was one of the oldest ills (and joys) of man. Only the names are new...

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bert
Date: 05 Dec 97 - 01:46 PM

Jaxon,

Oi! Watchit mush!

Come 'round our 'ouse and I'll show you how just how good English cooking can be.

Bert :-)

P.S. One big problem in England is that, for many years, catering was one of the few jobs open to immigrants. Other trades being restricted. So thousands of immigrants from various parts of the empire moved in and brought their standards of hygene and quatity along with them. It absolutely destroyed the whole catering industry. If you want to eat out in England you must ask the locals for recommendations.

I've heard that the fast food industry has improved somewhat, recently, due to the American influence.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Marc B
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 03:19 PM

Old thread but I thought I'd add an additional verse I've heard.

Oh then we had stomachs to eat and to fight And when wrongs were cooking we'd help put them But now we're all "ha-ha"(foppish sounding phrase) And good, good night.

Eat hearty. Marc B.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Pete M
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 04:17 PM

Bert,

an improvement due to American influence? now that *is* a contradiction in terms!

At least we can now get decent beer (Boddingtons, Tetleys, and Theakstons to name three) in New Zealand, so perhaps the days of good queen Bess are not lost forever. I'm holding out for Marstons Pedigree!

"The English, the English, the English are best, I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest" (Flanders & Swan)

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bert
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 05:13 PM

Pete,

American fast food may not be high cuisine but it is clean, reasonably priced and usually pretty good.

You can stop just about anywhere and know that you'll get something edible.

You can't say that for England, unless it's changed since I was there.

Perhaps we should start a thread on good local food from different parts of the world. Cooking is a FOLK ART isn't it?

Glad to hear that you have good beer available there. We have a couple of microbreweries in this area which are very good.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: alison
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 08:11 PM

Hi,

Played in an Irish club over here in Oz for St. Patrick's Day..... guess what I had for dinner...... black pudding.

YUM!!!!

Slainte

Alison

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Pete M
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 08:26 PM

Bert, I think you've got it right, in your fourth paragraph, English cooking, lets drop the pretentious "cuisine" bit, is no better or worse than anywhere else. Its just that the real traditional English cooking has never been fashionable. As to fast food outlets, I suppose they have the same advantages and disadvantages as "Euro fizz" beer, its consistent, reasonably priced and available anywhere, whereas cask conditioned ale and proper cooking can vary from sublime to awful depending on the skill and care of the publican / cook. Sorry about the dig at America, after all we would'nt be chating if it wasn't for them.

Pete M

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 09:01 PM

G'day,
English beer may be OK but how can you possibly drink warm beer??? Give me an ice cold Fosters or XXXX any time.

Cheers,
Alan Foster

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 10:45 PM

Alan....I have heard that Aussies drink their beer practically frozen...*grin* perhaps that is a comforting thing in the summer in the outback, but if the beer has ANY flavor, I like it just cool...(NOT warm!!) By the way, Pete, one of my proudest possessions is a bottle brought to me from New Zealand in a friends luggage. It is called 'Black Mac'...a dark ale from McCashin's Brewery in Stoke, Nelson, New Zealand (South Island)

(Alan, I also have a number of Aussie brews, but I really like stuff like Coopers Ale and Tooth's Stout..do they still make it?)

My fondest dream is to get to Oz & N.Z. some time and spend a year or so drinking, singing, and collecting exotic woods....

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Art Thieme
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 11:46 PM

Folks, ya know it's called PMS 'cause Mad Cow Disease was already taken! :-)

Art

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Art Thieme
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 11:48 PM

ALEX, Where the hell did you get that "fried it" line? Do ya remember?

ART

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: alison
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 01:22 AM

Hi,

On behalf of the women out there I would just like to say

HUMPH!!!!!!!

Slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Helen
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 04:24 AM

Alison,

I wholeheartedly second that opinion.

Helen

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Pete M
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 06:47 AM

Bill D, yes Black Mac's are good, and there are an increasing number of micro breweries in NZ that produce good beer and know how to serve it - by the way I did hear that the reason Aussies drink their beer ice cold is that that way you can't taste it - talk about making a virtue of necessity (grin).

