Lyr Req: Finding of Moses / Pharaoh's Daughter

11 Jan 03 - 08:31 PM (#864845)
Subject: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Robin

In A World Elsewhere, the question came up:

"
BTW, does anyone have an authentic text of early date for *Pharaoh's
Daughter*, said to be by Michael Moran ('Zozimus'), the early 19th C Dublin street singer of whom Yeats wrote a memoir? Some versions mention a 'skivvy'
"

Digitrad has a text, FINDING OF MOSES (Zozimus?)-- clicky

... but no details.

Elsewhere, I've found the text attributed as "The Finding of Moses"
Zozimus (Michael Moran, 1794-1846), which goes beyond what's there in Digitrad.

So anyone got any more? Specifically, an early-dated text.

The question turns on the use of the word "skivvy" in the final stanza.

Thanks in advance.

Robin

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11 Jan 03 - 08:43 PM (#864853)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: khandu

A skivvy is one who does menial labor. As to the other questions, I cannot help.

k

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11 Jan 03 - 08:44 PM (#864854)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: khandu

Uh...one who does domestic menial labor.

k

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11 Jan 03 - 08:49 PM (#864857)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: GUEST,Q

There is an old poem at the Bodleian Library, dated 1827; Moses in the Bulrushes, which tells the legend. Enter Moses in Browse-Search and look for Douce Add. 137(84). No author cited.
Search

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11 Jan 03 - 10:22 PM (#864904)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Robin

khandu:

Right on -- but been there done that bought the T-shirt.

Guest Q:

A Bodleian broadsheet would be perfect, but ... not the right text. (Well, I only checked one, so maybe ... )

The crunch for my purpose turns on the last stanza.

The Digitrad text reads:

So they sent a bellman to the market square
To see if he could find a skivvy there
But the only one that they could find

clicky

... and then there's a thread which reads (SLAVEY):

Well they sent a bellman to the market square
To see if he could find a slavey there
But the only one now that he could find

clicky

What I need (this is less song than semantics) is to negociate slavey/skivvy, and to establish the Earliest Text ...

So?

Help!!!!!

Robin

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11 Jan 03 - 11:45 PM (#864956)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: GUEST,Slavey

The version posted by Mcgrath in thread 5029 "Finding of Moses- Moran" is superb. "She" was found in the market. Skivvy would be the
correct word. You aren't going to find an "earliest" version, and it wouldn't turn on the word skivvy-slavey anyway. Beyond the first verses, it is probable that the rest was added by someone else.

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12 Jan 03 - 08:12 AM (#865089)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: John Moulden

One Joseph Tully writing under the pseudonym Guilelmus Dubliniensis Humoriensis in 1871 produced "Memoir of the Great Zozimus (Michael Moran) The Celebrated Dublin Street Rhymer and Reciter With his Songs, Sayings and Recitations". This was republished by Carraig Books Dublin (1876) with an introduction by Dr Thomas Wall. The booklet's text gives an early draft which begins:

"On Egypt's plains, where flows the ancient Nile
Where Ibex stalks, and swims the crocodile"
and which is quite unlike the version, or rather series of versions, which are current.

In my recollection the first person to sing this into general knowledge was Dominic Behan though Frank Harte may have been implicated also. However, as I read Dr Wall's introduction, it is likely that these versions owe more to the publication of a set of words on one of the Cuala Press Broadsides in 1935. This set, says Dr Wall was probably altered by FR Higgins who was co-editor with Yeats of this series: "suspect that ... Higgins ... was responsible for the exaggerated Dublinese of the Cuala version..."

Hence I'm afraid, in the absence of a full early text (Tully only quotes the first 2 stanzas) we can't place any reliance on the authenticity of the language of any of the current or post 1935 versions.

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12 Jan 03 - 11:08 AM (#865178)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Robin

GUEST, Slavey.

I take your point. In fact, what I'm after is the other way round. All this came out off an argument on the poetryetc list of the origin of "skivvy" (which is first recorded in 1902) and its relation to "slavey" (first recorded about 1810, which is why I was taken by +both+ words occurring in different versions. Which is (partly) why it would be sueful to +know+ that "Skivvy would be the correct word."
If so, it would push the first-recorded use of "skivvy" backwards. My feeling is that probably "slavey" is the word used by Moran, but that's simply an assumption based on the dates as (currently) given in the OED.

