Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects

Subject: Poor Old Horse
From: Dazbo
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 04:32 AM

I don't know why but I just don't like any songs about poor, old dying (or recently deceased) horses, even when they're by artists or groups I really like.

Do you have any (apolitical) song subject that you consistently find grating or otherwise unlikeable?

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: Scrump
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 04:50 AM

I hate songs about hares, especially white ones.

:-)

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 04:55 AM

cabin boys

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: GUEST,Grumpy
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 05:17 AM

Yes - songs about roses

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: Scrump
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 05:28 AM

With few exceptions, I'm not terribly keen on songs about women who dress up as soldiers, sailors or highwaymen. Or, even worse, men who dress up as women, and then dress up as soldiers, sailors or highwaymen. Or women who get undressed, then remove their wigs, wooden legs, glass eyes and false teeth, especially in a public place.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: bubblyrat
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 05:39 AM

Cuckoos' nests,aprons,little bunches of thyme,and all those other Euphoniums !!( with apologies to R.B.Sheridan )

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: GUEST,ChrisG
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 06:12 AM

Counting songs - aaaaaaaargh! Who else squirms when some clown strikes up with

"I'll sing you one -o
Green grow the rushes -o..."

or

"On the first day of Christmas...."

or

"Here's good health! Good health to Barley Malt...."

The trouble with these is their repetitiveness and sheer length! For the above examples (with 12 verses each), the length of the verses increases in arithmetic progression so by the time you've reached the end, you've gone through 1+2+3+4+.....+12 'days of Christmas' or whatever. Applying the general formula n(n+1)/2 for the sum, that's 78 bloomin' "days". Even in verse 8, you're not even 1/2 way through the song!

End of moan! :-)

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: GUEST,ozchick
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 06:14 AM

don't get me started on christmas carols.............

bah humbug!

Subject: Poor Old Hoarse - cough cough.
From: GUEST,Mr Red who likes any song that can be sung w
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 08:13 AM

But that only applies to folk

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: Les from Hull
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 08:16 AM

But to me the most famous song about a dying horse (Dead Horse Shanty) isn't about a horse at all. So is that one OK?

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: Compton
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 08:31 AM

I've always thought there was a whiff of Dead Horse about those songs...sorry!

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: GUEST,honest frankie
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 10:52 AM

Unicorns

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 11:36 AM

And while the appeal of cumulative counting songs may be up for grabs, the math isn't. In Twelve Days of Christmas, there are a total of 364 individual gifts: (1+(1+2)+(1+2+3).....etc. Which has a definite numerological significance.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: GUEST,Grumpy
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 11:55 AM

Why is 364 any more significant than 346 or 307 or 1218?
OK it *happens* to be 1 less than 365 but have I missed something?

:-(

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: eddie1
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 12:29 PM

Without "The Poor Old Horse" many pubs would have no beer!

Eddie

Subject: Lyr Add: POOR OLD HORSE (from The Shantymen)
From: Bugsy
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 07:13 PM

lifted from the Shantymen's website - "shantyman.com" I used to sing this with the Fo'c's'le Firkins.


A poor old man came riding by
Ch: And we say so, and we hope so!
A poor old man came riding by
Ch: Oh, poor old horse!

Says I, old man, your horse will die
Says I, old man, your horse will die

And if he dies we'll tan his skin
And if he don't we'll ride him agin'

For one long month I rode him hard
For one long month we all rode him hard

But now your month is up, old Turk,
Get up you swine and look for work

Get up you swine and look for graft
While we lays on and drags ye aft

He's as dead as a nail in the lamp room door
And he won't come a worryin' us no more

We use the hair of his tail to sew our sails
And the iron of his shoe to make deck nails

We'll hoist him up to the 'fore yard arm
Where he won't do sailors any harm

We'll drop him down with a long, long roll
Where the sharks'll have his body, and the devil take his soul

Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse
From: bubblyrat
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 11:27 AM

"Riding on a Donkey " isn"t about a donkey,either,come to that.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Scrump
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 11:54 AM

I hated that song about a Unicorn disguising itself as a racehorse so it could win the Cheltenham Gold Cup. It worked, too, but he regretted it when he tried to change back to his former self.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Dead Horse
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 01:44 PM

Whats that about a "whiff of Dead Horse"?
I'll have you know I bathe regular, mate.
Every year I has a bath.
Needed or not!!!

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Bernard
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 01:50 PM

Did 'Poor Old Horse' exist before Souling, Mumming, etc., or was it written along with the 'script'?

Don't shout, I only assed...!

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Marje
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 02:05 PM

I just want to add my vote to the "counting songs" category; specifically, the cumulative songs that get longer every verse, like the 12 days of Christmas. I have no problem with the ones like Seven Drunken Nights (or however many nights the singer dares to reach) - it's the endless repetition of all the lines from the previous verses that bores me. And the same applies to songs like "Herring's Head", etc, where there's a growing list of herring-bits that gets repeated every verse. To me, there's something inherently depressing about a song that gets longer every verse, I just feel it's never going to end. And the tune generally gets stuck in a groove too.

I think my dislike is partly because I'm not good at remembering these backward lists - I'd never sing one myself because I'd get it wrong, and I just don't enjoy the mental challenge of having to remember the sequence to join in the chorus. Perhaps if you find them a real breeze, they are a delight to sing and listen to. But not for me.

Marje

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Bernard
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 02:50 PM

...and the seemingly interminable 'Barley Mow'!!

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 05:10 PM

Bawdy Ballads Bore

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Scrump
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 05:14 PM

The Court of King Caractacus is one of those 'accumulative' songs where each verse gets longer.

