Funny, Traditional Songs

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 09:44 PM

King John & the Bishop (Child 45)

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Investing is not the same as gambling, and downtown is not the same as uptown. :||

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 07:55 PM

SIx Nights Drunk
The Eddystone Light
Finnegan's Wake
The Irish Rover
Soldier, Oh, Soldier
The Lock-Keeper's Lament
A Very Unfortunate Man

All side-splittingly funny in their day.

A

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 07:19 PM

One person's humorous song is someone else's tragedy,
The Tailor's Breeches, Won'tyou come down to Yarmouth Town,the Poor Lonely Widow, the Widow of the West Moorland, Compliments returned, Shepherd oh shepherd won't you come home, Butter and Cheese and all, Wop she ad it, the Christmas Goose,three jolly sportsmen, Gossip Joan

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: captainbirdseye
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 07:11 PM

the cunning cobbler,the crabfish,our gudeman or seven nights drunk the bald headedend of the broom,the rest of the days your own,my husbands got no courage in him.

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 06:05 PM

A song's age doesn't come into it; if it has known authorship, it's not traditional. So a C16 William Byrd madrigal or motet isn't trad. There's many a 'contemporary' or composed (or trad. arr song or tune) that gets listed as trad, not so much because of 'usage' but through laziness in attribution or else to avoid paying copyright.

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 06:04 PM

Not to worry. Not only is Queen Eleanor's Confession traditional, it's Child 156.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 05:52 PM

Countess Richard...and how old does a song have to be to be traditional or how does it qualify as traditional....there are many contemporary songs which are becoming traditional...not because of age but because of usage. Perhaps we should have a debate on the true meaning of tradition. For three years, the barbecue has come out on Christmas eve and chestnuts are roasted on it...it has already become a family tradition if you get my drift.
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 05:24 PM

Queen Eleanor's Confession (assume it's traditional?)

The Basket of Eggs (from the Penguin book of EFS so it must be! ;-)

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 04:51 PM

Good grief, first dead sheep and now dead cows. Not funny.

Just listening to Anahata and Mary Humphreys doing The Cuckoo & The Nightingale which is really funny (in a Geld Him, Lasses Geld Him sort of way, i.e. witty, not blokish stupid).

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 04:42 PM

For sure, "The Tune the Old Cow Died On."

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 04:26 PM

Dan, Dan the dirty man
Washed his face in a frying pan
Combed his hair with a rusty nail
And scratched his belly with his big toe nail.

North-East England children's street song.

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Johnhenry'shammer
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 04:07 PM

Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man/washed his face with a frying pan/combed his hair with a wagon wheel/and died with a tooth ache in his heel...

Funny stuff

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 04:01 PM

'Geld Him, Lasses, Geld Him'. Makes me smile anyway.

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Steve Benbows protege
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 03:52 PM

The mole catcher. Makes me smile anyway!!

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 03:46 PM

Oh, sorry. Reports of the ram's death are 'exaggerated'.

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 03:37 PM

It's not about "sheep murder". It's about exaggeration, which is a stock-in-trade item for humor.   Killing the ram is incidental.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 03:22 PM

Derby Ram funny? I don't think so. What's funny about sheep murder?

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 03:14 PM

Oh, oh! Not Oh, Suzannah. That's not only from an identifiable writer but a commercial-market song. Unless you're speaking more of the manner of dissemination it assumed rather than the source.

And frankly, I don't see it as all that humorous.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 02:21 PM

The Preacher and the Bear
Oh Suzannah

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 02:16 PM

The Darby Ram
Get up and Bar the Door

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 02:15 PM

The Devil and the Farmer's wife/The Farmer's Curst Wife
Eggs and marrowbones
Little Tom Clark

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 02:02 PM

The Sick Note ain't traditional. Pat Cooksey wrote it. Not sure about The Threshing Machine though it doesn't seem to be an Adge Cutler composition (I use the word loosely). As for The Moose Song, I've never heard of it but expect this is a Good Thing.

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 01:57 PM

My sweetheart's the mule in the mine.
I drive her without reins or lines.
On the bumper I sit
And I chew and I spit
All over my sweetheart's behind.

(Learned from Walt Robertson).

Carl Sandburg has a lot of pretty funny stuff in The American Songbag. The first one that pops to mind is "Horse Named Bill."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 01:50 PM

Soldier Oh Soldier (Will you marry me?)
The Frozen Logger (don't know if that's traditional)
The Swapping Song (Wing Wong Waddle)
Eggs and Marrowbone
Riding Down From Bangor
Blow the Man Down
The Young Man Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn
Three Jolly Rogues of Lynn
Sweet Little Window
Beans, Bacon and Gravy
Kansas Boys
Divil and the Farmer's Wife (The Farmer's Curst Wife)
Jan's Courtship
The German Musicianer
The Grey Mare
Phyllis and Her Mother
Hi Ro Jerum
Jan's Courting

That's a few that come readily to mind from my own repertoire.
Enjoy!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 01:40 PM

The sick note, The moose song, The threshing machine...there's a start. Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: Funny, Traditional Songs
From: thespionage
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 01:37 PM

What are some favorite traditional songs with a humorous edge, broadly defined?

Russ