John -- Marvellous! Just what Christopher Walker (who raised the issue of the song on poetryetc in the first place) was looking for.

Thanks all.

Robin

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12 Jan 03 - 06:43 PM (#865466)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: MartinRyan

Robin

The version in the DT was submitted by me, a long time ago. It's the way I sing it. Frank Harte (and most others) sing "slavey" but I've always felt more comfortable with "skivvy", so to speak. Apart from that, its pretty much as Frank does it.

My earliest memory of the song is from my Boy Scout days which, as John Moulden would confirm, were not today nor yesterday! I believe that version, with a simpler tune than the one now common, is still around.

Regards

p.s. There was a lovely clip on television the other night in which Dominic Behan sang a parody of "Galway Bay" based on an early suburb of Dublin called Kimmage, to which his family were banished from their inner city home. The final verse went, roughly,:
Ah but maybe someday I'll go back to Kimmage
If only at the closing of my mind
For to see the childer beating up their granny
Or picking on the crippled and the blind!"

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12 Jan 03 - 06:53 PM (#865471)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: MartinRyan

The Penguin Dictionary of historical slang has the folowing:

skivvy
A maid servant, especially a rough (one). General from around 1905 . Ex SLAVEY.

So it appears to have derived from "slavey", relatively recently. It remains current in Dublin.

Regards

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12 Jan 03 - 07:07 PM (#865478)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Snuffy

Not just Dublin:
"For it would take a dozen skivvies
His clothes to wash and scrub
Since our Jock became a member
Of that terrible football club."
(Can't spell it in Glesca)

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12 Jan 03 - 07:44 PM (#865502)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: McGrath of Harlow

"skivvie" and "slavey" means the same thing, the lowest in the hierarchy of servants, the one who is the servant to the servants - or in a big household, the servant of the servants of the servants. The general dogsbody.

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13 Jan 03 - 12:39 AM (#865674)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Bert

The Pharaoh's lovely daughter had a very winning smile,
she found the infant Moses in the rushes by the Nile,
took him home to Pharaoh, said I found him by the shore,
Pharaoh winked his eye and said "I've heard that one before".

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13 Jan 03 - 02:02 AM (#865697)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Robin

McGrath:

'"skivvie" and "slavey" means the same thing'.

Indeed, and that's what's a bit odd about it -- why does one term replace the other, since there's virtually no difference in meaning?

"slavey" is the earlier recorded -- from about 1810+. "skivvy" is first recorded in 1902. Early 20thC, they seem to co-exist, and a lot of the citations read "skivvy or slavey". Then after mibee 1920, it's "skivvy" virtually universally.

"skivvy", as McGrath rightly points out, was the lowest of the low. In a five-servant Edwardian household, it might run [descending] (female)-- housekeeper cook skivvy; (male) -- butler, boots. Add in the lady's maid.

But that's upmarket. The norm I'd guess is for there to have been one female servant -- the slavey/skivvy.

A muddle ...

Snuffy:

fitbaw?

Robin

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13 Jan 03 - 03:59 AM (#865732)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: MartinRyan

Robin

Sorry about the ornithological confusion!

I have a few 19C. slang collections, original or in reproduction. None contain either word.

Just to confuse the issue further - where does the American snse (t-shirt?) of "skivvy" come in?

Regards

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13 Jan 03 - 11:13 AM (#865956)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Steve Parkes

Slight diversion, but there's a Brummie version of "Galway Bay" with almost the same ending as Behan's. I got this from Barrie Roberts, who would have been familiar with B's version; BR may have written it himself, or it could have been Ian Cambell, who had a similar song based on "A little bit of Heaven fell down to the earth on day". (I'm sure it wasn't Harvey Andrews!)

There's a great big town that nestles in the Midlands,
I went down there so many years ago;
The folks down there all speak a funny language:
They say "Wharro aer kid" ["What-ho our kid"] and "Do' yo' know?" ["Don't you know?"]

The Yankies came and tried to teach them their ways
With chewing gum and pockets full of dough;
You can see their bastards walking round the Bullring,
Still looking for the dads they'll never know.

Maybe someday I'll go back again to Brummagem,
If it's only at the closing of my mind,
Just to see the kiddies teasing of their grannies
And tripping up the crippled and the blind.

