Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol

Subject: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 22 Dec 02 - 04:28 PM

Lyr. Add: Stuff Your Guts
(The Christmas Holiday, Or, Stuff Your Guts)

When holidays, they are begun, the lads and lasses gay,
For mirth and fun away they run, who as fleet as they?
There is Ralph and Doll. there's Jack and Molly,
Much faster they ran, resolv'd to cram on beef and ham,
O lud how they stuff their guts.

Here's jolly blades of every trade a Christmas boxing go,
And lusty jades of servant maids are traipsing to and fro,
There's 'prentice boys with hooping noise, through mud and dirt they strut,
And boldly knock for Christmas box, that they may stuff their guts.

The watchmen and scavengers at every door you meet,
The one he guards you in your bed, the other cleans your street,
These hearty cocks their Christmas box they in their pocket puts
Then like the rest of Christmas boxers(?) see how they stuff their guts.

The lamplighter so neat and trim, he mounts with nimble feet,
And fills a burner to the brim to light you thro' the street,
When full of gin I'm not, says he, for any dirty tricks(?),
But to the Ball I'll take a stroll, and there I'll stuff my guts.

The butler and the coachman too, the footman and the groom,
From kitchen to the lady's maids are powdered and perfumed,
But slyly watch the greasy cook who in her pudding puts
Some suet, plumbs and currants so that they may stuff their guts.

The Frenchman, sly as any thief, he feasts his hungry eyes,
And views our good sirloins of beef, our puddings, tarts and pies,
O fie on you Convention(?) Crew, while off their heads you cut,
I've better fare where Britons are, where I can stuff my guts.

The publicans I can't forget, this is their Christmas treat,
Nor neither do they seem to fret at all the beef you can eat,
You're welcome, kindly welcome friend, I wish you'd drain my butt,
The double chalk to work goes then, while you do stuff your guts.

The tradesman poor he cannot pay when creditors do call,
My husband is not in the way, the wife does loudly bawl,
I beg, sir, you will call again, then all the doors she shuts,
He's gone, my dear, so now come here, and let us stuff our guts.

To stuff your guts, is in my song, on either boil'd or roast,
I hope you will not think me wrong if I give you a toast-
Content to every tradesman here, and peasants in their huts,
A lasting peace and trade in rease(?), that we may stuff our guts.

Harding B 22(47); Firth c19(235): Bodleian Library, no date, no printer noted.
Great poetry I don't think, but evocative of England in early Victorian times. Was the Convention a warship fighting the French? Also a word in the last sentence has me flummoxed- help please! Printing poor.
Boxing Day is still a holiday in Canada, but its principal purpose is to let us return and exchange unwanted gifts, and to pick up distress sale merchandise.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: masato sakurai
Date: 22 Dec 02 - 09:04 PM

Thank you for the transcription. The broadsides are:

Firth c.19(235)

Harding B 22(47)

~Masato

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Haruo
Date: 27 Dec 02 - 02:44 AM

How about "increase"? (Done off the top of my head without looking at the broadsides in question.)

Haruo

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 27 Dec 02 - 08:20 AM

We have a recording of the song sung with pretty much the same words. In the UK it is available on a CD named WASSAIL! A Country Christmas recorded by a group named Magpie Lane.
It used to be sold at the shop chain Past Times and Mrs.Duck used to have a copy of a tape bought there, but it disappeared when our car got broken into a few years back. A couple of days before Christmas we found it on CD at The Music Room in Cleckheaton. We have now got the CD.
The CD is a nice assortment of songs and tunes, many of which I have not heard elsewhere, but all with a Christmas connection. Only a couple are not from traditional sources.
Here is a website for the record label - Beautiful Jo Records.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 27 Dec 02 - 09:08 PM

In the broadside, (in the last line) in and rease are separated by a space. In the OED, rease is defined as a Sc. dialect version of roose. Roose means to praise, either someone or one's self. I think the phrase follows this meaning, but I am open to suggestions.
Geoff, is there anything like it in the song sung by the Maggie Lane Group?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Leadfingers
Date: 27 Dec 02 - 09:16 PM

Magpie Lane are old mates and well worth listening to. I just wish they were good enough old mates that they would GIVE me their CD's to save me the exene of buying them,incredible value tho they are.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Haruo
Date: 28 Dec 02 - 09:46 PM

Having now looked at the broadsides, I say your "boxers" should be "guests", your "tricks" should be "sluts", your "Molly" should be "Moll", and that that "that" in the last line should be "then". I'm not convinced your "rease" explanation is right, but I'm not at all sure what's better. In the context "increase" still looks good to me (a lasting peace and increased trade being conducive to gutbusting), but I have no proof and the space in the (poor) printing doesn't look like a letter has fallen out. It looks like a space.

Haruo

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 28 Dec 02 - 10:42 PM

I think you are correct on the changes. Need someone good with Sc. dialect to look at the last line.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Haruo
Date: 29 Dec 02 - 12:22 AM

I'm not so sure on that, mainly because I hardly see anything else in the whole poem that would qualify as "Sc. dialect". If there were half a dozen other stereotypically Scots words scattered through the piece, I'd say "sure, this must be 'rease' in the sense of 'roose'", but with nary a Burnsism apart from it, I'm inclined still towards "in[c]rease".