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: aldus
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 08:48 AM

If the only claim to fame of American fast "ffod" is that it is clean and reasonable priced, so is box of kleenex and the taste is about the same. My idea of great fast food is a REAL Cornish Pasty....now that's fast food..burger and fries be damned.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 10:31 AM

when I first heard the term PMS, I thought it referred to that nervousness certain young women get just before they get up onstage to sing folk music.....you know, pre-minstrel syndrome....

*ducking for cover and abandoning the line while Art braves the hail of missles to retrieve it and file it for future use*

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 11:12 AM

Yeah, sorry here ! But it's a grand male bonding line---even E-mail bonding!

Sooo---2 guys in a boat on a lake fishing hook a bottle---open it and a Gennnie(spell ?) pops out! Grants the guy one wish. Wishes for the whole lake to turn to beer. That's done & the G. vanishes. Other guy in the boat just goes ballistic. Says, "You fool, now we've got to piss in the boat!!"

Art

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Whippoorwill
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 11:13 AM

I'm reminded of the story of a Yank who was touring England. He got into the Lake District and tried to pick a thistle that had somehow strayed down from Scotland. As he shook his aching hand, he exclaimed,
"What a country! They drive on the wrong side of the road, they eat with the wrong hand, the beer's hot, the women are cold, and the flowers bite!"

The British rejoinder to that story is the one about the American who boarded a train in London. The only available seat was taken by a snappy little dog sitting beside her owner, a stuffy dowager.
The Yank said, "Madam, will you move your dog, please?" She merely looked down her nose at him. He asked her the second time, and she replied, "For the likes of you? Certainly not!" And the dog snapped at him.
The train had not started to move yet, and the window beside her was open, so the Yank scooped the dog up and tossed it out. The woman cursed him soundly and stormed out to find the conductor and get her dog back.
An elderly gentleman was sitting across the aisle. He smiled at the Yank and said, "You Americans. You drive on the wrong side of the road, you eat with the wrong hand, and now you've thrown the wrong bitch out the window."

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bert
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 12:45 PM

Aldus,
MMMM, Yes a REAL Cornish Pasty is great, but if we want one here in Pennsylvania we have to make it ourselves.

And for a REAL Burger and Fries go to the Red Cap (or is it Red Top?) in Colorado Springs, it's out there on Circle Drive.

Subject: RE: Just thought you might like to see this...
From: Bert
Date: 09 Apr 98 - 12:47 PM

For a REAL American Delicacy

Subject: Lyr Add: BEEF AND LIBERTY ('No more shall Fame...'
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 27 Jun 17 - 02:16 PM

I first ran across this in another forum where someone said it was called "Beef and Liberty"—but I tracked it down to this source:

From The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks [compiled] by Walter Arnold (London: Bradbury, Evans, & Co., 1871), page 44 (where musical notation is also given):


THE SONG OF THE DAY.
Written by Brother Theodosius Forrest.^[1]

No more shall Fame expand her wings
To sound of heroes, states and kings;
A nobler flight the Goddess takes,
To praise our British Beef in steaks,—
A joyful theme for Britons free,
Happy in Beef and Liberty.^[2]

Oh! charming Beef, of thee possest,
Completely carved in steaks, and dressed,
We taste the dear variety,
Produced in earth, in air, in sea,—
Their flavour's all combined in thee,
Fit for the sons of Liberty.

Throughout the realms where despots reign,
What tracks of glory now remain!
Their people, slaves of power and pride,
Fat Beef and Freedom are denied!
What realm, what state, can happy be,
Wanting our Beef and Liberty?

O'er sea-coal fire and steel machine,
We broil the beauteous fat and lean;
Our drink Oporto's grapes afford,
Whilst India's nectar crowns the board,—
A right repast for such as we,
Friends to good cheer and Liberty!^[3]

1. Elected in the year 1763, and son of one of the original 24 Members in 1735.

2. [The last 2 lines are bracketed:] "Chorus after every verse."

3. On singing the last chorus Members and Visitors joined hands all round.

[The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks is apparently an ancestor of the present-day Beefsteak Club.]