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13 Jan 03 - 12:11 PM (#865997)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Robin

Martin:

"Just to confuse the issue further - where does the American snse (t-shirt?) of "skivvy" come in?"

It's a bit of a stretch, but how about a skivvy is a (domestic) underling, and a skivvy (vest, undershirt) is an underthing? The skivvy=vest is first recored in America about 1930, I think

There's a new edition of Patridge's Historical Slang out -- actually, it came out a year or so ago -- technically the 8th ed., which I have on order. I'm hoping that may give some more details. The +major+ revision of Patridge -- which will be the ninth edition -- in two volumes, isn't due out till 2005, alas.

Robin

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13 Jan 03 - 12:27 PM (#866005)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: MMario

I would suspect it would be because only the manual laborour would be seen in his undershirt.

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13 Jan 03 - 03:26 PM (#866139)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: MMario

wasn't "skivvy" also used for railroad workers? those laying the track, etc?

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13 Jan 03 - 04:22 PM (#866179)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: MartinRyan

Robin

Oxford Etymology gives "skivvy" as 19C. derivative of slavey. Again, no references are given.

Regards

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13 Jan 03 - 05:01 PM (#866201)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: GUEST,Q

Adding a little-
The OED says that skivvy for undershirt is of unknown origin, but tends toward a Nautical origin (1987 supplement), possibly because the first written reference is to cutting away a sailor's undershirt to get at a wound (1932).
Skivvy, however, has come to mean underwear including the pants in the present-day U. S. Navy.
Robert Chapman in his Dictionary of American Slang says skivvy is of naval origin, referring to underwear.

Slavey has been used for a black boy servant in Australia ca. 1900 (OED).
In a Flash dictionary of 1812, slavey indicated a servant of either sex (OED).

A skivvy waver is a naval signalman (May be no older than WW2).

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13 Jan 03 - 05:06 PM (#866207)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: McGrath of Harlow

skivvy is a much brisker word than slavey, that might explain why it caught on. A sort of get-a-move-on kind of a word.

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13 Jan 03 - 08:20 PM (#866315)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Robin

Martin:

"Oxford Etymology gives "skivvy" as 19C. derivative of slavey. Again, no references are given."

... it's *possible*, but contested. (I'm not happy with it myself, nor is anyone else involved in the discussion on poetryetc.) OED2(3) has it as of "obscure origin".

GUEST, Q

"Skivvy, however, has come to mean underwear including the pants in the present-day U. S. Navy.
Robert Chapman in his Dictionary of American Slang says skivvy is of naval origin, referring to underwear."

... thanks! Hadn't come on that. That would suggest that that particular version of skivvy is independent of the servant one.

"Slavey has been used for a black boy servant in Australia ca. 1900 (OED).
In a Flash dictionary of 1812, slavey indicated a servant of either sex (OED).
"

This sent me back to the OED on "slavey". The male servant meaning is the earlier -- 1812+. The first citation for the female servant version is 1821.

"skivvy" (coming in in the early 20C) only ever seems to apply to female servants.

Patridge's _Historical Slang_ defines "skivvy" as a female servant (though Partidge does cross-relate it to "slavey", where he gives male servant as the earlier use).

In sum, it looks as if the earlier term, "slavey", started out as applying to male servants, then transferred to female servants, while "skivvy" only ever applied to female servants, and at a certain point replaced "slavey" more-or-less completely.

I just noticed -- which may be relevant to the American Naval Undershirt! -- that Patridge also has:

skivvy! A naval asservation or exclamation (-1900). Ex Japanese.

amazon.uk informs me that I should have my copy of the New Patridge (8thEd) through my letterbox tomorrow -- let you-all know if that has anything relevant.

Robin

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13 Jan 03 - 09:23 PM (#866342)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: GUEST,Q

Robin, t he complete OED is a big help, but their word finders can only accept usages that have appeared in print. Often this occurs years after the word comes into verbal English. For this reason, they are always behind "English as she is spoke." My OED is complete only to 1987, so I lack 15 years- Wish I had the $1500 for the new one.
If I see "slavey---female servant" 1821, I feel that the usage is at least as old as late 18th century. Which I am pretty sure it is- 1812, Vaux, Flash Dict. "either sex," as I noted before (also OED)- since most of these flash dictionaries developed from late 18th C. compilations by amateur word collectors.
For a while, much computer work for the OED was done at McMaster's University in Waterloo, Canada. I wonder if the OED still accepts substantiated submissions as it did in the past- finds in old magazines and ephemera could push usages back.
The OED left the American Webster's far behind years ago because Webster's could not get stable funding. The OED, plus specialized tomes (Patridge and several others, collections of flash and cant, etc.), plus the journals, get most usages, but never all.