Haruo

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 29 Dec 02 - 12:53 PM

I'd go along with Haruo's amendments to the transcription. The problematic word is certainly increase. There really is no need to go looking for obscure Scots dialect words and trying to shoe-horn them into making some vague kind of sense; the vocabulary and syntax used in this piece is straightforward English, not Scots. There are several examples of gaps in other parts of the text where a letter has left no imprint, so I don't think that's anything to worry about.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 29 Dec 02 - 01:29 PM

Malcolm and Haruo, I will agree with your verdict. I got somewhat carried away by the OED definition of "roose (reese)," which is quite extended for a word apparently little used at present.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Haruo
Date: 30 Dec 02 - 07:00 PM

Geoff the Duck, can you tell us how point in question sounds on the recording i.e. is it "increase"; and are there any other points where the recording differs with our text as amended?

Haruo

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 31 Dec 02 - 12:09 PM

To end Geoff's silence, I went out to my car and retrieved my copy of the marvelous Magpie Lane CD in question. I may have the only copy in California . . . purchased at a concert in Worcester in late 2000.

Anyway, here's their version of the lyrics as best I can discern them (nothing seemed incomprehensible, so I think I've got 'em right). There are some minor but critical differences to the words previously posted that I think make the thing flow more smoothly:


The Christmas Holidays, Or, Stuff Your Guts

When holidays, they are begun, the lads and lasses gay,
For mirth and fun away they run, who so blithe as they?
There is Ralph and Doll. there's Jack and Moll,
Such capers sure they cuts, resolv'd to cram on beef and ham,
Lord, how they stuff their guts.

Here's jolly blades of every trade a Christmas boxing go,
And lusty jades of servant maids are traipsing to and fro,
There's 'prentice boys with whooping noise, through mud and dirt they strut,
And boldly knock for Christmas box, that they may stuff their guts.

The lamplighter so neat and trim, he mounts with nimble feet,
And fills his burner to the brim to light you thro' the street,
When full of glee I'm not, says he, for any dirty sluts,
But to the Bell I'll take a swell, and there I'll stuff my guts.

The butler and the coachman too, the footman and the groom,
From kitchen too the lady's maids are powdered and perfumed,
But slyly watch the greasy cook who in her pudding puts
Some suet, plums and currants so that they may stuff their guts.

The Frenchman, sly as any thief, he feasts his hungry eyes,
And views their good sirloins of beef, their puddings, tarts and pies,
O fie on you, Convention's Crew, while off their heads you cuts,
I've better fare where Britons are, where I can stuff me guts.

The publican I can't forget, this is their Christmas treat,
Nor neither do they seem to fret at all the beef you eat,
You're welcome, kindly welcome friend, I with you drain me butts,
The doubletalk to work goes then, while you do stuff your guts.

The tradesman's poor he cannot pay when creditors do call,
Me husband he's not in today, the wife did loudly bawl,
I beg, sir, you will call again, then oh, the door she shuts,
He's gone, my dear, so now come here, and let us stuff our guts.

To stuff your guts, is in oursong, on either boil'd or roast,
We hope you will not think us wrong if we give you a toast.
Content to every tradesman here, and peasants in their huts,
A lasting peace and trade increase, then we may stuff our guts.

***

The liner notes say: "Gluttony is the target of this satirical ballad found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The broadsheet is undated, but references to the French Convention suggest the 1790s."

I hope this helps. Wonderful holiday song! Wonderful band, for that matter.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 31 Dec 02 - 12:51 PM

Claire Bear, thanks for topping it off. Some of the Bodleian images are difficult to read. There are others about Boxing Day in their collection, but this one was the most interesting.
What tune did Magpie Lane use?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 31 Dec 02 - 01:10 PM

Ack! It's an early English country dance tune (and it works beautifully!), but I can't remember the name to save my life. I'll have to find a friend who's an ECD enthusiast to answer that one. Stay tuned.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 31 Dec 02 - 02:25 PM

Of course! It's "Cuckolds All Awry." In case you don't know it, there's a good audio file available here: Cuckolds .

Given my marginal success with the blue clicky thing, here's a URL in case: http://www.hobbyhorsefestival.co.uk/Audio/Cuckolds.html

Cheers
ClaireBear

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Haruo
Date: 01 Jan 03 - 08:20 PM

How about a MIDI (I don't have any way to hear an MP3 at the moment)?

Haruo

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 01 Jan 03 - 08:41 PM

The little line goes across, but no sound??

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Jan 03 - 09:20 PM

It works for me, but you can also get the tune in other formats at JC's Tunefinder:

Cuckolds.

Whether the song was ever sung to that tune is quite another matter, of course.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Haruo
Date: 01 Jan 03 - 09:40 PM

Thanks for the Tunefinder link, Malcolm. I like "awry" better than "a row", FWIW.

You say "Whether the song was ever sung to that tune is quite another matter, of course." Yet we know that it was, since ClaireBear has a recording of it. I know, I know, by "ever" you meant "way back when"... ;-)

As for GUEST,Q's queriette, no, for whatever reason, on the church computer (where I am posting from) the speakers only work on when you have D drive open, and the Internet access only works when you have C drive open, and you can't have both at once. At home, I have speakers but no Internet access. At work and at the library I have access but no speakers. So I can listen to MIDIs here by saving them on C drive and then opening them from D, but not anything streaming.

Haruo

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Stuff Your Guts - carol
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Jan 03 - 10:34 PM

As I'm sure you know very well, I meant that we don't know that the song was ever sung to that tune before 1995, when Magpie Lane dug it up and recorded it. We don't know, either, if it was sung at all for very long after its original, ephemeral publication. It doesn't seem ever to have been found in tradition, which isn't all that surprising.