To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=83463
6 messages

happy? - Aug 3 (In 14 Hundred and 92)

03 Aug 05 - 11:10 AM (#1533979)
Subject: happy? - Aug 3 (In 14 Hundred and 92)
From: Abby Sale

Columbus set out on his 1st voyage 8/3/1492 OS. (2nd trip, 9/25/1493 [thanx Sam Hinton])

        In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two
        Columbus sailed the ocean blue;
        It was a courageous thing to do --
                But someone was already there.

        Columbus knew that world was round;
        He looked for the east while westward bound,
        He didn't find what he thought he'd found,
                For someone was already there.

                CHORUS:
                The Inuit and the Cherokee,
                The Aztec and Menominee
                The Onondaga and the Cree -- (CLAP! CLAP!)
                Someone was already here.

                        "1492" by Nancy Schimmel (Malvina Reynold's daughter)

ALSO:
        For forty days and forty nights
        He sailed the broad Atlantic,
        Columbo and his scurvy crew
        For want of a screw were frantic.

                CHORUS:
                His balls they were so round-o
                His cock hung to the ground-o
                That fornicating, copulating
                Son-of-a-bitch Columbo.

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved
What are Happy's all about? See Clicky


03 Aug 05 - 02:54 PM (#1534121)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 3 (In 14 Hundred and 92)
From: CapriUni

Hee! Two questions:

When these written? They both read as relatively modern -- the first one strikes me as post 1960. The second one sounds more trad. but still relatively contemporary -- 1940's, maybe (when did "screw" become slang for sex?)?

And where can I find tunes for these songs?


03 Aug 05 - 07:34 PM (#1534406)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 3 (In 14 Hundred and 92)
From: Abby Sale

Sounds right. 1492 has to be after 1955 - first recording I've found is 1992.

Christopher Columbo, though, is well-established, one of the clasics. "Salty Dick" gives 'from the late 19th century.' It occurs in Legman/Randolph, Unprintable where the notes shound be as good as any but I'm in Raleigh at the moment and didn't bring it (or Erotic Muse) with me.

I also have a note it's by one Francis Bryant. Greenhaus saith a parlor version (in DigTrad) "made a hit on Broadway in the late 19th century. It probably preceded the more common feelthy versions. From Flashes of Merriment, Levy." ie, 1893 at CHRISTOFO COLUMBO


03 Aug 05 - 09:21 PM (#1534552)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 3 (In 14 Hundred and 92)
From: Big Jim from Jackson

The second version above can be found on one of Oscar Brand's Barrack Room Ballads albums. He has some other verses


04 Aug 05 - 03:57 AM (#1534642)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 3 (In 14 Hundred and 92)
From: Paul Burke

(when did "screw" become slang for sex?)?

From The crossed Couple, 17th century:

And as I screwed my body around
To see my gallant gain the town,
'Twas his getting up, made me tumble down,
with my fol-lol-lol-lol-lol-lero.

Hear it sung- the implication is deliberate.


04 Aug 05 - 04:15 AM (#1534651)
Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 3 (In 14 Hundred and 92)
From: Le Scaramouche

Paul, not so. Gaining the town here is sex, screwing her body around means she is twisting it for better access. I think as slang screw is from the mid-1700s.