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14 Jan 03 - 09:37 AM (#866640)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Dave Bryant

In many versions of the "Barley Mow" the word "Slavey" is used to describe the barman (or possibly potman) the usual run down of the last verse is Company, Brewer, Drayer, Slavey, Daughter, Landlady, Landlord, Barrel, Half Barrel, Gallon, Half Gallon, Quart Pot, Pint Pot, Half Pint, Gill Pot, Half Gill, Quarter Gill, Nipperkin, Anna, and Bowl.

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15 Jan 03 - 08:39 AM (#867333)
Subject: RE: Finding of Moses / Pharoah's Daughter
From: Nigel Parsons

MMario: I think the term for 'track layer' you're considering is probably 'navvy' (originally a labourer on a 'navigation' or canal)

Nigel

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02 Jul 04 - 08:58 PM (#1218711)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Finding of Moses / Pharaoh's Daughter
From: GUEST,Barrie Roberts

Getting back to 'There's A Great Big Town That Nestles in the Midlands', after all this unwholesome discussion of skivvies undershirts, I learned part of it in 1964 from a Post Office Engineering supervisor who used to hang around the job I was working on (trying to spread culture by contstructing a BBC2 cable link to the Midland transmitter at Sutton Coldfield).
Cyril (for that was his name) taught me a few verses, including one which Steve Parkes omits:

Now the breezes blow across old Brum from Nechells,
Gently scented by the Gasworks as they blow.
If you've never caught the whiff of Saltley gasworks,
It's a smell you'd never, ever want to know.

Saltley Gasworks is, of course, long gone. Cyril taught me other verses, which my innate sense of propriety made me forget. I probably did pinch the end bit from Dominic or someone (not Harvey thingy!)

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03 Jul 04 - 03:45 AM (#1218806)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Finding of Moses / Pharaoh's Daughter
From: John MacKenzie

Kimmage

          Tune....Galway Bay

Oh the wind that blows from Gardner St to Kimmage
Is perfumed by the knackers as it blows
And the women on the pitheap picking cinders
Speak a language that the clergy do not know

If your ould man pays the rent for two weeks running
The garda will have questions without fail
And if he can't tell them where he got that money
They'll cart your poor old fella off to jail

Well some day I will go back again to Kimmage
Even if it's only at the closing of my mind
Just to watch the children beating up their grannies
And tripping up the crippled and the blind.


I think there's another verse, but can't call it to mind.
Giok

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03 Jul 04 - 07:13 AM (#1218849)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Finding of Moses / Pharaoh's Daughter
From: Flash Company

Always pictured Slavey in the Barley Mow as someone a bit like the girl in Upstairs Downstairs who did all the jobs that no-one else wanted, and was shouted at by the Cook. Ruby, was it?
Or 'Greasy Joan' in Shakespeare.
Dominic Behan sang 'skivvy' in The Finding of Moses.

FC

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31 May 14 - 05:51 PM (#3629389)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Finding of Moses / Pharaoh's Daughter
From: GUEST,Mary King

Re 'the winds that blow from Gardiner St to Kimmage
I think the missing verse goes something like this

'There's a plot outside the house they call a garden
That's covered all with black stuff they call clay
If you think that it is muck you might be pardoned
It's the image of the stuff that's under clay

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14 Jun 14 - 12:55 AM (#3632840)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE FINDING OF MOSES (Zozimus)
From: Jim Dixon

From Memoir of the Great Original, Zozimus (Michael Moran), the Celebrated Dublin Street Rhymer and Reciter by "Gulielmus Dubliniensis Humoriensis" (Michael Moran), (Dublin: M'Glashan & Gill, 1871), page 20:

The next literary effusion on which Zozimus used his vocal powers was that on the 'Finding of Moses among the Rushes.' From want of a classical finish in his speech, which we had to follow, it would appear to be all his own composition; some of his imitators introduced loose words which, as his friend, we reject:—

'Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of modesty is want of sense.'

THE FINDING OF MOSES.

In Egypt's kingdom, upon the banks of Nile,
King Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe in style;
She tuk her dip, then walked unto the land,
And to dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand.

