'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'

Subject: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: MartinRyan
Date: 25 Sep 06 - 07:29 PM

Fans of Con (Fada) O'Drisceoil might like ot know that his long-awaited magnum opus has just appeared! "The Spoons Murder and other mysteries" is a book/CD package of Con's (very) originals. Not cheap but a beautifully produced package and worth every cent!
click here for details at eh Pipers Club web-shop.

Regards

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 10:49 AM

Refresh

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: GUEST,Curious Clouseau
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 12:01 PM

Does anyone have and address for Con O Drisceoil? Any help would be much appreciated.

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 04:49 PM

Should be able to get in touch with him through the Spalpin Fanach Club in Cork - Cap'n Birdseye should have a contact number.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: AmyLove
Date: 03 Mar 16 - 10:35 PM

I have the book and cd. Marvelous songs. Now I'm hoping someone here can direct me to the lyrics online somewhere -- I find it more convenient while singing along to follow the lyrics on my computer rather than referring to the book. (I've already found the King Lear lyrics here on mudcat. On my cd the song has the title Jig-time Shakespeare.)

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 06:56 PM

Here's the title song, and an anonymous addition.

1. In the tavern one night we were sitting
I'm sure 'twas the last week in March;
From our drinks we were cautiously sipping
To ensure that our throats didn't parch.
We played music both lively and dacent
To bolster our spirits and hopes,
And we gazed at the females adjacent
And remarked on their curves and their slopes.

2. 'Til a gent wandered into the session
And decided to join in the tunes:
Without waiting to ask our permission
He took out a large pair of soup-spoons.
Our teeth in short time we were gritting
As he shook and he rattled his toys,
And the company's eardrums were splitting
With his ugly mechanical noise.

3. Hopping spoons off our heads to provoke us
He continued the music to kill;
Whether hornpipes, slow airs or Polkas
They all sounded like pneumatic drills.
Then he asked if we'd play any faster
As his talent he wished to display
With a grin on the face of the bastard
Like the cat as she teases her prey.

4. Our feelings by now were quite bloody
And politely we asked him to quit
We suggested a part of his body
Where those spoons might conveniently fit.
This monster we pestered and hounded
We implored him with curses and tears,
But in vain our appeals they resounded
In the desert between his two ears.

5. When I went out the back on a mission
He arrived as I finished my leak
He says "this is a mighty fine session
I think I'll come here every week".
When I heard this, with rage I was leppin'
No more of this torture I'd take
I looked 'round for a suitable weapon
To silence this damn rattlesnake.

6. Outside towards the yard I did sally
To find something to vanquish my foe.
I grabbed hold of a gentleman's Raleigh
With 15 speed gear and dynamo.
Then I battered this musical vandal
As I shouted with furious cries
"My dear man your last spoon you have handled
Say your prayers and await your demise."

7. With the bike I assailed my tormentor
As I swung in a frenzy of hate
Til his bones and his skull were in splinters
And his health in a very poor state.
And when I was no longer able
I forestalled any last minute hitch
By removing the gear-changing cable
And strangling the sonofabitch.

8. At the end of my onslaught ferocious
I stood back and surveyed the scene.
The state of the place was atrocious
Full of fragments of man and machine.
At the spoon's players remains I was staring
His condition was surely no joke
For his nose was clogged with ball-bearings
And his left eye was pierced by a spoke.

9. At the sight I was feeling quite squeamish
So I washed up and went back inside
Then I drank a half gallon of Beamish
For my throat in the struggle had dried.
Unpolluted by cutleries clattered
The music was pleasant and sweet
For the rest of the night nothing mattered
But the tunes and the tapping of feet.

10. At the inquest the following September
The coroner said "I conclude
The deceased by himself was dismembered
As no sign could be found of a feud.
And the evidence shows that the fact is,
As reported to me by the Guards
He indulged in the foolhardy practice
Of trick-cycling in public house yards.

11. So if you're desperately keen on percussion
And to join in the tunes you can't wait
Be you Irishman, German, or Russian
Take a lesson from his awful fate.
If your spoons are the best silver-plated
Or the humblest of cheap stainless steel
If you play them abroad, you'll be hated
So just use them for eating your meals.


1. When next at the tavern we gathered,
(I think it was sometime in May)
We raised up our glasses and chattered
As the pipes and the fiddles did play.
The tunes and the songs flowed around us
And the porter it flowed down our throats,
The temperature rose like a furnace;
And we loosened the collars of our coats.