And the Rattling Bog.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: bubblyrat
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 05:18 PM

I have struggled with all those liquid measures in the chorus of "the Barley Mow " since I first heard it in about 1960-something,and I STILL can"t handle it !.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Scrump
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 05:22 PM

The worst song of that type is "1,000,000 Green Bottles". Whenever I hear Bob Dylan sing it I can never stay awake till the end of the song. And as for Leonard Cohen's version, well, words fail me.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 05:42 PM

Grumpy-
One gift for every day of the year. But there are 365 days in a year. Yes, because Christmas brought the greatest gift of all! (but don't tell my rabbi)

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: GUEST,ChrisG
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 09:19 AM

"there's something inherently depressing about a song that gets longer every verse" - with you all the way there, Marje.

It's bad enough when the singer chooses a song with 43 verses, but when the verses also get *longer* as the song goes on, then one simply loses the will to live!

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 09:58 AM

Just a stab at Bernards question:

"Did 'Poor Old Horse' exist before Souling, Mumming, etc., or was it written along with the 'script'?"

I guess the horse of souling and mumming was taken to sea to become the "Poor Old Horse". Shanties as we know them, such that we do, Stan Hugil so to speakk, seem to be a product of the so called Great Days of Sail, the industrialisation of long distance trade via sailing. I think that was mostly 18 or 19C activity.

I will take advice M'Lord

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 11:56 AM

Poor old Hoss

why did I think that was all about Sally in the kitchen making duff..?

was that the albion band?

when the cheeks of her arse went chuf chuff chuff, I stopped concentrating the equine references somewhat.....

I don't really care what people sing about. The thing that pisses me off is when they accuse me of writing about weird subjects - as though some subjects are off limit. Recently (last week) I was recording a song and the recording engineer instead of saying okay got that - he sort of looked at me with glazed eyes and said, you are a dangerous lunatic.......

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Songster Bob
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 12:19 PM

Counting songs, animal-noise songs (sorry, old Mac), in-group obscurobelia (who cares what a shoe-maker uses last?) and, I'm sorry to say, ballads chosen only because they're uncommon versions of well-known ones (even if the well-known one is better musically and/or lyrically -- it's the 'obscurer than thou' attitude that I hates).

Then again, I'm probably guilty of singing each of those kinds of songs, and dead horses, too. My favorite counting song, for example, is infinitely interminable, if sung to the end:

99 bottles of beer on the wall,
99 bottles of beer;
Take one down, put it back up,
99 bottles of beer on the wall!

(repeat till zero is reached)


Bob

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Alec
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 12:25 PM

Might I recommend my own preferred version of "Ten Green Bottles"?
It goes "Ten sticks of Dynamite hangin' on the wall
         Ten sticks of Dynamite hangin' on the wall
         And if one stick of Dynamite should accidently fall
         There'll be no sticks of Dynamite and no bloody wall."
Find this version saves a lot of time.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 01:29 PM

"there's something inherently depressing about a song that gets longer every verse" - with you all the way there, Marje.

I used to like Noel Murphy singing The Bog down in the valley-oh. In fact it cheered me up.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 01:49 PM

Um - aren't you contradicting yourself, WLD?

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:20 PM

probably

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 04:39 PM

But then, in your favour, I've always said you are remarkably easy to get along with ...

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 04:53 PM

No - the whole sentence was a quote! Ahha see what you mean!

I was just thinking to meself - Noel Murphy - he could pull it off.

In general though I agree.

what becomes of a mackerels eyes - who gives a shit?

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 05:16 PM

The mackerel, I would imagine ...

(As Dennis Lee says: "You've got your uncle's eyes,/For God's sake, give them back!")

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: GUEST,mick p royal marine shanty crew
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 09:55 AM

as a shanty singing group we have to perform POOR OLD HORSE on regular occasions. This is bad enough but one of our members insists on singing THE BARLEY MALT in its entirety at every opportunity. Any suggestions on how to stop this obsene behavior. As for unlikeable song subjects what about Johnnies.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Dazbo
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 09:59 AM

make him drink a drink of each size mentioned

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Celtaddict
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 12:41 PM

Songster Bob: What do you mean, put it back up? Don't you take one down and pass it around? No wonder the song seems to drag on!

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Songster Bob
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 04:44 PM

Nah, I never developed a taste for beer, so my tipple involves single malts or rum or, the nearest to beer among the things I'll readily drink, ciders.

Bob

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Gurney
Date: 10 Feb 07 - 02:02 AM

Well, previous posters have the tradition pretty well covered.   Wonder what type of folk clubs they go to?
Perhaps folk clubs where people sing about walking on the beach, or missing their 'baby', or both.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: teddy_bear_picnic
Date: 10 Feb 07 - 02:27 AM

Cuckoos? Cabin Boys? Women dressing as men? THYME, for God's sake?!

These subjects are all fantastic. :P



Myself, I don't really enjoy folk music with really psychedelic lyrics, I can't stand that neo-psych-post-folk or whatever it's calling itself nowdays. I also am not a big fan of syrupy love songs, however, when done well they can be ok.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Feb 07 - 08:22 AM

I agree, tbp (thats almost poetry!)

as soon as some bugger pipes up with:-

i'm looking through the window.....

Its hard for you to understand just the way I feel......

I love you but I need to ramble.....

the winds are blowing... (like thats what winds do!)

I'm singing a song for (you, the world, our love, Manchester City at home.....)

I wish I was back shagging the handsome cabin boy. well actually no, but you get my drift.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 11 Feb 07 - 03:21 AM

They sound like songs to open a vein to.

Subject: RE: Poor Old Horse - unlikeable song subjects
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Feb 07 - 07:26 AM

I suppose if you've been a couple of years at sea, the cabin boy might develop a certain allure.