A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
A smiling babby in a wad o' straw.
She tuk it to Pharo', who madly wild,
Said, 'You foolish girl, have you got a child?'

An old Blackmore woman among the crew,
Cried out, 'You royal savage, what's that to you?
The royal lady is sure too mild,
To find dishonestly the charming child.'

'Oh!' says the king, to end this pother,
'I'll kick the reptile from Nile to Dodder,
And then I'll search every hole and nook,
And likely I'll find him at Donnybrook.'*

Other versions of this poem are extant in the memories of the old citizens of Dublin, some of the fragments being well enough as a burlesque, but not true to the character of Zozimus; we have, however, rescued one from the uncertainty of tradition, which appears to have been an early effort, when the poetaster's brain was full of Bishop Coyle's superior composition, which he had committed to memory so carefully. The style evidences this, and the historical allusions are fairly accurate. In a couple of places there seems to be a 'spark of the fire' not discreditable to more pretentious poets.

FINDING OF MOSES IN THE NILE.

On Egypt's plains, where flows the ancient Nile,
Where Ibix stalks, and swims the crockadile,
Where burning suns for ever shed their glare,
And rainless countries dry the parched air,

'Tis here the pyramids ascend on high,
And lofty temples tell of times gone by,
When mighty monarchs made their people slaves,
And with their victims filled ten thousand graves.

The Israelite, oppressed for full four hundred years,
In anguish cried aloud, and shed the captive's tears;
The Lord from heaven came down and heard the sufferers' cry,
And in His own due time, the penitents' tears to dry.

Proud Pharaoh from his throne sent forth his mandates wild,
'Go, slaughter every male, but keep each female child.'
The mothers then in Israel raised their cries on high:
'Oh, save our infant boys, in them our hopes rely.'

Oh, woman! in thy need what plans thou canst contrive;
And now the trial came to save her child alive.
Right well we know thy nature; the diamond of thy mind
Shines out most brightly when the heart is most resigned;

A woman's sympathy is all we here enjoy,
The Hebrew mother trusted this, to save her lovely boy;
So now of wicker-work a little ark she made,
And in it placed her world of wealth, and o'er it knelt and prayed:

'Oh, God of all our fathers, avenge poor Israel's woes,
And may my child redeem our race, and save them from their foes.'
The hearty, fervent prayer went up unto the Throne of Grace;
The floating ark went down the stream and settled in the place

Where Egypt's noble daughters came at noon to bathe and play,
And Pharaoh's lovely child was there, so artless, good, and gay;
She heard the piteous cry, an infant's wailing note,
And searching round among the reeds she found the tiny boat;

Her tender heart at once was moved, the babe she kissed and pressed
Close to her virgin bosom pure, and lovingly caressed;
The smiling infant gazed at her, then spreading forth its arms,
The noble girl's heart then warmed with all a woman's charms

When first awakened from that sleep, when innocency dreams,
And sense and instinct glowing, both unite their warming beams.
'Go forth, some maid,' she cried, 'and seek a nurse to care
This infant which I've found, for all his wants prepare;

'Tis heaven alone could give to mortals such a child,
And I will try to keep him pure and undefiled.'
The anxious mother watched her child's eventful fate,
And meeting then the maiden with joy was most elate.

For years she nursed her child, and as he older grew
The youth was taught such learning as Egypt's priesthood knew.
They little thought that boy in time would wield a rod,
Which rescued from their bondage the Israel of God.

A conquered nation, though down-trod, it still is never crushed,
A Liberator always comes when Freedom's voice is hushed;
And so our own dear land, in time we all shall see
The Saxon rulers gone—Old Ireland shall be free!

Inferior as this poem may appear to the educated reader, it had its force and interest with the attentive crowd, which drank in every word as it was spoken; nor should we undervalue the impression it must have made on those who had few, if indeed any, other opportunities of hearing the incidents of Scripture history. In ancient times those incidents were carved on the Irish crosses, and so supplied what Zozimus recited. Art speaks to the soul through the eye, but our modern hero spoke through the trumpet of the poet, to the anxious ears of the 'plebs.'

* note.—This Quixotic notion is doubtless owing to the wild Irishism of our friend Zozimus.


[I have taken the liberty of inserting a stanza break after every 4 lines; there were no stanza breaks in the original.—JD]

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