2. I drew into the spirit of the occasion,
By bestowing a kiss on a lass;
(She was of the female persuasion,
And single, with curves smooth as glass.)
I said 'My young lass, are you willing
To try your good fortune with me?
For I have in my purse some bright shillings
That I'd spend in your good company.'

3. But my passion was dowsed in cruel fashion,
And no answer she gave unto me,
For a stranger strode into the session,
And sat down betwixt her and me.
I told him the seat had been taken
And that there was room in the bars,
But he said I was sorely mistaken
For he'd sat here before, kiss my arse.

4. 'You're welcome, kind stranger,' I told him,
'Though I hardly remember your face.
Did you sing, play or dance in times olden
Ere politeness evolved in your race?
For my father's grandfathers, God bless them,
Have fiddled and piped here as well,
And never a soul dared disturb them
But a spoonsman who now bides in Hell.'

5. The temperature fell like an icicle,
And the stranger announced to the room,
Said he 'It is due to a bicycle
That ever I met with my doom.
For the last time I came to this session
My skills on the spoons I displayed,
But I met with unwonted aggression
And got murdered by velocipede.

6. But we spoonsmen let nothing deter us,
Even death shall not make us quit -
And so I arrived at Saint Peter's
To play with the angels a bit.
He said: "Oh you're welcome in Heaven,
And we've got some fecking great tunes,
Sure all of your sins are forgiven,
But I can't say the same for your spoons."

7. "But don't worry," he says very civil,
"You're dead lucky you met me, you know,
For there's a fella who plays like a divil
Runs a hell of a session below.
In a room at the foot of the staircase
You can hear some most infernal tunes,
The crack it is fast and its furious,
But the racket needs help from your spoons."

8. So I joined the cacophanous rabble,
And the records of Hades will tell
That since Adam ate half of Eve's apple
Such discords were ne'er heard in Hell.
And such was their utter amazement
At the rattles and rolls of my spoons,
They sent for the hostelry's management
And summoned him into the room.

9. "This fella will make us demented,"
They all cried aloud with one voice,
"We were never so vilely tormented
By such cruel and unusual noise."
The Devil he said, and he meant it,
"You've a talent I wish I could use,
But the sin hasn't yet been invented
That I'd punish with such an abuse.

10. Go home and take all of your cutlery
You can practice little bit more -
It may take a couple of centuries,
But I'll call when we want you, I'm sure."
'So I'm back, and I've something to please youse.'
And as we stifled our horrified groans,
He threw off his coat, and bejasus,
He proceeded to play on his bones!

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Mar 16 - 04:03 AM

You always scan your book.



(I've already found the King Lear lyrics here on mudcat. On my cd the song has the title Jig-time Shakespeare.)

The introduction to the song in the book is titled 'jig time Shakespeare' both in the book and on the CD (cover included in the book) the song is given its proper title of 'King Lear'

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: JHW
Date: 05 Mar 16 - 03:55 PM

So which Wetherspoons was it?

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: AmyLove
Date: 14 Jun 16 - 10:44 PM

I found the lyrics to another of the songs here.

The song title on my cd is In Praise of Pipers; the title at that site is The Irish Piper.


You grand connoisseurs of fine reels and slow airs,
A few moments you'll spare to give ear to my croon;
Till without inhibition I praise a musician
Adept and proficient at all kinds of tunes.
For a sound that's heart-stopping, a rhythm that's topping,
For cranning and popping with flair and with style,
From east of the Khyber to the banks of the Tiber
You won't beat the piper from Erin's green isle.

This piper contrives with his elbow to drive
Some fresh air which arrives in a bag 'neath his arm;
He fingers the chanter as lithe as a panther,
No sound could be grander for beauty and charm.
When the air it is blown through the finely-tuned drones
It produces a tone that amazes the ear:
Regulators get going as a musical bonus,
With notes so harmonious, perfection is near.

I sing no encomium for pipes Caledonian
Which cannot be blown on inside in the house,
For your bagpiper Scottish must leave his own cottage,
His unhappy lot is to play for the cows.
As he stands in the rain with his lungs under strain,
All his work is in vain, as the Gael hoists his kilt.
He can blow till he's crocked, but his way will be blocked,
For to play a high octave his pipes aren't built.

Some people declare that all pipers are quare
With a manner that scares timid people and weans.
Their behaviour so strange and their wits half-deranged,
As if some sort of mange infiltrated their brains.
Playing those pipes problematic takes skills acrobatic
Which turns them fanatic, obsessive and grim:
So those cynics deride all his properties vital,
To slander our idol's their purpose and whim.

