lines that show up in different songs

Subject: lines that show up in different songs
From: Will Bakker
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 03:52 AM

There are certain lines that show up in many songs. I first heard these in some Lonnie Donegan songs. I don't know where they come from, from England or the USA. One is: There where two old ladies sitting in the sand, each of 'em wishing that the other was a man.Another: A dollar is a dollar and a dime is a dime, I'd sing another chorus, but I haven't got the time. But there must be many other ones. They all seem to have the same rhytm.

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GUEST,keith A at work
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 05:41 AM

I'll eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm dry

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GeorgeH
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 06:05 AM

It's not just lines, it's whole verses . . So-called "floating verses". I'm sure Malcolm Douglas can come up with excellent examples . . his memory seems better than mine.

Then there the songs which deliberately use the titles of other songs . . "Midnight on the Water" (as sung by Waterson/Carthy) is probably the best known of these at the moment, but Peggy Seeger had a magnificent song of this type many years ago . .

As far as I can tell they originate on both sides of the Atlantic.

G.

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: pavane
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 06:56 AM

There are even whole SONGS composed from a selection of 'floaters'. And there is a recent thread (Metasongs) on songs referring to other songs, including links to a large collection of 'songs of songs' composed almost entirely from other song names, popular in the mid to late 19th century. I will go and look for it and make a link if I find it.

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: Gypsy
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 11:20 AM

The Storms over the Ocean has verses that seem to wander from tune to tune

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: mousethief
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 12:02 PM

Sun's gonna shine in my back door someday

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 02:20 PM

Who's gonna shoe your pretty little foot
Who's gonna glove your hand
Who's gonna kiss your red ruby lips
When I'm in a foreign/far-off land

Papa will shoe...
Mama will glove...
Sister/nobody will kiss

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GUEST,Phil Dirt
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 07:07 PM

...peaches in the summertime, Apples in the Fall

If I had a needle and thread, fine as I could sew...

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: mg
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 07:27 PM

How little did my mother ken the day she cradled me

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 08:00 PM

blues: I woke up this morning folk: as I went out one day in the month of may

come all ye young ladies take warning from me come all ye young men take warning from me

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 01:42 AM

Many a day with you I've rambled
Happiest hours with you I've spent
Thought I had your heart forever
Now I found 'twas only lent.

Just about the worst lines I've ever heard- and they use them in a number of songs!

Ebbie

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 10:51 AM

Always walking out on a morning in May. Doesn't anybody do anything on a cold afternoon in February? (Wait a minute, we've got October's night and July which rhymes with July...) Ah, well, musicians can't count past 3 anyway (maybe 4).

Shanties and work songs often use the same lines because new verses were made up on the spot and lines freely stolen from other work songs.

Various conventions of phrase are traditional to the point of going back thousands of years, to Homer and his like. Easier to remember when reciting or singing the story.

Bat Goddess

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 11:15 AM

If I were a bird and had wings for to fly
Love is pleasing love is teasing, gay as a jewel etc...
Down in yonder valley/garden
Don't build your nest at the top of the tree / don't build your nest in the sycamore tree etc.
Come all you fair & tender maidens

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: RWilhelm
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 11:24 AM

If you don't like my peaches don't shake my tree

I got a gal she's so tall
She sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: Grab
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 11:27 AM

"Woke up this morning"
"My little girl/woman/lady/wife/fella/man/boy/baby/dog/horse left me/lay down and died/went off with another little girl/woman/lady/wife/fella/man/boy/baby/dog/horse" (delete as appropriate)
etc.

And the classic all-purpose lines:-

"Yeah, yeah, yeah"
"woah-woah-woah"
"oh baby"
"doowop, doowop, doowop"

Incidentally, on a pop note, anyone ever cross-compare Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet" and Bryan Adams' "I will love you"? Very dodgy...

Graham.

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: MMario
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 11:31 AM

It's real confusing when they get written down - because a lot of them have really similar lines - those five horizontal ones across the page, and that curlyque one at the left side of the page - then there are the ones that have the crosshatch thingies....

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 11:34 AM

Your parents don't like me, they say I'm too poor;
They say I'm not worthy to darken your door.
I work for a living, my money's my own;
And them as don't like me can leave me alone.

Variations on this can be found in lots of songs.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: DaveJ
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 11:52 AM

I have heard them called zipper verses or lines...and the songs that use them are often called zipper songs. Don Firth's example is often sung in "Jack of Diamonds". If you compare the lyrics to Jack of diamonds to Peter, Paul, & Mary's Pretty Mary you'll see that the verses to Pretty Mary are almost all zipped from Jack... with some editting and rearrangement of course. The tunes are very similar. Jack is in the public domain to my knowledge, but ...Mary is copyrighted.

DaveJ

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: pavane
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 11:56 AM

I once saw a song which was made up entirely of three 'come all ye .. and listen' floater verses, and three 'now you've heard my song' verses. I think it was called 'Come all ye - and go back again'

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 27 Jul 01 - 10:59 AM

To add to the LD ones in the opening post: "ABCWXYZ The cat's in the cupboard and he don't see me".
These nonsense lines, used to keep going songs which are really only a chorus (like "Don't you rock me daddio")are different from lines reused in "proper" verses like "Woke up one morning" or "As I was a walking". The Weavers' favourite of the first kind was "Alas my love you do me wrong/To treat me so discourteously".
RtS (speaking from the depths of my ignorance)

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GUEST,cewlticblues5
Date: 27 Jul 01 - 11:34 AM

Another floater I've noticed in a lot of songs is the one about how one's love will never fail, despite whatever apocalyptic things happen :-)

From Burns'

As fair thou art, my bonnie lass,
so deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
and the rocks melt wi' the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
while the sands of life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only luve!
And fare thee well awhile!
And I will come again, my love.
Tho it were ten thousand mile!

To American eastern mountain "Fare Thee Well"

.....Where'er I go, I will return,
If I go ten thousand miles
.....
.....The rivers never will run dry
Or rocks melt with the sun
I'll ne'er be false to the one I love
Till all these things be done

To even the blues - "Ever After On"

And I'll love my baby till the sea run dry
Till the rocks all melt with the sun
I'll love my baby till the day I die
And ever after on.....

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: GUEST,celticblues5
Date: 27 Jul 01 - 11:42 AM

@%#^$*%^#!!! Fingers don't work this early in the morning! There should, of course, have been no "w" in my name above. Can someone tell me why, if I haven't posted in awhile, my membership apparently disappears, and I have to log in as a guest again?

Subject: RE: lines that show up in different songs
From: Gomez
Date: 27 Jul 01 - 12:59 PM

"the water is wide.. I cannot cross o'er" I heard this in 2 or 3 different songs. not sure if they are the original words in each case or if the singers adapted them on the spot. artistic licence maybe (mine has run out!) i believe it has been known to happen.