For howe'er they may slight him, our hero's a Titan,
A brave gallant knight and a champion supreme;
Though he's often attacked as being thorny as cactus
He's not half as cracked as he sometimes may seem.
He's bright and flamboyant, his heart's full of joy and
He's almost clairvoyant, with wisdom endowed;
He's keen as a razor when he starts Colonel Fraser
And he drives women crazier by playing Miss McLeod.

I could write an epistle on screechy tin whistles
Or the germ-filled drizzle that drips from the flute;
The tone-deaf accompanist happily thumpin' his
Strings, causing grumpiness, rows and disputes.
Those musical rookies who torture bouzoukis
Make noises so spooky, for mercy you'll plead;
Forget all those villains, your píobaire uilleann
Is famed for his brilliance at handling a reed.

So if your life is like slime and your verses won't rhyme
And the days of your prime are a memory frail,
Avoid treatments quixotic like drink or narcotics,
Just hear the hypnotic bagpipes of the Gael.
'Twould take Archimedes a hundred and three days
To grasp how that reed is created from cane.
But my powers they grow scanty, I'd need the poet Dante
Or the Spaniard Cervantes to sing this refrain.

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: AmyLove
Date: 12 Dec 16 - 10:51 PM

More lyrics. On my cd the title is "Our Own Saint." The title given at the video is "Hymn to St Finbarr."

Video:

Hymn to St Finbarr

Lyrics:

You may talk of the Saints and the Scholars
Whose names we all learned in school
Who found Europe in sin and in squalor
And brought it to order and rule
A fig for these globe-trotting clerics
St. Ronan, St. Brendan, St. Gall
The man who gave women hysterics
Was Finbarr so handsome and tall

You can keep St. George and his dragons
St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes
For drinking the quarts and the naggins
St. Finbarr the trophy must take

While others were off gallivanting
In Brussels, Berlin and Paris
Finbarr his vespers was chanting
At home in his church by the Lee
His miracles all were astounding
But surely of all his great work
His finest achievement was founding
The beautiful city of Cork

You can keep St. George and his dragons
St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes
For drinking the quarts and the naggins
St. Finbarr the trophy must take

St. Canice above in Kilkenny
At hurling had made quite a name
He suffered an awful shock
When he took on our Finbarr at the game
St. Finbarr, he hurled like lightning
By pulling first time, low and high
He gave the poor man such a frightening
He thought that the Doomsday was nigh

You can keep St. George and his dragons
St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes
For drinking the quarts and the naggins
St. Finbarr the trophy must take

At bowling he cut quite a figure
On tarmac or gravel or sods
Men who were many times bigger
He beat by incredible odds
At draghunts and racetracks and meetings
His dogs always won with a will
And ever since then there's no beating
The dogs of the boys of Fair Hill

You can keep St. George and his dragons
St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes
For drinking the quarts and the naggins
St. Finbarr the trophy must take

Incensed with the heavy taxation
On brandy and spirits and wine,
Finbarr gave his dispensation to all
Without penance or fine
So the hills of West Cork were infested
With men making poitín and rum
Which then they consumed and digested
To make themselves totally numb

You can keep St. George and his dragons
St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes
For drinking the quarts and the naggins
St. Finbarr the trophy must take

Bould Finbarr being always ambitious
And eager to taste a smathán
In a way that was most surreptitious
He founded a still in Guagán
The stuff that he made was delicious
And eagerly sought and imbibed
But delivered an impact so vicious
That no-one who drank it survived

You can keep St. George and his dragons
St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes
For drinking the quarts and the naggins
St. Finbarr the trophy must take

At a conclave inside in St Peter's
The cardinals said with one voice
As they quaffed the red wine by the litre
That Finbarr for Pope was their choice
On hearing that he was elected
And urgently summoned to Rome
St Finbarr the job he rejected
Remarking "There's no place like home!"

You can keep St. George and his dragons
St. Pat with his shamrocks and snakes
For drinking the quarts and the naggins
St. Finbarr the trophy must take

Subject: RE: 'The Spoons Murder and other mysteries'
From: GUEST,Eoin O'Buadhaigh
Date: 13 Dec 16 - 09:50 AM

Con sang a new one he had composed (must be a year or so I heard it) about a man with a wig, brilliant, mind you, there was a lot of liquid being taken so song is a bit vague now but almost fell off my chair at the time. Con is on Facebook, you can search him out there.

Eoin